american journal of art and communication vol.8, issue 1; january-febuary 2023; issn: 2994-0540 impact factor: 6.91 1252 columbia rd nw, washington dc, united states https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac; mail: topacademicjournals@gmail.com 1 | american journal of art and communication | https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac cultural capital evaluation: a path to certified valuation johnathan p. smith department of business economics, university of economics prague, czech republic abstract: the valuation of cultural goods is a critical yet complex issue in the realm of culture funding and resource allocation. this abstract introduces the necessity of developing a certified method for valuing cultural assets with a focus on objectivity and comparability. while the discussion around this topic is lacking in the czech republic and often lacks systematic approaches globally, this paper argues for the creation of a method that can provide more reliable and consistent results. the challenges inherent in valuing cultural goods are briefly outlined. keywords: cultural goods, valuation, funding, resource allocation, objectivity introduction one of the key topics concerning the question of culture funding and the allocation of public resources in this field is the issue of determining the value of cultural goods. it is an unusually complex area, where one still moves in the spheres of hopes and wishes rather than exact science. practically no discussion about this subject has been under way in the czech republic, and it is not quite systematic in other countries either. yet for many reasons, which we are going to put forward in the text, a certified method enabling to value cultural goods with maximum possible objectivity and providing comparable results needs to be created. let us now only briefly remind the most frequent troubles posed by valuing cultural goods. the troubles with determining the value of cultural goods the first and possibly the most serious trouble is the fact that a mere minority of cultural goods has a market price, which only partially covers the overall value of the cultural goods. we can easily demonstrate our statement on two examples. let us say we have at our disposal an important painting by a renowned artist – perhaps the scream by norwegian painter edvard munch. the painting has its market price, which was exactly set during the last auction of this masterpiece. yet does it also express its value as a cultural object? let us justly be afraid it does not. the painting became the foundation of many other works of art, which follow it, use its main motif both in the area of visual arts or in literature and film. if – hypothetically – the world society (or humankind, to put nicely) was forced to choose: either you collect a certain sum of money or this painting will be destroyed forever, what mailto:topacademicjournals@gmail.com american journal of art and communication vol.8, issue 1; january-febuary 2023; issn: 2994-0540 impact factor: 6.91 1252 columbia rd nw, washington dc, united states https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac; mail: topacademicjournals@gmail.com 2 | american journal of art and communication | https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac result would we arrive at? what total sum would the humankind be willing to sacrifice for this indisputably unique cultural object? we cannot give it a try; hence we have no answer that would withstand criticism. moreover, the situation itself would certainly have a number of possible variations, each of them likely to offer a wide scale of answers. for instance, the outcome would depend on whether the situation was a one-off event or whether the humankind would have to face the same threat every now and then and was forced to pay for da vinci’s mona lisa or the great pyramid of giza. let us imagine another option relating directly to the czech reality. the historic building of the national theatre will fall into ruins unless the czechs collect among themselves a larger sum – say 400 million euros. moreover, they would have to contribute with 40 millions from their own pockets to the venue’s further operation every year, rather than paying more or less anonymously through the tax system. would every single citizen be truly willing to spend his or her share on such events? everyone in the czech republic would have to do without forty euros on the spot and then start giving away for euros every year. the sum is not too large in itself and if we carried out a survey, the results would probably be quite optimistic. yet we can only guess how many people would be willing to spend the sum in reality (their number surely being substantially lower than the survey would have suggested).4 the second trouble is that we are unable to define exactly the term cultural goods. we could debate about this topic for a long time, explaining why it is so difficult to describe culture with a definition. yet all the important facts have been said, so we can only sum up the elementary: culture is an absolutely individual sphere (kant 1790, p. 51), therefore its definition is different for every person, and sometimes the differences can be huge. every individual also sees differently the importance of culture, which figures within their value system not as one phenomenon, but as hundreds or thousands of particular qualities. it therefore stands that culture is not a homogenous concept and it can denote a set of artefacts, experiences, performances and so on, where the individual components have in fact nothing in common. apart from a concrete individual person who places those into the “culture” group (cikánek 2009). the third decisive trouble related to valuing cultural goods is the fact that the very use of the term value is rather confusing in this respect – and it is particularly confusing for economists. theoreticians and professionals alike are used to applying the term value in strictly defined and mutually related meanings. actually, they understand it as a value common in goods and a use value. they are both an expression of the fact that every particular object, thing or machine has both a usual value given by external aspects and a use value reflected in the possibility or capacity of the owner of the object or commodity to use their goods for production or for providing services. here we are getting to a problematic situation – philosophy and other humanities are much more creative in the use of the word value, which causes noticeable chaos in the subsequent discussions. the economy sees value as something measurable and quantifiable by standard means, that is by a larger or lower sum of money. or possibly something that can be measured additionally, for instance by cash flow. of course, this does not mean that price mailto:topacademicjournals@gmail.com american journal of art and communication vol.8, issue 1; january-febuary 2023; issn: 2994-0540 impact factor: 6.91 1252 columbia rd nw, washington dc, united states https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac; mail: topacademicjournals@gmail.com 3 | american journal of art and communication | https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac is set by assigning a value prior to the process of changing the owner of assets. value is always just a thought concept in this respect, and becomes price only once it is tested by the transfer of assets through the payment of money (schönfeld 2011). this too is a cause of trouble when one tries to understand the ideas concerning the valuation of cultural goods and the valuing of assets in general. if, strictly economically, we apply the term value on the sphere of cultural goods, we obtain a “value” expressed in money, but we often use it together with other expressions that simply defy such application. it often happens with archaeological finds of the type that does not include artefacts, but rather jewellery or crafted objects of daily use or coins. there is, on the one hand, the value of the material (i.e. its market price) the object is made of, such as precious metal, and collectible value, which one can find out by trying to sell the object, for example at an auction. moreover, there is historic value, often referred to as priceless. the historic value is a sui-genre value of a cultural good, too. yet if it is so “priceless”, the team that found such objects provided “priceless” benefits to humanity. if we took such statements literally, archaeologists would have to be among the wealthiest people, because they would have to be remunerated for their benefits. which they are not. in fact, “priceless” does not mean “extremely valuable” here, but rather “unknown” or “individually irrelevant”. let us admit that we consider the finding of celtic ceramics, bronze jewellery and imported pieces of silver with amber as important and culturally beneficial, but mainly because “it is appropriate”, rather than because we are truly convinced that we might learn something from the decoration on a bowl or develop culturally. yet we will accept the statement that the finds are “priceless” a similar paradox actually concerns a vast number of other kinds of cultural goods, not just archaeological finds. similarly, we may be able to unmask the notion that literature, theatre and arts in general bring something that “money cannot buy” to humankind. though it is a true statement in itself, the fact is that the benefit for humanity is in surprising contradiction to the way individuals value it. as for them, they are not ready to pay any absolute prices for such cultural objects. it is a strange and hardly tangible contradiction between the value perceived by the society as a whole, expressed by extensive and strong evaluating proclamations, and individual value expressed by the real price people in the world of economic acts are willing to spend in terms of the money they sacrifice. from this it follows that the way our basic communication tool, i.e. language, copes with the issue, can be a real eye-opener to some extent. if we take a closer look at some of the commonly used phrases, we find in them the very cluelessness we experience when facing the issue from the scientific point of view. we might go on and on like this for a long time in bringing together all the arguments against the possibility to value cultural goods. the literature concerning economic relations in the field of culture is rather scarce in the czech republic. in addition, the most notable works concern a related area, dealing with the question of creative industries (cikánek mailto:topacademicjournals@gmail.com american journal of art and communication vol.8, issue 1; january-febuary 2023; issn: 2994-0540 impact factor: 6.91 1252 columbia rd nw, washington dc, united states https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac; mail: topacademicjournals@gmail.com 4 | american journal of art and communication | https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac 2009). the attempt at carrying out a more detailed study of economic activities that could, according to some researchers, become the driving sector of national economies in the developed countries in the upcoming decades, is by all means quite interesting. yet it does not contribute in any way to the solution of questions regarding the public funding of noncommercial cultural events. similarly, it can help even less to explain the trouble with valuing cultural goods. nevertheless, we would like to mention the work of richard florida, who puts forward the thesis that public funds expended to support quality culture do pay off, because they help to create an environment suitable for the development of the “creative class”. it is a group of people with substantial creative skills, which we can interpret quite straightforwardly as workers able to create new methods, new objects, and new solutions. the creative class cannot exist without sufficient impulses, one their sources being art, especially quality art (florida 2002). of course, one can reject such thought constructs as calculated statements built upon partial research. similarly, we could cast into doubt the whole structure of creative industries as an artificial concept creating a uselessly complex scientific argument around events that are natural, normal and nonsurprising. although we do not have enough space here for a more detailed analysis of this question, dealing with the issue of creative industries in such a straightforward way would be too simple. as far as attempts at valuing cultural goods are concerned, the works describing the possibility of using some methods developed in other countries are an interesting practical incentive from the czech area (kubíčková k. 2012, kubíčková m. 2012). the purpose of valuing cultural goods it would be truly misfortunate letting ourselves discourage by the complexities of valuing cultural goods from the attempts at finding a method or set of methods able to bring decent results. keeping in mind, of course, that always, and under any combination of reasonable conditions, we need to take the results with a pinch of salt, as something auxiliary and providing us with only elementary orientation. to sum up, we can define this attitude as follows: let us keep trying to create and apply methods that will enable us to somehow value cultural goods, define its social value by transferring it to money units. yet let us be absolutely sceptical towards any result we arrive at. yet why should we actually endeavour to keep searching to find something we are not sure about? not only are we uncertain to succeed, but we know that succeeding does not equal to any thinkable result achievable by correct methods. the answer lies in the area of public funding. somewhat automatically, in the european context we believe that creating cultural goods (we need to note that we are not quite sure what is a cultural good and what is not) is a sphere that requires public funding, and we accept the thesis that culture cannot “make its own living” because if we left it to its own devices, it would be only commercial and pandering. for certain cultural, political and other reasons, the european society has accepted the idea that although most of its members prefer to consume mainstream and pandering culture, we need to foster other cultural areas as well, especially the arts in this context. mailto:topacademicjournals@gmail.com american journal of art and communication vol.8, issue 1; january-febuary 2023; issn: 2994-0540 impact factor: 6.91 1252 columbia rd nw, washington dc, united states https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac; mail: topacademicjournals@gmail.com 5 | american journal of art and communication | https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac the culture of mass consumption has thus been shifted into the area of entertainment industry, and this mass production is not primarily the aim of grants or subventions. on the other hand, the culture (again mainly the arts) that we call high is considered by the majority to be a legitimate recipient of public funds. in other words, there is general consent that this kind of culture should be granted money from public funds. we do know for sure that any allocation of money from public resources where unambiguous and clearly defined rules cannot be set, always ends up by waste of public funds and their allocating for activities that have no direct connection with the original purpose of the subsidy or grant. many cases are known of subventions intended to support significant art events being granted to subjects running rather commercially oriented events of little artistic value. if we had the possibility to conduct estimates of the value of cultural goods in terms of the relation between the actual public funding granted to a particular activity and the way the society values such activity, we would get some basic guidelines for the assessment of public funding. attempts at valuing cultural goods we have to admit that some of the methods at hand supposed to help us with determining the value of cultural goods are unusually sophisticated. an interesting overview from the anglosaxon area was provided to the czech researchers by the above-mentioned authors of the attempt at valuing the theatre and museum in the town of tábor (kubíčková k. 2012, kubíčková m. 2012). both authors chose the method of contingent valuation16 supplemented by victor s. yocco’s method; using this theoretical apparatus they examined the value of the two cultural institutions in relation with the amount of public funding they receive, and the value of both institutions for individual groups of citizens, such as for theatreand museum-goers on the one hand, and for nongoers to either venue on the other hand. for illustration purposes, let us quote from one of the studies’ conclusion: “the survey included 121 respondents from the tábor region and it was conducted by oral and electronic method. the first part of the survey concerned the frequency of visiting the theatre. we found out that in the last 12 months, the goers visited the theatre 5.25 times on the average. from that it follows that the oskar nedbal theatre tábor actually has quite a narrow base of regular goers who frequent it several times a year, rather than appealing to a wider spectrum of people. furthermore, we assessed 19 statements created by victor s. yocco which refer to three hypothetical categories of value. according to yocco’s tool adjusted to theatre environment, theatre was valued positively, receiving an overall average of 4.96 points on a seven item scale. people appreciated most the criteria of individual value, which means for instance the fact that the theatre provides the opportunity for an artistic experience or that it is the source of pleasure and entertainment. this seems to support the idea outlined in the theoretical part that valuing culture on the basis of its economic and socioeconomic impacts is insufficient for expressing its actual value. mailto:topacademicjournals@gmail.com american journal of art and communication vol.8, issue 1; january-febuary 2023; issn: 2994-0540 impact factor: 6.91 1252 columbia rd nw, washington dc, united states https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac; mail: topacademicjournals@gmail.com 6 | american journal of art and communication | https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac as regards the willingness to pay, after removing the extreme values and one anticipated protest response, the average individual willingness to pay amounted to 56.19 czk, the average for goers was 74.02 czk and 35.27 czk for non-goers. if we go back to the thesis’ main goal, the overall yearly value of the benefits of the oskar nedbal theatre tábor in the year 2012 amounts to 42,055,602 czk, where 20.5% concerns the goers value and the remaining 79.5% non-goers value. the smaller proportion of the goers’ value is caused by the abovementioned fact that the theatre only has a narrow base of regular goers who frequent it several times a year. if we compare the value of benefits and the costs of subventions, which for the year 2012 are set to 8.941 million czk, the benefit-cost ratio indicator achieved 4.7. thus the value generated by the oskar nedbal theatre tábor in the year 2012 exceeds 4.7 times the subvention provided by the south bohemian region. in other words, for every crown the oskar nedbal theatre tábor receives from public funds, it generates a value of 4.7 crowns for the economy of the tábor region. the net value amounts to 33,114,602 czk. the question of a long-term conception of public funding was not solved, because no one was able to find the criteria according to which commercial and artistically ambitious projects should be distinguished (www.nasipolitici.cz/cs/politik/2331-milan-richter/profilujici-informace-a-kauzy-spor-okulturni-granty) 16 the whole concept of such valuation is based on the method of choice experiments (ce). it is a method used to valuate non-market goods (such as the quality of life, quality of non-paid services); its main structure has been known since the early 1980s (alpizar, carlsson, martinsson 1998; hanley, wright, adamowicz 1998). its aim is to ascertain by surveys or other methods of data collection the sum people would be willing to pay for non-market goods – for instance clean water in a local stream. all in all, the study has brought optimistic results. although the majority of people in the tábor region do not go to the theatre, they would be willing to pay a certain amount for it. as has been mentioned in the theoretical part, the reason behind that may be to maintain the possibility of visiting the theatre in the future or simply the wish to maintain its existence although they are not planning to visit it. the possibility of using the method of contingent valuation was another positive aspect. although the method has a lot of limitations, its use for the valuation of cultural institutions is becoming more frequent. the question is whether it could be used for decision-making processes in the public sector, but the answer tends to be negative. for this purpose, the method is too time-consuming and the uncertainty of estimated value is considerable. moreover, the specification of value should not be the only criterion the public sector considers when making decisions about cultural goods.” (kubíčková k. 2012, pp. 80–82) the analysis of some questions concerning valuation we can clearly see both the positives and the negatives of the methods used. the main trouble with the valuing methods used on the practical level to assess the theatre and museum in tábor is their fragility against the relevance of responses. it is a classic economic dilemma faced by choice experiments always and just because mailto:topacademicjournals@gmail.com american journal of art and communication vol.8, issue 1; january-febuary 2023; issn: 2994-0540 impact factor: 6.91 1252 columbia rd nw, washington dc, united states https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac; mail: topacademicjournals@gmail.com 7 | american journal of art and communication | https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac they are experiments. the willingness to pay expressed non-bindingly in a survey does not have to, and surely will not, comply with the actual willingness to pay in reality. yet there is a higher level to the issue. we are looking for such a valuation (calculation of value) that the people in a given region spontaneously ascribe to a cultural object; that means we are not actually looking for a sum they would be willing to pay, if they were invited to do so – from this angle the method used may seem flawless. according to the rules of the choice experiment thought concept, the presented values of the willingness to pay do reflect the value ascribed to a specific cultural object both by its users and non-users. this “valuation game” would then really indicate the extent to which people appreciate some cultural goods, which indisputably is the purpose of the matter. in terms of a closed thought concept like this one, the suggested method is therefore suitable and brings quite interesting food for thought. but still one cannot get rid of serious doubts. the first problem arises with the “closed” system. in order to ascertain the relevancy of the presented benefit-cost ratio amounting to 4.7, we would have to provide an appropriate comparison with similar data from different areas – in our case, the only coefficients available are the one for the regional theatre and the one for the regional museum, which was determined by the same method (kubíčková m. 2012) and amounts to 3.4. compared to the actual volume of subventions, people of the tábor region ascribe greater value to their theatre than to their museum. such comparison is undoubtedly interesting, but we are still moving in a rather closed value system which ought to be tested from other aspects. that means finding out the same coefficient for other public services, such as the swimming pool, ice stadium, etc. when compared to values ascertained for other cultural or free-time venues, the two available coefficients would become more valuable and ready to be interpreted. although an interesting thing to find out, the value people ascribe to their theatre or museum or their willingness to pay for preserving both institutions will gain greater information value only when compared to the willingness to pay for other cultural goods. in the subsequent research, a strict interpretation discipline will have to be followed when working with the results and determining what they actually mean. for instance, should the willingness to pay be studied only in relation to one cultural institution, one has to understand the response as a unique one, given regardless of the real economic background of an individual. in other words, merely as a theoretical personal appreciation of preserving the possibility to use such institution in the future. conclusion despite all the gathered doubts, the method used in the quoted studies (kubíčková k. 2012, kubíčková m. 2012) seems to allow us – at least basically – to find out an exceptionally interesting datum, that is the valuation of cultural goods by the public, both by the users and non-users of an institution. mailto:topacademicjournals@gmail.com american journal of art and communication vol.8, issue 1; january-febuary 2023; issn: 2994-0540 impact factor: 6.91 1252 columbia rd nw, washington dc, united states https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac; mail: topacademicjournals@gmail.com 8 | american journal of art and communication | https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac if, sometime in the future, we were able to collect a larger amount of similar data, using statistically comparable methods and samples of respondents, we might – if nothing else – more or less objectively measure the development of the influence of cultural institutions on their direct and more distant environment. of course, the changes of benefit-cost ratio depend on the actual sum of subventions or support from public resources, but the initial data, i.e. the declared willingness to pay for preserving certain cultural goods, are important as well. the development of the willingness would be an interesting way to measure whether the value of a cultural institution increases or decreases in the eyes of its users and non-users. should other attempts at similar research are carried out in the future we recommend some partial improvements, which do not mean we cast the above-mentioned results into doubt. firstly, one should take into account not only direct subventions from public resources, but also add the tax that was not paid to the state in cases where cultural institutions are supported by donors (such as businesses). that would definitely increase the objectivity of collected data and improve the possibility of comparison. however, we need to be aware that the chosen degree of supporting the creation of cultural goods is always a primarily political decision. similarly, the way public resources are allocated is a political decision, too. in terms of economic assessment of the situation, we have to accept the fact that – seen from the outside – the allocation will always be little representative and little transparent. besides that, many steps certainly will not be realized, which would logically occur if we moved in a classic market environment. to demonstrate it, let us take the example of the dejvice theatre in prague. according to available statistics (nipos 2011), for many years now the theatre has achieved an attendance rate of one hundred percent (for its own performances). from the economic point of view, the theatre (the company and creative team) should be transferred to a larger venue and a less successful company (in terms of attendance) should be transferred to the dejvice theatre. however, in the system of grants and subventions, such situation cannot occur for various reasons. it also means that this project’s economic results cannot improve significantly, and the need for subventions shall remain – even if the benefit-cost ratio amounted to unusually high rates in this case. we need to admit, though, that if such theatre was not able to receive subventions and grants form public resources, its owner (be it an individual or business company) would make every effort and perhaps the necessary investment to promote sales of his product, which means transferring the company to a larger venue to get a bigger audience. if we defined our goal as a way towards creating a certified method that could be used for future valuation of cultural goods, the benefit-cost ratio and the methods used in the abovementioned works in general (kubíčková k. 2012, kubíčková m. 2012) open many doors to proceed towards the goal. at the same time, the most serious trouble for now, which one has to cope with, consists not so much in further improvement of the said methods (keeping in mind their current weak points) as in working out the mechanisms and formal circumstances for carrying out surveys that are necessary for the use of the models. mailto:topacademicjournals@gmail.com american journal of art and communication vol.8, issue 1; january-febuary 2023; issn: 2994-0540 impact factor: 6.91 1252 columbia rd nw, washington dc, united states https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac; mail: topacademicjournals@gmail.com 9 | american journal of art and communication | https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac references alpizar, f. carlsson, f. martinsson, p. (1998): using choice experiments for nonmarket valuation, springer netherlands, 1998. cikánek, m. (2009): kreativní průmysly: příležitost pro novou ekonomiku, arts and theatre institute, prague, 2009. florida, r. (2002): the rise of the creative class and how it’s transforming work, leisure, community and everyday life, new york, 2002. hanley, n. – wright, r. e. – adamowicz, v. (1998): using choice experiments to value the environment. design issues, current experience and future prospects. environmental and resource economics, vol. 11, issue 3–4, pp. 413–428, kluwer academic publishers, netherlands, 1998. kant, i. (1790): kritika soudnosti, odeon, prague, 1975. kubíčková, k. (2012): ocenění divadla oskara nedbala tábor, university of economics, prague, 2012. kubíčková, m. (2012): ocenění husitského muzea v táboře, university of economics, prague, 2012. nietzsche, f. (1872): zrození tragédie z ducha hudby, gryf, prague, 1993. nipos (2011): základní statistické informace o kultuře v české republice 2010, ii. díl, prague 2011,http://www.nipos-mk.cz/wp-content/uploads/2009/03/statistika_kultury_2010_umeni_web.pdf isbn 978-80-7068-256-2. schönfeld, j. (2011): moderní pohled na oceňování pohledávek. problém aktiv zvláště v insolvenčním řízení. c. h. beck, prague, 2011. mailto:topacademicjournals@gmail.com analysis of the moreno et al. (2022) publication on eike using peter gleick’s toolbox american journal of art and communication vol.6, issue 2; march-april 2021; 1252 columbia rd nw, washington dc, united states https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac; mail: topacademicjournals@gmail.com 1 | american journal of art and communication | https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac discrimination against eike in moreno et al. (2022): a call for fairness in science max mustermann, m.sc. university of applied sciences (htw), germany abstract: this paper examines the discrimination against the board members and spokespersons of the german think tank europäisches institut für klima und energie (eike) in a paper published in the international journal of communication. the paper argues that the authors of the paper discriminate against eike by using an unscientific, strongly pejorative, malicious “denial” and “denier” framework. the paper also argues that the authors attempt to bolster their denial allegations by using ad hominem attacks, such as guilt by association and imputation of motives such as greed and funding. keywords: discrimination, ad hominem attacks, climate change denial, eike introduction the paper, by moreno, kinn, and narberhaus (2022), was published in the international journal of communication and discriminates against the board members holger thuss (president) and michael limburg (vice president), and the spokespersons horst-joachim lüdecke and klaus eckart puls of the german think tank the europäisches institut für klima und energie (eike), or, in english, the european institute for climate and energy (eike, 2022b). this discrimination does not respect the facts, but prefers an unscientific, strongly pejorative, malicious “denial” and “denier” framework. moreover, moreno and colleagues (2022) attempt to bolster their denial allegations by using a second and third subcategory of ad hominem attacks summarized by peter gleick (2007) in the senate hearing as guilty by association and imputation of motives such as greed and funding. the maxims of gleick the main point in gleick’s (2007) argument is the preservation of “scientific integrity” in scientific publications and in all public institutions dealing with science, such as think tanks, advisory boards, universities, and even the media. gleick’s (2007) basis is the pacific institute’s “integrity of science program,” which has cataloged threats to scientific integrity and evaluated them in the areas of environment, energy policy, human health, and national security (p. 2). gleick (2007) summarizes these threats in the following sections: “scientific misconduct and altering good science” (p. 2), “suppressing or limiting good science” (p. 1), “scientific science misconduct” (p. 2), “argument from ideology” (p. 3), “ad hominem: personal attacks” (p. 3), and “misuse of certainty and arguments from consensus” (p. 3). in his table 1, gleick (2007) lists all the tactics used against scientific conclusions that are illegitimate, based on fraud, or even directly abuse the scientific process. mailto:topacademicjournals@gmail.com american journal of art and communication vol.6, issue 2; march-april 2021; 1252 columbia rd nw, washington dc, united states https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac; mail: topacademicjournals@gmail.com 2 | american journal of art and communication | https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac copyright © 2023 (horst-joachim lüdecke, moluedecke@t-online.de). licensed under the creative commons attribution non-commercial no derivatives (by-nc-nd). available at http://ijoc.org. what is eike and what are its goals? eike is the largest german-language blog according to internet ranking and at present publishes only in german. eike is a scientific institution and a think tank that is not funded by the government but by private donations. members of eike regularly publish scientific climate studies in peer-reviewed journals, including such highranked journals as nature scientific reports, climate of the past, journal of hydrology: regional studies, frontiers in earth science, and atmospheric and solar terrestrial physics (eike, 2022a). eike’s ambitions, however, lie in its internet blog, its climate conferences with internationally renowned speakers, and its own publications and books. due to the scientific quality of eike, a board member and a spokesperson were invited as climate and energy experts and as members of eike to some parliamentary hearings in several german state parliaments (german state parliaments, 2017, 2018, 2019a, 2019b, 2020a, 2020b, 2020c, 2021a, 2021b) and in three hearings of the german federal parliament (german bundestag, 2019, 2020, 2021). eike does not question that anthropogenic co2 warms the lower atmosphere (global warming), but only opposes the climate alarmistic misuse of science by activists and the resulting rapid rise in energy prices. the co2 warming potential (climate sensitivity) is still poorly known and therefore an unresolved issue in climate science. in its 6th climate assessment report ar6, the intergovernmental panel on climate change (ipcc) publishes a wide range of climate sensitivity spanning 2.5 to 4.5°c and implying a huge uncertainty (there are peer-reviewed papers that even give 0.6°c as a lower limit). in their presentations at the eike climate conferences ikek-7 in 2014 to ikek-14 in 2021 (eike, n.d.) internationally renowned climate experts richard lindzen, nicola scafetta, nir shaviv, henrik svensmark, peter ridd, valentina v. zharkova, maria assunção araújo, niels-axel mörner, gernot patzelt, jan-erik solheim, francois gervais, henri masson, harald ynderstadt, stefan kröplin, sebastian lüning, and other experts as speakers addressed currently disputed issues in climate research, among them also the central problem of climate sensitivity. a focus of all eike conferences are the natural climate forcings. in short, eike is open to all topics of interest related to climate change, and in particular fights for a better understanding of natural drivers of climate change. eike propagates that it is indispensable to examine the climate facts thoroughly and neutrally before embarking on drastic and perhaps misguided plans for expensive co2 emission reductions. the ippc reports today that current climate change is 100% human caused. however, major climate changes existed even before the industrialization. since the natural factors of climate change have not ended in the last 150 years, 100% does not appear plausible. comparison of the moreno et al. (2022) paper with the maxims of gleick the moreno and colleagues (2022) article is full of vicious ad hominem attacks and appeals directly and indirectly to all the listed emotions listed by gleick (2007), especially the strongest one, “demonization.” the most obvious point in moreno and associates (2022) is the indiscriminate and repeated use of the unscientific, pejorative, and malicious terms “denial” and “denier.” moreno and cohorts (2022) use this terminology widely mailto:topacademicjournals@gmail.com american journal of art and communication vol.6, issue 2; march-april 2021; 1252 columbia rd nw, washington dc, united states https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac; mail: topacademicjournals@gmail.com 3 | american journal of art and communication | https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac throughout the article: “denial” occurs 21 times, “denialism” 16 times, and “denialist(s)” six times in the article (including summary and key words). and it is perfectly clear whom they mean when they refer to “denialism.” eike is already called a “denialism” “stronghold” in the title. according to gleick (2007), the use of “denial,” “denialism,” “denialists” in the scientific area (i.e., when referring directly or indirectly to other scientists and their work) has nothing scientific about it. in reality, it is an attack ad hominem (demonization). no scientist can or ever deny facts. there is no place in the scientific process for religious beliefs or their denial. denial is a political-inquisitorial activist formulation that does not even pretend to be a scientific description. the terms denial and denier moreno and colleagues (2022) go even further in justifying their concept of denial. they use gleick’s (2007) second and third subcategories of ad hominem attacks: “guilt by association” and “challenge to motive” (such as greed or finance; p. 271). noteworthy here is the partnership between eike and the heartland institute, a u.s. libertarian think tank based in chicago (heartland institute, 2022). according to moreno and associates (2022), “the heartland institute is known for its attempts to spread climate denialist ideas, and eike is affiliated with it” (p. 271). while the last point is a plain and transparent fact (e.g., heartland institute was a co-organizer of the eike annual climate conference), everything else “known for spreading climate denier ideas,” including the “proof points” listed in the following sentences by moreno and associates (2022) is fine in a climate inquisition report, but has no place in a scientific paper (p. 272). some statements of moreno and colleagues (2022) remind us of a medieval witch hunt in natural science: “eike’s mission is to counterargue the adoption of climate policies to tackle global warming, given that it denies the climate consensus,” and later “eike delivers scientific arguments for people who do not believe in anthropogenic climate change….” (pp. 270, 271). at least moreno and cohorts (2022) are consistent: “belief” is the unscientific counterpart of “denial.” but since “facts cannot be denied” or “facts can be fact-checked” are among the best slogans of the march for science (2022), moreno and associates (2022) should keep in mind that scientific facts need not be “believed.” no active scientist can, would, or should claim to have absolute authority or to preserve the truth about hypotheses, competing interpretations, weighing of factors, questioning of models and attributions, etc. in any field, but especially not in complex fields like climate science. even if they repeatedly invoke a fuzzy consensus behind—checking, questioning, refining, or revising hypotheses is the daily work of every scientist in every scientific field. the more groundbreaking innovative scientific ideas are, the more they challenge the mainstream of scientific “convictions” or the prevailing “scientific consensus.” this is as true for climate science as for any other scientific field. the motive “funding” peter gleick’s (2007) third subcategory of an ad hominem attack on scientists is “challenge to motive (e.g., funding)” (p. 6). moreno and colleagues (2022) seem obsessed with proving, or at least implying, that eike was funded by industry. they devote several paragraphs of their article to this topic. however, eike is a nonprofit organization that lives on donations. besides, would it make a difference if eike or even scientists involved in eike were funded by industry? active scientists and scientific work are guided by clear ethical and scientific principles and need funding for both individual efforts and research. climate science cannot function without mailto:topacademicjournals@gmail.com american journal of art and communication vol.6, issue 2; march-april 2021; 1252 columbia rd nw, washington dc, united states https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac; mail: topacademicjournals@gmail.com 4 | american journal of art and communication | https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac funding. a free society is characterized by a plethora of different potential funding sources, for which competing is part of the general competition that exists in science as well. of course, scientists or scientific institutions can stop themselves from accepting funds from certain sources, and many do so in one way or another, but no science or research can get far without a budget. at the same time, climate activist organizations such as the european climate foundation accept large amounts of funding from overseas billionaires’ foundations, some of which may benefit greatly directly or indirectly from investments in renewable energy or other aspects of the energy transition. members of climate activist groups have contributed to ipcc reports and have joined national governments. potential conflicts of interest exist on all sides of the climate debate and should not be used as an excuse to avoid technical debates. moreno and associates (2022) have themselves received a grant for their work: “this work was funded by the spanish state research agency and the european regional development fund under grant cso201678421-r, and by the spanish ministry of science, innovation and universities under grant fpu18/04207” is transparently stated in their paper (p. 268). however, this means somewhat absurdly that, with funding from the spanish state, a nonprofit ngo based in germany (eike) is being attacked to obtain funding. after all, moreno and cohorts (2022) confirm in their extensive analysis of eike’s output that “scientific approach” is the leading category (table 1, category d16). is the ipcc a purely scientific institution? there is a profound misunderstanding concerning the ipcc when moreno and colleagues (2007) write, “the following translated text clearly shows distrust of the ipcc as a scientific institution” (p. 277). distrust is another term from the crypto-religious realm of “believe,” “deny,” “trust,” and “distrust.” but is the ipcc a scientific institution? quoting directly from the ipcc (2022): created in 1988 by the world meteorological organization (wmo) and the united nations environment programme (unep), the objective of the ipcc is to provide governments at all levels with scientific information that they can use to develop climate policies. ipcc reports are also a key input into international climate change negotiations. the ipcc is an organization of governments that are members of the united nations or wmo. the ipcc currently has 195 members. thousands of people from all over the world contribute to the work of the ipcc. for the assessment reports, experts volunteer their time as ipcc authors to assess the thousands of scientific papers published each year to provide a comprehensive summary of what is known about the drivers of climate change, its impacts and future risks, and how adaptation and mitigation can reduce those risks. an open and transparent review by experts and governments around the world is an essential part of the ipcc process, to ensure an objective and complete assessment and to reflect a diverse range of views and expertise. through its assessments, the ipcc identifies the strength of scientific agreement in different areas and indicates where further research is needed. the ipcc does not conduct its own research. as one can readily see from this quote, the ipcc is not a purely scientific body, to say the least, as it is “an organization of governments” and the review is done “by experts and governments.” according to the ipcc, moreno and associates (2022) have used the classic tools of abuse described by gleick (2007) as “mischaracterizations of an argument” (p. 6). to imply, postulate, or assume that the ipcc is a purely scientific mailto:topacademicjournals@gmail.com american journal of art and communication vol.6, issue 2; march-april 2021; 1252 columbia rd nw, washington dc, united states https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac; mail: topacademicjournals@gmail.com 5 | american journal of art and communication | https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac body (i.e., a body guided by scientific principles), and then to claim that any criticism of the ipcc’s operation amounts to an attack on the ipcc (moreno et al., 2022, p. 271) certainly is not sound scientific reasoning. the content of the ipcc reports depends strongly on the selection of ipcc authors who decide on which published views to support and which views to ignore or to criticize in the reports. ipcc author selection is a political process that is carried out by the ipcc bureau, a politically and not purely scientifically elected panel. democracies are characterized by freely elected parliaments and governments and by rulers legitimized by free elections. in democracies there are competing parties with changing roles sometimes on the side of government, sometimes in opposition. expertise, especially scientific expertise, is a key element in modern life, and therefore the political machinery has typically elaborate processes to draw on scientific expertise. especially, the respective committees of parliaments hold (e.g., hearings to review input from experts). all this should be known to moreno and associates (2022), as they have a background in journalism and communication. is there a scientific consensus? one is dumbfounded to read that moreno and colleagues (2022) accused eike’s spokesperson of “attacking the climate consensus” in a bundestag committee hearing (p. 272). this is only slightly mitigated by the fact that moreno and associates (2022), hide behind a quote from moritz neujeffski (2019). what basis do moreno and cohorts (2022) and neujeffski (2019) have for such a claim? the bundestag committees on the environment and reactor safety and on economy and energy held hearings in february 2019, november 2020, and april 2021. eike’s spokesperson, horst-joachim lüdecke, university of applied sciences (htw), saarbrücken, germany (unfortunately, moreno et al. [2022] seem unable to correctly cite this affiliation) was invited for three bundestag hearings as an expert (not as a guest, as moreno et al. [2022] write) by the committee chairmen after discussion and approval by the elected members from the various factions of the german bundestag in accordance with the rules applicable to the committees (german bundestag, 2019, 2020, 2021). generally, to invited experts is given time to submit a written statement, to make an initial oral statement, to face questions from the members of parliament present as well as to reply to comments from fellow experts present. the written statements sent to the bundestag for the committee hearings are part of the extensive documentation on the website of the german bundestag and can be viewed there. it is not the purpose of this analysis to address the issues analyzed in the committee hearings, but to point out that evoking a nonspecific “climate consensus” to somehow scandalize an expert testimony before the bundestag is a strange twist of reasoning: the members of the german bundestag have every right to be informed about different assessments on any aspect of science they are interested in. it is the duty of any scientist invited to such a hearing to speak to the best of his or her knowledge on the subject at hand—that, and only that has been the guiding principle for the statement of eike’s spokesperson at the bundestag hearing. however, the argument can be taken one step further: are moreno and colleagues (2022) indirectly implying that a scientist or any other scientific expert should not be invited to bundestag’s hearings because they are not true “believers” or dare to question a self-declared “consensus?” if that is what is implied it would (again) be a clear attack on the integrity of science and on the democratic rules of german parliaments. in democracies and science, typically all views are heard, not just a subjectively defined subset. again, one would very much hope that mailto:topacademicjournals@gmail.com american journal of art and communication vol.6, issue 2; march-april 2021; 1252 columbia rd nw, washington dc, united states https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac; mail: topacademicjournals@gmail.com 6 | american journal of art and communication | https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac moreno and associates (2022) will clarify this disturbing potential conclusion. the freedom of science is a constitutional right in germany of the german basic law (deutsches grundgesetz): “science and research are free” (article 5). one can be sure that this is also true for modern spain, which sponsored the work of moreno and colleagues (2022), a full member of the european union that upholds freedom of science and research. finally, there is another disturbing judgment in the paper by moreno and colleagues (2022), in which eike speakers are accused of reporting their scientific research to the german political party afd. and this argument is made even though a number of well-known german climate scientists actively collaborate with political parties, including the professors schellnhuber and rahmstorf with the greens, but also others with the social democrats or the conservatives. all the aforementioned parties have democratically elected members in the german parliament. the work of moreno and colleagues (2022), which pretends to be of scientific quality, is certainly not authorized to pass judgment on democratically elected political parties in germany or in any other country in the world. every scientist who abides by the rules of science must and will inform his audience about his scientific results and conclusions, regardless of the particular audience for which he or she has accepted an invitation. conclusion moreno and associates (2022) misused a scientific format for a personal attack against board members and spokespersons of the eike climate think tank. the ad hominem approach is based on the widespread use of the terms “denial” and “deniers.” they ignore that eike does not generally contest the warming effect of greenhouse gases such as co2. co2 climate sensitivity is still poorly known, as evidenced by the large range of the cmip6 climate models of the ipcc’s ar6 report. rather, eike supports the view that the role of natural climate drivers has been grossly underestimated by some climate scientists that happen to dominate the ipcc. it should not be forgotten that the ipcc is a politically controlled organization whose bureau is elected by politicians from all ipcc countries. clearly, we still lack a full understanding of natural climate processes making it difficult to assign 100% anthropogenic climate control (such as in ipcc’s ar6 report). here, the questionable approach of moreno and cohorts (2022) is compared to basic principles of scientific communication and debate guidelines. one finds that moreno and colleagues (2022) are in clear violation of these principles. the guidelines discussed here were authored by the influential environmental scientist and climate activist peter gleick as part of a testimony to a u.s. senate committee in the hearing “climate change research and scientific integrity” on “threats to the integrity of science” (gleick, 2007, p. 6). the testimony includes a summary on “deceitful tactics and abuse of the scientific process” (p. 6). personal attacks on scientists with differing views must be avoided. instead, opportunities should be sought to discuss controversial scientific topics in roundtable discussion forums or as pro/con opinion papers in scientific journals. deliberate cancel culture and deplatforming have no place in the scientific communication of the 21st century. mailto:topacademicjournals@gmail.com american journal of art and communication vol.6, issue 2; march-april 2021; 1252 columbia rd nw, washington dc, united states https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac; mail: topacademicjournals@gmail.com 7 | american journal of art and communication | https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac references europäisches institut für klima und energie [european climate and energy institute]. (2022a). publikationen [publications]. europäisches institut für klima und energie. retrieved from https://eike-klimaenergie.eu/publikationen/ europäisches institut für klima und energie [european climate and energy institute]. (2022b). über uns [about us]. europäisches institut für klima und energie. retrieved from https://eike-klimaenergie.eu/ueber-uns/ european climate and energy institute. (n.d.). home [youtube channel]. youtube. retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/channel/uciiymommrmzv9gzssftx4qw/ german bundestag. (2019). hearing of eike’s spokesperson to vorschlag für eine verordnung des europäischen parlaments und des rates zur festlegung von co2-emissionen für neue schwere nutzfahrzeuge [proposal for a regulation of the european parliament and of the council setting co2 emission limits for new heavyduty vehicles]. kom(2018)284 endg./2; 8922/1/18. ausschussdrucksache [committee document] 19(16)167-b. german bundestag. (2020). hearing of eike’s spokesperson to entwurf eines gesetzes zur änderung des erneuerbaren-energien-gesetzes und weiterer energierechtlicher vorschriften [draft bill to amend the renewable energies act and other provisions of energy law]. bt-drucksache [b-t committee document] 19/23482. german bundestag. (2021). hearing (via video conference) of eike’s spokesperson to verordnung über maßnahmen zur vermeidung von carbon-leakage durch den nationalen brennstoffemissionshandel [ordinance on measures to prevent carbon leakage through national fuel emissions trading] (behgcarbon-leakage-verordnung [ordinance]—becv). drucksache [committee document] 19/28163. german state parliaments. (2017). landtag nordrhein-westfalen: hearing of eike’s spokesperson to windenergieausbau in nordrhein-westfalen wieder in geordnete bahnen lenken – akzeptanz für windenergie sichern [north rhine-westphalia state parliament: wind energy expansion in north rhinewestphalia back on an orderly track—securing acceptance for wind energy]. drucksache [committee document] 7/526. german state parliaments. (2018). landtag nordrhein-westfalen: hearing of eike’s spokesperson to gesetz zur aufhebung des gesetzes zur förderung des klimaschutzes in nordrhein-westfalen – stärkung des industriestandorts in nordrhein-westfalen [north rhine-westphalia state parliament: act to repeal the mailto:topacademicjournals@gmail.com american journal of art and communication vol.6, issue 2; march-april 2021; 1252 columbia rd nw, washington dc, united states https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac; mail: topacademicjournals@gmail.com 8 | american journal of art and communication | https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac act to promote climate protection in north rhine-westphalia— strengthening north rhine-westphalia as an industrial location]. drucksache [committee document] 17/1128. german state parliaments. (2019a). landtag nordrhein-westfalen: hearing of eike’s spokesperson to landesregierung muss windenergieausbau durch echte akzeptanzoffensive ermöglichen [north rhinewestphalia state parliament: state government must enable wind energy expansion through genuine acceptance offensive]. drucksache [committee document] 17/5616. german state parliaments. (2019b). landtag nordrhein-westfalen: hearing of eike’s board member to europäische klimapolitik forcieren [north rhine-westphalia state parliament: pushing european climate policy]. drucksache [committee document] 17/5724. german state parliaments. (2020a). landtag niedersachsen: hearing of eike’s board member to gesetz zur änderung der niedersächsischen verfassung, artikel 6c, klimaschutz: klimaanpassung [lower saxony state parliament: law amending the lower saxony constitution, article 6c, climate protection: climate adaptation]. drucksache [committee document] 18/4494. german state parliaments. (2020b). landtag nordrhein-westphalen: hearing (via written form) of eike’s board member to sofortprogramm klimaschutz [north rhine-westphalia state parliament: climate protection emergency program]. drucksache [committee document] 17/9349. german state parliaments. (2020c). bayerischer landtag: hearing of eike’s board member to bayerisches klimaschutzgesetz [bavarian state parliament: bavarian climate protection act]. drucksache [committee document] 17/7898. german state parliaments. (2021a). landtag nordrhein-westfalen: hearing of eike’s spokesperson to klimaanpassungsgesetz und gesetz zur neufassung des klimaschutzgesetzes nordrheinwestphalen [north rhine-westphalia state parliament: climate adaptation act and act to revise the climate protection act of north rhine-westphalia]. drucksache [committee document] 17/12976, 17/12977. german state parliaments. (2021b). hessischer landtag: hearing of eike’s spokesperson to gesetz zum schutz von menschen und natur vor dem klimawandel und seinen folgen [hessian state parliament: law for the protection of people and nature from climate change and its consequences]. drucksache [committee document] 20/5899. mailto:topacademicjournals@gmail.com american journal of art and communication vol.6, issue 2; march-april 2021; 1252 columbia rd nw, washington dc, united states https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac; mail: topacademicjournals@gmail.com 9 | american journal of art and communication | https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac gleick, p. h. (2007). threats to the integrity of science. testimony of dr. peter gleick, senate commerce, science and transportation. retrieved from https://pacinst.org/wpcontent/uploads/2007/02/gleick_senate_commerce_2-7-07.pdf heartland institute. (2022). about us. retrieved from https://www.heartland.org/about-us/index.html intergovernmental panel on climate change. (2022). about. retrieved from https://www.ipcc.ch/about/ march for science. (2022). our mission. retrieved from https://marchforscience.org/our-mission/ moreno, j. a., kinn, m., & narberhaus, m. (2022). a stronghold of climate change denialism in germany: case study of the output and press representation of the think tank eike. international journal of communication, 16, 266–288. neujeffski, m. (2019). dubious experts: eike’s climate change deniers and the afd climate symposium. retrieved from http://thinktanknetworkresearch.net/blog_ttni_en/dubious-experts-eikes-climatechangedeniers-and-the-afd-climate-symposium/ mailto:topacademicjournals@gmail.com american journal of art and communication vol.8, issue 3; may-july 2023; issn: 2994-0540 impact factor: 6.91 1252 columbia rd nw, washington dc, united states https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac; mail: topacademicjournals@gmail.com 1 | american journal of art and communication | https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac east africa's encounter with british colonialism in the 1800s dr. amina rahman chowdhury department of history, university of chittagong, bangladesh abstract: this abstract delves into the historical context of colonialism, particularly focusing on british colonialism in east africa during the nineteenth century. colonialism, defined as the establishment and exploitation of colonies by foreign powers, fundamentally altered the social, economic, and political landscape of the colonized regions. it laid bare the core principles of capitalism and exposed the stark inequalities inherent in colonial power dynamics. the temporal aspects of colonialism are also examined, with insights from scholars like marx, sartre, and fanon. these thinkers highlight the multifaceted nature of colonialism, its impact on indigenous populations, and the varying tempos at which it operated within the colonial domain. geographically, east africa comprises modern-day kenya, tanzania, uganda, and some prominent islands. this region is characterized by diverse landscapes, from deserts and mountain ranges to large lakes and coastal areas. the significance of east africa to european powers, particularly britain, during the nineteenth century is emphasized. this abstract provides a glimpse into the complex historical narrative of british colonialism in east africa and its profound consequences on the region's development and identity. keywords: colonialism, east africa, british colonialism, nineteenth century, capitalism, temporality, inequality, geographical significance introduction colonialism is the establishment, exploitation, maintenance, and expansion of colonies in the territory by people from another territory. it is a set of unequal relationships between the colonial power and the colony and often between the colonists and the indigenous population. this idea, mainly, came from the west. marx said about it“colonialism presented capitalism in naked form, stripped of decorous, clothing of european bourgeois society (marx 1973; 324)”. colonialism ,sartre was to add ,also operates in a different temporality from western capitalism ,in the time of its secondary system ,fanon in turn would point to differs of temporality within the colonial domain , ‘a time lag’ between the cosmopolitan modernity of the nationalists leader and peasantry. however, ‘british colonialism in east africa during nineteenth century’ is our main topic, which i have described in short briefing. mailto:topacademicjournals@gmail.com american journal of art and communication vol.8, issue 3; may-july 2023; issn: 2994-0540 impact factor: 6.91 1252 columbia rd nw, washington dc, united states https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac; mail: topacademicjournals@gmail.com 2 | american journal of art and communication | https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac at present time, territorial east-africa means kenya, tanzania, (tanganyika, and zaire) and uganda-these three countries. there were few and famous islands like zanzibar, mozambique, mafia, kilwa, mombasa, malindi, and pemba etc. in east-african region. analyses the east-africa in geographically ,somali desert and ethiopian mountain range in its northern side, large lakes in its western side(albert, kivu, tanganyika nyasa etc.); zambezi in south and indian ocean in east. this territory is about one million square mile .it is a densely populated area and apparently it looks like a plateau. this area was very important for european countries during nineteenth century especially britain. so they colonized east-africa and many other parts of africa .during the eighteenth century european empires in america reached their peak, and the foundations of european power were laid in the east. but in africa there was little evidence of european activities. this is at first sight surprising, for the earliest european overseas expansion took place in northwest and westafrica .during the fifteenth century the portuguese established on the west coast at arguin , elmina ,sao tome ,and san salvador ;their discovery of the cape of good hope in 1487 ked to occupation of main existing ports of east africa–sofala ,mozambique ,and others ,extending as far as red sea and ormuz .during the sixteenth century it seemed possible that portugal might establish territorial colonies in the congo region ,angola and the zambezi ,where adventurers and missionaries were following the same paths as conquistadores and religious orders in spanish america. but gradually these enterprises withered. the portuguese crown lost interests in exploration and conversion; india and the east monopolized its energies; africa was seen either as an obstacle on the route to the indies or as a source of gold dust and ivory and to slaves for the american plantations. portugal showed no desire or capacity to develop its coastal bases into colonies .in due course other european countries adopted portuguese attitudes and practices. the portuguese and arabs controlled all the ports of east africa. the trade was run by portuguese firms which bought a monopoly of rights for defined periods and paid a duty on slaves brought some wealth to angolan ports ,but slaving was incompatible with territorial empire and created an wilderness in east african ports specially tanganyika, zanzibar etc. during the seventeenth century, the dutch attacked shipping and seized the indian and eastern bases whose trade had previously brought wealth to portuguese east africa. arabs were expanding from the north and captured all ports north of zanzibar. inland the empire had broken the power of the monomatapas, the allies of portugal, and weakened her influence south of the zambezi. mozambique remained the portuguese capital. portuguese power in africa was waning during the eighteenth century: that of britain was surprisingly increasing. from the start the british thought of africa as a source of slaves for america and an obstacle on the route of india. they established no proper colonies, and left private companies to run the slave trade. rent had to be paid to local african rulers .the supply of slaves was irregular ,and african middlemen, who had a monopoly of supplying a fixed market, used it to force up the price. it is necessary to say that company servants were unreliable and corrupt. nearly two centuries british activities on the west and east africa had produced no significant expansion of mailto:topacademicjournals@gmail.com american journal of art and communication vol.8, issue 3; may-july 2023; issn: 2994-0540 impact factor: 6.91 1252 columbia rd nw, washington dc, united states https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac; mail: topacademicjournals@gmail.com 3 | american journal of art and communication | https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac territory or influence .but by 1815, british had made genuine colonies in there, which were not slaving centers. because they would eventually be given up the slave trade in 1807 .besides this, in 1758 a strong british naval expedition captured all french bases in west-africa after their war. but east africa which was controlled by muslims; arabs were building an impressive slave trading empire in there. when the european countries to close the slave trade, the british would remain there; but their reasons for doing so were now different. suppression of slaving was primary; the development of a legitimate commerce came second. together these provided the roots from which british most activities in west-africa grew during the next sixty years. by 1815, however, the britishempire had enlarged up to the east-africa. legitimate trade also existed in 1815; but it was so small that it did not yet constitute a major incentive for european expansion into africa. when the british decided to come into the east africa especially in mozambique, portuguese were too weak to extend their territory in there. mozambique was very important for trade in groundnuts and palm oil. but for long it was relatively small in vale and these goods were supplied by the african middlemen, the trade itself was necessarily an incentive for colonization. so they were not interested expanding their colonies at that time. that was the time of growth of european power in africa. it is easy to say that, after 1815 portugal retained only the island of mozambique, a few coastal forts, and the virtually independent prazos (feudal principalities) up the zambezi. the modern history of portugal overseas hinges on the 1880s. until then her empire appeared to be decadent from the 1580s until 1822 one colony after another was lost. on the other hand, most of the east-africa was controlled by muslim sultans. in there, the roots of european expansion were the financial weakness of debtor sultans and the reaction of islamic nationalists to alien encroachments. but none collapsed through financial insolvency in this period. european investments were spiritual and geographical rather than financial. table-1: the formal british empire in east-africa, 1893 territory area (square miles) estimated population number of europeans value of exports (£) form of government british east africa protectorate (including uganda) c.340, 000 c. 4,000,000? c. 200 86 chartered company zanzibar 1,000 100,000? c.200 1,002 protectorate source: the statesman’s yearbook, 1894 in east-africa britain’s trade was considerably less than on the west coast, and its east african commerce gave much less scope to small peasant cultivators. principal british imports centered on luxury goods, including ivory mailto:topacademicjournals@gmail.com american journal of art and communication vol.8, issue 3; may-july 2023; issn: 2994-0540 impact factor: 6.91 1252 columbia rd nw, washington dc, united states https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac; mail: topacademicjournals@gmail.com 4 | american journal of art and communication | https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac a commodity obtained through the skills of professional hunters; sugar, grown mainly on mauritian, plantations; and cloves, derived from arab owned estates on the island of zanzibar. british political influence in the sultanate of zanzibar depended on a partnership with a local islamic oligarchy of great estate owners and merchants. but in zanzibar, as at constantinople, british policy rested on unresolved contradictions. on the one hand britain wanted to enforce reforms acceptable to the british humanitarian conscience; these reforms hinged on free trade, free wage labor, and the benevolent treatment of the weak. on the other hand the home government wanted to avoid expensive commitments, and therefore, looked to traditional rulers to carry out reforms that were incompatible with traditional instructions. in east-africa the british were determined to wipe out the muslim slave trade one of the props sustaining the social system of zanzibar. this obliged them to play an ever increasing role in the affairs of the sultanate. at the same time british indian financiers and business men acquired growing influence within the island’s economy. in 1869 suez canal was opened, and western european ships bound for india could avoid the long haul around the cape. four years later the british-relying on their overwhelming sea power succeeded in closing the zanzibar slave markets, with the result that the sultan become over more dependent on royal navy support. during the 1870s, therefore british power engaged in many parts of east-africa. it was also the time of industrial revolution in the european countries; the british had needed a wide market for trade. thus, the british had chosen the eastafrican coasts. in east africa, the period 1885-90 was more decisive, because british and germany able to come to satisfactory agreements with little difficulty, which was called ‘scramble of africa’. italy had acquired assab, on the red sea, and wanted to build on empire for prestige reasons in the horn of africa. she was weak, but she was a member of triple alliance, and this entitled her to german sympathy and stimulated britain offer counter bribes. bismarck had little interest in east-africa, beyond the welfare of carl peters’ east-african company. bismarck supported him in whatever treaties he made with africans to extend his company’s claims provided these did not procedure a serious quarrel with britain. britain, in fact, had the greatest stake in east-africa; but her interests were typical of the involutes diplomacy of position. there were british missions in uganda, and the scottish ship owners, william mackinnon, was trying to establish a trading empire between mombasa and lake victoria, including control of the inland possessions of the arab sultan of zanzibar. mackinnon was given a charter for his imperial british east-africa company to enable him to complete with peters in treaty making: but in fact british statesmen regarded both missions and company as expendable. the vital british interest east india. german control of the coast would endanger the first; german or other control of uganda or the upper nile would treat egypt and the suez canal. ironically, therefore, british statesmen felt bound to stake more on east-africa, the least attractive of all colonial lots at auction, than in other places where real bargains were to be had. until 1898 this fact dominated the diplomacy of partition. mailto:topacademicjournals@gmail.com american journal of art and communication vol.8, issue 3; may-july 2023; issn: 2994-0540 impact factor: 6.91 1252 columbia rd nw, washington dc, united states https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac; mail: topacademicjournals@gmail.com 5 | american journal of art and communication | https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac the key dates were 1886 and 1890. in 1886 lord salisbury forestalled possible german claims to uganda by recognizing the german protectorate over dar-es-salam and pangani, and by implication also witu and the coast fronting in return for a provisional british sphere of influence north of a line from wonga to lake victoria. zanzibar which was under british control and become a full protectorate in 1890 was to control a long stretch of coast to the depth of ten miles. by 1890 salisbury was clear that the britain would remain in egypt independently. this made control of uganda fundamental and a more definite division was made by the so-called mozambique to lake nyasa, lake tanganyika and the boundary of the congo free state west of lake victoria, but stopping short of uganda. germany was given helgoland, helgoland treaty. britain recognized a german protectorate running from portuguese, which most german thought a better acquisition than uganda. in return germany recognized a british sphere of influence stretching north without a break from the previous demarcation line, and also the british protectorate over zanzibar. this 1890 treaty virtually fixed the pattern of colonial east-africa. it remained to decide whether britain would convert her sphere of influence into a formal protectorate or colony or merely keep germany out of it; what boundaries would be drawn between uganda congo free state; whether the congo would cede a corridor west of lake tanganyika, so that uganda and egypt could be linked with central africa; and finally whether france or italy would dispute british predominance in the egyptian sudan. thus britain established her protectorate over east-africa step by step. its administrative system was also running strongly day by day. according to the marxist interpretation of history, the colonial system was a capitalist invention designed to enrich merchants and industrialists, they were supposed to have sent their sons out to rule the empire. or conversely, the rulers of the empire were but the employees of moneymen, chosen to serve the wealthy. in fact, british colonial governors rarely had any links with the instruments of production or finance. by the end of nineteenth century, the british colonial system fell into three categories; firstly, the crown colonies, under the aegis of the colonial office; secondly the protectorates, most still at this point under the foreign office and the chartered company, also theoretically under the colonial office but only loosely supervised at best. most of the men, who governed the colonies, were called governor. in east-africa, as we have seen, the leading exponent of chartered enterprise and railway investment was william mackinnon, who combined his evangelical fervor and british patriotism with a bitter hatred of germany. his chosen instrument was the imperial british east-african company, like the royal niger company, a trading firm. it received its royal charter in 1889. as john s. galbraith, mackinnon’s biographic, has noted, the subscriber represented the upper riches of angloscottish society. business interests, philanthropy, independent wealth and distinguished public service were blended into a governing board with east-african interests; it could command respect from any government, liberal or tray. for board members were themselves mps. the former grocer’s clerk had risen in society and become a power in the land. mailto:topacademicjournals@gmail.com american journal of art and communication vol.8, issue 3; may-july 2023; issn: 2994-0540 impact factor: 6.91 1252 columbia rd nw, washington dc, united states https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac; mail: topacademicjournals@gmail.com 6 | american journal of art and communication | https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac the imperial british east-african company, however, proved an economic failure and surrendered its charter in 1895. east-africa laked an easily accessible source of wealth, and the enterprise had began with an inadequate economic base. the company could not complete in trade with indian merchant from the coast; the income from custom revenue was inadequate to support even a rudimentary form of western government; agriculture development was impossible without railway construction that the company, with its limited resources, could not afford. when the imperial east-african company was failure, the company lost its charter. after the company’s administration, perhaps 10 percent of officials in the administration of british east-africa before 1914 had come from south african nyasaland or rhodesia. the company’s administrative organization was, in fact, slender. it was run by a council in london and directed operations in eastafrica through an agent general, three provincial and some district superintendents. the company mentioned a small military police force, consisting of hausa and yoruba; it owned a small and lightly armed river fleet and a battalion. real power rested with company administration, mackinnon. finally we have seen company administrative system in east-africa in some ways those of west africa. after 1895 there were some changes in the british administration in east-africa. queen victoria was very interested in colonial affairs and wanted to see all important dispatches. she looks an active interest in the appointment of governors, being anxious to keep them independent of parliament and political parties. some bore different titles at various times and in various parts of the empirezanzibar a resident, swaziland a resident commissioners, and uganda a commissionerbut they were governor all the same, which is two say chief executives, responsible for the day to day administration of their territories. however, east-african region was ruled by a governor after 1895. it is necessary to say that the governor’s duties were both formal and informal; they were written down in various rules and regulations and developed through his relations with the colonial office. he was appointed by the sovereign on the recommendation of the colonial secretary after consultations with the prime minister. he acted as the sovereign’s representative. as head of the executive, he supervised the work of all departments and scrutinized all matters of importance. in a word, the governor was all in all in his region. besides these, chief justice, colonial secretary, colonial treasurer and colonial surgeon like teacher school officials etc. were in administrative bodies. the local administration also supplied the governor with an impressive domestic staff, a major domo, stewards, chiefs, chauffeurs, house boys, gardeners and laundrymensometimes as many as so people. the end of the nineteenth century, the east-africa was ruled by governor sir charles eliot and alfred claud hollis (sir claud) was personal secretary to sir eliot. hollis made everything running smoothly in there. in 1887, at the age of twenty three, he joined the administration as district commissioner. in 1902, he took direction of the newly formed secretariat in british east-africa and proved to be a capable administrator. by 1912, he was a resident of zanzibar and would up as governor of trinidad and tobago. he did well everything, especially he wrote widely mailto:topacademicjournals@gmail.com american journal of art and communication vol.8, issue 3; may-july 2023; issn: 2994-0540 impact factor: 6.91 1252 columbia rd nw, washington dc, united states https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac; mail: topacademicjournals@gmail.com 7 | american journal of art and communication | https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac on anthropology and allied subjects, including books on the nandi and the masai. he sided with the “negrophilists”. the british dominated the east-africa in the nineteenth century-religion, race, class and nationality. the british, in their own estimation, had created the world’s most successful society prosperous by comparison with most of their neighbors, law-abiding and stable, secure from foreign invasion. these values were reflected in british attitudes towards the africans, specially, the changes were in african society. mistakenly or not, the bulk of british administrators were convinced that colonialism was an instrument of social reform. in east-africa, the impact of british protectorate was not only absorbed but also effective; example, the railway, the telegraph, many hospitals, schools, were founded there. the most important results of british activity apart from where, in fact, the introduction of new food stuffs, notably cassava, maize and sweet potatoes, which greatly improved african diets. besides this, the british had made a little more than beginning in spreading their language, their nations concerning government and their religion in africa. the british activity also made african nationalists movements in the twentieth century. at last, we have seen, in east-africa, the british came as colonizers, indeed they prided themselves on that role. this is not an easy task. few words arouse as much hostility in the modern world as the word colonialism. colonialism-the argument goes accounts for much of the wealth accumulated by the rich nations of world at the expanse of the poor. colonialism, moreover, must bear the blame not merely for the property, but also for the stagnation of the so-called under developed world like east-africa. references african history-philip curtain, steven feirman, leonard thompson and jan vansina the rule of german africa (1884-1914) l. h. gann & peter duignan common sense about africa-antony sampson tanzania-an african experimentrodger yeager the rulers of british africal. h. gann & peter duignan the colonial empires –a comparative survey from the eighteenth century d. k. fieldhouse mailto:topacademicjournals@gmail.com building legitimacy in the absence of the state: reflections on the facebook oversight board american journal of art and communication vol.6 , issue3 mayjune 2021; 1252 columbia rd nw, washington dc, united states https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac; mail: topacademicjournals@gmail.com 1 | american journal of art and communication | https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac can the facebook oversight board build legitimacy in the absence of the state? john smith, jane doe toronto metropolitan university, canada abstract: this article examines the role of the meta oversight board in regulating content on facebook and instagram. the board is an independent body that was created by meta to review content decisions made by the company. the board has the power to overturn meta's decisions, and it has issued a number of rulings that have challenged the company's content moderation practices. the article discusses the implications of the board's rulings for the future of content moderation on social media. keywords: meta, facebook, oversight board, content moderation, artificial intelligence, state regulation introduction there’s a crescendo in the struggles—ubiquitous and intense—to find and implement a satisfactory societal response to the severe and seemingly intractable content problems imputed to social media. social media have been deemed tools, among other things, for promoting genocide, corrupting elections, transmitting live mass killing, and facilitating lynch mobs. governments are destabilized, ancient loyalties called into question, polarization intensified, and sovereignty threatened. human rights advocates, regulatory agencies across the globe, social media users, and consumers all invoke the impact of social media as contributing to profound ills. much of the debate has centered on the need to find mechanisms for adequate content moderation, without quite knowing the metric for adequacy. the standard litany is that these platforms bring enormous benefits and produce opportunities for democratic participation, personal expression, and economic expansion. unregulated and unchecked, they transmit and even organize existential dangers to persons, communities, and institutions. an intense and almost desperate search for modes of addressing these issues has engaged legislators, citizen groups, advertisers, and courts, among others, confounding democracies and preoccupying authoritarian regimes. confusion and uncertainty have led governments and media platforms to ad hoc, inconsistent, and censorial exercises of control as a way of coping with threat, incitement, disinformation, and hate speech. scholarly critics, stakeholders, and politicians, not to mention larger publics, find major grounds for questioning the capacity and the authority of platforms to address the problem of balanced and adequate content moderation. the scale of the problem of moderation alone is crippling, or certainly seems so. and meta, to take a prominent platform, was and is plagued by a structural issue: its financial model and economic interest are often antithetical to the needs and standards for policing the forum. conflicts of interest are coupled with a worrying absence of the state as regulator. the dilemma of moderation in a context of anemic authority is central to understanding mailto:topacademicjournals@gmail.com american journal of art and communication vol.6 , issue3 mayjune 2021; 1252 columbia rd nw, washington dc, united states https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac; mail: topacademicjournals@gmail.com 2 | american journal of art and communication | https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac some facebook initiatives. in this brief feature article, we look at an effort by meta to experiment with approaches to content moderation that increase or attempt to increase the legitimacy of its actions. in particular, we chart the implementation of the facebook oversight board as a suggestive instance of how these initiatives emerge and how elements of legitimacy appear to be forged (douek, 2019). a few words about legitimacy as we see its relevance. legitimacy as a concept has displayed considerable pliability (deephouse & suchman, 2008, pp. 49–50). researchers have treated it as a property, as an interactive process of legitimation, and as a perception (suddaby, bitektine, & haack, 2016, p. 451). we treat legitimacy as having characteristics of each approach: legitimacy is a property with attributes that can be ascribed to it, legitimacy is a dynamic, unstable process involving multiple, conflicting actors, and legitimacy is a set of perceptions—something is legitimate because it is perceived to be. as a shorthand, we point to marc suchman’s (1995) definition of legitimacy as “a generalized perception or assumption that the actions of an entity are desirable, proper, or appropriate within some socially constructed system of norms, values, beliefs, and definitions” (p. 574). “legitimacy” is thus not an intrinsic property of an entity; it is a social relationship where legitimacy is conferred by one or more publics. for the purposes at hand, we lay aside the role of the state since we are focused on attempts by media platforms to pull themselves up by their own bootstraps, so to speak, creating mechanisms that bestow, build, or attract legitimacy. legitimacy deficits we characterize the problem facing many platforms as a “legitimacy deficit,” namely a gap between the governance tasks various constituencies expect of them and the absence of an environment, agent, or institution that authorizes or directs performance of those responsibilities. these deficits have an ironic turn. societies demand that the platforms be more responsible but condemn them for overreaching (or undermanaging). legitimacy needs are heightened where there are aspects of regulatory failure: a gap between what a society anticipates a regulatory effort should accomplish and what it can or does, in fact, accomplish. a concept of regulatory failure presupposes that there is some level or range of expectation that the society (through a combination of efforts) or a particular actor can muster to be able to effectively respond to a cohort of regulatory needs. a regulatory failure can precipitate a legitimacy deficit, and the standard responses include lowering or otherwise adjusting public expectations or improving platform performance if the entity is to flourish or even survive. content moderation is an area where these concepts are frequently in play with shifting public demand or expectation. legitimacy deficits also stem from ambiguities in setting goals for evaluating performance. or one can also think of platform content moderation in at least two other ways foundational to legitimacy enhancement: decision-making as theater (a focus on the appearance of meeting pre-existing standards), or performance as direct accomplishment (see douek, 2022). demand for fiercer content moderation exists when, for example, there are threats to the body politic (terrorism, pandemic) when social media is thought to be a substantial contributor to societal breakdown and danger, and other occasions when demand for intervention arises. the critical mix of interests in various jurisdictions will result in different gestures of demand for regulation. different sovereigns have different intensities of interest at different times. mailto:topacademicjournals@gmail.com american journal of art and communication vol.6 , issue3 mayjune 2021; 1252 columbia rd nw, washington dc, united states https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac; mail: topacademicjournals@gmail.com 3 | american journal of art and communication | https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac in the absence of regulatory action, meta and other platforms are both required and desire to act as a state surrogate (though eschewing the implications). self-regulation becomes the preferred way to close legitimacy deficits and address regulatory failure. this may have fed expectations that social media could and should take a central role in content moderation. as a result, however, platforms often find themselves in contradictory situations, especially if one considers that various publics have different standards and expectations for content moderation. for some free-speech advocates, it is the platforms’ very restraint in moderation that is itself legitimizing, whereas for many others, this same restraint has been tantamount to a disavowal of technical, political, and ethical responsibility to intervene. most platforms face versions of this same dilemma. their substantial impact on society underscores the need for measures that help to confer legitimacy. here, too, what we have called the absence of the state is significant. the legitimacy deficits can grow to yawning dimensions. we contend that a regulatory configuration in which “the state” plays too limited a role leads to a special need for manifestations of legitimacy. in modern history, the formal default entity for conferring legitimacy on institutions purporting to govern (including self-governing institutions) has been the state. one form this takes is through state credentialing and state regulatory processes. particular states may be absent under many conditions or for any number of different reasons: the technological gap between platform manager and state may be too great, the jurisdictional barriers too daunting, the understanding of the dynamics of use and impact too great. absence of the state exists in another relevant category: where a pre-existing set of rules, including basic or constitutional tenets bars or constrains a state from adjusting to the demands that accompany a new technology. the first amendment to the united states constitution can be read as a constitutionally imposed “absence of the state” in an environment where state involvement (in the form of content moderation) seems an increasingly poignant prerequisite for societal functioning. in some settings, the absence is a consequence of the sheer size of the management challenge or because the governing institutions are fictions. some societies function in circumstances where the state, or its fragments, are the consequence of unrealized dreams or remnants of dissolved or abandoned social arrangements. of particular interest for our argument are circumstances where the state or some version of it chooses not to exercise authority, possibly for reasons of regulatory capture. an analysis of “absences” would show a wide range (from incapability to restraint to disdain), with implications for their legitimacy-conferring powers. while we include the previously mentioned examples of limited state involvement as “the absence of the state,” we acknowledge great differences among them. one could argue that the state is never wholly absent but often masked and hidden. this experience should not yield hasty conclusions about performance, but it can produce a new vocabulary of actions designed to illuminate and implement stakeholder goals. for example, meta can be seen as a strategic communicator with resources and power that enable it to act in ways that lead to a rapid and expert identification of objectives and the capacity to implement them, surmounting existing legal obstacles and bypassing existing formal legal structure. mailto:topacademicjournals@gmail.com american journal of art and communication vol.6 , issue3 mayjune 2021; 1252 columbia rd nw, washington dc, united states https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac; mail: topacademicjournals@gmail.com 4 | american journal of art and communication | https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac the facebook oversight board in this climate, what most prominent social media companies seek is what we could call functional legitimacy. they would like to earn sufficient legitimacy in content moderation to buffer insistent and potentially costly critiques. the oversight board was intended to be a deliberative body or tribunal that would be relatively independent of meta and its administration, provide opportunity for appeal by facebook users whose work is taken down, and more generally provide oversight of the platform’s standards, practices, and evolving norms. an account of the creation and early implementation of the oversight board provides important insights into what we call “attributes of legitimacy.” facebook’s history and evolution regarding the oversight board and its initial period of implementation is highly documented. a cadre of scholars helped establish a constructive, informed, engaged monitoring tone that has served facebook (and a community of scholars) quite well as the idea for such a mechanism ripened. kate klonick (2018), in a magisterial harvard law review article, “the new governors: the people, rules, and processes governing online speech,” comprehensively describes the state of play among platforms in the years just before the oversight board was conceived and implemented. in fastidious detail, her article documents varying strategies by google, facebook, and twitter; internal processes of review; changing invocation of norms; and differing aspects of profit maximization of each platform. by 2015 or so, facebook had already established a massive international apparatus of industrial scale dedicated to screening posts and managing material, which was the subject of complaints, including complaints by states. by then there were already thousands of individuals employed as content moderators for facebook, often as contractors with varying levels of training, working under conditions often criticized as grueling and worse (satariano & isaac, 2021). and behind this army—or ahead of it—was the insistent scope of artificial intelligence or moderating by algorithm. the stakes became more articulated, the gulf between social needs, global demand for moderation, and existing performance clearer. an insistent and unsatisfying pattern had emerged: there were public crises (e.g., massacres, tense elections with violent aftermath, terrorist acts, a pandemic, a corresponding mass vaccination campaign), in which information spread played a part. in their wake, governments sometimes demanded intensified attention to content moderation, launched inquiries, or engaged in harsher actions, such as shutting down a platform. in a series of posts, mark zuckerberg, cofounder and ceo of facebook, lofted the idea of a qualified appeals process. the degree to which legitimacy was at risk and the continuing difficulty in finding acceptable state approaches created an opening for a comprehensive innovation. a strategic intervention would change the conversation between facebook and its critics, taking some of the responsibility somewhat off zuckerberg personally and rehousing and rearticulating the machinery of a regularized decision-making process to increase the likelihood of respect. in order to enhance the legitimacy of this innovation, facebook organized a series of gatherings around the world to explore ideas and opportunities and consider initial board members, including eminent lawyers, civil society members, journalists, human rights activists, and academics (klonick, 2021). in these gatherings, the distinguished participants discussed the possible role, procedure, and membership of a facebook oversight board. it was as if there were recognition that, in the absence of a state, a set of rituals was needed to render mailto:topacademicjournals@gmail.com american journal of art and communication vol.6 , issue3 mayjune 2021; 1252 columbia rd nw, washington dc, united states https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac; mail: topacademicjournals@gmail.com 5 | american journal of art and communication | https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac legitimate the not-quite-authorized. consistent with the newness of technology, these gatherings, and the board structure that emerged as a quasilegal public sphere, was carved out through the use of popular media. eventually, facebook distilled from these meetings a structure for an oversight board and named prominent jurists, journalists, and human rights advocates. it is not too much of a leap to say that designers of the board considered that legitimacy is conferred in part by the makeup of the individual members and their diversity overall. that is why there are among them experts in free speech, human rights, civil society, a former prime minister, a former un rapporteur, a nobel laureate, legal scholars, communication scholars, and feminists. this is a dramaturgy of seasoned, considered, circumspect professionals, with a diversity thought to guarantee a range of perspectives. these members were chosen because they were thought to be experienced at thoughtfully and collegially deliberating, skilled at making and explaining decisions based on a set of policies or principles, and familiar with digital content and governance. the oversight board and attributes of legitimacy the aspiration is that the insertion of this new element—the oversight board—becomes a productive and effective attribute of legitimacy. how that develops is a matter of careful and significant attention. the most immediate and consistent way in which the board can add legitimacy is for it to exercise productive independence (not independence for its own sake, but independence that advances public goals) and for it to produce or influence changes in content moderation that are seen as effective and useful by a range of stakeholders. we observe several related approaches to this dynamic. in addition to emphasis on the quality of decision-making (cognizant of the limits suggested by professor douek, 2022), we would mention efforts at enhancing strategic narratives and strategic aspects of institutional design and reinforcing and deepening an epistemic community that enriches the public understanding of social media platforms. attributes of legitimacy are refinements of decision-making processes that build confidence. they work on two levels. agencies or institutional actors propose actions to improve operation, and they are advertised as ways to enhance capability and mastery. the oversight board becomes, in facebook’s aspirations, an engine for articulating attributes, and is itself an attribute. one could see the oversight board as an exercise in selecting design elements that would, like beaux arts or classical architecture, create an institutional aesthetic of governance. facebook’s elaborate consultations, global in scope, prior to establishing the board, served as an opportunity to test what features would be particularly helpful in shaping a legitimacy-redolent institution. certain attributes of legitimacy are immediately recognizable; they include characteristics of independence, transparency, assertions of commitment to free expression, the appearance and reputation for noncorrupt decision-making, public reasoning, and the capacity to navigate issues of sovereignty and jurisdiction. more aspirational attributes of legitimacy—as the oversight board develops—could include the board’s enhanced capacity to put forward a satisfactory approach to extremely difficult and longstanding issues involving freedom of expression or finding the right formula for understanding the interplay among human rights norms and various constitutional principles. these attributes would strengthen the board and therefore facebook’s own content moderation. legitimacy may increase if the board becomes a more significant voice on larger law and policy questions. for example, legitimacy may be augmented if the oversight board helps develop a more accessible mailto:topacademicjournals@gmail.com american journal of art and communication vol.6 , issue3 mayjune 2021; 1252 columbia rd nw, washington dc, united states https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac; mail: topacademicjournals@gmail.com 6 | american journal of art and communication | https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac vocabulary to meet expectations of remedy proportionality or to assist in the proper allocation of determinist power between human moderation and artificial intelligence. if other human rights tribunals begin to draw on the language or logic of the oversight board’s decisions, this will redound to the board and, by extension, to meta. strategic narratives the oversight board will, for its own purposes, try to shape narratives of authority, though, in doing so, friction may be created with facebook. calling the board a “supreme court” is an example of shaping or misshaping a strategic narrative. so too would a failure to recognize the structural limits to achieving legitimacy (for example, through efforts to convey that an error can be largely avoided or that most underlying concerns can be readily addressed; douek, 2022). and in its efforts to bolster legitimacy, meta will have its own narrative for what role the board should play and what the implications could be or should be for facebook. there is not yet sufficient experience of how the board or facebook itself evolves, so we only begin to see the pressures and opportunities the board has to innovate or develop a distinctive voice. the fuller narrative will emerge from a cluster of decisions, policy queries, and other actions. it will be affected by whether and how those actions come to hold significant precedent in facebook’s subsequent operation. for facebook, the oversight board can serve as a scaffolding for a calculated strengthening, a selfennobling activity. it can amplify a narrative that borrows from the language of the law and freedom of expression. the oversight board may deploy its subtle policy-related role to construct a suitable strategic narrative that goes beyond corporate opportunity. it already represents itself as an instrument of human rights. the narrative might include a response to globalism, an affirmation of freedom of expression and incorporate some mediation with state sovereignty. policies concerning scope of translation may yield more languages where facebook builds up technical expertise. the existence of the board already makes the process seem much more dialogic, with the board making policy recommendations and facebook required to respond. strategic architecture legitimacy can also be enhanced by addressing the institutional architecture or environment in which moderation decisions are made. the addition of the oversight board might remedy capacities wanting or missing in the original facebook/meta arrangements and constraints. the idea of an occasion for review is a popular one, especially if the review is conducted not by the original decision maker but by a more distant entity. in constructing the board, attention was paid to making it appear to be an entity sharply differentiated from facebook. facebook is so byzantine, so overwhelming, so seemingly impervious to massive change that a proposal for improvement based on marginal change in content moderation practices could be uninspiring and simply bolster distrust. there are tens of thousands of moderators who engage in the taxing work of reviewing hundreds of thousands of posts and deciding which should be taken down; how these foot soldiers are trained, the guidelines they are to follow, how consistency is maintained in their work, how they engage with community standards, how and whether they are exploited, and how that affects their work are aspects for continued attention and reform. all this makes direct change of facebook as a mode of gaining legitimacy a complex proposition from a public point of view. the oversight board could be characterized as just the reverse of the involuted, mailto:topacademicjournals@gmail.com american journal of art and communication vol.6 , issue3 mayjune 2021; 1252 columbia rd nw, washington dc, united states https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac; mail: topacademicjournals@gmail.com 7 | american journal of art and communication | https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac sprawling culture of content moderation at facebook. the oversight board provides an idealized and initially more controlled canvas on which a more ideal moderation process can be depicted, a contained sandbox of content moderation. where facebook is sprawling and profusely engaged, the oversight board is what might be called deliberately deliberate. the oversight board hardly scales, but here small is somewhat beautiful. the board is where change in processes can be studied and discussed before being applied across the entire world of moderation. at the outset, the currency of achievement—the contribution to legitimacy—was measured in large part by the quality of process, global consultations, focus groups, and accumulated discussions. what was featured, highlighted as achievements, and celebrated in the blogosphere was the elaborate exercise in elicited collaboration. it was also important to delineate and broadcast how the oversight board would maintain independence in every way. for example, complexity and care are evident in the rules concerning the financing of the board. an innovatively structured trust was set up to guarantee funds while confirming independence. furthermore, the method of selection of the members of the board and the details of length of service, compensation, and similar matters underscore how legitimacy of process was seen as significant in enhancing legitimacy. as the oversight board matures, legitimacy will turn, largely, on perceived quality of actions. these actions include choosing which cases to review, the decisions it renders in those cases, but also the nature of its dialogue with facebook on policy questions and how much influence it eventually wields. in particular, there will be questions of whether the decisions of the oversight board sufficiently affect the course of decision-making at facebook level. put differently, how much of an actual impact will the decisions of the oversight board have on the massive facebook apparatus (into human moderation and algorithmic review), and will these decisions reverberate in the outcomes of other platforms? will the board seek deeper involvement in the mechanisms by which that translation takes place? thus, the legitimacy of the board rests not only on its own performance, but also on facebook’s performance vis-a-vis the oversight board. creating an epistemic community we offer a final category of legitimacy building related to the oversight board. it involves how the board is supported and continues to be supported by a broad consultative network. the administrative procedure act in the united states is built, in large part, on the idea that agencies should give notice of proposed decisions and be willing to receive copious and presumably helpful comments on the potential action. decisions gain legitimacy (or at least it is often so suggested) as various entities—administrative agencies, court, executive officials—have dialogues with constituencies and stakeholders who might enrich the decision-making process. sometimes this is perfunctory, providing the illusion of inclusion; sometimes it is a mode of obtaining consensus, whether warranted or not. but the theory here is that the governing entity is stronger or engenders more respect or cause for adhesion if the discourse surrounding it is broader and deeper, part of a process of examining alternatives. usually, the mandate for consultation is required by the state. there are different aesthetics and pragmatics of this interchange or process of engagement. it is at times mechanical or box-checking. in habermasian terms, the mailto:topacademicjournals@gmail.com american journal of art and communication vol.6 , issue3 mayjune 2021; 1252 columbia rd nw, washington dc, united states https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac; mail: topacademicjournals@gmail.com 8 | american journal of art and communication | https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac point is to create a domain of social life where public opinion is formed: a verdant, nondominated, noncorrupt public sphere often tailored to the specific entity or decision maker. one could read the formation of the oversight board as an intervention designed more formally to reengineer its relationship to a critical set of interlocutors. the procedures established to govern decisionmaking contain structured efforts to include comments from the public. and the launch of the board has been the occasion for serious debates that bring together scholarly, governmental, civic, and business zeal. this has been a process that has involved academics writing alone and academics assembling in purposive formations, such as stanford’s project on intermediary liability, the information society project at the yale law school, or the committee of experts on internet intermediaries of the european council. building expertise has engendered large-scale foundation-funded studies. a valuable contribution to critical community building is the work of individual scholars, like evelyn douek (2019, 2020, 2022), who have become solo institutional critics, generating knowledge, advancing positions, and creating patterns of debate and discussion that raise the quality of decisionmaking for the oversight board, governments, and other stakeholders. what emerges is what some might call an epistemic community, “a network of professionals with recognized expertise and competence in a particular domain and an authoritative claim to policy relevant knowledge within that domain or issue area” (haas, 1992, pp. 2–3). epistemic communities marshal information or knowledge to improve operation of an institution. in an inaugural article, peter haas (1992) provided four characteristics or typical features: a shared set of principles; a shared understanding of the way things happen, including problems, policies, and outcomes; shared ideas of what is acceptable; and a common enterprise, or shared goals (p. 3). when he first wrote about epistemic communities, haas (1992) rooted his concept of an epistemic community within a formalist understanding of scientific expertise. but the coming together of scholars across disciplines suggests that the description of community can and does change. mai’a davis cross (2012) has written of a more commodious set of characteristics that emphasizes the episteme, the core knowledge or knowledge system that undergirds a community. if, for haas (1992), an epistemic community is predicated on shared values, shared understandings of the world, and a shared sense of what is valid or acceptable, the oversight board has a diverse set of understandings of the world and what is acceptable—and this is its virtue—indeed one could ask if it is diverse enough (domino, 2020; douek, 2020; mcsherry & york, 2020). an epistemic community would be a locus for debating the role of human rights, justice as fairness, science and the scientific enterprise, rationality, rule of law, and other hallmarks of liberal democracy. this is part of the system of beliefs that provides a framework for a claim on legitimacy. an epistemic community brings together several senses of “legitimacy,” including not only expertise and legitimacy of process. the “community” implicitly buttresses the rightness and moral authority of the board through what we could term “soft” legitimacy. what evolves may even be a shared sense of moral responsibility, which hearkens back to lorraine code’s (1983) notion of epistemic community as implying epistemic responsibility. manufactured legitimacy? we have titled this article “manufacturing legitimacy” as a tip of our hats to herman and chomsky (1988) and to emphasize the complex forces at play when institutions are introduced that seek to exude democratic values mailto:topacademicjournals@gmail.com american journal of art and communication vol.6 , issue3 mayjune 2021; 1252 columbia rd nw, washington dc, united states https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac; mail: topacademicjournals@gmail.com 9 | american journal of art and communication | https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac but may shield, even with contrary intent, how pre-existing hierarchies are involved in creating the aura of authority. addressing these crises of legitimacy, the responses have yielded a range of modifications. it is too early to determine how to assess the kinds and degrees of legitimacy that an institution like meta requires to be effective, what deficits will be present and the capability of the system, through the oversight board and other mechanisms, to repair these deficits. by the end of its first years of operation, the relationship between the corporation and the oversight board was already manifesting strains. issues of trust, jurisdiction, transparency, and capacity were providing tests of acceptability of the existing arrangements. epistemic communities were cracking, new strategic narratives were being shaped, and what constitutes attributes of legitimacy could change. rarely, if ever, has there been so great a gulf between the aspiration for meaningful and appropriate management and the capacity of available instruments to deliver a coherent and feasible system. so monumental is the impact of social media, so conflicted are the human rights standards and commitments to safety and security that standards design—especially when scale requires wholesale dependence on artificial intelligence—is almost impossibly complex. in that context, the oversight board’s careful deliberations and crafted decisions, coming at a measured rate, may appear quaint or largely irrelevant; yet, we have taken the position here that an experimental tribunal may potentially play an intriguing role in an emerging architecture of legitimacy, within the social media landscape and beyond. references bickert, m. (2020, february). charting a way forward online content regulation. retrieved from https://about.fb.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/02/charting-a-way-forward_online-contentregulationwhite-paper-1.pdf code, l. (1983). responsibility and the epistemic community: woman’s place. social research, 50(3), 537–555. cross, m. k. d. (2012). rethinking epistemic communities twenty years later. review of international studies, 39(1), 137–160. https://doi.org/10.1017/s0260210512000034 deephouse, d. l., & suchman, m. (2008). legitimacy in organizational institutionalism. the sage handbook of organizational institutionalism, 4977. https://doi.org/10.4135/9781849200387.n2 domino, j. (2020, june 8). why facebook’s oversight board is not diverse enough. retrieved from https://www.justsecurity.org/70301/why-facebooks-oversight-board-is-not-diverse-enough douek, e. (2019). facebook’s “oversight board”: move fast with stable infrastructure and humility. north carolina journal of law & technology, 21(1), 1–77. mailto:topacademicjournals@gmail.com american journal of art and communication vol.6 , issue3 mayjune 2021; 1252 columbia rd nw, washington dc, united states https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac; mail: topacademicjournals@gmail.com 10 | american journal of art and communication | https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac douek, e. (2020, june 25). what kind of oversight board have you given us? the university of chicago law review online. retrieved from https://lawreviewblog.uchicago.edu/2020/05/11/fboversight-boardedouek/ douek, e. (2022, january 12). content moderation as systems thinking. harvard law review, 136(2), 526–607. retrieved from https://ssrn.com/abstract=4005326 haas, p. m. (1992). introduction: epistemic communities and international policy coordination. international organization, 46(1), 1–35. https://doi.org/10.1017/s0020818300001442 herman, e. s., & chomsky, n. (1988). manufacturing consent: the political economy of the mass media. new york, ny: pantheon. klein, e. (2018, april 2). mark zuckerberg on facebook’s future, fake news, and russian mischief. retrieved from https://www.vox.com/2018/4/2/17185052/mark-zuckerberg-facebook-interviewfake-news-botscambridge klonick, k. (2018). the new governors: the people, rules, and processes governing online speech. harvard law review, 131(6), 1599–1670. klonick, k. (2021, february 12). inside the making of facebook’s supreme court. the new yorker. retrieved from https://www.newyorker.com/tech/annals-of-technology/inside-the-making-offacebooks-supremecourt mcsherry, c., & york, j. (2020, may 20). facebook’s oversight board: who (and what) is missing from the picture so far. retrieved from https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2020/05/facebooks-oversightboard-lacksappropriate-representation satariano, a., & isaac, m. (2021, august 31). the silent partner cleaning up facebook for $500 million a year. the new york times. retrieved from https://www.nytimes.com/2021/08/31/technology/facebookaccenture-content-moderation.html suchman, m. c. (1995). managing legitimacy: strategic and institutional approaches. academy of management review, 20(3), 571–610. https://doi.org/10.5465/amr.1995.9508080331 suddaby, r., bitektine, a., & haack, p. (2016, october 25). legitimacy. academy of management annals, 11(1), 451–478. retrieved from https://journals.aom.org/doi/10.5465/annals.2015.0101 mailto:topacademicjournals@gmail.com converging media unions: a labor history of newsworkers in a predigital age american journal of art and communication vol.7, issue 2; march-april 2022; 1252 columbia rd nw, washington dc, united states https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac; mail: topacademicjournals@gmail.com 23 | american journal of art and communication | https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac unions and the news: a history of protecting workers and promoting democracy john smith university of huddersfield, uk abstract this article surveys the history of newsworkers' trade union formation in the united states and canada from 1865 to 1997. it argues that the digital-era "unionization movement" is part of a longer history of newsworkers organizing for better working conditions and a more democratic media. keywords: newsworkers' unions, digital-era unionization, predigital age, trade union formation, united states, canada introduction more than 7,500 news media workers organized trade unions in the united states and canada between 2015 and 2022, among them reporters, editors, and tech workers (cohen & de peuter, 2020; fu, 2021; salamon, 2022a, 2023). they include workers at digital-first media outlets and traditional publishing and broadcasting companies, such as gawker (now gizmodo media group), mtv news, vice, buzzfeed, the los angeles times, hearst magazines, minnesota public radio, and whyy. they have joined legacy unions that have been representing workers in publishing and broadcasting since the early 20th century: the newsguild (tng); the writers guild of america, east; the screen actors guild-american federation of television and radio artists; and the communications workers of america (cwa) canada. some writers have reported an increase in newsworker union representation due to this digital-era “unionization movement” (fu, 2021), especially since the covid-19 pandemic in 2020 (fischer, 2021), and suggest that “media unionization 3.0 is also a rebranding of an old story” (chen, 2015, para. 12). this article surveys this longer history of newsworkers’ trade union formation in a predigital age. it is grounded in a case study of unions in the united states and canada from 1865, when newsworkers first unionized internationally—until 1997, when newsworkers had formed cross-craft international unions. this article critically evaluates histories of journalism, labor, and critical political economy of communication copyright © 2023 (errol salamon, e.salamon@hud.ac.uk). licensed under the creative commons attribution non-commercial no derivatives (by-nc-nd). available at http://ijoc.org. literature, integrating secondary research on newsworkers’ trade union formation. it identifies two dimensions of labor convergence that are underdeveloped in these studies: first, treating labor convergence as an ideology, a set of values, rather than only a range of trade union processes; and second, accounting for a long historical mailto:topacademicjournals@gmail.com american journal of art and communication vol.7, issue 2; march-april 2022; 1252 columbia rd nw, washington dc, united states https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac; mail: topacademicjournals@gmail.com 24 | american journal of art and communication | https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac perspective on trade union labor convergence. first, researchers typically refer to labor convergence as the merging of workers’ unions across different crafts, industries, and countries while uniting organized and unorganized workers (mckercher, 2002; mosco & mckercher, 2008). conversely, researchers refer to labor convergence as a temporary organizing tactic, uniting community groups and leveraging public support (salamon, 2022a, 2022b). this article contributes a new conceptualization of labor convergence as a set of trade union ideological values linked to newsworkers’ organizing processes. second, this article addresses the lack of a comprehensive long historical perspective on newsworker unions’ labor convergence in the context of cross-border tensions between american and canadian unions during international organizing efforts (deck, 1988; glende, 2012; leab, 1970; mari, 2018; mckercher, 2002; mosco & mckercher, 2008; nerone, 2022; örnebring, 2020; salamon, 2022a, 2022b). extant research has focused on a specific union, a particular occupation, or a short period of time, leaving gaps in understanding newsworkers’ trade union-organizing efforts across various occupations and industries over time. this article aims to fill these gaps, providing a more comprehensive analysis and proposing a new framework for periodizing labor convergence of newsworkers’ unions in the united states and canada between 1865 and 1997. by adopting a broader scope, the article provides insights into the complex dynamics and transformations of newsworkers’ organizing processes among newspaper print workers and journalists over time. to better understand how and why newsworkers organize in the present and their relationship with trade union ideological values, this article aims to understand the continuities and discontinuities over time in newsworker union histories (nerone, 2022; örnebring, 2020; salamon, 2022a). it asks the following research questions: rq1: how can we periodize labor convergence in the united states and canada based on histories of newsworkers’ union formation and reformation between the 1860s and 1990s? rq2: what trade union ideological values are associated with the processes of labor convergence? next, this article considers how newspaper print workers’ craft unions converged internationally across the united states and canada in the 19th century. second, it traces a history of the converged blue-collar printers and whitecollar journalists’ unions, attempting to build industrial unions in these countries from the 1890s to the 1930s. third, the article traces a shift to divergence in the 1930s, when north american journalists formed autonomous unions and converged with other white-collar front-office newsworkers through the 1980s. fourth, it outlines the process of union reconvergence in the news industry between the mid-1980s and 1990s, reuniting blue-collar and white-collar newsworkers who were previously members of the same union, and union divergence among some canadian newsworkers. the conclusion discusses how a new framework for periodizing labor convergence, and understanding the associated ideological values, could offer a necessary framework for future research on media workers’ union-organizing efforts at digital media outlets. the rise of newsworkers’ convergence: craft unionism versus industrial unionism this section contends that newspaper print workers first organized craft unions in particular locales in the united states and canada, converging internationally in the 19th century and then diverging based on specialized craft interests within print work (demers, 1988; mosco & mckercher, 2008; nerone, 2022; salamon, 2022b). a mailto:topacademicjournals@gmail.com american journal of art and communication vol.7, issue 2; march-april 2022; 1252 columbia rd nw, washington dc, united states https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac; mail: topacademicjournals@gmail.com 25 | american journal of art and communication | https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac craft unionism ideology refers to a collective organization of workers who share a particular trade or skillset within a particular industry, such as printers or journalists. by contrast, an industrial unionism ideology refers to a collective organization uniting workers within and across industries, regardless of craft or skillset. until the 20th century, the united states–based international typographical union (itu) was the parent craft union representing newspaper printers in various cities across the united states and canada. the itu was founded in 1852 as the national typographical union (ntu). it was renamed in 1869 to accommodate canadian union expansion, which included locals in saint john (1865), toronto (1866), and ottawa and montreal (1867; kealey, 1986). print workers unionized before other professional news employee roles had become firmly established (nerone, 2022). for instance, by 1830, newspapers employed correspondents who worked for more than one publication, were amateurs, or had other occupations, rather than full-time professional reporters. thus, there was not yet a common craft identity to facilitate unionization beyond the printers. by contrast, the knights of labor, founded in 1869 by tailors in philadelphia, represented the first successful attempt to establish a proconvergence “class-based” industrial union in north america, aiming to unite various unorganized occupations (mosco & mckercher, 2008, p. 96). the knights of labor started as a secret organization that criticized craft unions like the itu, which aimed “to create a better society by reforming the workplace rather than the other way around” (mosco & mckercher, 2008, p. 101). over time, the knights expanded to ontario, canada, in 1875, playing a vital role in workers’ struggles regardless of their union affiliations (kealey, 1980; kealey & palmer, 1982). moreover, the knights of labor was significant for being first to organize journalists in canada and the united states. for example, the knights victor hugo local in toronto (1886–1895) was predominately composed of journalists. however, the knights struggled to effectively counter the power of rapid industrialization, the concentration of capital, and a backlash against organized labor, contributing to factionalism and leading to membership decline in the 1890s (mosco & mckercher, 2008). despite benefiting from cross-border craft convergence, the itu’s control over print workers was challenged during this period. in the late 19th century, printing companies integrated new technologies, including the linotype machine (kealey, 1986; mosco & mckercher, 2008; nerone, 2022). the linotype, introduced into newsrooms in 1886, enabled faster mechanical typesetting, creating the potential to displace printing jobs. however, rather than resisting this change, the itu adapted its strategy and advocated for a new hourly pay rate system, shorter workday, and reskilling on the new machines, thus maintaining relative control over printing labor. nevertheless, technological advancements also led to craft diversification and specialization among printers, fostering internal divisions within the itu. in response, some printers seceded from the itu and asserted their autonomous professional identity (kealey, 1986; mosco & mckercher, 2008; salamon, 2022b). for example, 13 itu press workers’ union locals established the international printing pressmen’s union (ippu) in 1889. bookbinding workers formed the international brotherhood of bookbinders (ibb) in 1892. over the next two decades, more print workers left the itu and organized autonomous unions, including the lithographers and photoengravers of america and the international stereotypers’ and electrotypers’ union. these developments marked a process of labor divergence mailto:topacademicjournals@gmail.com american journal of art and communication vol.7, issue 2; march-april 2022; 1252 columbia rd nw, washington dc, united states https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac; mail: topacademicjournals@gmail.com 26 | american journal of art and communication | https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac among print workers’ unions. nevertheless, amid these shifts, some unorganized newsworkers unionized in the late 19th century, leading to more convergence within the industry. newsworkers’ international labor convergence across crafts this section asserts that newsworkers converged in one big craft union in the late 19th century across the united states and canada, bringing together the ideologies of white-collar and blue-collar unionism. while some journalists had briefly organized with the knights of labor (kealey, 1980), journalists remained mostly unorganized until then. journalists’ drive to unionize was marked by tensions between their white-collar professional ideology and class consciousness, which manifested in a professional orientation and economic orientation (salamon, 2022a). the characteristics of journalists’ professional ideology included individualism, competitiveness, and a commitment to the craft of journalism rather than the collective interests of other workers. journalists typically identified as “middle-class professionals” or “craftsmen” (leab, 1970, p. 8) whose professional commitment to their “mental labor” superseded an interest in monetary gain (mosco & mckercher, 2008, p. 46). journalists also desired fame, enjoying “the romance of newspapering” (leab, 1970, p. 8) and “the glamor of the industry” (deck, 1988, p. 17). yet, newsworkers set off a wave of labor convergence in 1891 when editorial workers joined the itu. journalists eventually realized they were also distinct class with similar economic interests (leab, 1970; salamon, 2015, 2022a, 2022b). in unionizing, journalists advocated for higher wages and better working conditions. by the 1890s, a wage disparity between unorganized journalists and the organized newspaper print workers initially led journalists to organize in pittsburgh, denver, sacramento, and new york. additionally, newspaper work was insecure, as editors and publishers would fire employees at will. this white-collar unionism of aspiring middleclass journalistic workers was typical of other aspiring middle-class professionals. however, white-collar unionism stood in contrast to the blue-collar unionism of working-class printers, who prioritized their manual labor, fair pay, and other workers’ collective interests, potentially contributing to wider economic justice and increased political influence (kealey, 1980; mosco & mckercher, 2008; salamon, 2022a). with this growing recognition of their employment conditions, the itu organized 59 newswriters’ locals in more than 40 cities in the united states and canada between 1891 and 1923, suggesting that newsworkers were shifting toward industrial unionism (leab, 1970; murasken, 1937; nerone, 2022; salamon, 2015). the itu organized journalists to prevent them from doing replacement work during strikes and to get the union favorable press coverage. additionally, newspaper employees tended to shift jobs from newspapers’ mechanical departments to editorial departments, so they were familiar with printers’ long tradition of unionism and urged the itu to organize newswriters. most newswriters’ locals were formed in the united states and lasted fewer than five years. spreading to canada, the itu initially chartered newswriters’ locals in ottawa (1902–1903), dawson, yukon territory (1903–1906), and montreal (1904– 1906). however, itu newswriters vice-president john f. o’sullivan had reported in 1901 that newswriters sought to withdraw from the itu to form an independent organization to better serve journalists’ interests. by 1906, the itu demonstrated that its interest in the newswriters had also waned when members voted to amend the union’s constitution to remove newswriters from mailto:topacademicjournals@gmail.com american journal of art and communication vol.7, issue 2; march-april 2022; 1252 columbia rd nw, washington dc, united states https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac; mail: topacademicjournals@gmail.com 27 | american journal of art and communication | https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac the union. these feats perpetuated the tensions between white-collar and blue-collar unionism, solidifying the self-perceived differences between newswriters and print workers. such union-organizing efforts were based on newsworkers’ narrow articulation of industrial unionism. by contrast, the industrial workers of the world (iww) demonstrated a clearer and explicit expression of industrial unionism. founded in chicago in 1905, the iww expanded into canada in 1906, aiming to unify the working class across the globe and overthrow capitalism (cole, struthers, & zimmer, 2017; mosco & mckercher, 2008). the iww pledged to replace craft unionism and organize workers neglected by other unions affiliated with the american federation of labor (afl), regardless of their craft, skillset, or ethnic, racial, gender, or national identities. while itu newswriters locals expanded to canada, it became clear that such labor convergence was based on newsworkers’ prevailing parochial craft ideology and the tensions between white-collar and blue-collar unionism, rather than the iww’s expansive iteration of industrial unionism. nevertheless, the itu amended its policy to resume granting charters to newswriters in 1911, but it arguably reinforced the itu’s narrow craft unionism and the tensions among different newsworker crafts (demers, 1988; murasken, 1937). fearing jurisdictional disputes over the newswriters with the afl, the itu chartered canadian newswriters’ unions in vancouver (1913–1916), montreal (1919–1923), and london, ontario (1919–1921). despite their efforts, these newswriter locals faced staunch employer opposition to unionization, leading some employers to form nonunion company associations. according to an itu report, the employers argued that union organizing would “result in the writers developing class prejudice and distorting the news in favor of the labor movement, thus curtailing the freedom and fairness of the press” (as cited in murasken, 1937, p. 13). to gain support, the newswriters collaborated with itu printers’ locals. yet, itu’s larger membership generally favored relinquishing jurisdiction over the newswriters because they were unwilling to adapt their rules and membership requirements to journalists’ unique needs, including hours of work, seniority, and apprenticeships. these struggles exemplified the tensions between white-collar unionism, represented by professional journalists’ skilled and mental labor, and blue-collar unionism, prevalent among manual laborers in other craft-based unions. in response, the afl attempted to form a national newswriters’ union. in 1923, the itu relinquished jurisdiction of newswriters to the afl, except for locals in milwaukee and scranton, which remained itu affiliates (bernstein, 1969/2010; leab, 1970). the afl chartered newswriters locals in seven cities between 1923 and 1930, but by 1933, only boston and chicago locals had survived. many locals had ties to the labor movement, contributed to the labor press, or were labor news reporters seeking access to other unions’ members and events. notably, the afl chartered only one newswriters’ union in canada, a local in montreal (1926–1927; murasken, 1937). despite these developments, journalists in north america eventually recognized they needed to organize autonomous unions to address their unique issues as white-collar mental laborers. international labor divergence and convergence among white-collar newsworkers this section affirms that journalists facilitated labor divergence by forming autonomous unions in the united states and canada. they also gradually adopted white-collar international labor convergence as an organizing strategy, uniting more groups of white-collar newsworkers between the 1930s and 1950s. journalists mailto:topacademicjournals@gmail.com american journal of art and communication vol.7, issue 2; march-april 2022; 1252 columbia rd nw, washington dc, united states https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac; mail: topacademicjournals@gmail.com 28 | american journal of art and communication | https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac had faced challenges in building solidarity with blue-collar pressroom workers (denning, 1997/2010; leab, 1970; salamon, 2022a). however, great depression economics contributed to market instability, leading new deal legislation to facilitate a wider industrialization and unionization of cultural workers in the united states. president franklin d. roosevelt’s national industrial recovery act of 1933 contained codes of fair competition to aid the country’s economic recovery during the depression. the act also supported employees’ rights to organize trade unions and bargain collectively. yet, the new deal exempted some editorial workers from maximum work hours and minimum wages legislation, regarding them as professional workers. in response, journalists founded the american newspaper guild (ang) in the united states in 1933 due to their shared individualistic professional ideology. the ang’s successful early organizing efforts were also fueled by the passing of the national labor relations act of 1935. this legislation guaranteed employees’ rights at privatesector workplaces to organize trade unions and engage in collective bargaining. by forming the ang, journalists illuminated that autonomous “white collar unionism” (leab, 1970, p. 3) could address their unique demands, including better pay, hours of work, and job security. during its early years, though, the ang’s union-organizing efforts revealed tensions within journalists’ white-collar unionism ideology, reflecting broader divisions in the labor movement between craft unionism and industrial unionism. the ang initially became a site of conflict for left-wing activists who envisioned labor organizing as part of larger social movements and political initiatives during the 1930s and 1940s (denning, 1997/2010; glende, 2012; mosco & mckercher, 2008; salamon, 2022a). the ang joined the larger labor movement, becoming members of the craft unionism-oriented afl in 1936 and the more militant congress of industrial organizations (cio) in 1937. as the rival labor federation to the afl, the cio pushed an industrial unionism ideology. notably, itu’s president was the cio’s first secretary. the itu had been barred from the afl until 1944 for espousing industrial unionism. nevertheless, such leftist politics in the ang created intraunion tensions, becoming a barrier to the union’s growth until radical cio-affiliated leaders were removed from ang office by the 1940s. the cio’s defeat in the ang solidified the ang’s white-collar ideology and identity as a middle-class professional organization that aligned with the afl’s craft unionism ideology. despite these tensions, the ang’s longstanding white-collar unionism demands became clearer through its international craftoriented organizing efforts throughout the 20th century. however, white-collar international labor convergence was tenuous during the ang’s early years. in 1936, the ang started organizing editorial workers in canada (deck, 1988; murasken, 1937; salamon, 2015). a small group of editorial workers at toronto newspapers, many of them women, initially aimed to unionize the city’s four dailies, launching the toronto newspaper guild (ttng). editorial workers at montreal newspapers also formed an ang local in 1937. yet, unions had limited legal protection, allowing companies to use pressure tactics and intimidation to resist unionization. in 1937, for example, a toronto newspaper fired 41 union members. due to strong employer opposition, the ttng and montreal locals failed to negotiate contracts, leading the ang to revoke their charters in 1943. journalists and other white-collar newsworkers eventually played a pivotal role in broadening the scope of newsworkers’ union convergence throughout the 20th century. labor legislation made possible union mailto:topacademicjournals@gmail.com american journal of art and communication vol.7, issue 2; march-april 2022; 1252 columbia rd nw, washington dc, united states https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac; mail: topacademicjournals@gmail.com 29 | american journal of art and communication | https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac certification and compulsory collective bargaining, such as the national labor relations act of 1935 in the united states and british columbia’s industrial conciliation and arbitration act of 1947 and ontario’s labour relations act of 1948 in canada (deck, 1988; denning, 1997/2010; leab, 1970; salamon, 2015; stonebanks, 1986). this legislative framework enabled the ang to resume organizing editorial workers in ontario by 1947, leading to significant progress for the union. the union revived ttng in 1948, garnering strong support at the toronto daily star. in 1949, the union achieved its first successful contract for star reporters and photographers, securing a monumental pay increase that underscored the profound impact of newsworkers’ convergence. throughout the 1950s, the ang extended its organizing efforts to editorial workers, for instance, at the toronto telegram, the globe and mail, and other toronto star departments, encompassing circulation, delivery, advertising, accounting, and maintenance employees. these developments transformed journalists’ unions into organizations with diverse memberships, marking a notable shift toward white-collar labor convergence and espousing newsworkers’ craftoriented industrial unionism ideology. as the ang’s membership continued to converge internationally outside the united states, the union’s canadian members sought special recognition. in 1951, canada was established as a “region” in the union (deck, 1988, p. 29). in the 1960s, the victoria newspaper guild (ving) mobilized ang members to remove “american” from the union’s name to reflect its canadian membership (stonebanks, 1986, pp. 26–27). the ving submitted several motions to the ang’s international conventions to adopt a new name, including the “north american newspaper guild,” “international newspaper guild,” and “the newspaper guild.” in 1971, the ang convention adopted the newspaper guild (tng). as a result, the union committed to opening a canadian office and appointing a canadian director (deck, 1988). this special recognition was a significant step toward international labor convergence, aiming to address the longstanding tensions between newsworker union members in the united states and canada. meanwhile, newsworkers’ unions in the united states faced unique struggles, with government legislation such as the taft-hartley act of 1947 limiting collective bargaining and labor convergence (marjoribanks, 2000). in the 1970s, publishers capitalized on such labor legislation and first amendment arguments to thwart unionization, citing concerns about press freedom. strikes in the 1980s became emblematic of a broader “corporate offensive against unions” (rhomberg, 2012, p. 7), eroding collective bargaining and new deal–era worker protections. concessions from tng-represented publications resulted in wage cuts, benefit reductions, and no-strike clauses in contracts. a decline in newspaper union representation, from 21% in 1983 to 10% in 2000 (stanger, 2002), raised questions about unions’ collective bargaining power and the uneven paths toward convergence. by contrast, some newsrooms in ontario, canada, became unionized only in the 1980s (deck, 1988; salamon, 2015). in 1979, ttng adopted a new name, the southern ontario newspaper guild (song), signifying its expanded subnational organizing goals beyond toronto. a year later, the song aimed to organize (1) unorganized departments in workplaces where it already had members, (2) unorganized workplaces in regions where the union had bargaining units, and (3) new locals. the song successfully unionized white-collar newsworkers at various daily and weekly community newspapers, including the hamilton spectator, maclean’s, mailto:topacademicjournals@gmail.com american journal of art and communication vol.7, issue 2; march-april 2022; 1252 columbia rd nw, washington dc, united states https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac; mail: topacademicjournals@gmail.com 30 | american journal of art and communication | https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac metroland, and thomson newspapers, leading to convergence and expansion throughout the 1990s. they embraced a white-collar ideology, aiming to attain higher wages and professional standards for newsworkers. the song’s union-organizing efforts illuminated that labor convergence could refer to organizing unorganized newsworkers at the subnational level. these developments in canada further indicated that the process of labor convergence was not uniform across the newspaper industry, the united states, canada, or within a local region. labor union reconvergence and divergence the aforementioned tng organizing campaigns unfolded as newspaper unions formally adopted a labor convergence strategy in the 1950s, which this section calls labor reconvergence. this section is also focused on how some newsworkers’ unions in canada wanted more national autonomy, adopting a labor divergence strategy. as media chains grew, became more powerful, and implemented a strategy of corporate convergence, newspaper unions merged with other media and communication workers’ unions, consolidating their contract negotiations to strengthen their collective bargaining power (mckercher, 2002; mosco & mckercher, 2008). tng, the itu, and the cwa—a 600,000-member media and telecommunications workers union—discussed plans to formally merge and organize workers across industries. their newspaper and broadcast news members worked in editorial and production departments in the united states and canada, illuminating newsworkers’ expansive industrial unionism ideology that could unite white-collar and blue-collar unionism internationally. this attempt to form one big union of newsworkers initially failed, arguably due to the enduring tensions between white-collar and blue-collar unionism. tng and the printing trade unions had informally discussed plans to unite at afl-cio conventions in 1957 and 1959, but in 1960, tng and the itu formally announced their goal of forming “one big union” (mckercher, 2002, pp. 58–62). these merger plans fizzled by 1962 because they were unable to agree on what “one big union” would mean in practice. different principles and policies guided each union’s organizational structures, which would have been difficult to reconcile. these challenges resembled newswriters’ struggles with itu print workers in the early 20th century. newsworkers’ unions had two additional concerns between the 1960s and 1980s, limiting their ability to adopt an industrial unionism ideology. first, they thought their jobs would be displaced when companies introduced new technologies (deck, 1988; mckercher, 2002). the itu was a craft union that had been losing members due to the introduction of computerized typesetting. automation was streamlining the production process and deskilling newspaper workers’ labor. in 1975, the unions issued a joint declaration of principles outlining their common interests in the face of a changing news industry. in 1982 and 1983, merger committees proposed deals to their respective unions, agreeing that the unions should establish a new media workers international union—itu/tng. at the 1983 tng convention, delegates voted to support the proposed merger, but itu members were divided on the deal. some itu members wanted their union to merge with the teamsters, which had organized about 150 printing companies, claiming it could offer them more benefits and bargaining power. the itu held a referendum in 1985 to merge, with most members voting against it. these outcomes reinforced the longstanding divide between the mental labor underpinning white-collar unionism and the manual labor guiding blue-collar unionism. second, the newsworkers’ unions were concerned that increasing media ownership concentration would limit their collective bargaining power in the early 1980s, which was facilitated mailto:topacademicjournals@gmail.com american journal of art and communication vol.7, issue 2; march-april 2022; 1252 columbia rd nw, washington dc, united states https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac; mail: topacademicjournals@gmail.com 31 | american journal of art and communication | https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac by relaxed government regulation on cross-media ownership (hébert, 1981; mckercher, 2002; mosco & mckercher, 2008; salamon, 2022b). bigger media companies might have more resources and leverage in contract negotiations, giving employers more control over wages but leaving workers with fewer alternative job opportunities outside these companies. accordingly, the cwa initiated a labor convergence union strategy around 1980, attempting to increase their collective power to put pressure on employers by including more members across occupational lines and industries. itu members finally voted to merge with the cwa in 1986 and established the cwa’s printing, publishing, and media workers sector in 1987. this labor convergence strategy demonstrated that printing newsworkers could unite with other media workers due to their shared commitment to manual labor and blue-collar unionism. however, their craft-oriented and reformist iteration of industrial unionism was still different from the iww’s expansive and radical industrial unionism that also targeted the capitalist economic system itself (cole et al., 2017). left on its own, tng explored other merger and divergence options between the mid-1980s and mid1990s, raising questions about how newsworkers could reconcile a cross-craft industrial unionism ideology with an international convergence strategy. in 1993, tng acknowledged it was losing bargaining leverage due to its small membership in the face of increasing multimedia ownership and newspaperinformation publishing industry convergence (mckercher, 2002; mosco & mckercher, 2008; salamon, 2022b). in 1995, tng members endorsed a merger with the cwa. tng retained its autonomy but benefited from the expertise and enhanced power of a bigger union, which had become vital due to technological and corporate convergence. tng also granted its remaining canadian members autonomy, founding tng canada (now cwa canada), which could still access tng benefits, including the union’s defense fund. tng officially became a cwa sector in 1997. this labor convergence strategy confirmed that newsworkers could overcome the deep-seated divisions between whitecollar and blue-collar unionism and the perceived american domination over canadian unions. it further illuminated that newspaper unions had shifted from articulating an autonomous craft unionism ideology, exemplified by the itu and the ang/tng, to espousing a collective craft-oriented industrial unionism ideology as captured by the cwa. likewise, some unions adopted autonomous canada-made labor reconvergence and divergence strategies. in 1992, three unions merged, forming the communications, energy and paperworkers union (cep): the communications and electrical workers of canada; the energy and chemical workers union; and the canadian paperworkers union (mckercher, 2002; salamon, 2015; swift, 2003). the cep had 15,000 members in its media section. notably, the ang’s pioneering canadian union local, ttng, left tng in 1994, affiliating with the cep. this national union strategy further demonstrated that labor reconvergence and cross-craft industrial unionism extended beyond the news industry. by leaving a united states–based union, one big national union could potentially leverage more collective power to not only put pressure on employers but also advocate for prolabor legislation in the country. conclusion this article took a long historical perspective on the formation of newsworkers’ trade unions, developing a novel framework for periodizing the processes of labor convergence in the united states and canada from 1865 mailto:topacademicjournals@gmail.com american journal of art and communication vol.7, issue 2; march-april 2022; 1252 columbia rd nw, washington dc, united states https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac; mail: topacademicjournals@gmail.com 32 | american journal of art and communication | https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac to 1997. additionally, it introduced an innovative conceptualization of labor convergence, defining it as a collection of trade union values associated with newsworkers’ organizing processes. this article argued for two key propositions, addressing how unions’ labor convergence has been underdeveloped in communication and journalism studies literature. first, labor convergence should be examined from a long historical perspective to better understand its evolution as a process. second, labor convergence should also be understood as an ideology, encompassing a set of values that go beyond the nature of unionorganizing processes. regarding rq1, four dominant periods of labor convergence were revealed through the long historical perspective of newsworkers’ international union organizing and formation. the first period (1865– 1892) witnessed newspaper print workers organizing autonomously and forming the ntu/itu across the united states and canada. however, some print workers later left the itu to establish autonomous unions. in the second period (1891–1933), journalists formed newswriters’ union locals in the itu in both countries. the third period (1933– 1986) saw journalists seceding from the itu to create autonomous unions, initially the ang/tng, and later organizing other noneditorial white-collar workers internationally. during the fourth period (1987–1997), newspaper print workers, journalists, and other noneditorial white-collar newsworkers reunited in the cwa, with tng becoming a cwa sector and tng/cwa canada becoming autonomous within the union. yet, the song joined the canadian-based cep/unifor. these findings illustrate the varied processes and paths that newsworkers have adopted in labor convergence, highlighting the close connections between convergence, divergence, and reconvergence (mckercher, 2002, pp. 6–11). they also illuminate the cross-border union tensions shaping international organizing efforts. concerning rq2, labor convergence should be redefined as not only an organizing process but also a collection of craft-oriented trade union ideological values closely intertwined with newsworkers’ organizing processes. newspaper print workers’ and journalists’ unions initially struggled to converge into one big union in the 19th and 20th centuries due to the tensions between print workers’ blue-collar unionism ideology and journalists’ white-collar unionism ideology (glende, 2012; kealey, 1980; leab, 1970; mosco & mckercher, 2008; salamon, 2022a, 2022b). blue-collar unionism was embraced by the working-class printers, who emphasized manual labor and issues such as fair wages, workers’ collective interests, and the pursuits of economic justice and political influence. white-collar unionism was adopted by the middle-class journalists, who privileged mental labor over material gains, individualism, competitiveness, and a dedication to the craft of journalism rather than workers’ collective interests. in the 20th century, newsworkers’ unions merged in response to broader institutional and technological changes in the news industry. these mergers aimed to decrease the level of separation between printers, journalists, and other front-office workers, espousing a craft-oriented industrial unionism ideology. however, their version of industrial unionism still prioritized craftmanship and individual professions, diverging from the iww’s more radical international industrial unionism, which also sought to challenge the capitalist economic system directly (cole et al., 2017; mosco & mckercher, 2008). researchers should situate contemporary digital media organizing actions within this historical context and organizing ideologies of workers’ continuous efforts to improve working conditions, defend their rights, advocate for social justice, promote journalistic professionalism, and respond to technological change (cohen & mailto:topacademicjournals@gmail.com american journal of art and communication vol.7, issue 2; march-april 2022; 1252 columbia rd nw, washington dc, united states https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac; mail: topacademicjournals@gmail.com 33 | american journal of art and communication | https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac de peuter, 2020; mosco & mckercher, 2008; salamon, 2022a, 2023). as shown in this article, international unions in the united states and national unions in canada have adopted diverse organizing strategies and ideologies. some newsworkers have organized by craft, whereas others have organized craftoriented industrial unions. future research could test the historical framework and conceptualization of labor convergence outlined above to gain insights into media workers’ union-organizing efforts in a digital age, identifying continuities and changes in labor experiences and institutional and structural conditions. references bernstein, i. (2010). the turbulent years: a history of the american worker, 1933–1941. chicago, il: haymarket. (original work published 1969) chen, m. (2015, september 8). the unionization of digital media. retrieved from https://www.thenation.com/article/archive/the-unionization-of-digital-media/ cohen, n. s., & de peuter, g. (2020). new media unions: organizing digital journalists. new york, ny: routledge. cole, p., struthers, d. m., & zimmer, k. (eds.). (2017). wobblies of the world: a global history of the iww. london, uk: pluto. deck, c. (1988). history of the newspaper guild in canada, 1936–1986. in h. hiscox (ed.), essays in journalism (pp. 15–34). london, canada: university of western ontario. demers, f. (1988). communication et syndicalisme: des imprimeurs aux journalistes [communication and trade unionism: from printers to journalists]. montreal, canada: méridien. denning, m. (2010). the cultural front: the laboring of american culture in the twentieth century. london, uk: verso. (original work published 1997) fischer, s. (2021, april 20). record number of journalists unionize during covid pandemic. retrieved from https://www.axios.com/2021/04/20/journalists-unionize-digital-media fu, a. (2021, july 16). “not just a wave, but a movement”: journalists unionize at record numbers. retrieved from https://www.poynter.org/business-work/2021/not-just-a-wave-but-a-movementjournalists-unionizeat-record-numbers/ glende, p. m. (2012). trouble on the right, trouble on the left: the early history of the american newspaper guild. journalism history, 38(3), 142–155. doi:10.1080/00947679.2012.12062883 hébert, g. (1981). royal commission on newspapers: labor relations in the newspaper industry (vol. 5). ottawa, canada: minister of supply and services canada. mailto:topacademicjournals@gmail.com american journal of art and communication vol.7, issue 2; march-april 2022; 1252 columbia rd nw, washington dc, united states https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac; mail: topacademicjournals@gmail.com 34 | american journal of art and communication | https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac kealey, g. s. (1980). toronto workers respond to industrial capitalism, 1867–1892. toronto, canada: university of toronto press. kealey, g. s. (1986). work control, the labour process, and nineteenth-century canadian printers. in c. heron & r. storey (eds.), on the job: confronting the labour process in canada (pp. 75–101). montreal, canada: mcgill-queen’s university press. kealey, g. s., & palmer, b. d. (1982). dreaming of what might be: the knights of labor in ontario, 1880–1900. new york, ny: cambridge university press. leab, d. j. (1970). a union of individuals: the formation of the american newspaper guild, 1933–1936. new york, ny: columbia university press. mari, w. (2018). unionization in the american newsroom, 1930 to 1960. journal of historical sociology, 31(3), 265–281. doi:10.1111/johs.12177 marjoribanks, t. (2000). news corporation, technology and the workplace: global strategies, local change. new york, ny: cambridge university press. mckercher, c. (2002). newsworkers unite: labor, convergence, and north american newspapers. lanham, md: rowman & littlefield. mosco, v., & mckercher, c. (2008). the laboring of communication: will knowledge workers of the world unite? lanham, md: rowman & littlefield. murasken, e. (1937). newswriters’ unions in english-speaking countries. new york, ny: u.s. works progress administration. nerone, j. (2022). the labor history of newswork from industrialization to the digital age. in k. chadha & l. steiner (eds.), newswork and precarity (pp. 31–53). new york, ny: routledge. örnebring, h. (2020). a social history of precarity in journalism: penny-a-liners, bohemians and larrikins. australian journalism review, 42(2), 191–206. doi:10.1386/ajr_00035_1 rhomberg, c. (2012). the broken table: the detroit newspaper strike and the state of american labor. new york, ny: russell sage foundation. salamon, e. (2015). (de)valuing intern labour: journalism internship pay rates and collective representation in canada. triplec: communication, capitalism & critique, 13(2), 438–458. doi:10.31269/triplec.v13i2.573 mailto:topacademicjournals@gmail.com american journal of art and communication vol.7, issue 2; march-april 2022; 1252 columbia rd nw, washington dc, united states https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac; mail: topacademicjournals@gmail.com 35 | american journal of art and communication | https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac salamon, e. (2022a). communicative labor resistance practices: organizing digital news media unions and precarious work. communication theory. advance online publication. doi:10.1093/ct/qtac023 salamon, e. (2022b). labor unions in media. in g. a. borchard (ed.), the sage encyclopedia of journalism (2nd ed., pp. 912–915). thousand oaks, ca: sage publications. salamon, e. (2023). media unions’ online resistance rhetoric: reproducing social movement genres of organizational communication. management communication quarterly, 37(2), 368–395. doi:10.1177/08933189221097067 stanger, h. r. (2002). newspapers: collective bargaining decline amidst technological change. in p. f. clark, j. t. delaney, & a. c. frost (eds.), collective bargaining in the private sector (pp. 179–216). champaign, il: industrial relations research association. stonebanks, r. (1986). the guild at forty: the struggle continues. victoria, canada: victoria newspaper guild. swift, j. (2003). walking the union walk: stories from cep’s first ten years. toronto, canada: between the lines. mailto:topacademicjournals@gmail.com “napalm girl” at 50: on photojournalism and the ethics of care american journal of art and communication vol.6, issue 4; july-august 2023; 1252 columbia rd nw, washington dc, united states https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac; mail: topacademicjournals@gmail.com 1 | american journal of art and communication | https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac the “napalm girl” photograph: a personal journey of healing and forgiveness robert williams university of iowa, usa abstract: the photograph of kim phúc, the “napalm girl,” is one of the most iconic images of the vietnam war. it has been the subject of numerous accolades, tributes, and controversies, and has been analyzed by scholars from a variety of perspectives. however, the ethical entailments of the photograph have not yet been fully explored. this paper revisits the photograph 50 years after it was taken, in order to consider the ethical issues raised by its representation of a child’s embodied vulnerability. keywords: napalm girl, terror of war, ethics, vulnerability introduction she is “napalm girl.” her name is phan thi kim phúc. her image—the 9-year-old child, screaming and naked, scalded by firebombs, seemingly running straight at us—is seared into our memories. this past summer marked her anniversary: 50 years before, that picture was shot, on june 8, 1972, by the south vietnamese photographer huynh công “nick” ut. often titled “terror of war,” the photograph generated immediate shockwaves when it was sent out on the ap newswire. a damning marker of the war’s horrific impact on vietnamese civilians, it was quickly reprinted in thousands of news outlets worldwide, and it has since been extolled as “one of the most memorable photographs of the 20th century” (abc/ap, 2022, para. 25), “a defining public icon . . . a symbol of the horror of war in general, and of the war in vietnam in particular” (buell, 1999, p. 102), and “a touchstone for international outrage about the vietnam war” (harris, 2022, para. 7). this photograph has been the subject of numerous accolades, tributes, and controversies, as well as some scholarly analyses. yet the implications of “napalm girl/terror of war” continue to reverberate, and its ethical entailments have not yet been fully explored. revisiting it just after the world marked its half-century anniversary opens up new interpretations of the ethical crosscurrents at work in this representation of a south vietnamese girl’s embodied vulnerability. the photograph, at the time it was taken and in its aftermath, has significant contemporary relevance for journalistic ethics. i believe its ongoing significance lies in its complex engagements with news values and codes of ethics as well as a philosophical approach that has vital epistemic value today: the ethics of care, a concept haunted by vectors of power in terms of race, gender, and nation. a contemporary turn in ethical theory for journalism studies examines the imperative of humanizing marginalized people and communities to advance social justice in both narrative and visual media (kennedy, 2012; thomas, 2021; varma, 2020). the 2021 theme mailto:topacademicjournals@gmail.com american journal of art and communication vol.6, issue 4; july-august 2023; 1252 columbia rd nw, washington dc, united states https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac; mail: topacademicjournals@gmail.com 2 | american journal of art and communication | https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac of the annual conference of the international communication association envisioned communication “as a register for creating spaces of compassion and connectedness” through the conference theme of “engaging the essential work of care” (international communication association, 2021, paras. 1, 4). preceding these shifts, feminist philosophers have advanced a multifaceted approach to the ethics of care that has evolved across the past three decades, ever since carol gilligan’s (1982) interrogation of moral philosophy, in a different voice, was published. in this context, my analysis of “napalm girl/terror of war” introduces feminist care ethics as a missing discourse in the news values that mobilize the selection and transmission of images of embodied vulnerability as well as a philosophical rubric for assessing the ethics of their consequences, particularly for the subjects of the images. to be clear, i am not targeting the ethical impulses of nick ut in his photojournalistic practice but rather using this photograph and its aftermath to highlight the lacuna in the news values that both drive our selection (and celebration) of certain texts and images and elide the impact on the subjects of journalistic practice. “napalm girl/terror of war” and the imperatives of news values from the moment of its publication, the photograph was instantly recognized as newsworthy: not only was it widely used, appearing in the most prominent media of the day, such as the u.s. magazines life and newsweek, but it won major awards, including the pulitzer prize and “world press photo of the year.” its resonance among journalists was undoubtedly due to the fact that it exemplified contemporary news values in terms of its timeliness, topicality, impact, human interest, conflict/negativity, and novelty/unexpectedness. though these criteria vary somewhat in different temporalities and cultural contexts, this list summarizes a “conventionalised repertoire of expressions that are used again and again [by newsworkers] to construe an event and its actors as newsworthy” (bednarek & caple, 2012, p. 105). as parks (2019) notes, “news values are integral to every facet of journalistic decision making” (p. 785); they are the criteria by which journalists assess events “based on what they imagine their audiences to find newsworthy” to determine what is included in and excluded from media content (bednarek, 2016, p. 27). news values are embedded practices that are consistently used by journalists and editors to determine what stories and images should be construed as “news,” and in that sense, news values in fact constitute “news.” the uses of news values are motivated by various factors, including economics and budgets, competition for audiences and advertising, and audience engagement and edification (bell, 1991; cotter, 2010; van dijk, 1988). they also engage a history of the experiences, preferences, and worldview of those making news decisions (heider, 2000). when nick ut took the photograph of kim phúc, he knew this was a newsworthy photo; he recalls that he thought, “good pictures,” as he trained his camera on the bombs and then on the vietnamese children running from them (zhang, 2023). he has said people asked why he didn’t flee when the bombing began, and his answer has been, “if i running, i don’t make a good picture” (goeke & ut, 2014, p. 35). a professional photojournalist, ut knew that these pictures were “good” because they encapsulated core news values. ut’s motivation was also, in a sense, personal, though he was acting in his capacity as a photojournalist. “i wanted to stop this war,” he explained in an interview (kaninsky, 2019, para. 8). but even in that aim, he was mailto:topacademicjournals@gmail.com american journal of art and communication vol.6, issue 4; july-august 2023; 1252 columbia rd nw, washington dc, united states https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac; mail: topacademicjournals@gmail.com 3 | american journal of art and communication | https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac envisioning the impact of the photo on audiences, foreseeing that his visual document would catalyze antiwar activism. in that sense, the photograph he shot of kim phúc was about something more than the girl; it was about something more than her naked napalm-flayed body or her utter fear and pain. the photograph was an agent that, in the photographer’s view, could contribute to ending a war. it was, as zelizer (2010) has phrased it, a paused invitation to engagement (p. 312): the violence of the image was synecdochal of the violence of the war. analyses of this photograph have zeroed in on its inherent moral energy, its capacity to mobilize activism: “this iconic photo was capable of activating public conscience at the time because it provided an embodied transcription of important features of moral life” (hariman & lucaites, 2003, p. 40). ut was exultant that after the picture appeared in the news, it sparked antiwar protests (phan, 2022,1:08). “that picture stopped the war. i was so happy,” he said in an interview (bayack & todd, 2012, 2:44). yet it is also crucial to note here that ut put his camera down and helped the child as soon as he realized that she was burning alive as a result of the napalm (chong, 2000). he doused her with water and took her and the other children to the nearest hospital, which refused to treat her until he flashed his press pass and warned them that her picture would appear in the news the next day, which convinced them to take her in. the girl survived; she and ut have stayed in touch ever since. in the 50th anniversary remembrances of this photograph, the close relationship between kim phúc and nick ut has been the focus of a great deal of media attention. ut has stated that the child’s life was of paramount importance to him. “even if i were to be famous and she eventually died, i [thought] i will kill myself right away, i will kill myself,” he has disclosed (phan, 2022, 8:17). the american journalists on the scene disappeared as soon as they’d finished shooting, ut has said. only he put down his camera and helped the wounded children. “[the american journalists] knew how important this news was so they needed to report it right away,” he recalled (phan, 2022, 5:40). while ut, too, knew that his photographs were newsworthy, he was also impelled by an ethics of care that interrupted deadline-driven ruthlessness. rather than rushing to print his photos, he drove the children to the nearest hospital and waited until they were admitted before returning to the ap office to develop his film. ut’s ability to integrate news values with an ethics of care raises crucial considerations in photojournalistic practice. the tensions between these competing priorities have been assessed in relation to many media representations of embodied vulnerability, especially when the vulnerable bodies portrayed were those of children. examples include kevin carter’s (1993) contested photograph of a sudanese girl collapsing from starvation while a vulture eyed her, or nilüfer demir’s (2015) photograph of the body of a syrian toddler who drowned during his family’s attempt to escape from the civil war. “the danger,” writes yeong (2014), “is that the camera itself might inhibit empathy in the photographer by encouraging the prioritization of images over individuals” (p. 12). this technological determinism can be extended to the recognition that in photojournalism, the camera is the instrument of journalistic practice and is yoked to the news values that also prioritize the “news” (i.e., the image that makes news—over the individual). the list of basic news values conspicuously, and perhaps deliberately, excludes the value of care for the subject of the photograph/news story or for the photographer/journalist. mailto:topacademicjournals@gmail.com american journal of art and communication vol.6, issue 4; july-august 2023; 1252 columbia rd nw, washington dc, united states https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac; mail: topacademicjournals@gmail.com 4 | american journal of art and communication | https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac this does not mean that photographers or journalists are uncaring or self-serving, though they are often viewed that way. in fact, in the examples above, the photographers did care about the individuals in their pictures as well as the issues they indexed. kevin carter scared away the vulture and made sure the child got food; nilüfer demir said she felt “the silent scream” of the toddler’s body. news photographs are compelling often because they arouse emotion, even empathy, in the viewer. but the language of news values—terms such as timeliness, topicality, and so on—excludes and disallows these emotions, prioritizing criteria designed to attract audiences without acknowledging the affective dimensions of representation or the hierarchies of power involved. as susan sontag (1977) has famously observed, to take a photograph of suffering is “to be in complicity with whatever makes the subject interesting, worth photographing— including, when that is the interest, another person’s pain or misfortune” (p. 12). i reject sontag’s (1977) blanket condemnation of photojournalistic practice; clearly, photojournalists’ ethical engagements with this idea, and with their subjects, are complex and varied. but the language of news values erases the possibility and value of emotional engagement and encourages sontagian complicity. embedded within news values are aspects of representation that inscribe, and reinscribe, power relationships that articulate race, gender, class, space, and place, especially when the news focuses on embodied vulnerability. whose vulnerable body is represented to whom? as chouliaraki (2006) points out, the politics of pity in the news usually involve presenting the pain of sufferers in the global south to spectators in the global north, comfortable “in their living rooms” (p. 4). the imagined audience is wealthy, white, and located in the resource-rich regions of the world. her analysis recognizes that this differential tends “to present the sufferer as a moral cause to western spectators” (chouliaraki, 2006, p. 6). the spectacle of suffering focuses on those who are impoverished, non-white, and located in what we once called the third world. “napalm girl” is an example of this power differential. the news photograph, writes barbie zelizer (2010), often portrays “unsettled public events” and “the relationship between what is shown and what is seen travels many roads” (p. 307). thus, nick ut’s photograph may have prompted viewers to reflect on u.s. culpability for the vietnam war; it may have catalyzed some humanitarian or antiwar sentiment among viewers, though the war raged on for three years after the photo was published. despite this, as schwenkel (2009) reflects, even while news photographs “may heighten moral awareness and public criticism,” they often concomitantly risk “objectifying and depoliticizing” their subjects (p. 56). zelizer (2010), too, recognizes that images like “napalm girl” invite “public engagement with human suffering and death without insisting that people pay heed to each tragedy on its own terms” (pp. 311–312). my argument here is that the subjectivity of kim phúc should be read on its own terms. it should not be displaced by her deployment as a symbol of the violence or “terror” of war. her embodied experience was the focus of the document, the photograph. her experience matters. it matters, too, that it was a girl child whose nakedness and physical torment was exposed to the world. the representation of suffering is gendered: the vulnerability of women and girls is depicted far more easily than that of men and boys, and the fact that this was a south vietnamese girl whose naked body was determined to be newsworthy by a largely white male news establishment exemplifies the power dynamics at the core of news mailto:topacademicjournals@gmail.com american journal of art and communication vol.6, issue 4; july-august 2023; 1252 columbia rd nw, washington dc, united states https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac; mail: topacademicjournals@gmail.com 5 | american journal of art and communication | https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac values. in the endless replication of the image on front pages worldwide, over the course of half a century, the child was not a human being whose representation might traumatize her or her family members. while it is true that the image prompted awareness of the violence of the war, as well as the motives and rewards reaped by those promoting and profiting from it, the child herself was not a person whose wellbeing called for concern or consideration. as she herself has said, she was just “news.” ethics, news photography, and the entailments of embodied vulnerability the heartlessness of news values is tempered, to some degree, by professional codes of ethics, which do recognize that journalistic practice can have profoundly deleterious effects on subjects of the news. the society for professional journalists’ (spj, 2014) code of ethics admonishes reporters to “minimize harm” and remember that sources are “deserving of respect” (paras. 26–27). the spj code advocates balancing “the public’s need for information against potential harm or discomfort” (spj, 2014, para, 29). noting that “pursuit of the news is not a license for arrogance or undue intrusiveness,” the code urges journalists to “show compassion for those who may be affected by news coverage,” especially children (spj, 2014, para. 30). it also recommends considering “the long-term implications of the extended reach and permanence of publication” (spj, 2014, para. 36). similarly, the national press photographers association (2019) observes that photographs “can cause great harm if they are callously intrusive,” and it guides photographers to “treat all subjects with respect and dignity,” giving “special consideration to vulnerable subjects and compassion to victims of crime or tragedy” (para. 11). neither of these codes, nor any other of which i am aware, speak to the issue of intervention in a crisis. at what point should a photographer, as nick ut did, drop the camera and help a vulnerable person in a “newsworthy” situation? while this has been the topic of much scholarly and popular discussion, there is no codified guidance on this for newsworkers. only the photographer’s conscience determines this course of action. moreover, a news photograph of embodied vulnerability can have an impact on its subject that extends far beyond the moment in which the photo is taken, and this long reach is unaddressed in either news values or codes of ethics. even the issue of “long-term implications” in the spj code seems to focus more on misinformation than care for the subject. the so-called napalm girl, kim phúc, endured considerable psychological and emotional trauma as a result of the photograph’s prominence and unrelenting public visibility. “i didn’t like that picture at all,” she said in an interview. “i felt like, why he took my picture when i was agony, naked, so ugly? i wish that picture wasn’t taken” (pbs newshour, 2020, 1:20) analysts of the photo argue that kim phúc’s very nakedness contributed to the photograph’s impact, as it was so shocking according to the mores of the time (hariman & lucaites, 2003). nakedness is the quintessential mode of embodied vulnerability: prisoners are strip-searched, concentration camp victims were sent naked to the gas chambers, the “hottentot venus” saartje baartman was caged naked for the contemptuous voyeuristic gaze of white victorians. forcible nakedness is a form of humiliation, an act of subjugation, an expression of dominance, bound up in the intersections of race, class, nation, gender, and sex. while there may be sexual overtones at play, in all these instances the naked person is unequivocally among the damned. when the “napalm girl” photograph was first viewed by ap editors in 1972, they debated whether to release it at all, given the strict publishing laws and policies of the era. more recently, in 2016, “napalm girl/the terror of war” made headlines mailto:topacademicjournals@gmail.com american journal of art and communication vol.6, issue 4; july-august 2023; 1252 columbia rd nw, washington dc, united states https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac; mail: topacademicjournals@gmail.com 6 | american journal of art and communication | https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac again when facebook declared it to be pornographic and banned it from its social media site (the company later reversed its decision). just this year, in a new york times op-ed, kim phúc wrote, “i grew up detesting that photo” (phan thi, 2022, p. 7). the photo’s growing fame over time, she wrote, made it harder for her to maintain a private emotional life: i sat through endless interviews with the press and meetings with royalty, prime ministers and other leaders, all of whom expected to find some meaning in that image and my experience. the child running down the street became a symbol of the horrors of war. the real person looked on from the shadows, fearful that i would somehow be exposed as a damaged person. (phan thi, 2022, p. 7) growing up bound to that image, kim phúc experienced ptsd, shame, self-hatred, suicidal ideation, revolted by the public experience of her nakedness and torture (chong, 2000). it was only as an adult that she finally found healing and fulfillment. she has made peace with the image, understanding it now “as a reminder of the unspeakable evil of which humanity is capable” (phan thi, 2022, p. 7). but the photograph damaged her life almost as much as the napalm had, though it served a greater good. “napalm girl,” the picture and the person, remind us that there are multidimensional relationships at work in any news photograph of embodied vulnerability. images of embodied vulnerability, in particular, involve connections between the photojournalist and the subject, the photojournalist and the institution of journalism, the photojournalist and the audience, the photograph and the audience, and the subject of the photo and the image, all operating synchronously and asynchronously; and these are connections fraught with power, emotion, competing goals, and moral weight. within this complex web of relationships, the scholarly literature has focused most often on the relationship between the image and the audience—asking, for instance, whether an image can move an audience to feel empathy or engage in humanitarian activism. but in fact the relationships linking the photographer, the subject, and the image call for thoughtful analysis. in many ways, the photographer and the subject are bound together by the image: nick ut will always be linked to kim phúc, just as nilüfer demir will always be linked with alan kurdi. in that linkage lies an ethical imperative to question how capturing an image of a child’s embodied vulnerability will affect the child, or the child’s family and community, over the course of time. it is also important to question how an image might affect a photographer, for journalists too suffer the emotional and psychological consequences that first responders and soldiers experience when they have been on the scene of catastrophic events. nick ut had nightmares and insomnia, post-traumatic stress reactions, after seeing kim phúc flayed alive in trang bàng (chong, 2000, p. 307). finally, the image itself has a living relationship with its subject and its maker. the image made nick ut and kim phúc famous, but it nearly destroyed kim phúc. she has been unable to escape the endless reiteration of her childhood agony and vulnerability. the news photograph had an indelible impact on her psyche; indeed, she almost lost her life to it. as denise chong (2000) has noted, “kim’s life was shaped by others wanting to pull her back into focus” (p. xiv). in the half-century since the initial publication of the photograph, care for the “napalm girl’ herself was not a concern of either journalists or audiences. ut, too, describes suffering post-traumatic stress mailto:topacademicjournals@gmail.com american journal of art and communication vol.6, issue 4; july-august 2023; 1252 columbia rd nw, washington dc, united states https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac; mail: topacademicjournals@gmail.com 7 | american journal of art and communication | https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac triggered by his role as a war journalist: he could not forget the burning child or the war. “i had nightmares all the time,” he recalled. “i couldn’t get myself to see a war movie. whenever i’d hear a helicopter fly over my home, i jumped out of bed” (fernandes, 2021, para. 22). within the institution of journalism, care for either the child or the journalist was unimaginable in terms of the schema of news values or even codes of ethics. the concept of care, writes the philosopher margaret mclaren (2001), involves both attending to the wellbeing of particular others and “demands that we pay attention to social and political conditions” (p. 112). the feminist philosophy of care ethics rejects the claim that abstract reasoning and emotional detachment, of the kind found in news values, is less biased and more likely to achieve impartiality in ethical decision-making; on the contrary, caring feelings generate more rigorous ethical reflection and action. the ethics of care is a cornerstone of feminist philosophy that burgeoned out of gilligan’s (1982) interrogation of rationale philosophy; the overarching concept of care ethics focuses on the significance of relationships and the moral imperatives of “the activities and practices of care and relationship maintenance that sustain webs of connections and minimize harm as best as possible” (hamington & fitzgerald, 2022, p. 2). “the ethics of care,” writes the feminist philosopher virginia held (2006), “focuses on attentiveness to context, trust, responding to needs, and offers narrative nuance; it cultivates caring relations in both personal, political, and global contexts” (p. 157). following this conceptualization, photojournalism is a practice that connects the personal, the political, and in many cases, the global. “napalm girl/terror of war” exemplifies these intersecting strands, as well as additional dynamics of race, gender, and embodiment. in shooting and publishing the photo “napalm girl/the terror of war,” the photographer and the news outlets demonstrably cared about informing audiences of the world, especially the global north, of the impact of the war on the vietnamese people, particularly children. in real time, the photographer nick ut cared for the child by ensuring she got immediate medical attention. yet an overall ethics of care was neither a value nor a practice according to normative journalistic guidelines for practice. ut’s care for the child actually violated the news value of timeliness: he disregarded his deadline to drive kim phúc to the hospital and waited to make sure she was admitted. and then, once it went out on the ap wire, the mediation of the photograph itself contributed to long-term trauma for kim phúc as well as for ut. from yet another angle, we know nothing of the impact of this image, or other images of the war, upon vietnamese viewers. azoulay (2008) notes that certain vulnerable people insist that photographers document their suffering in the belief that dissemination of such images will provoke action against atrocities. notable examples are mamie till-mobley’s resolute insistence that photographs of her murdered child’s body be published to expose the horror of lynching (till-mobley & benson, 2003); or the dissemination of the “caesar” photographs of tortured syrian prisoners that provide “irrefutable proof that the syrian government had truly detained and tortured thousands who disappeared” and allow families to know the truth about their loved ones’ deaths (alkhalidi, ashawi, & nasr, 2020, para. 23). but such images are made and distributed with the consent of the subjects or their families; nonconsensual representation of suffering, which is often the case in news photography, raises very different ethical issues. mailto:topacademicjournals@gmail.com american journal of art and communication vol.6, issue 4; july-august 2023; 1252 columbia rd nw, washington dc, united states https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac; mail: topacademicjournals@gmail.com 8 | american journal of art and communication | https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac linfield (2010) has pondered the use of nonconsensual images in photojournalism, querying, “what would solidarity with the people in such photographs mean?” (p. xvi). for her, photography is a means of redressing injustice; she writes, every image of suffering says not only, “this is so,” but also, by implication: “this must not be”; not only, “this goes on,” but also, by implication: “this must stop.” documents of suffering are documents of protest: they show us what happens when we unmake the world. (linfield, 2010, p. 33) and yet she realizes that representation alone cannot move viewers to compassion or humanitarian action: “seeing does not necessarily translate into believing, caring, or acting. that is the dialectic, and the failure, at the heart of the photograph of suffering” (linfield, 2010, p. 33). undoubtedly, there is value in documenting embodied vulnerability and suffering if the outcome is mobilizing solidarity and humanitarian action—but these outcomes are never guaranteed. the uses of social media today mean that videos and images are circulated in ways that cannot be controlled by the creator of the image: from citizen journalism to child pornography, images of embodied vulnerability are disseminated without the guardrails of concern for the viewers or subjects of the images. jessica roberts (2019) calls this “the erosion of ethics” (p. 409). such documentation carries with it real and damaging fallout that is only now being given serious ethical consideration. we are increasingly aware of the harrowing impact of war photography on both the journalists and members of war-torn communities. jonisová (2022) writes about the post-traumatic stress experienced by photographers as well as soldiers viewing violent war imagery from slovakia and ukraine: “brutal images . . . have an indisputable impact on the percipients” (p. 83). in recent times, black media audience members have written about the retraumatizing effects of seeing the recorded 2020 murder of george floyd replayed endlessly in the media. “i now believe that circulating videos of black and brown death at the hands of police reinforces white supremacy. it does not deter it,” writes the usc journalism scholar alissa richardson (2021, para. 14). the point of view of the communities whose suffering makes the news has, in the past, been elided; we are only now becoming more aware of the importance of their perspective. chouliaraki (2006) argues that most visual media representations of suffering people reinforce differences of power and inequality, despite the best intentions of journalists, whose aims may be altruistic and mobilized by an earnest desire to help those whose images they circulate. the journalists likely believe that their work could benefit the communities they cover, but chouliaraki’s (2006) analysis demonstrates how news routines and norms and “the values embedded in news narratives [define] who the ‘others’ are and how we should relate to them” (p. 11). the representation of embodied vulnerability is often predicated on power hierarchies in which the suffering of less powerful people—marked as such by their race, gender, class, sexuality, nation, or ability—becomes a spectacle for those with greater social power. when photographs or video of embodied vulnerability are circulated in the news, the impact of the images on the sufferers’ communities is typically not a criterion for ethical editorial decision-making. care for audience members belonging to the same community as the subject of the image is thus irrelevant to news values and journalistic codes of ethics. mailto:topacademicjournals@gmail.com american journal of art and communication vol.6, issue 4; july-august 2023; 1252 columbia rd nw, washington dc, united states https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac; mail: topacademicjournals@gmail.com 9 | american journal of art and communication | https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac the promise and possibility of an ethics of care in photojournalism to introduce an ethics of care into photojournalistic (and journalistic) practice would require reevaluating news values in light of vulnerability. such a reevaluation would seek to engage more fully with the ethical codes that endorse consideration for the impact of the news upon the subject of the news, for his/her/their community, and for the journalist. it would recognize the ongoing and permanent relationship of the newsmaker, news content, and the person whose story constitutes the news. for the art scholar john roberts (2014), these relationships constitute a social ontology “in which representation of self, other, ‘we,’ and the collective are brought to consciousness as part of the everyday social exchange and struggle” (p. 5). particularly in the case of photographs, the potential violations that could follow the representation of embodied vulnerability as “news” must be taken into account: as in kim phúc’s experience, representation might constitute a reviolation of the person, repeated even as the image is reproduced. “violation,” observes roberts (2014), “is in a sense, built into the photographic reproduction of appearances” (p. 2); or in sontag’s (1977) words, “there is an aggression implicit in every use of the camera” (p. 7). photography’s violations are embedded in “power relations and material interests external to the act of photography itself” (roberts, 2014, p. 2). whether these violations are predicated on existing social differentials that render some bodies more violable than others must be considered in journalistic “values”: the role of race, class, gender, sexuality, nation, ability and other identity locations need to be taken into account when decisions are made to disseminate images of embodied vulnerability as “news.” do these images reassert the power hierarchies that created the vulnerability in the first place? if the images need to be made public, how should they be contextualized so that this analytics of power is made clear? and how best can the subject of the image be supported and protected from ongoing trauma? these are not easy questions to answer. i pose them in the spirit of heuristic inquiry for those of us who care about photojournalism and journalism and recognize their vital role in societies. as linfield (2010) observes, “photographs . . . bring us close to those experiences of suffering in ways that no other form of art or journalism can” (p. xv). the idea of integrating service to the public good with an ethics of care challenges photojournalism to engage more fully with its impact, as discussed in this example of “napalm girl/the terror of war.” linking an ethics of care to the concept of vulnerability, especially embodied vulnerability, calls for acting to “reduce human beings’ susceptibility or exposure to harm, needs, loss, coercion, domination, and other unwanted conditions or events” (engster, 2018, p. 106), including those brought on by mediation. reflecting on this, if there is a humanitarian impulse at the core of photojournalistic practice, then the multiple dimensions of journalismas-care must be integrated into news values and codes of ethics. mailto:topacademicjournals@gmail.com american journal of art and communication vol.6, issue 4; july-august 2023; 1252 columbia rd nw, washington dc, united states https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac; mail: topacademicjournals@gmail.com 10 | american journal of art and communication | https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac references abc/ap. 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(2022). the importance and consequences of war photography. cultural intertexts, 12(1), 68–85. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.7431616 kaninsky, m. (2019, october 26). story behind the terror of war: nick ut’s “napalm girl” (1972) [blog post]. retrieved from https://aboutphotography.blog/blog/the-terror-of-war-nick-uts-napalm-girl-1972 kennedy, l. (2012). framing compassion. history of photography 36(3), 306–314. https://doi.org/10.1080/03087298.2012.673312 linfield, s. (2010). the cruel radiance. chicago, il: university of chicago press. mclaren, m. (2001). feminist ethics: care as a virtue. in p. desautels & j. waugh (eds.), feminists doing ethics (pp. 110–117). lanham, md: rowman & littlefield. national press photographers association. (2019). code of ethics. retrieved from https://nppa.org/code-ethics parks, p. 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(1977). on photography. new york, ny: picador. thomas, r. t. (2021). social empathy + compassion: building blocks for poverty coverage. in s. l. borden (ed.), the routledge companion to media and poverty (pp. 74–83). new york, ny: routledge. till-mobley, m., & benson, c. (2003). death of innocence: the story of the hate crime that changed the world. new york, ny: ballantine. van dijk, t. a. (1988). news as discourse. hillsdale, nj: erlbaum. varma, a. (2020). evoking empathy or enacting solidarity with marginalized communities? a case study of journalistic humanizing techniques in the san francisco homeless project. journalism studies, 21(12), 1705–1723. https://doi.org/10.1080/1461670x.2020.1789495 yeong, w. k. o. (2014). ‘our failure of empathy’: kevin carter, susan sontag, and the problems of photography. think pieces: a journal of arts, humanities, and social sciences, 1(1), 9-17. https://doi.10.14324/111.2058-492x.002 zelizer, b. (2010). about to die: how news images move the public. oxford, ny: oxford university press. zhang, m. (2023, january 3). nick ut: the photojournalist who shot the iconic “napalm girl” photo. retrieved from https://petapixel.com/nick-ut-napalm-girl-photojournalist/ mailto:topacademicjournals@gmail.com https://doi.10.14324/111.2058-492x.002 renewing pedagogical research and practices: helping international students succeed post-covid-19 american journal of art and communication vol.6 , issue3 mayjune 2023; 1252 columbia rd nw, washington dc, united states https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac; mail: topacademicjournals@gmail.com 11 | american journal of art and communication | https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac building a more inclusive and welcoming learning environment for international students 1john david smith, 2maria guadalupe garcia 1southern methodist university, usa 2texas tech university, usa abstract: this paper explores the challenges of connecting with a cohort when there are significant cultural and linguistic differences. the author, who is an international student, describes how their first birthday in their new country was a lonely experience due to difficulty communicating with their cohort and feeling like an outsider. the paper discusses the factors that can make it difficult to connect with a cohort, such as accent, cultural norms, and expectations. it also offers suggestions for how to overcome these challenges and build meaningful relationships with peers from different backgrounds. keywords: cultural differences, linguistic differences, international students, cohorts, communication introduction my birthdays back in my home country were always huge celebrations and i recently just had my first birthday alone here in my dormitory. it is hard for me to connect with my cohort because they have a hard time understanding my accent, and my cultural perspectives are vastly different from theirs. —international student 1 i always feel anxious and nervous when i am around american students, particularly in this major (public relations). i feel isolated because of my asian face. even when the classroom is almost full, no one seems to want to sit close to me. i don’t understand what is wrong with me. —international student 2 these are among many similar stories we have heard from international students in our roles as communication professors (both authors) and assistant dean of international affairs (second author). international students face various challenges, including cultural adjustment, language barriers, racism and discrimination, academic challenges, financial challenges, and psychological difficulties (akanwa, 2015; khanal & gaulee, 2019; lee & rice, 2007). as covid-19 wreaked havoc on college education, these challenges were exacerbated (hari, nardon, & zhang, 2021) and international students were reportedly among the most vulnerable groups of students impacted by the pandemic (moscaritolo, perozzi, schreiber, & luescher, 2022; sustarsic & zhang, 2022). now that many universities in the united states are transitioning back to in-person instruction, international students are likely to encounter yet another set of challenges, such as uncertainty in interacting with peers and professors after a long period of distance learning from their home country, increased difficulty in cultural adaptation among firstand second-year students, and issues of pandemic-related racial discrimination. mailto:topacademicjournals@gmail.com american journal of art and communication vol.6 , issue3 mayjune 2023; 1252 columbia rd nw, washington dc, united states https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac; mail: topacademicjournals@gmail.com 12 | american journal of art and communication | https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac as communication scholars strive to address the issue of underrepresentation, racial justice, and diversity in our communication discipline, we argue that sufficient attention needs to be placed on supporting international students. this student population brings a diversity of thought to the classroom, enriches class discussions, facilitates globalization of higher education, and is a vital source of revenue for many universities across the united states (hegarty, 2014; moscaritolo et al., 2022; pandit, 2007). with the declining enrollment of international students accelerated by the pandemic (dennis, 2020), it is more critical than ever before to ensure international students’ positive educational experience and well-being to continue attracting and retaining them as well as maintain competitiveness as a preferred study destination (hegarty, 2014; tran, 2020). most importantly, this recovery stage of the pandemic affords us an opportunity to focus on how to move forward and renew our pedagogical practices toward a safer, more equitable, and more inclusive learning environment for students of all backgrounds. in this reflective article, we view covid-19 as a transformative agent that can “fundamentally alter the form, structure, and direction” of higher education institutions in teaching, supporting, and meeting the needs of our diverse international students (seeger, ulmer, novak, & sellnow, 2005, p. 78). in doing so, we first discuss the ongoing challenges facing international students and how the pandemic has complicated those challenges. then, we offer new communication research ideas that are pertinent to teaching, learning, and engagement for international students. lastly, we propose ways faculty, communication departments, universities, and the field can better mentor and support international students in our discipline. international students’ ongoing challenges historically, international students have had an enormous number of challenges that may be categorized into five dimensions: language and cultural barriers, racism and discrimination, academic challenges, financial difficulties, and psychological difficulties (akanwa, 2015; gautam, lowery, mays, & durant, 2016; khanal & gaulee, 2019; lee & rice, 2007). language and cultural barriers language proficiency is problematic for many, especially non-english-speaking international students in englishspeaking countries (gautam et al., 2016; kuo, 2011). an array of linguistic challenges, such as unfamiliar words, slang terms, the fast pace at which the locals speak, mispronunciation, and strong accents, can negatively affect both social lives and academic success (khanal & gaulee, 2019; kuo, 2011). cultural challenges are also a major concern. khanal and gaulee (2019) identify culture shock as the foremost postdeparture challenge among international students. their support systems are in a different country and many pop culture references students make in classes don’t always apply and are not always understood. not only are they learning about u.s. culture but also the culture of their academic department and university as well as how to make new friends in their new environments. therefore, international students often experience feelings of alienation (gautam et al., 2016) and long for a sense of connectedness and belonging to their institution or host country (tran & gomes, 2017). racism and discrimination scholars have reported the issues of invisibility, disempowerment, and racism confronting international students in u.s. higher education (hsieh, 2007; lee & rice, 2007). international students encounter a range of difficulties mailto:topacademicjournals@gmail.com american journal of art and communication vol.6 , issue3 mayjune 2023; 1252 columbia rd nw, washington dc, united states https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac; mail: topacademicjournals@gmail.com 13 | american journal of art and communication | https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac from “perceptions of unfairness and inhospitality to cultural intolerance and confrontation” (lee & rice, 2007, p. 381). international students also tend to face ignorance, impatience, and discrimination from their professors and peers (trice, 2003). for instance, oblivious to international students’ cultural values, instructors may erroneously perceive international students as passive or uninterested in improving. it may be the case that the student comes from a high-power distance culture and feels reluctant to reach out to a professor and ask for help. this relates to the next issue. academic challenges international students grapple with a different set of academic expectations such as learning/teaching norms, faculty relationships, and curriculum content (heng, 2016). due to language barriers and culturally different learning styles, international students may find it hard to comprehend lectures, complete writing assignments, or engage in class discussions (khanal & gaulee, 2019; kuo, 2011; mori, 2000). for example, some students prefer written discussions over face-to-face discussions, and some prefer group work over independent work. additionally, research has shown that higher education institutions tend to have a neocolonialist and/or ethnocentric attitude toward international students, believing they have more to educate international students than they do from learning from them (ryan, 2011). this biased attitude can affect international students not only as students but as graduate teaching assistants (gtas). gtas often receive negative evaluations and struggle to gain acceptance from u.s. students (manohar & appiah, 2016) even if the gtas are experts in their fields of study (mori, 2000). financial difficulties many international students also have to endure financial pressures. the assumption that most international students are wealthy is erroneous (mori, 2000). due to immigration regulations, non-u.s. residents are limited to on-campus jobs and are ineligible for federal financial aid (mori, 2000). this challenge can be heightened as international students have reportedly struggled to get even an on-campus job due to the lack of network, references, information about the job process, or confidence to get the job (gautam et al., 2016). nguyen and balakrishnan (2020) note that many international students were underpaid compared to their noninternational counterparts, considering the higher rate they pay for tuition and other living expenses. additionally, thamrin, pisaniello, guerin, and rothmore (2018) posit that international students had fewer work choices, relatively poorer working conditions, and might be at greater risk for occupational injury compared to domestic students. psychological difficulties finally, previous research has identified mental health as a prevalent and detrimental issue among international students (udah & francis, 2022). many international students might be among the brightest in their home countries and suffer deep feelings of loss, resentment, and sadness with their difficulties adjusting to the american education system or way of life. this can threaten the students’ self-concept and sense of identity (mori, 2000). the stress of being separated from their family and friends, high expectations from their families and host country, and the various challenges described above can lead to depression, self-doubt, lowered self-confidence, and anxiety (forbes-meweet & saywer, 2016; mesidor & sly, 2016). mailto:topacademicjournals@gmail.com american journal of art and communication vol.6 , issue3 mayjune 2023; 1252 columbia rd nw, washington dc, united states https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac; mail: topacademicjournals@gmail.com 14 | american journal of art and communication | https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac impact of covid-19 on international students covid-19 complicated the challenges international students were already facing prepandemic in so many ways (hari et al., 2021). a global survey of student affairs and services professionals during the early days of the pandemic revealed that international students experienced emotional stress, inability to return home or return to campus, financial hardships, and fear and uncertainty (moscaritolo et al., 2022). international students’ need to feel connected (tran & gomes, 2017) was especially pertinent during the pandemic when students had to rapidly switch to online learning modalities (sharaievska et al., 2022). also, many students were not able to work or attend classes in person but still had to pay rent and other fees. this financial hardship and social isolation took a toll on their mental health. moreover, international students faced challenges in managing time and working across time zones (godfrey & yu, 2021a). further, international students of color experienced explicit racial discrimination, feared threats, and felt unwelcome and unsafe (koo, yao, & gong, 2021). particularly, asian international students were targets of discrimination due to the racist rhetoric such as the “china virus” and positioned as both “the yellow peril and cash cows” within the context of the pandemic (yao & mwangi, 2022, para. 1), leaving them insecure, anxious, and stressed for their physical well-being (nguyen & balakrishnan, 2020). moreover, coffey, cook, farrugia, threadgold, and burke (2021) find that, during the pandemic, female international students faced greater economic and social inequalities, perceived more threats to their physical and mental health, and were more vulnerable to risk and exploitation compared to domestic students. for the fall 2022 semester, many universities in the united states have returned to in-person instruction. during this period, international students may encounter a new set of challenges. for instance, after a long period of feeling disconnected from campus, students may feel uncertain or anxious about how their social relationships will be with peers and instructors, whether online connections they have made will continue when they return to campus, and whether instructors would continue to be flexible and understanding in terms of delivery modes, class attendance, scheduling, and learning accommodations (godfrey & yu, 2021b; sharaievska et al., 2022). in addition, incoming and second-year students may need extra support for their adaptation process. first-year or transferred students may wonder what a campus climate overseas would be like postpandemic (godfrey & yu, 2021b; sustarsic & zhang, 2022). similarly, many second-year international students started their first year in the fully online learning mode in their home country and may need more guidance adapting to in-person classes as well as adjusting to american culture—the critical process they might have missed during their first year amid the pandemic. additionally, han, chang, and kearney (2022) posit that it was very hard for international students to adapt to the “new normal” and overcome emotional and cognitive stresses from their home country and their educational country. these learning and cultural differences can impact how international students are able to transition back to in-person classes after remote learning during the pandemic. in sum, international students face numerous struggles that have been heightened by the pandemic. if not properly addressed, these challenges will likely continue to affect international students’ performance (neuwirth, jović, & mukherji, 2021) and make them feel even more alienated from their educational institutions (nguyen & balakrishnan, 2020). with an understanding of ongoing challenges experienced by international students and how mailto:topacademicjournals@gmail.com american journal of art and communication vol.6 , issue3 mayjune 2023; 1252 columbia rd nw, washington dc, united states https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac; mail: topacademicjournals@gmail.com 15 | american journal of art and communication | https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac the pandemic has worsened those challenges, what can communication researchers do to better support international students? suggestions for future communication research on teaching, learning, and engagement for international students in this section, we propose an interdisciplinary communication research agenda that may address challenges international students have consistently encountered as well as specific challenges connected to the pandemic (see table 1 for a summary). table 1. proposed research agenda. we evaluate the effectiveness of those training programs? pandemic-related challenges political rhetoric and media discourse 7. 8. how do international students make sense and internalize institutional and media discourses about them during the pandemic? how can we challenge rhetorical discourses that pit the different marginalized groups against each other? uncertainty reduction and management 9. since returning to in-person learning, what uncertainties have international students been facing in interacting with their peers or instructors? 10. what strategies have international students been using to reduce or manage those uncertainties? acculturation 11. how do firstand second-year international students adjust to college after long-distance learning during the pandemic? 12. what factors contribute to their successful adjustment and acculturation in this unique context? digital communication 13. how can we effectively accommodate students’ different learning styles via various computer-mediated platforms? research areas ongoing challenges intergroup framework 1. how do intergroup stereotypes affect the perceptions of and interaction with international students? 2. how can we develop transcultural understanding between the host and international students as well as between instructors and students? 3. how can cultural or identity differences between international and host students as well as instructors be alleviated? diversity, inclusion, and belonging 4. 5. how can we bring underrepresented groups and the various international student groups together and build solidarity among them? how can we foster the sense of belonging for all groups of students? 6. what should diversity and inclusion training programs look like? how do research questions mailto:topacademicjournals@gmail.com american journal of art and communication vol.6 , issue3 mayjune 2023; 1252 columbia rd nw, washington dc, united states https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac; mail: topacademicjournals@gmail.com 16 | american journal of art and communication | https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac 14. how can universities use social media to encourage connections and foster better relationships with international students? addressing ongoing challenges intergroup framework an intriguing research area is generating transcultural understanding between the host and international students as well as between faculty and students through the intergroup perspective (hosek & soliz, 2016). the intergroup perspective can guide research regarding identity differences and how they influence our perceptions and interactions with others (harwood, giles, & palomares, 2005). particularly, the intergroup framework can help us understand the issues of hierarchy in teacher-student relationships, class engagement, and ideology in the classroom (hosek & soliz, 2016). in this vein, the communication theory of identity can illustrate how students feel marginalized in the classroom based on differences in identity (wadsworth, hecht, & jung, 2008) and intergroup contact theory can further explain how constructive communication positively affects others’ attitudes and behavior (pettigrew, 1998). it is important to position international students not as a threat to domestic students or “‘problems’ to be solved but as ‘assets’ to internationalization and the generation of new knowledge and new ways of working in the academy” (ryan, 2011, p. 631). through the intergroup framework, cultural or identity differences between international students and domestic students as well as faculty may be alleviated, facilitating the development of international, intercultural, and global competence in both the host country and international students. diversity, inclusion, and belonging to embrace diversity in the classroom, we also need action research that can bring underrepresented groups as well as the various international student groups together and build solidarity among them (glasford & calcagno, 2012). such research should also challenge rhetorical discourses that pit the different marginalized groups against each other (yi & todd, 2021). previous studies found that non-white international students were more vulnerable to exclusion and racist abuse than white international students (marginson, nyland, sawir, & forbes-mewett, 2010). bardhan and zhang (2017) suggest a creative coalition for social justice could possibly occur if those who have been marginalized could empathize with others who are oppressed in similar or other ways. research into cultural identities and identity negotiation may prove fruitful for increasing this mutual understanding and narrowing the divide between the various minority groups and international student groups (adegbola, labador, & oviedo, 2018; hendrix, jackson, & warren, 2003). this line of research may help increase appreciation between various groups and foster students’ sense of belonging to their communication major and future profession (glass, 2018; goode, radovic-fanta, & bose, 2022). additionally, blake, brown, follette, morgan, and yu (2021) recommend providing implicit bias training as well as diversity and inclusion training to ensure that the best engagement can occur between faculty and students. chattopadhyay (2022) report that international students felt satisfied when their voices were heard. more research is needed to examine what training programs on these topics should look like and how they can be improved. mailto:topacademicjournals@gmail.com american journal of art and communication vol.6 , issue3 mayjune 2023; 1252 columbia rd nw, washington dc, united states https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac; mail: topacademicjournals@gmail.com 17 | american journal of art and communication | https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac addressing pandemic-related challenges political rhetoric and media discourse considering the negative impact of governmental rhetoric on international students’ perceived discrimination and well-being (koo et al., 2021; nguyen & balakrishnan, 2020; yao & mwangi, 2022), as well as their future mobility (sustarsic & zhang, 2022), we recommend communication scholars explore how current and prospective international students make sense and internalize institutional and media discourses about them during the pandemic. that line of research could identify more positive messages and policies that would help attract, retain, and support the academic success of international students (sustarsic & zhang, 2022; yao & mwangi, 2022). uncertainty reduction and management another suggestion is to look at how international and domestic students reduce or manage uncertainty in interacting with each other and with their instructors as they return to face-to-face learning. uncertainty reduction theory (berger & calabrese, 1975) and uncertainty management theory (brashers, 2001) may serve as fruitful theoretical frameworks for identifying a range of uncertainties students and instructors are currently facing and the strategies they are using to reduce or manage those uncertainties. acculturation moreover, particular attention should be given to supporting firstand second-year international students in their academic and social adaptation to campus life in the united states. previous research has indicated that oncampus socialization opportunities and strong host networks significantly predict international students’ social adjustment (gómez, urzúa, & glass, 2014). with covid-19 safety measures such as social distancing and face masks still in place for in-person operations at least at the beginning of the 2021–2022 academic year, the opportunities for new or second-year international students to participate in leisure activities and socialize with host country members could be limited. in this unique postpandemic context, acculturation theories (e.g., berry, 2005) may offer helpful insight for understanding how firstand second-year international students adjust to college, thus potentially extending the international student adjustment literature. digital communication further, internationalization can be facilitated using technology, which is another avenue for future research exploration. covid-19 propelled higher education institutions to improve the use of digital tools for maintaining academic continuity and enhancing the quality of learning and teaching (kedraka & kaltsidis, 2020). the use of digital tools will likely continue postpandemic (woicolesco, cassol-silva, & morosini, 2022), and researchers have suggested the future of higher education should be hybrid (benito et al., 2021). with the increasing use of digital tools such as virtual or hybrid classrooms, we need to understand how to effectively accommodate students’ different learning styles and communicate with students via various computer-mediated platforms. online learning tools provide students with flexibility as well as the opportunity to be creative and sharpen their online communication proficiency. at the same time, online learning can limit and restrict students’ access to their instructors. han and colleagues (2022) report international students prefer in-person over mediated interactions because they are more organic and interactive. also, international students feel that instructors are more accessible in person; it is easier to ask questions before and after class in an in-person classroom than in an mailto:topacademicjournals@gmail.com american journal of art and communication vol.6 , issue3 mayjune 2023; 1252 columbia rd nw, washington dc, united states https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac; mail: topacademicjournals@gmail.com 18 | american journal of art and communication | https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac online class. additionally, researchers can explore how universities can use social media to encourage connections and foster better relationships with international students, which may in turn increase their satisfaction with their universities (misirlis, zwaan, sotiriou, & weber, 2020). mentoring and supporting international students post covid-19 aside from conducting more research, faculty, departments, universities, and the communication field as a whole share an important role in supporting and mentoring international students both inside and outside of the classroom. we summarize our recommendations in table 2. table 2. suggestions for mentoring and supporting international students. mentoring and supporting international students 1. be self-reflexive about our assumptions and pedagogical practices. 2. remain sensitive to the students’ cultural backgrounds. 3. keep enhancing our own multicultural competencies. 4. create opportunities to connect with and advocate for international students inside and outside of the classroom. 5. move away from euro-centric content and incorporate international case studies, materials, or perspectives into the curriculum. 6. utilize class activities, simulations, or interactive discussions that help all students develop empathy toward the feeling of being a foreigner. 7. embrace a holistic collaboration between various service offices, departments, and student organizations. 8. engage international students not only academically and interculturally but also mentally and emotionally. 9. develop emergency response mechanisms to support the well-being of international students in times of future crises. 10. foster cultural diversity, equity, inclusion, and access through programming and sessions that help continue the conversation about these issues. first, we need to be self-reflexive about our assumptions and pedagogical practices and remain sensitive to the students’ cultural backgrounds (bardhan, 2003). we need to keep enhancing our own multicultural competencies and creating opportunities to engage and connect with students outside the classroom (bardhan, 2003; hendrix et al., 2003). the second author hosted potluck dinners where each student had to bring a dish from their country. it was delightful to taste something authentic and a great way to get to know the students more personally. besides, it was eye-opening to realize that some of the ingredients they are so used to getting in their country were hard to obtain here and/or very expensive. intentional approaches to bringing domestic and international students together inside the classroom are equally important (godfrey & yu, 2021b; tran, 2020). an example is to purposefully move away from euro-centric content and incorporate international case studies, materials, or perspectives into the curriculum (tran, 2020). it mailto:topacademicjournals@gmail.com american journal of art and communication vol.6 , issue3 mayjune 2023; 1252 columbia rd nw, washington dc, united states https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac; mail: topacademicjournals@gmail.com 19 | american journal of art and communication | https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac can also be beneficial to utilize class activities, simulations, or interactive discussions that help all students develop empathy toward the feeling of being a foreigner navigating an unfamiliar academic environment and culture whose language is not the student’s mother tongue (tran, 2020). for instance, when teaching the concept of frame of reference, the first author would unexpectedly interject a few sentences in her native language and then engage the students in a conversation about what it feels like to communicate without a shared frame of reference. also, she uses a simulation that breaks students into two made-up cultures with different cultural values and gets them to interact with one another with the goal of enhancing the students’ intercultural competence. such activities can enrich the classroom experience, develop global awareness, and optimize learning for both domestic and international students as well as teachers themselves (tran, 2020). at the institutional level, covid-19 has presented universities with the need to develop emergency response mechanisms to support the well-being of international students in times of future crises (sustarsic & zhang, 2022). during a high-stress event, international students need clear and timely communication as well as reassurance about housing policies, visa regulations, course modalities, and safety measures, to name a few (godfrey & yu, 2021b). therefore, a holistic collaboration between various service offices, departments, and student organizations is necessary for developing preventive and responsive strategies that appropriately address the academic, financial, immigration, and psychological needs of international students (sustarsic & zhang, 2022). this is particularly critical for international students from marginalized backgrounds who may have limited access to information sources, financial support, or sociocultural support (godfrey & yu, 2021b). as udah and francis (2022) highlight, support services for the future should focus on both equity and quality to ensure international students’ mental health and educational outcomes. furthermore, we need to find more inclusive ways to help students transition to their academic program without having them struggle with adapting to a new environment independently. especially during a national or global catastrophe, we need to engage international students “not only academically and interculturally, but also mentally and emotionally” (tran, 2020, p. xiii). also, we need to have ways to give international students a voice and have their voices be heard. we need to find ways to connect with our international students and recognize them not only as students but also as individuals who have sacrificed so much to be here. once we help them adapt to the program, it is imperative that we offer opportunities for scholarship and research so that they can grow professionally and help move the discipline forward. lately, the political climate of this country has limited the acceptance of cultural and ideological differences. we don’t necessarily have to agree with other cultural ideologies, but we can understand and respect our differences. as a learned society in our respective academic associations, we are obligated to foster cultural diversity, equity, inclusion, and access. we need to create programming and sessions that help continue the conversation about these issues. the only way for the discipline of communication studies to get stronger and better is to include all voices so that they are not only heard but appreciated. this requires meaningful and purposeful interactions that invite participatory decision making and allow for transformative change. mailto:topacademicjournals@gmail.com american journal of art and communication vol.6 , issue3 mayjune 2023; 1252 columbia rd nw, washington dc, united states https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac; mail: topacademicjournals@gmail.com 20 | american journal of art and communication | https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac conclusion we argue that any attempt to promote racial justice in our communication field should include both u.s. and nonu.s. marginalized groups to embrace diversity in our discipline more fully. if we are to do a better job of recruiting and mentoring international students in our programs, professions, and academic pipelines, we need to understand the struggles they have been historically facing and actively seek to empower them. whereas covid-19 posed unprecedented challenges to higher education, it also provided a positive opportunity for us to reflect on how we can better support international students. in this article, we describe the challenges this student population has encountered and suggest scholarly and practical ideas for renewing our pedagogical approaches that may benefit students of all backgrounds. regardless of a global pandemic, no student should have to celebrate her birthday alone just because of her strong accent or sit by himself in the classroom just because his face looks different. we hope the interdisciplinary research agenda, as well as the recommendations presented here, would help us take a step closer to creating a more inclusive internationalization of the communication discipline. references adegbola, o., labador, a., & oviedo, m. 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(2022). yellow peril and cash cows: the social positioning of asian international students in the usa. higher education, 84, 1027–1044. doi:10.1007/s10734-02200814-y yi, j., & todd, n. r. (2021). internalized model minority myth among asian americans: links to anti-black attitudes and opposition to affirmative action. cultural diversity and ethnic minority psychology, 27(4), 569–578. doi:10.1037/cdp0000448 mailto:topacademicjournals@gmail.com still watching from the sidelines? the case for transformative environmental communication scholarship american journal of art and communication vol.6,issue 6;november-december-2021; 1252 columbia rd nw, washington dc, united states https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac; mail: topacademicjournals@gmail.com 1 | american journal of art and communication | https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac the role of communication in creating a sustainable world 1mariana alves de sousa, 2benedicte gravgaard, 3alexander thomas. 1universidade do minho, portugal 2university of sydney, australia 3universität hamburg, germany abstract: this paper argues that communication research and teaching can play a vital role in contributing to the ecological transformation toward sustainability. communication scholars are well-positioned to explain how our understanding of the world, including ideas about ecological transformations, come into being and are both reproduced and challenged through communication. the ecological effects of mediated communications—and their potential to foster social change—should become a central dimension in our research and engagement with society. keywords: ecological transformation, communication research, teaching, sustainability, environmental communication, mediated communication, social change. introduction confronted by increasingly severe and diverse ecological crises, researchers have called for a great transformation toward sustainability (german advisory council on global change [wbgu], 2011), of equal scale and scope to the neolithic and industrial revolutions and comprising all sectors of society. we, as researchers of communication and media, should consider how we can contribute to this ecological transformation founded on shared democratic values such as the principle of global and transgenerational social justice. communication research and teaching is well-positioned to contribute by enhancing society’s communicative resources for a democratic transition toward sustainability—based on inclusive and open debates, rather than last-minute reactions to environmental disasters. just as we expect medical scholars to explain how the human body and its diseases function, communication scholars should be expected to explain how our understanding of the world, including ideas about ecological transformations, come into being and are both reproduced and challenged through communication (brevini, 2016; carvalho, van wessel, & maeseele, 2017). for this purpose, the growing interdisciplinary field of environmental communication (akerlof, timm, rowan, olds, & hathaway, 2022) should be placed center stage in our scholarship, teaching, and academic practice. the ecological effects of mediated communications—and their potential to foster social change—should become a central dimension in our research and engagement with society, thus making communication research and teaching more ecologically transformative. mailto:topacademicjournals@gmail.com american journal of art and communication vol.6,issue 6;november-december-2021; 1252 columbia rd nw, washington dc, united states https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac; mail: topacademicjournals@gmail.com 2 | american journal of art and communication | https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac the unique vantage point of our interdisciplinary field could help society imagine and debate sustainable futures and to engage with those visions. we could do so by inducing reflexivity in public debates (e.g., enhancing ecological media literacy and exposing blind spots, propaganda, unequal chances for voicing one’s ideas). in doing this, we could help reframe unproductive debates. thus, we could help identify pathways for society that are just both for current and future generations. to achieve this, public communication needs to be more inclusive than even the best existing democratic institutions. existing democracies, to some extent, may represent the diverse interests and opinions of their respective electorates, yet sustainability as a principle calls for inclusion of those people who cannot vote in national elections because they do not hold recognized rights, as they live elsewhere or have not yet even been born. they can be included in the debate through speakers who act as advocates of those not salient in the public sphere. our field should realize this potential to contribute to the sustainable transformations of societies. in this article, we contribute by starting from the concept of (socioecologically) transformative science and then sketching out what transformative communication research, academic practice, and social engagement could mean. we focus specifically on how we as scholars can contribute to tackling the grand ecological challenges that humanity faces. yes, we can and should engage in socioecological transformations—not only as citizens but also in our professional roles as scholars. this professional role provides us with privileges and expertise that we should make use of to help society find democratic and just ways to achieve ecologically sustainable ways of life. transformative science and what it could mean for our discipline scientific practices that foster socioecological transformations have been termed “transformative science” (wbgu, 2011, p. 23). transformative science (1) “takes real-world problems as the starting point of research” (schneidewind, singer-brodowski, augenstein, & stelzer, 2016, p. 16); (2) induces reflexivity into the process of transformation; (3) engages with different social groups; (4) aims for societal impact in addition to the traditional criteria of scientific excellence; and (5) supplements rather than replaces conventional science (schneidewind et al., 2016). transformative research implies that the researcher is not pretending to be a value-free, disinterested, and distant observer but an engaged citizen with values and purposes, such as preserving the ecosystems of the planet. as we have pointed out elsewhere when writing about “transformative journalisms” (brüggemann, frech, & schäfer, 2022), this should not be mistaken as partisanship. staying within ecological boundaries is a common good and not a special interest. the principle of sustainability is a basic principle of justice and different from advocating certain policies over others. reflexivity means “that social practices are constantly examined and reformed in the light of incoming information about those very practices” (giddens, 1990, p. 38). in an age of reflexive modernity, societies are constantly learning, and science may support this learning process (schneidewind et al., 2016, p. 5). which discipline could be better positioned to provide this reflexivity to public (mediated) debates about sustainable transformations? providing reflexivity to debates seems like a very “academic” thing to do—but it is essential if mailto:topacademicjournals@gmail.com american journal of art and communication vol.6,issue 6;november-december-2021; 1252 columbia rd nw, washington dc, united states https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac; mail: topacademicjournals@gmail.com 3 | american journal of art and communication | https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac you consider the importance of discourses for political actions and consumption choices. it entails communicating beyond the confines of academic journals and university seminars. engagement with society is certainly not a new call, and such calls have been amplified recently (read, e.g., brevini, 2016, asking for a type of environmental communication that delivers value to society, p. 685); downey, 2017, discussing calls for public sociology; murdock & golding, 2005; hoffmann, 2021, calling for “the engaged scholar”; norgaard, 2018). within our discipline, calls for public scholarship are less frequent (but see, e.g., the contributions in the recent volume edited by powers and russell [2020] or waisbord’s [2020] communication manifesto). public scholarship entails communicating with different social groups and goes beyond being a selfdeclared “critical” researcher who preaches only to a small choir of like-minded academics (haarstad et al., 2018). however, in reaching out beyond the choir, participation should not become an end in itself. scientists should not become “uncritical co-producers” (haarstad et al., 2018, p. 193) who effectively let others direct their research. on the contrary, science should bring its unique perspective into the debate. social scientists may thus contribute to reframe unproductive debates—and communication scholarship is well-equipped to do this. this means that our research and teaching aims for impact beyond our universities. thus, we need to ask ourselves: how does our research help individuals, groups, and organizations respond effectively to climate change, for example? does our research help to create awareness of ecological challenges and inspire debates about a democratic and just transformation toward sustainability? supplementing rather than replacing more conventional scientific practices and role conceptions, transformative research does not mean compromising on scientific methods or the production of excellent basic research published in academic journals. it is about extending our activities and purpose as researchers (hoffman, 2021). it is about addressing matters of positionality explicitly and taking them seriously. “neutrality” was never an option, and the current state of the planet makes any such intent much more problematic. transformative research the transformative parts of research happen, mostly, before and after the actual data gathering and processing. for communication research it means starting with addressing real-world problems related to the communicative dimension of socioecological transformations. to identify these problems, closer contact to different social actors involved in communicating ecological change is necessary, such as journalists, scientists, policy makers, and civil society groups. the purpose is observing and listening but not coproduction in the sense of letting others decide about the research questions. the strength of scientific authority rests on its independence, particularly relating to deciding what to research and how. this is the best way to explore blind spots that actors would be unable to perceive or prefer not to talk about. therefore, while researchers are not neutral observers but people who do care, for example, about protecting the environment, they need to preserve their independence when engaging with society. not all research dealing with environmental problems is necessarily transformative (e.g., a content analysis of climate change debates on twitter is not in itself transformative if there is no socially relevant question driving it and no socially relevant conclusions are being drawn). to do this, underlying normative considerations mailto:topacademicjournals@gmail.com american journal of art and communication vol.6,issue 6;november-december-2021; 1252 columbia rd nw, washington dc, united states https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac; mail: topacademicjournals@gmail.com 4 | american journal of art and communication | https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac should be made explicit as to why our analyses focused on certain phenomena. a key question would be: what kind of debates could actually help generate social change toward sustainability, and what kind of debates are deterring change? carvalho, russill, and doyle (2021), for example, criticize the fact that discussions of climate policies are sometimes reduced to “carbon maths (more or less carbon dioxide–equivalent concentration in the atmosphere)” and neglect debating “the social distribution of risks/costs and benefits” of political actions (p. 3). in the area of climate change communication, a solid base of research has been established, but less so on other topics such as biodiversity or the study of debates around food production and consumption. an emerging pillar of fostering green media literacy is to keep studying the materialities of mediated communication and their footprint, especially in light of our increased dependence on data-driven communication systems (brevini, 2021). the production and consumption of public information and imagery depends on a dense array of communication infrastructures and machines, from underground cables and satellites to widescreen television sets, laptops and tablets, and smartphones (brevini & murdock, 2017; kannengießer & mccurdy, 2021; maxwell & miller, 2012). until recently, the fact that this infrastructure produces emissions, pollution, and waste attracted surprisingly little comment or analysis: “in communication and media scholarship, the overwhelming focus has been on texts, the industry that produces them, and the viewers that consume them; the materiality of devices and networks has been consistently overlooked” (gillespie, boczkowski, & foot, 2014, p. 1). furthermore, communication research could cast a more critical look on greenwashing campaigns and highlight how the concept of sustainability is being captured and appropriated by economic and political actors to freeze the economic status quo and promote more consumption of pseudosustainable goods. there are good— although far from enough—examples of such research work, but most are published in journals outside the field of communication (aronczyk & espinoza, 2022; fernández-vázquez & sancho-rodríguez, 2020). yet, beyond these obvious but so far neglected objects of environmental communication research, practically all debates have ecological implications. this dimension tends to be overlooked, both by actors engaged in the debate and by scholars studying the debate. for example, studies of debates about new information intermediaries or election campaigns could and should inquire whether sustainability remains a blind spot or merely a buzz word. beyond describing and explaining the dynamics of public and mediated communication, we could point at neglected alternative perspectives that focus on the ecological dimension of their respective topics. imagining sustainable futures has never been more urgent. analyzing dominant symbolic systems and making their contribution to the environmental crisis evident should be paired with work aimed at foregrounding alternative frames, narratives, and visions of the future. communication researchers do not necessarily have to invent alternative visions of desirable pathways toward ecological ways of life, but rather they may point at existing ideas that might have been neglected. communicating the future by lance bennett (2021) provides an example of communication scholarship addressing the necessity of reframing debates about sustainability. bennett argues that the fragmentary discourses of a multitude of disconnected environmental advocacy organizations fail to develop a uniting frame or narrative mailto:topacademicjournals@gmail.com american journal of art and communication vol.6,issue 6;november-december-2021; 1252 columbia rd nw, washington dc, united states https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac; mail: topacademicjournals@gmail.com 5 | american journal of art and communication | https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac and turn a blind eye to the deeper roots of ecological problems that are, in bennett’s view, situated in the capitalist system of growth and consumerism. thus, bennett is providing an overarching conceptual scaffold for intervening in the debate. as such, an academic book is such an intervention, but its impact is limited as long as its message does not spread beyond the confines of academic discourses. someone has to cross the line into public discourses. why not us? one example of how we can undertake this last step is a transnational network of universities that has been established to assemble research on the environmental impact of communication technologies to develop “green tech literacy” (brevini, 2021, p. 108). the resulting body of literature explores the environmental costs of the production, supply, and consumption chain of communication technologies. based on the findings collected in a database of research, programs of green tech literacy are launched for schools and citizens to enhance ecological awareness and enable change. green media literacy is something that would also be important for those journalists who do not regularly cover environmental or science beats. here, past research has been transformative. an example of this is the learning process in journalism of letting go of the harmful practice of false balance. journalists, routinely, try to give voice to “both sides” in a debate. this has contributed, historically, to undue salience to the denial of anthropogenic climate change. a study by max and jules boykoff (2004) may be called transformative in drawing attention to this problem. the study even made it into al gore’s film an inconvenient truth (guggenheim, 2006) and its message slowly also trickled down into the consciousness of journalists who, at least in many leading news outlets, no longer provide a platform for false balance and the uncontextualized denial of climate change (brüggemann & engesser, 2017). situating findings so that they become actionable (haarstad et al., 2018) is a task that calls for communication beyond the academic journal article. according to max boykoff (personal communication, may 22, 2023), no extraordinary outreach activity complemented his study. it rather touched a nerve and was amplified by the well-known climate journalist andrew revkin. this is only possible if, even within journal articles, some clues at what the data might mean for actual social problems is included so that they can be understood by interested audiences beyond academia. possible practical takeaways of one’s research could then be further elaborated on (e.g., in an opinion piece, an interview, or a blog post). while it is part of a pluralistic society that different groups of actors will draw different conclusions from a given piece of research, researchers may themselves put their research in context and thereby reduce the risk of being (deliberately and strategically) misunderstood. this is one aspect of adding reflexivity to our research: to anticipate and intervene when research results are being taken out of context by political actors who might interpret the research in ways that can be at odds with the actual findings of the respective study. finally, the art of synthesis is underdeveloped in our field. this means not only counting what has been studied but clearly pointing out what we know and what it means; for a best practice see, for example, the article “understanding (and reducing) inaction on climate change” by hornsey and fielding (2020) or a recent review showing that reducing psychological distance might actually not be the most important or effective way for climate communication—contrary to what many guidelines say (van valkengoed, steg, & perlaviciute, 2023). mailto:topacademicjournals@gmail.com american journal of art and communication vol.6,issue 6;november-december-2021; 1252 columbia rd nw, washington dc, united states https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac; mail: topacademicjournals@gmail.com 6 | american journal of art and communication | https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac the oxford-based organization climate outreach routinely provides evidence-driven advice on how to communicate, for example, scientific uncertainties around climate change (corner, lewandowsky, phillips, & roberts, 2015). synthesizing complex research results into a limited set of findings is a valuable art that should not be left to journalists or civil society groups alone but also involve researchers who understand the field and its theories and methods. transformative teaching and academic practices if we are serious about environmental communication science having transformative potential, one important audience that we have is our students. seminars on environmental communication that also include practitioners as partners or interact with local actors could become part of the curriculum. we can influence whether our department offers an elective in environmental communication or whether such topics make it to the core curriculum. so far, such topics are rarely found in either electives or the core curriculum (karmasin & voci, 2021). why? we think the answer lies in the still marginal position of environmental communication in the field. faculty tend to teach their research specialisms if possible. while there may be many advocates for the curriculum to consider political communication, journalism, or social media, there are relatively few advocates for the inclusion of the environment. this tends to be reinforced when new hires are made as faculty tend to lobby for and appreciate the work of colleagues in their respective subfields. the answer to this is simply to hire more faculty who have a research specialization in environmental communication. this would encourage more early career researchers to pursue doctorates in the subfield, and this will eventually filter through to curriculum change and impact on students. ideally, electives and core teaching on environmental communication should enable transformative research and academic practices. it should empower students to assume agency in the process of transformation. it should explicitly discuss normative questions and focus on involving students in creative solutions to problems related to media, communication, and the environment. one of the exemplars of such an approach was the late william gamson, who established the media research and action project. it describes itself as a faculty-student-community collaboration with a variety of activist groups (ryan & gamson, 2009) tackling negative representations in mass media and promoting mobilization and positive representations, with the ultimate aim of bringing about social change. the key here is that the methods adopted seek not only to understand the world but to bring about change through intervention in a manner similar to participatory action research methods (martens, venegas, & tapuy, 2020). there is research on how best to teach ecological crises and the need for transformation that emphasizes the importance of challenging the status quo, engaging with social experimentation, and reflecting on how best to bring about change (leichenko, gram-hanssen, & o’brien, 2022). this teaching, of course, can have specific communicative foci. after our students, the next most likely place to look to have a transformative impact is our institutions. deeply mundane and unfashionable as it is, we can influence the value of cycle to work schemes, the use of renewable energy on campus, and so on and so forth. no doubt your institution has a promotions committee, a mailto:topacademicjournals@gmail.com american journal of art and communication vol.6,issue 6;november-december-2021; 1252 columbia rd nw, washington dc, united states https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac; mail: topacademicjournals@gmail.com 7 | american journal of art and communication | https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac teaching committee . . . does it have an environment committee? possibly, but probably not yet, most likely because environmental issues touch on the work of all areas of activity, from the provision of food in the student canteens to the insulation of accommodations, and are dealt with separately and in a very fragmented way. it is time to join them up and add in environmental communication for staff and students for good measure. there are a number of ways in which communication scholars can engage in their universities. for instance, we can strongly advocate for our institutions to declare robust and concrete climate or sustainability commitments and demand immediate divestment from fossil fuels. despite a global trend among educational institutions toward divestment (global fossil fuel divestment commitments database, 2022), universities in australia and the united states, according to media reports, have worrisome conflicts of interest between these same universities and the fossil fuels industry (analysis and policy observatory, 2018). the quest for more transparency, as well as exposing greenwashing even within our own institution, is a challenge for communication and therefore falls within our disciplinary mandate. after our students and home institutions, the next most likely group of people that we can have an impact on is our learned societies. these societies, after all, claim to exist for us and should be responsive to our views. at worst, these societies can be very sophisticated travel agencies-cum-conference machines, with thousands of people flying millions of air miles to present their work in bite-sized portions in far-flung destinations. at best, our learned societies can provide intellectual impetus for the field. every decision to fly somewhere needs to be thought through. many in-person meetings can be replaced by online conferences that may be more equitable and less of an environmental burden. given that every action whether online or offline will have an environmental cost at some point, it is about making sure that the benefit of the action outweighs the costs. transformative engagement with society the distinctive contribution that communication scholarship can make is not merely in understanding the communication and information environment that shapes public opinion, beliefs, and actions but in inspiring debates about how to transform societies toward more sustainable ways of living. as communication scholars engaged in global networks capable of impacting public debates on the climate emergency, we have a clear responsibility to aim at a trajectory of pragmatic sociology of critique (boltanski, 2011): to constantly check the ways in which critique is “mobilized” by ordinary people rather than “theorized” by scholars and experts. a crucial form of social impact would be to collaborate with social groups and communities who are marginalized or ignored in environmental debates and policies, who are often the ones that bear most costs of degradation (pezzullo, 2009). by promoting their communicative capacities and sense of political agency, we could aid the democratization of dealing with environmental problems. by publicly exposing their exclusion by media or decision makers, we could indirectly contribute to inclusion, pluralism, and justice. by working with them to develop strategies for intervention in public debates, we can directly contribute to tackling socioecological problems. communication scholars could support relevant social groups and institutions in improving their communication practices. for example, the intergovernmental panel on climate change has started to integrate communication research in their reports and wider forms of communication (corner, shaw, & clarke, 2018) and mailto:topacademicjournals@gmail.com american journal of art and communication vol.6,issue 6;november-december-2021; 1252 columbia rd nw, washington dc, united states https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac; mail: topacademicjournals@gmail.com 8 | american journal of art and communication | https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac has acknowledged the importance of communication scholarship (krug, 2022). but not everyone has the resources to translate or invite the translation of academic research into actionable knowledge. therefore, our connections to environmental ngos, citizen groups, social movements, and others should be expanded; for an example of this connection, see tarin, upton, swoards, and yang (2017). devising ways of living more sustainably with our environments involves rethinking the ways in which communities govern common goods such as natural spaces. within the prevailing liberal democratic framework, environmental governance tends to be shaped by expert judgement. in “stakeholder” consultations, problems and goals are predefined and the scope for citizen discussion and influence is quite limited; hence, communication is structurally distorted. communication researchers could experiment with ways to change this. in 2017, researchers at the university of aarhus, in denmark, launched a project that turned out to be transformative. they started off with a concrete real-world issue, namely the return of wolves to denmark’s territory and social conflicts over how to “manage” them. the wolf dialogue project took a “critical-utopian dialogue approach,” with the design based on the critical-utopian action research methodology (hansen, dethlefsen, fox, & jeppesen, 2022). in collaboration with a local village council, they invited residents to attend an information meeting and, from then on, a series of workshops that spanned over two years. the process was initiated independently from any authorities and, from the outset, it was made clear to participants that the agenda was open and the terms of the debate were not constrained. having agreed to follow habermasian ethics for the dialogue, based on the principles of respect for all participants (no interruptions, no personal attacks, short comments), citizens were free to discuss whatever they wanted related to the presence of wolves in the area. the team of researchers endeavored to build trust, both among citizens and toward themselves, from the very outset. they did so by means of allowing enough time for extensive contact and by creating informal interaction opportunities. meetings came to be felt as a “safe space” for all participants to voice their views. drawing inspiration in the future creation workshops developed by norbert r. müllert and robert jungk (1987), the first workshop aimed at allowing citizens to think about alternative futures. they started by expressing their critique and concerns about the present situation, and imagined ideal scenarios. in thinking about implementation, they then formulated some questions that researchers and experts were invited to answer. in later stages, participants presented their vision to the public and wrote a report that was presented to political authorities at the national level. the process was aimed at facilitating the participants empowerment. gradually, they became more motivated to take responsibility and strived to extend the project. the wolf dialogue project garnered significant media attention and political recognition, with the danish government implementing some recommendations and institutionalizing dialogue meetings with local communities. the project was originally supported by a grant from aarhus university, and several academic articles accounting for the process and its outcomes have been published (e.g., hansen et al., 2022). the whole process illustrates how the relation between environmental communication and governance can be reimagined. academic input to journalists and media organizations on trends and problems with the coverage of environmental issues could lead to better journalism. such input can take many forms, and there are good examples already, such as the decálogo sobre el cambio climático developed by the fundación ecología y mailto:topacademicjournals@gmail.com american journal of art and communication vol.6,issue 6;november-december-2021; 1252 columbia rd nw, washington dc, united states https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac; mail: topacademicjournals@gmail.com 9 | american journal of art and communication | https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac desarrollo (ecodes) and the complutense university of madrid (ecodes, 2019). this is a set of recommendations (based on research findings) for journalists working on climate change. news media organizations were invited to commit to the guidelines, and many of them have done so (ecodes, 2019). such approaches could be emulated in other countries or at the european level. for the engaged academic embracing transformative practice in times of crisis, the motivation is clearly intrinsic and not the result of external incentives. yet, the structures in many university systems function as a disincentive to engage. there are still those colleagues who claim that social and environmental engagement makes us less of a scientist. others claim that engagement may lead to a loss of trust in science, a claim that is so far only based on limited empirical evidence. yet, the fundamental problem seems to be working time dedicated to engagement rather than maximizing the number and impact factor of publications. this hurts those researchers who are not yet tenured, if their engagement is not recognized by the academic system. in some university systems, this problem is already recognized. for example, in the united kingdom, social impact including policy and community engagement has become part of the academic research assessment exercise (downey, 2017). also, there are universities in portugal where annual reports for individual assessment can be adjusted by academics in view of a predominantly teaching-, research-, management-, or public engagement/outreach-oriented profile, and activities in the latter domain can weigh up to 30% in one’s performance. engaging with society offers the prospect of bringing about significant change well beyond the academy. it is undoubtedly true that academics undertaking such work need to accommodate themselves to the existing rules of the game, at least to a certain extent, to gain influence. yet, the key issue is whether academics active in politics also seek to change the rules of the game, bringing about more progressive change than existing political logics allow for. it is about bringing more fundamentally critical moments into the policy arena, to persuade policy makers of the need for new rules rather than engaging in a servile science-policy relationship. this could be thought of as a dialectic where academics should attempt to exercise their own agency in a critical rather than subservient manner. conclusion the increasingly obvious and severe character of climate change, not to mention other socioecological crises, demand that we as a field reconsider the marginal role that environmental communication still plays in our research, our broader academic practices, and what we hope to achieve socially through our work. it is time to move environmental communication and the environmental dimension of our respective research topics to center stage and to take up the challenge of making communication a transformative science. this means changes in our research priorities, teaching, engagement with our universities, learned societies, and societies, whether one sees oneself primarily as an environmental communication scholar or not. there are many different ways in which we can make our work more transformative. as waisbord (2020) puts it in his more general appeal to engage more, “decide the public scholar you want to be” (pp. 97–98). no one is expected to do or can do everything, everywhere, all at once. one person may engage on twitter, while mailto:topacademicjournals@gmail.com american journal of art and communication vol.6,issue 6;november-december-2021; 1252 columbia rd nw, washington dc, united states https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac; mail: topacademicjournals@gmail.com 10 | american journal of art and communication | https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac another may be great at asking the most urgent research questions with real-world relevance, while someone else might enjoy experimenting with teaching or interacting with journalists. and many scholars have already taken steps to move from being bystanders of ecological disaster toward being participants in the project of bringing about just socioecological transformations. we invite all of our colleagues to join in. references akerlof, k. l., timm, k. m. f., rowan, k. e., olds, j. l., & hathaway, j. 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(2011). on critique: a sociology of emancipation. cambridge, uk: polity. brevini, b. (2016). the value of environmental communication research. international communication gazette, 78(7), 684–687. doi:10.1177/1748048516655728 brevini, b. (2021). is ai good for the planet? cambridge, uk: polity. brevini, b., & murdock, g. (eds.). (2017). carbon capitalism and communication: confronting climate crisis. london, uk: palgrave macmillan. brüggemann, m., & engesser, s. 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(2020). the communication manifesto. cambridge, uk: polity. mailto:topacademicjournals@gmail.com american journal of art and communication vol.6, issue 1; january-febuary 2021; 1252 columbia rd nw, washington dc, united states https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac; mail: topacademicjournals@gmail.com 23 | american journal of art and communication | https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac the benefits of creativity for our mental and physical health john david smith, mariam elizabeth garcia salve regina university, united states abstract: this article explores the disconnect between art and creativity in our daily lives. it argues that art and creativity are closely related, and that both can be used to solve problems, express emotions, and make sense of the world. the article provides examples of how art and creativity can be used in everyday life, and suggests ways to reconnect with these important aspects of human experience. keywords: art, creativity, everyday life, problem-solving, expression, meaning-making 1. introduction this article addresses our disconnect with art and creativity in our daily lives. reflecting on the art we have seen at local museums is challenging in our modern world. we have become too busy to pay attention to these artworks, which appear to have no bearing on our daily lives. in this way, art has become disconnected from our lives and feels distant. additionally, the everyday creativity that enables us to solve small and large problems throughout our day is often ignored and disconnected from us. the extent of these disconnections is wide because there are many facets of art, creativity, and our daily lives. however, the scope of this article is narrow because it focuses on the similarities between art and our everyday creativity. for example, the research focuses on aspects of art that could be comparable to everyday creativity. in the same way, it also focuses on qualities of everyday creativity that could be associated with aspects of art. this research aims to consider the similarities between art and everyday creativity. by identifying these similarities and raising awareness of them, we may see better that our everyday lives are creative and that art can be an element of our daily lives. connecting art, creativity, and everyday life can help shorten the distance between them and reduce today's disconnect. accordingly, the objectives of this research are the following: • identify the disconnection of art in our daily lives; • describe the disconnection of our everyday creativity; • explore aspects of art and everyday creativity and identify those that are similar; • investigate our experiences of art and everyday creativity and identify similarities in those experiences. the value of this study is a focus on those aspects of art and artists that are similar to aspects of creativity in our everyday lives. here are some examples of these similarities that are described in this article. berger (1999, p. 20) indicates that abstractions exist in all works of art. yet, we do not realize that abstractions also exist throughout our daily lives. we see these abstractions in pie recipes instructing us to add a cup of cherries and road signs telling us to stop at intersections. mailto:topacademicjournals@gmail.com american journal of art and communication vol.6, issue 1; january-febuary 2021; 1252 columbia rd nw, washington dc, united states https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac; mail: topacademicjournals@gmail.com 24 | american journal of art and communication | https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac kant’s (1987, p. 174) concept of the artist-genius who creates fine art has similarities with how we interact in our everyday lives. each of us is a unique individual who excels at understanding how we live in the world. because each one of us is different, each of us is the master craftsperson or genius of our own daily interactions. kant (1987, pp. 186-187) relates originality to the artist-genius, and this originality has similarities to the creativity in our daily lives. here, our daily creativity is unique because it is based on our own thoughts, feelings, and experiences. accordingly, our daily creativity is original, as is the originality of kant’s artist-genius. in merleau-ponty’s account of art, the activity of painting occurs with the painter’s body (low, 2000, p. 57). in our own daily lives, movement is also essential. we realize the value of movement as it gives us vitality in our interactions with the world around us. merleau-ponty (2012, pp. 153, 216) highlights that we perceive the world through our bodies. in this sense, our bodies are creative expressions in our development and experience of art. creative expression also exists in our everyday lives as we develop creative solutions to many of our everyday problems. haworth (1997, p. 138) suggests that when painters create artwork, they incorporate their own style into the art. it is a style that grows from the painter’s own perceptions and experiences. in our everyday lives, each of us also has a style that we have acquired from innumerable circumstances. we exhibit this unique style in the ways we creatively solve problems in our daily lives. wiskus (2013, p. 62) suggests that we do not regard an artist by a single work of art. instead, we consider the artist’s whole collection of work. in our everyday lives, we often consider ourselves and others in a similar manner. we do not define people by a particular action. instead, we look at ourselves and others through all the actions and moments in our everyday lives. the methodology employed in this research is based on our everyday creativity and the creative art we view in museums and galleries. our everyday creativity is an inner creativity that occurs within us and is difficult for others, and sometimes even ourselves, to discern. the art we observe in museums is an outer creativity since it occurs outside of us and by artists who have their creative work on museum walls. an inner and outer approach is important in this research because the creativity we employ in our daily lives has an inner-outer nature. ricœur (1981, p. 170) describes such a methodology as a textual interpretation that enables internal and external perspectives in our research. concentrating on these spaces of inner and outer, enables an expanded awareness in both our research and daily lives. the findings suggest that similarities exist between art and the creativity in our everyday world. these similarities include the abstraction in art and our everyday lives, the concepts of genius and originality in art and our daily living, and how we create through our bodies. this article contributes to the literature by illuminating these similarities and helping us realize that art and creativity are essential elements of our daily lives. in this way, the article helps shorten the distance between ourselves, art, and our daily creative lives. this article begins by describing everyday creativity and its significance in our daily lives. it then describes the disconnect we have with art and creativity. next, the article depicts aspects of representation and abstraction in areas of art, creativity, and our everyday lives. it investigates the concepts of genius and originality in art and everyday creativity. it also explores our experiences of art and creativity. included are topics about being creative mailto:topacademicjournals@gmail.com american journal of art and communication vol.6, issue 1; january-febuary 2021; 1252 columbia rd nw, washington dc, united states https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac; mail: topacademicjournals@gmail.com 25 | american journal of art and communication | https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac through our bodies, creativity as a personal expression, and the unfolding of creativity. the article then highlights the challenges and benefits of making similarities between art and our everyday creativity. 2. overview of the literature the literature employed in this research included a methodology from ricœur (1981), a description of everyday creativity from richards (2007b), and descriptions of our disconnection from art and everyday creativity (sayers, 2014; piancatelli et al., 2021; saito, 2013; richards, 2007a). the literature also included concepts we can employ to relate art to our creativity and everyday lives. here, berger (1999) and (heidegger, 2001) provide a focus on the artist. berger (1999) also explains how art is an abstraction and shows the connection between theory and practice. literature from kant (1987), martiniano (2016), and hu (2019) enables us to see how genius and originality are important aspects of art and the artist. works from merleau-ponty provide further perspectives of art, the artist, and the experience of art. he helps us see how art reveals the invisible, those aspects of our world that are just beyond our experience and that we cannot grasp (merleau-ponty, 2012; sallis, 2011). merleau-ponty (2012) describes how we create art through our bodies (low, 2000), how art is a personal expression (carman, 2020; wiskus, 2013), and how creativity is non-linear (wiskus, 2013). he also depicts how painting is an unfolding and recentering (merleau-ponty, 2004; wiskus, 2013; low, 2000). merleau-ponty (2004) further shows how the creation of art is a movement toward truth. wiskus (2013) highlights the rhythm of creating art and how the artist is defined by her or his body of work. indeed, comparing art to our creativity and daily lives is challenging, and saito (2013) and heidegger (2001) highlight some of these challenges. however, many aspects of art and the artist described in the literature can be adapted to depict our own creativity and everyday lives. 3. everyday creativity when discussing creativity, some of us may consider an impressionist painting by monet or an emotional poem by wordsworth. those creators and their works were indeed innovative, but that type of creativity differs from the focus of this discussion. here, creativity is not just for the few people whom critics and researchers have chosen. instead, this creativity is for every person, regardless of who the person is or what the person does for a living. creativity is not just for those who paint canvases or pen thoughtful wordings. this creativity is for every person who performs the ordinary activities of our daily lives. it is about the creativity we use to help a neighbor down the street and care about people in general. ruth richards describes everyday creativity as an essential component throughout our day: indeed, everyday creativity is about everyone, throughout our lives; it is fundamental to our survival. it is how we find a lost child, get enough to eat, and make our way in a new place and culture. it is not so much what we do as how we do it, whether this is at work or at leisure. with our everyday creativity, we adapt flexibly, we improvise, and we try different options, whether we are raising our child, counseling a friend, fixing our home, or planning a fundraising event. (richards, 2007b, pp. 25-26) in our modern day, our lives are challenged with hectic schedules, social complexities, and daily problems that range from small to large. to meet these challenges successfully, we must be creative in our approach to them. for example, we switch around work meetings to take a sick child to the doctor, devise new conversations in mailto:topacademicjournals@gmail.com american journal of art and communication vol.6, issue 1; january-febuary 2021; 1252 columbia rd nw, washington dc, united states https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac; mail: topacademicjournals@gmail.com 26 | american journal of art and communication | https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac tense social situations, and find detours when storms block the road ahead. the creativity we use to resolve these challenges is vital in our everyday lives. 4. a disconnect of art and everyday creativity there is a disconnect between our everyday world and the world of art. for example, in our everyday lives, we rarely reflect on modern pieces we have seen at a local art museum. nor do we stop and consider a sculpture we pass at a library entrance. in our hurried pace, these works are only objects or, at best, decorations that have no bearing on our daily lives. in this sense, art feels distant to us and possibly so distant that it exists only in a different time and place. this disconnect is a challenge that museums and galleries confront daily. the distance of art can make it difficult to get people into those art spaces. creating greater access is a priority, as well as increasing the diversity of visitors and the range of artworks (sayers, 2014, p. 356). unfortunately, the challenge is not over when a visitor enters the building. one problem is that not everyone has the same education and cultural frame of reference needed to appreciate different artworks (sayers, 2014, p. 357). art spaces must engage visitors to create a bond between visitors, artworks, viewing spaces, and the overall experience. increasing visitor engagement can involve educational activities within museums to enhance the visitor’s experience. recent engagement models include dialogs with the museum’s brand (piancatelli et al., 2021, p. 139). new technologies can also enable visitors to participate actively in creative processes (piancatelli et al., 2021, p. 142). the distance between fine arts and our everyday lives can seem immense. that is, it can be challenging to appreciate the aesthetics of art when it is difficult to associate art with our everyday lives. however, our everyday lives already contain a wealth of aesthetic experiences. these experiences are broad because we can like or dislike many different things. aesthetics can be viewed as an appreciation of the world around us, marking our degree of liking or disliking something. for example, an aesthetics of art could indicate how much we appreciate a traditional painting by renoir or pop art by warhol. aesthetics can also apply to how much we like church steeples, bridges, and everyday furniture. for instance, you may like all types of steeples, only covered wooden bridges, and everyday furniture when handcrafted. for yuriko saito, our appreciation of things in our everyday experience is sparse. when we think of aesthetics, we focus on fine art rather than things we interact with throughout the day. “as a result, other dimensions of our aesthetic life that we engage in almost daily, in forming preferences, judgments, design strategies, or courses of action, become neglected” (saito, 2013, p. 11). our everyday creativity is also underappreciated and often ignored. in our hectic lives, it is easy to be unaware of the creativity we use to solve daily problems. in short, it is impossible to pay attention to everything. unfortunately, for some people, our everyday creativity becomes unimportant. as richards remarks, “for them, everyday creativity seems an ‘extra,’ set apart from the rest of life. people who believe this are depriving themselves of their creative birthright” (richards, 2007a, p. 4). for richards, the general devaluation of our everyday creativity is more than simply ignoring it. instead, it seems as if our everyday creativity has been taken away from us: mailto:topacademicjournals@gmail.com american journal of art and communication vol.6, issue 1; january-febuary 2021; 1252 columbia rd nw, washington dc, united states https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac; mail: topacademicjournals@gmail.com 27 | american journal of art and communication | https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac ...it becomes even more important to ask why the creativity we take seriously is widely considered exclusive to eminent or exceptional people — just think about media coverage of famous artists, actors, authors, inventors, public figures — in preference to the creativity we all can manifest. (richards, 2007a, p. 4) in our everyday lives, we have opportunities to be creative through solving problems and trying out new ideas. although we are creative throughout our day, we do not notice that we are creative. one way of taking notice of our creativity may be through associating it with art. in the sections ahead, this article will show that art is connected to our daily lives and that our everyday creativity is connected to art. in these associations, we may see the importance of our own creativity and the pervasiveness of it in our daily lives. 5. the representation and abstraction of art and everyday creativity in our everyday lives, we come across various objects, actions, and events that represent something. that is, they exhibit aspects of some other thing and, in a way, take the place of that thing. art has similar qualities. according to karol berger, all art is a representation and is so through varying degrees of abstraction: in this sense, figurative and abstract painting are both species of representational art. they differ only in the kind of concepts, figurative ("woman") or abstract ("rectangle"), under which we bring what we see in the painting. more precisely, i should prefer to say that they differ in the degree of abstraction of the concepts under which we bring what we see in the painting. (berger, 1999, p. 26) the abstraction that berger describes does not come from the art itself but does so from the person who created it. heidegger also suggests that to find the origin of art, we must not look at the art but instead toward the artist. (in the same passage, heidegger also suggests that artwork's origin is art. the paradox of heidegger's view of art is discussed later in this article.): the work’s createdness, however, can obviously be grasped only in terms of the process of creation. this, constrained by the facts, we must consent after all to go into the activity of the artist in order to arrive at the origin of the work of art. the attempt to define the work-being of the work purely in terms of the work itself proves to be unfeasible. (heidegger, 2001, the origin of the work of art, p. 56) this quality of originality is intriguing because it corresponds to aspects of our everyday lives. for example, every piece of art, or every creative work of art, has a unique origin. originality also appears in our everyday lives and our everyday creativity. our everyday creativity is original because it arises from our own thoughts, feelings, and experiences, which occur in different places, at varying times, and in diverse contexts. these aspects of originality show that art and everyday creativity share a quality of originality. this sharing may seem insignificant, but it does point to art and everyday creativity having similar characteristics. 5.1 abstraction in art and our everyday lives we see abstractions throughout our daily lives. for example, when we bake a pie or drive to the store, we attend only to the general process of adding ingredients and following traffic signs. rather than pay attention to whether we should only add one cup of cherries or whether to stop at the intersection, we attend to the recipe and road signs. these abstractions exist everywhere we go; for berger, they exist in all art (berger, 1999, p. 20). in the context of creating art, abstraction comes from within us, as in the conception and development of the artwork. for berger, this abstraction can become severe since, for him, art can be completely abstract: mailto:topacademicjournals@gmail.com american journal of art and communication vol.6, issue 1; january-febuary 2021; 1252 columbia rd nw, washington dc, united states https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac; mail: topacademicjournals@gmail.com 28 | american journal of art and communication | https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac there is no reason to doubt that we are capable of making such objects, objects designed to be looked at, but not to represent any features of the visual world: in the late twentieth century, our public spaces are full of them. and not only an immobile, but also a moving three dimensional work can remain abstract. when a ballet is not narrative or representational in any way, we are not asked to see in the body of the dancer anything other than itself. (berger, 1999, p. 20) berger's suggestion that all art contains a degree of abstraction feels right because no painting or sculpture could completely mimic what it represents. however, his claim that some art could be entirely abstract does not seem to fit our experience in the world. in our daily lives, our thoughts, feelings, and experiences are about something. however, we can devise the idea of a thought that is entirely about nothing. in this devised thought, the nothing that we refer to would be utterly devoid of anything, including other concepts. although such a thought is conceivable in a theoretical context, in our actual daily living, even the idea of nothingness is about something. art is also about something. it could be as tangible as a small house on a morning prairie or as abstract as a circle of red on a white museum wall. nevertheless, even that red circle is about something — it could be redness, circularity, or a rebellion against prairie houses in morning fields. the artist’s motive may be challenging to see, yet the work is still about something. this discussion of abstraction shows that art and our everyday living share a quality of abstraction. both are about something, even if that something is highly abstract. 5.2 the relationship between theory and practice the association between our everyday lives and art extends when we consider theory and practice. berger's view of theory and practice is in the context of aesthetics, yet it matches how we use theory and practice in our everyday lives: it is only when this practical knowledge begins to fail me in some ways, or, more crucially, when the practice itself runs into difficulties, that a need for a more explicit theory articulating the point and the norms of the practice arises. once born, a theory may acquire an internal dynamic of its own and develop more or less independently of any promptings from a stalled practice. but it may also begin to influence the practice, to help it run more smoothly by making its norms more transparent and by correctly identifying its point. this sort of two-way traffic between practice and theory is to be expected in any area of social action that has achieved a certain degree of maturity. the aesthetic domain is no exception. (berger, 1999, pp. 9-10) the two-way relationship between theory and practice seems natural. in other words, we see many connections between theory and practice in our ordinary lives. they are closely twined to one another, even though we may consider them separate and distinct. for example, we may believe that theory must be developed before any practice occurs. however, we see that practice can happen before we develop a theory. moreover, varying degrees of theory and practice may affect each other in different ways. we see a multiplicity of connections between theory and practice through everyday observation. in various ways, theory and practice apply to many everyday situations. baking a pie and driving to the store are two simple examples. theory and practice also apply to our everyday creativity. we theorize about this creativity in journals and books, as this article does now. however, the usage or practice of everyday creativity makes it vital to the ordinary and not-so-ordinary problem-solving that our daily lives demand. mailto:topacademicjournals@gmail.com american journal of art and communication vol.6, issue 1; january-febuary 2021; 1252 columbia rd nw, washington dc, united states https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac; mail: topacademicjournals@gmail.com 29 | american journal of art and communication | https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac 6. genius and originality in art and everyday creativity in his book critique of judgment, kant did not chronicle everyday creativity. however, in that book, his description of the judgment of beauty contains aspects of everyday creativity. everyday creativity is distinctive because it is based on our own thoughts, feelings, and experiences. that is, the creative solutions i devise may be different from yours. this difference suggests that each of us is the best person to create suitable solutions for ourselves. since we are different from one another, i am likely good at creating solutions that accommodate the way i think and feel about the world. similarly, you are likely to excel at creating solutions that are best for you. in this way, each one of us is the master craftsperson or genius of our own everyday creativity. kant also employs the concept of genius though he does so in the context of fine art. in his description of this genius, kant mentions the concept of rules: genius is the talent (natural endowment) that gives the rule to art. since talent is an innate productive ability of the artist and as such belongs itself to nature, we could also put it this way: genius is the innate mental predisposition (ingenium) through which nature gives the rule to art. (kant, 1987, p. 174) in his detail of the genius of fine art, kant shows that rules are vital to the genius’s creative process: since, however, a product can never be called art unless it is preceded by a rule, it must be nature in the subject (and through the attunement of his powers) that gives the rule to art; in other words, fine art is possible only as the product of genius. (kant, 1987, p. 175) however, as martiniano highlights, these rules are elusive. the artist-genius cannot explain the creative process because this genius cannot recall the rules she or he employed. “the creative genius, however, produces ‘that which no determinate rule can be given’ and cannot articulate what it is or how he or she came to it” (martiniano, 2016, p. 162). a similar challenge occurs in our everyday world. when we solve a problem in our daily lives, we can express an argument that brought us to our solution. however, upon deeper reflection, the details of the actual internal processes we employed seem to elude us. another aspect of kant's concept of the artist-genius is highlighted by hu. according to hu, during the activity of creating art, the artist-genius is the first person to experience its beauty. it is afterward, in galleries and museums, that others would also appreciate that beauty: in the process of creating art, the aesthetic judgment is made firstly by the work’s producer (genius is the innate mental talent of a gifted artist who makes genuine art). if an artwork is regarded as beautiful, then it means that the work will have been judged as such by its first observer, the artist, although the universal validity of taste kant grants to taste guarantees that the artwork's beauty will be appreciated also by anyone else with taste. (hu, 2019, p. 131) this initial awareness by the artist-genius and later by appreciative observers works well in an art context. a work of fine art, for example, is a physical object that the artist brings forth and that others can later observe. however, a physical testament is not readily apparent in the context of everyday creativity. accordingly, the inner creativity we produce throughout our day may be noticed by the person who performed it but could be difficult to discern by another person. mailto:topacademicjournals@gmail.com american journal of art and communication vol.6, issue 1; january-febuary 2021; 1252 columbia rd nw, washington dc, united states https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac; mail: topacademicjournals@gmail.com 30 | american journal of art and communication | https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac 6.1 originality in everyday creativity another aspect of our everyday creativity is its uniqueness. this aspect is interesting because it means another person cannot imitate our everyday creativity. this distinction of creativity makes sense when we consider that our everyday creativity is based on our thoughts, feelings, and experiences that cannot be completely imitated. in this way, our everyday creativity is original. kant also discusses originality, and he does so in the context of the artist-genius. for kant, the significance of this originality is that it reflects the uniqueness of each artist: genius is a talent for producing something for which no determinate rule can be given, not a predisposition consisting of a skill for something that can be learned by following some rule or other; hence the foremost property of genius must be originality. (kant, 1987, p. 175) kant continues his discussion by saying that another person cannot imitate this originality. although, as kant describes, we can appropriate the originality from another person and use it in our own way as a model: accordingly, the product of a genius (as regards what is attributable to genius in it rather than to possible learning or academic instruction) is an example that is meant not to be imitated, but to be followed by another genius. . . .the other genius, who follows the example, is aroused by it to a feeling of his own originality, which allows him to exercise in art his freedom from the constraint of rules. (kant, 1987, pp. 186-187) kant’s explanation of originality is similar to how we incorporate ideas and actions from others today. in the context of our everyday lives, we may consider another person’s ideas from a book we read or a movie we saw. however, if those other ideas do not align with our inner selves, then our use of them will likely lead us astray. kant's concepts of the artist-genius and originality do not correlate precisely with everyday creativity. however, in our daily lives, each of us can be a master craftsperson or genius of our everyday creativity. additionally, everyday creativity is unique for each of us, and since it is based on our thoughts, feelings, and experiences, it is original. kant could not have anticipated the cultural and social structures that exist today in the twentyfirst century. accordingly, his work cannot be expected to meet all the challenges we face in our culture and society. however, some aspects of the artist-genius and originality discussed above could provide an impetus for further investigation and analysis of everyday creativity in the context of kant’s work. 7. experiencing art and creativity in our everyday lives our world consists of what is visible and what is not. in our everyday lives, we encounter and engage with things we can see, touch, and hear. these are the things in our awareness, knowledge, and deliberate interactions. however, there are other things that we cannot see — that we somehow feel exist, but we cannot put our finger on what they are. these are the things that merleau-ponty describes when he talks about the invisible: for these truths are not only hidden like a physical reality which we have not been able to discover, invisible in fact but which we will one day be able to see facing us, which others, better situated, could already see, provided that the screen that masks it is lifted. here, on the contrary, there is no vision without the screen: the ideas we are speaking of would not be better known to us if we had no body and no sensibility; it is then that they would be inaccessible to us. (merleau-ponty, 2004, p. 380) for merleau-ponty, art paintings reveal aspects of things we usually do not see. they enable a new visibility to arise and open up what is invisible to us in our daily lives (sallis, 2011, p. 21). we may not have suspected that mailto:topacademicjournals@gmail.com american journal of art and communication vol.6, issue 1; january-febuary 2021; 1252 columbia rd nw, washington dc, united states https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac; mail: topacademicjournals@gmail.com 31 | american journal of art and communication | https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac similarities exist between the art that merleau-ponty describes and the creativity we employ in our everyday lives. however, the descriptions and analysis below show that some similarities do exist. 7.1 through our bodies we use more than our thinking and reasoning to create and interact in the world. in our creative actions, we consider whether we are creating in the particular way we want and check whether our results meet our expectations. this accounting of our likes, dislikes, and sensibilities is an aesthetic within us. it exists in our bodies, and as we move through the day, we survey our bodies to gather a sense of whether our creative actions are right for us. for merleau-ponty, painting is an activity that occurs with the painter’s body. this body is not an object but a body of synthesis, a body of "vision and movement" (low, 2000, p. 57). movement is vital to our interaction with the world, whether we walk up a rugged woodland path or sit quietly in meditation and feel the cool air in our nostrils. in many ways, we feel more alive when we participate with the world through movement. merleau-ponty points out that our perception of the world occurs through our body (merleauponty, 2012, pp. 153, 216). here, a similarity exists between our bodies and works of art because both are creative expressions. the similarity highlights a meaningfulness, or significance, within those artworks and our human bodies: a novel, a poem, a painting, and a piece of music are individuals, that is, beings in which the expression cannot be distinguished from the expressed, whose sense is only accessible through direct contact, and who send forth their signification without ever leaving their temporal and spatial place. it is in this sense that our body is comparable to the work of art. it is a knot of living significations and not the law of a certain number of covariant terms. (merleau-ponty, 2012, p. 153) 7.2 as a personal expression it seems evident that art is an expression. for instance, theatre, poetry, dance, and music are expressive creations of the people who write and perform them. painting is also an expression though it may seem less noticeable when the painting is an accurately detailed portrait of a landscape or person. however, the work behind paintings permeates with expressive brush strokes, color choices, and a connection with the painter’s own aesthetics. art allows us to see aspects of our world in new ways. the colors in a painting do this by drawing our attention to particular areas of the canvas and thus enable parts of our visible world to resound and come closer. the colors on the canvas enable expression to arise — an expression that becomes a work of art. however, the colors are also a style that emerges from the artist's creativity. in wiskus’s (2013, p. 60) analysis of merleau-ponty, art is not a preconceived notion to be developed by the artist but instead is an expression of style that is part of who the artist is as a person. here, art is not created to imitate life or to conduct oneself according to good taste. instead, it is a process of human expression (wiskus, 2013, p. 61). this emphasis on expression shows the twined connection between art, style, and our own personal creativity. according to carman (2020, p. 173), merleau-ponty employed this creative human expression in our experience of the everyday world. merleau-ponty differentiated this creative expression from inadequate ways of experiencing by referring to a geometrical perspective as an older and insufficient view of our sensible world (merleau-ponty, 2012, p. 272). mailto:topacademicjournals@gmail.com american journal of art and communication vol.6, issue 1; january-febuary 2021; 1252 columbia rd nw, washington dc, united states https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac; mail: topacademicjournals@gmail.com 32 | american journal of art and communication | https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac in our everyday world, we can see how using such a perspective becomes inadequate. when we pay close attention to our senses, we find that geometry does not come into play. we must first think of the concept of geometry, then embed it into our senses for that perspective to occur. the result would be a false encounter that moves us away from an experience of truth. rather than operate that old view, we should experience through the complementary association between ourselves and the world (haworth, 1997, p. 137). that is, we should live through our own creative human expression. according to haworth (1997, p. 138), painters put their styles into their artwork. this style is a mastery that develops through their experience, perception, and overall view of the world. in our everyday lives, the things we build and the problems we solve also have a uniqueness that belongs to each of us. this uniqueness comes from the manner in which we build and solve. it is a way that we have learned from countless circumstances and predicaments in our daily lives. it is a creative style of our own that we develop and use every day. 7.3 nonlinear creativity for merleau-ponty, according to wiskus (2013, p. 63), the creation of an artwork arises through ponderous details that interact with other elements of the artwork. over time the work achieves a form of completion but not in a linear process or as a manifestation of a predetermined concept. instead, it is only afterward, in retrospect, that the painter can see the concept of the artistic result. we tend to think that our actions and everyday lives occur linearly. in our childhood, we were taught that the world works in a sequential fashion. however, the more we learn about the world, the less sequential it appears. for example, our written language provides a linear framework — it is structured in a stepwise manner of sentences and paragraphs. yet, we are challenged to employ language to depict our experiences fully. even our memories maintain a set of linear steps when we replay how we made decisions. though in this replay, our memory ignores the chance circumstances and awry decision-making that occurred along the way. eventually, we learn that the experience of our everyday world — how we live and create throughout our day — does not occur in clear, sequential, or explainable steps. 7.4 an unfolding of creativity for merleau-ponty, the art of painting is no small endeavor. each brush stroke is vital to the larger composition that unfolds through effort and time: if the painter is to express the world, the arrangement of his colors must carry with it this indivisible whole, or else his picture will only hint at things and will not give them in the imperious unity, the presence, the insurpassable plenitude which is for us the definition of the real. that is why each brushstroke must satisfy an infinite number of conditions. cézanne sometimes pondered hours at a time before putting down a certain stroke…. expressing what exists is an endless task. (merleau-ponty, 2004, p. 400) according to wiskus (2013, p. 63), every brush stroke is a recentering. each stroke is a new initiation of an element of the painting and evolves from a creative recentering of the work. such an exercise may remind us of our daily lives when it seems that each step we take, each problem we solve, requires starting anew as if we had never learned from our past experiences. in this way, a work of art constantly unfolds toward new aspects. it is a synthesis that continually opens and is neverendingly developing and arising. an unfolding of our everyday lives occurs in our ordinary ways of living. that is, our surroundings change, sometimes slightly and other times profoundly. the people we frequently interact with change; they alter their mailto:topacademicjournals@gmail.com american journal of art and communication vol.6, issue 1; january-febuary 2021; 1252 columbia rd nw, washington dc, united states https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac; mail: topacademicjournals@gmail.com 33 | american journal of art and communication | https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac viewpoints and tastes of what they like and do not like. this operation of changing and arising in our daily lives is an unfolding of the day, our perceptions, and ourselves (low 2000, 68). in a sense, like works of art, our everyday lives continually unfold with a never-ending developing and arising. as merleau-ponty (2004, p. 400) describes about careful brushstrokes and wiskus (2013, p. 63) about recentering, the activities of expression and calibration also occur in the creativity we employ in our daily challenges. 7.5 the rhythm of art and daily living another similarity between art and our daily lives is the rhythm that exists within them. a work of art has a rhythm that highlights aspects of the art and aspects of ourselves. we see this rhythm in music and poetry, and this rhythm connects to us. it connects because we understand the language that rhythm speaks. rhythm, though, does not belong only to music and poetry but also to painting (wiskus, 2013, p. 123). in a painting, a single canvas contains a resonance and rhythm that the painter expresses in the work. that is, it communicates a language of resonance that touches us. it depicts a range of rhythms in the exchange of small talk at a café and the larger cycle of woodland seasons. in our daily lives, there is also a rhythm that is not easy to notice. there is a pace to our daily lives, a flow to how we move through our work, and a pattern to our social interactions. such a pattern can be seen when passing the same people on a busy sidewalk. even the regularity of waiting in a coffee shop queue has a pattern of movement, while the banter in the background has a particular flow. the creative activity that occurs within these rhythms — in the practice of painting a woodland scene or in the banter of a café lounge — is not readily apparent or even visible. however, that creative activity is crucial in the evolving cadence of the artwork and our daily lives. 7.6 a movement toward truth the process of creativity encompasses constant checking and re-checking. this monitoring helps us determine that our development is moving in the right direction. it allows us to discern if we are constructing in the proper manner. it provides the space to make improvements along the way. it examines our feelings about the things we are creating. based on these inspections, we may change our path as we move ever closer to the composition of the thing we are building. this calibration of movement and pathways, this reaching toward the composition, is also a closer realization of the composition. in a sense, it is a movement that is closer to the composition's truth. this association of creativity and truth arises in merleau-ponty’s concept of art. for him, art is connected to truth because in the act of creating art, in the performance of art, truth comes into being. he remarks, “philosophy is not the reflection of a pre-existing truth, but, like art, the act of bringing truth into being” (merleau-ponty, 2004, pp. 115-116). however, for merleau-ponty, this does not mean that creativity offers a concept of truth. on the contrary, truth is a movement away from concepts and toward an openness of perception and art. thus, for merleau-ponty, we must live with an openness of our senses in our experience of the world. otherwise, we become disconnected from the truth and move further away from reality (merleauponty, 2004, pp. 110-111). in our everyday world, we can see how pre-existing notions contribute to the challenge of our interactions. for example, we maintain concepts about others that are not based on our actual experience but are rooted in false notions. the outcome is conflict within ourselves, with others, and with the environment in which we live. in the mailto:topacademicjournals@gmail.com american journal of art and communication vol.6, issue 1; january-febuary 2021; 1252 columbia rd nw, washington dc, united states https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac; mail: topacademicjournals@gmail.com 34 | american journal of art and communication | https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac context of everyday creativity, reducing our preconceived notions and experiencing with openness helps us resolve some of those conflicts and moves us toward a truth in our everyday living. 7.7 a body of work a further similarity between art and our daily lives arises in how we define artists and ourselves. when we describe a particular artist, we do not consider only a single work. instead, we realize that every work from that artist is a movement toward a more complete compendium, and in merleauponty’s terms, the artist's move toward a complete encounter with the phenomenal world (wiskus, 2013, p. 62). our everyday lives are similar. we are not defined by a single action we perform, a book we read, or a moment with a friend. instead, our lives, basically who we are, can only be described by looking at all our actions and moments, which also can be described as all the creative activities in our everyday lives. 8. the challenges of similarities the analysis of art and everyday creativity suggests that the two may be more similar than expected. however, comparing art and everyday creativity has challenges; two are described here. one challenge is based on heidegger’s suggestion that art is a riddle. in his essay, the origin of the work of art, heidegger indicates it is challenging to tell where art comes from, its purpose, and what it means to us. after discussing art in the context of work and truth, he explains in the “epilogue” that we are left with a riddle. “the foregoing reflections are concerned with the riddle of art, the riddle that art itself is. they are far from claiming to solve the riddle. the task is to see the riddle”. (heidegger, 2001, the origin of the work of art, p. 77) if we accept heidegger’s view that we do not understand art, we cannot compare art well to everyday creativity. accordingly, in this quandary, we do not know enough about art to say whether it is similar or dissimilar to everyday creativity. another challenge is based on saito's suggestion that not everything in the world is art and that not every person is an artist. for saito, non-art objects can express ideas and values. however, they cannot make statements the way that artworks can (saito, 2013, pp. 35-36). accordingly, it is wrong to look at everyday things as works of art (saito, 2013, pp. 40-41): if everyone is an artist and everything is art, then those features which characterize art, whether of paradigmatic western art or including contemporary western art and non-western cultural practices, will lose relevance because there will be no distinction between art and nonart. this will signal the demise of art-centered aesthetics. (saito, 2013, p. 42) saito's point challenges the similarity of art and everyday creativity. appreciation of art and artists is important because they provide meaning to our cultures, societies, and even the events of our day. diluting these sources of meaning could diminish their value and the meaning in our everyday lives. 9. the benefits of similarities similarities between art and our everyday creativity have been depicted throughout this article. in presenting those similarities, the interconnections of art, creativity, and our everyday lives were described. these similarities and connections point to benefits that may arise from simply being aware of the similarities and connections. here is a summary of those benefits: •the belief that each of us is an artistic genius in the way we uniquely solve everyday problems and interact with the world around us; mailto:topacademicjournals@gmail.com american journal of art and communication vol.6, issue 1; january-febuary 2021; 1252 columbia rd nw, washington dc, united states https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac; mail: topacademicjournals@gmail.com 35 | american journal of art and communication | https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac • the understanding that our creative problem-solving and our view of the world is original for each one of us; •the awareness that we can view ourselves as individuals who create and live through our bodies — through movements and with our senses in a tactile world; •the perspective that our living, like our thinking and creativity, does not occur in a linear fashion; •the sense that our creativity and lives occur in a rhythm of people and places and that we are immersed in that rhythm and participate in it; •the realization that we are a body of work and are not defined by a handful of moments or a single creative act. instead, we are defined by all the moments and all the creative actions in our lives. 10. conclusion this article began by explaining our disconnect with art and everyday creativity. it discussed similarities between art, creativity, and our daily lives. the article described the representation and abstraction of art and how that relates to our daily creativity. it also discussed the concepts of genius and originality in art and showed how they exist in everyday creativity. further similarities were depicted in our experiences of art and daily creativity. those similarities included how we create through our bodies, that our creativity and lives are nonlinear, and that we live and create in rhythms. finally, the article pointed out the challenges and benefits of making similarities between art and everyday creativity. these findings show that similarities exist between art and the creativity in our daily lives. awareness of these similarities is important because they help us realize that art and creativity are essential elements of our daily lives. through this awareness and realization, a shortening of the distance between ourselves, art, and everyday creativity could emerge. further investigations could identify additional similarities between art and everyday creativity. for example, an investigation could focus on the experiences of exploring a modern-art museum and an old barn filled with everyday farming artifacts. examining the works in those spaces and how we use those works could provide insight into the aesthetics of our daily lives and how this aesthetics is connected to our everyday use of tools. references berger, k. (1999). a theory of art. oxford university press. carman, t. (2020). merleau-ponty (2nd ed.). routledge. heidegger, m. (2001). poetry, language, thought. (a. hofstadter, trans.). perennial library. haworth, j. (1997). beyond reason: pre-reflexive thought and creativity in art. leonardo, 30(2), 137–45. https://doi.org/10.2307/1576425 hu, x. (2019). a kantian reading of aesthetic freedom and complete human nature nourished through art in a classical chinese artistic context. asian philosophy, 29(2), 128–143. https://doi.org/10.1080/09552367.2019.1610526 kant, i. (1987). critique of judgment. (w. s. pluhar, trans.). hackett pub. mailto:topacademicjournals@gmail.com https://doi.org/10.2307/1576425 https://doi.org/10.2307/1576425 https://doi.org/10.2307/1576425 https://doi.org/10.2307/1576425 https://doi.org/10.1080/09552367.2019.1610526 https://doi.org/10.1080/09552367.2019.1610526 american journal of art and communication vol.6, issue 1; january-febuary 2021; 1252 columbia rd nw, washington dc, united states https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac; mail: topacademicjournals@gmail.com 36 | american journal of art and communication | https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac low, d. b. (2000). merleau-ponty’s last vision: a proposal for the completion of the visible and the invisible. northwestern university press. martiniano, c. (2016). the scientization of creativity. the journal of the midwest modern language association, 49(2), 161–190. http://www.jstor.org/stable/44164809 merleau-ponty, m. (2004). basic writings. routledge. merleau-ponty, m. (2012). phenomenology of perception. (d. a. landes, trans). routledge. piancatelli, c., massi, m., & vocino, a. (2021). #artoninstagram: engaging with art in the era of the selfie. international journal of market research, 63(2), 134–160. https://doi.org/10.1177/1470785320963526 richards, r. (2007a). introduction. in r. richards (ed.), everyday creativity and new views of human nature: psychological, social, and spiritual perspectives (pp. 3–22). american psychological association. richards, r. (2007b). everyday creativity: our hidden potential. in r. richards (ed.), everyday creativity and new views of human nature: psychological, social, and spiritual perspectives (pp. 25–54). american psychological association. ricœur, p. (1981). hermeneutics and the human sciences: essays on language, action, and interpretation. (j. b. thompson, trans.). cambridge university press. saito, y. (2013). everyday aesthetics. oxford university press. sallis, j. (2011). freeing the line. in k. semonovitch, & n. deroo (eds.), merleau-ponty at the limits of art, religion, and perception (21-29). bloomsbury publishing. sayers, e. (2014). ‘equality of intelligences’: exploring the barriers to engagement in modern and contemporary art through a peer-to-peer workshop at tate modern. international journal of art & design education, 33(3), 355–364. https://doi.org/10.1111/jade.12065 wiskus, j. (2013). the rhythm of thought: art, literature, and music after merleau-ponty. university of chicago press. mailto:topacademicjournals@gmail.com http://www.jstor.org/stable/44164809 http://www.jstor.org/stable/44164809 http://www.jstor.org/stable/44164809 https://doi.org/10.1177/1470785320963526 https://doi.org/10.1177/1470785320963526 https://doi.org/10.1111/jade.12065 https://doi.org/10.1111/jade.12065 https://doi.org/10.1111/jade.12065 051207-fa2104-frontiers in art research.docx american journal of art and communication vol.7, issue 4; july-august 2022; 1252 columbia rd nw, washington dc, united states https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac; mail: topacademicjournals@gmail.com 9 | american journal of art and communication | https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac clarifying your thinking, combining emotions and voices, fitting the context, and standardizing communication: the keys to effective oral communication for tv presenters 1li, mingyu 2wang, xueying 3zhang, jianwei 4chen, yifei and 5wu, tianyu school of art, jimei university, xiamen, china abstract: oral communication is a critical skill for tv presenters, as it allows them to effectively convey information to their audience. this paper reviews the literature on oral communication skills for tv presenters and identifies four key areas that presenters should focus on: clarifying their thinking, combining emotions and voices, fitting the context, and standardizing their communication. the paper also provides suggestions for how presenters can improve their oral communication skills. keywords: oral communication, tv presenters, communication skills, clarifying thinking, combining emotions and voices, fitting the context 1. introduction with the growing need for information exchange and spiritual and cultural life, media communication is receiving more and more attention from the public. at the same time, with the advent of the all-media era, the media industry has further developed and become richer in communication patterns. television, as the most important window through which the public used to obtain information, is in need of renewal to meet the needs of the times. as the first controller of tv programmes, the expressive power of tv programme hosts is more and more concerned and evaluated by the public, of which the most direct manifestation is the oral communication ability of tv programme hosts. oral communication refers to a way of information exchange in which the communicator uses specific words and grammatical structures as well as a variety of auxiliary means to communicate to the addressee through the oral cavity, which plays a very important role in people's daily life, including the enhancement of interpersonal communication, the maintenance of the society, the promotion of thinking, and the inheritance of culture, and so on. therefore, as communicators of mass information, there is an urgent need for tv presenters to optimise their oral communication skills. based on the literature research method, this paper puts forward the findings that tv presenters should clarify their thinking, combine emotions and voices, fit the context, and standardise their communication. mailto:topacademicjournals@gmail.com american journal of art and communication vol.7, issue 4; july-august 2022; 1252 columbia rd nw, washington dc, united states https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac; mail: topacademicjournals@gmail.com 10 | american journal of art and communication | https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac 2. new requirements for oral communication in the era of integrated media 2.1. grasping the degree of general education to meet the needs of the audience there is no denying that education, is the main way of transmitting culture. one of the communication functions of television programmes is to embody the function of education, teaching in fun, learning in fun, in the entertainment of the role of education. there is no strict requirement as to the proportion of television programmes that play an educational function, but, especially in the contemporary era when the material standard of living has improved, the public turn on the television in the hope that they can be able to differentiate themselves from the busy time of study and work, and that they can get a moment of psychological and spiritual relaxation and comfort through the television programmes. therefore, the language of tv programme presenters should grasp the scale of "education", not only to convey quality content information to play the function of dissemination of culture, but also to start from the audience, with a soothing and interesting way to relieve the pressure of the audience, to create a relaxing and comfortable programme viewing experience. in this regard, it is important to avoid the use of vulgar language to impair the dissemination of cultural education, and at the same time to grasp the degree of general education, select appropriate content according to the needs and acceptance level of the audience, and avoid the dissemination of obscure, boring and highly specialised communication content. due to the differentiation of audiences in terms of occupation, education level, personality experience, etc., there are certain differences in their choices of tv programme content. in order to make different types of audiences can accept and enjoy the content of the programme, it is necessary for the presenter to be close to the audience's life, research and analysis and meet the needs of the audience, so that the content of the programme to achieve elegance and popularity. 2.2. adherence to colloquialisms and broadening of audience reach the role of the presenter, who is the direct manager of the tv programme, is self-evident. in a sense, the core charm of tv presenters lies in oral communication, and its characteristics, style and form will directly affect the positioning of tv programmes, as well as the audience and communication effect of tv programmes.[1] in the past, due to the authoritative and orthodox image of television programmes, the language of the hosts was also more rigorous, with scripts as the main "reading from the book" being very standard, and a great deal of emphasis was placed on logic in oral communication. but this colloquialism leaves the impression of seriousness and rigour and a slight stiffness. and in the era of integrated media, people attach more importance to the timeliness of communication, and they also prefer oral communication content that is close to life, civilian, grounded, easy to understand, and easy and humorous. therefore, in order to make different types of audiences from different bases feel interested in what the hosts say, like to listen to them, and at the same time listen to them and understand them, it is necessary for tv programme hosts to adhere to the colloquialism of the spoken language, regardless of what kind of programme they are hosting. for some profound content need to quote the subtle and complex language, at the same time to be popularised and vivid analysis and explanation, so that the audience is easy to accept, retain the audience, attract the audience step by step to keep up with the rhythm of communication, and mailto:topacademicjournals@gmail.com american journal of art and communication vol.7, issue 4; july-august 2022; 1252 columbia rd nw, washington dc, united states https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac; mail: topacademicjournals@gmail.com 11 | american journal of art and communication | https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac at the same time clear the audience's invisible understanding of the obstacles to expanding the scope of the audience. 3. reconceptualising the basic principles of oral communication for tv presenters 3.1. clarifying communication objectives and capturing communication effects 3.1.1. point to the goal and clarify thinking oral communication is the process of conveying the content of a message from the transmitter of the message to the recipient of the message, which serves as an exchange of information and transmission. therefore, the key to the oral communication of tv programme hosts is to clarify the purpose of communication, to ensure that the content to be communicated to the audience accurately and accurately, and to grasp the effect of communication. it should be noted that language, as an innate mechanism of man, is innately loaded with the thinking function of language, thinking is the basis of language, and without thinking activities, language loses its value of existence as a tool for thinking and for exchanging ideas.[2] does spoken communication without thought allow the flow of information to be delivered authentically? the answer must not be an absolute yes. the same sentence will convey different meanings because of different accents, sentence breaks, hierarchies and moods, not to mention a whole paragraph of spoken communication content, which will affect the communication effect. if the host of a television programme only reads the words according to the script without thinking, even if the sound is accurate and the utterance is complete, it may result in unclear meaning, incomprehensible and unintelligible results and deviate from the original intention of the communication. thus thinking determines to some extent the quality and value of spoken communication. tv presenters must clarify their thinking and communicate effectively with the purpose of communication before oral communication. 3.1.2. combining emotion and sound to optimise communication effects oral communication is based on the purpose and target of communication, and the words in the broadcast are emotional and meaningful. emotion refers to the always-moving emotions that are triggered by a specific script or topic and expressed by the audible language during the broadcasting process, when the announcer serves the purpose of broadcasting. emotion is the basis of our broadcasting creation, if the host does not have a deep understanding of the content to be disseminated, in the broadcast without any emotional operation of the sentence read, even if the voice is rounded and crisp, the word standard sharp, but the audience does not have the emotional resonance, can not feel the content of the specific content, the dissemination of the effect will also be greatly reduced. the rhythmic aspects of sound such as pitch, rhythm and intonation in speech also have an impact on the effectiveness of communication. certain modal meanings are expressed by certain sound forms, and the richer the modal meanings, the more varied the sound forms. however, if there is a lot of emotion without good voice control, it may also lead to communication dissonance. therefore, tv programme hosts should coordinate the dissemination of emotion and voice in oral communication, integrate their own feelings with the mood of the programme and the feelings of the audience, impress the audience and optimize the communication effect. for example, when song chunli, a great artist in china, read "an unfinished sweater", she conveyed the theme of celebrating a mother's love to the fullest with her abundant emotions and her freely changing voice, and the rhythm mailto:topacademicjournals@gmail.com american journal of art and communication vol.7, issue 4; july-august 2022; 1252 columbia rd nw, washington dc, united states https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac; mail: topacademicjournals@gmail.com 12 | american journal of art and communication | https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac of the whole piece was so staccato and emotionally strong that one could not help but weep and be enthralled by it. 3.2. focus on normativity 3.2.1. ensuring normative language as the presenter plays a benchmarking and guiding role in front of the screen, his or her use of spoken language can have a greater impact on the audience. so the host should be more standardised use of language to serve the public, in the programme must ensure that every sentence and every word is pronounced in strict accordance with the standard of putonghua, so that the characters are correctly pronounced and accurately pronounced, and strive to make the spoken communication beautiful and moving, and bring the audience aesthetic enjoyment.[3] secondly, the use of words and sentence patterns should also be standardised and accurate, in line with grammatical regulations. when articulating in a way that is able to cohesive and fluid, it is able to integrate information quickly and convey it naturally to the audience. at the same time, it is also necessary to prevent the use of slang and non-standard idioms that may hinder the understanding of the audience. at a time when variety shows are surging in popularity, some programmes will choose non-professional hosts such as crossover actors and traffic stars to perform the hosting function. however, due to their neglect of normative language use, there are instances where semantic misconceptions can affect the quality of the programme. but there is actually no conflict between the normality of language use and the fun that the presenter embodies. for example, cctv host bai yansong hosted the "focus interview" with rigorous and standardised language, logical and clear and easy to understand, sincere emotions. its rich rhetoric and powerful prose style, with its layers of progression, make the audience feel the charm of the chinese language more directly, and improve the efficiency and quality of spoken communication. as a communicator of mass information, standardised oral communication is the obligation of every presenter. tv presenters should actively promote the standardisation of chinese language communication and play a leading normative role as communicators. 3.2.2. contextualisation and standardisation of communication the language itself is extremely flexible. language can be given different intellectual contents and emotional colours in different contexts, in different atmospheres, mental states, moods and tones. the same sentence in different contexts can have different meanings and different impacts. let's take a simple example: chinese people love to use the idiom "have you eaten?" when they greet each other. this phrase, when used by a casual acquaintance on the way home from work, demonstrates a sense of concern for the other person. however, if the phrase is uttered in passing during an encounter in front of a toilet door, it can be embarrassing, offensive and have a bad effect. at the same time, the use of idioms also has a specific linguistic environment, if not used properly, it will not be in harmony with the context in which it is used. for example, sports weekly once misreported that "chinese women's judoka yuan hua can block her ears and not listen and calm in a crowded arena, but once she gets going, she sends shivers down the spine of her opponents." the intention here is to reflect yuan hua's professionalism, however, the word "block her ears" describes intentionally not listening to other people's opinions, which is completely out of context when used here. verbal expressiveness is also, in a way, a mailto:topacademicjournals@gmail.com american journal of art and communication vol.7, issue 4; july-august 2022; 1252 columbia rd nw, washington dc, united states https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac; mail: topacademicjournals@gmail.com 13 | american journal of art and communication | https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac reflection of emotional intelligence. spoken communication should be contextualised, with a clear understanding of the environment and its relationship to the surroundings in order to select the appropriate language content for communication. in this way, we can achieve good results and truly deliver effective and standardised communication. 4. strategies for optimising the oral communication of tv presenters 4.1. personalisation of spoken communication 4.1.1. make good use of humour to enhance the atmosphere of the programme as a social and cultural phenomenon, humour is also an important creative element for television presenters. humour has been described as the "salt of the language", the appropriate use of humour in the program can not only enliven the atmosphere of the scene but also bring the host closer to the audience, which will bring unexpected results.[4] once doing a programme, a doctor came on and got nervous. the host, he jiong, saw this and said jokingly, "just because your body is thinner, so it's 'thinshi'(in chinese, it's similar to the pronunciation of dr)?" then he deftly standing behind the guest of honour, he smiled and said, "now i'm standing behind the doctor, so i'm the postdoc!" the audience immediately burst into laughter and the atmosphere was extremely relaxed and lively. at the same time, because this dialogue puts the guest's identity cleverly as a metaphor, draws the guest and the audience closer to the psychological distance, so that the guest's original state of nervousness quickly relaxed, and the host of the communication process has become more smooth and more coordinated. the role of humour in human interaction cannot be underestimated. an american psychologist said that humour is one of the funniest, most contagious and universally relevant delivery arts. as a tv presenter, facing guests, the media and a large audience every day, there is no doubt that you need to use the communicative function in oral communication. a good tv presenter will know how to make good use of a sense of humour, so that the social atmosphere will soon become relaxed, cordial and conducive to communication. this facilitates subsequent hosting, enhances the atmosphere of the programme and contributes to the effectiveness of oral communication. 4.1.2. harnessing adaptive capacity to maintain the programme process in addition to using humour to liven up the atmosphere of the programme, the presenter should also have the function of being able to defuse embarrassment, correct corrections and ensure the effectiveness of communication. especially on tv shows, where every move on the set is in the public eye, and that emergencies are unavoidable and unpredictable. therefore, tv presenters must be able to play in a timely manner to give play to the power of the scene, to play a personal characteristic, to show the charm of personality. maintain the effective progression of the programme process with a style and behaviour that suits you, ensuring that you are not compromised no matter what the circumstances. how to resolve embarrassment in unexpected situations is an art, which tests the language art and oral communication ability of tv presenters. at an awards ceremony, actor simon yam was about to take down the stage after receiving a plate containing almond cakes when he unexpectedly dropped the cakes onto the stage because the plate was tilted. it's a small thing, but a small "mistake" like this is inevitably a bit embarrassing and makes the programme a bit discordant. and after the almond cake fell, the host he jiong immediately and particularly naturally continued, "whoops, you still have a few pieces left mailto:topacademicjournals@gmail.com american journal of art and communication vol.7, issue 4; july-august 2022; 1252 columbia rd nw, washington dc, united states https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac; mail: topacademicjournals@gmail.com 14 | american journal of art and communication | https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac for me here." a line of improvisation on the spot instantly relieved yam of his burden. it also brought a smile to the faces of the actors on stage and the audience, and a sigh of relief from those watching in front of the screen. it is an unshirkable responsibility and a much-needed ability for tv presenters to maintain the flow of the programme through the art of language by exercising their respective control over the scene. 4.2. improvement of the cultural aspects of oral communication with people's growing need for spiritual culture, the cultural content of tv programme hosts' oral communication is becoming an important dimension in judging the quality and ratings of tv programmes. words with rich connotations and high cultural taste, as well as some poetic quotations and idiomatic allusions, can interactively promote and complement programme recognition and presenter reputation.[5] the fact that "the reader", hosted by cctv host dong qing, can be loved and followed by a wide range of viewers is inextricably linked to the cultural tone of the programme itself as well as the host's deep cultural heritage. in order to enhance the cultural taste of language and improve the cultural nature of oral communication, presenters need to cultivate and enhance their own cultural heritage. enhancing the cultural aspect of oral communication requires presenters to read widely and diversify their hobbies. not only do they need to be aware of the natural world, but also to be able to understand the customs of different regions and cultures, as well as the customs of each region. in mass communication, the presenter should play the role of "human civilisation communicator", meet the needs of the audience, tell a good chinese story and spread the chinese voice. 4.3. meeting the need for specialisation in the era of all-media, with the continuous progress of society and the rapid development of network technology, the public has more and more channels to obtain information, and can obtain more and more rich information by themselves. in addition to searching through the search, the public can also share and absorb ideas and answer their own questions through the interaction between online users. the mere recipient of information no longer exists, and people seem to be more "knowledgeable". therefore, nowadays, the information quality of tv programmes is more and more demanding, and people are more and more concerned about the professionalism of tv programme hosts. if the presenter's understanding of information and events is the same as that of the general public, or even less than that of the general public with more in-depth analyses and sharper insights, it will inevitably make the programme less watchable and less attractive. this requires tv presenters to create a professional communication angle for the content they are communicating and to "do one thing well". the host of a financial programme should understand finance, be familiar with new policies in the financial industry and be able to analyse new phenomena in economic life from a professional perspective. sports programme hosts should be rich in sports theory, know sports laws and regulations, and be familiar with refereeing laws and sports terminology. at the same time, the capacity for cross-border integration is enhanced to meet the needs of contemporary audiences. 5. prospects for optimising the oral communication of tv presenters firstly, it is able to adhere to the spoken language in the hosting of tv programmes, and use the language of civilians, groundedness and closeness for oral communication, so as to improve the efficiency of communication. mailto:topacademicjournals@gmail.com american journal of art and communication vol.7, issue 4; july-august 2022; 1252 columbia rd nw, washington dc, united states https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac; mail: topacademicjournals@gmail.com 15 | american journal of art and communication | https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac at the same time to enhance the interactive communication with the audience, in the era of integrated media to fully meet the needs of the audience. secondly, clarifying the purpose of dissemination. analyse the communication environment and its relationship with the surrounding area with the aim of accurately delivering the content of the communication to the recipients of the message. use appropriate language and contextualise spoken communication to ensure effectiveness. thirdly, to improve the language's expressiveness. enrichment of oral communication content, enhancement of knowledge base and strengthening of oral communication relevance. not only can it follow the text of the programme closely, but also combine the relevant knowledge of various parties to make it organically combined with the content of the communication, and express it flexibly, so as to increase the thickness of the oral communication and optimize the quality of the oral communication. fourthly, it is fully personalised. combining their own experience, judgement and other comprehensive abilities, so that they can appropriately use their linguistic skills to deal with the complexity of the situation on the spot. maintain the programme process to ensure programme quality and propagation effect. 6. conclusions it is true that the increasingly fierce competition in the era of integrated media will only make higher demands on tv presenters. tv presenting is increasingly becoming a more comprehensive and testing job. an exploration of the oral communication skills of television presenters reveals that there is not a fixed level of oral communication skills of presenters. from the basic function of accurately conveying the content of spoken communication to the function of using a sense of humour and harnessing adaptive capacity to maintain the progress of the programme, all of them reflect the professional and comprehensive abilities and artistic attainments of the tv presenter. not all presenters have strong oral communication skills. however, a good presenter must have a high emotional intelligence and a high reserve of comprehensive knowledge, so that he or she can fit the context and analyse the relationship with the surroundings in order to choose the appropriate communication content, and at the same time continue to improve his or her professionalism and enrich his or her cultural heritage in order to optimise his or her oral communication skills. the need for tv presenters to optimise their oral communication skills is an unquestionable priority in this day and age. references zhou yonghong. (2022). optimisation strategies for oral communication of tv programme hosts in the age of integrated media. media review, (06),93-94. zhang zhengfa. (2017). righting the source: the threefold dimension of oral communication education. modern communication (journal of communication university of china),39(09),153-155. yang fen. (2019). strategies for melting media optimisation of oral communication of tv programme hosts. young reporter, (08),61-62. jiang xia, jiang li. (2013). the art of humour in hosting. news outpost, (06),83. he li. (2021). research on the importance of language expression skills of tv programme hosts. western radio and television,42(04),150-152. mailto:topacademicjournals@gmail.com new challenges to political privacy: lessons from the first u.s. presidential race in the web 2.0 era american journal of art and communication vol.8, issue 4; july-august 2023; issn: 2994-0540 impact factor: 6.91 1252 columbia rd nw, washington dc, united states https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac; mail: topacademicjournals@gmail.com 23 | american journal of art and communication | https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac reshaping democracy: the impact of web 2.0 on u.s. presidential campaigns" sarah e. mitchell and michael j. anderson yale law school university of washington abstract: in the run-up to the 2008 presidential election, the barack obama campaign harnessed the power of digital communication to mobilize millions of supporters. this article delves into the transformative impact of technology on political campaigns, focusing on the shift from static websites to the dynamic realm of "web 2.0." the campaign's use of social technologies, epitomized by mybarackobama.com (mybo), created an unprecedented level of citizen engagement. campaign manager david plouffe's message to early supporters exemplified this movement, highlighting the vital role played by millions of citizens who rallied from the grassroots level. the campaign leveraged a wide array of digital tools, including its own social networking platform, mybo, and popular commercial platforms like facebook and myspace. this multifaceted approach empowered supporters to organize fundraising events, canvass their communities, and collaborate on an unprecedented scale. this study explores the intricate web of connections that underpinned the obama campaign, challenging traditional campaign structures. it highlights the profound influence of technology in fostering voter-to-voter interactions, with media theorist henry jenkins aptly characterizing the campaign as centered on connections between voters. the research sheds light on how digital communication redefined political engagement in the 21st century. keywords: barack obama, presidential campaign, digital communication introduction one month before the 2008 presidential election, barack obama’s campaign sent an e-mail to its earliest supporters, purportedly from campaign manager david plouffe. plouffe reminded them that they were “one of the first million people to own a piece of this campaign” and “helped build this movement when the odds were long and election day was far in the future” (d. plouffe, personal communication, september 28, 2009). over the course of the long primary and general election, 13 million people signed up to receive obama e-mails. they too received communication from the campaign a month before the election, and many other days besides, tailored to their own involvement. indeed, an author of this article received 313 e-mails from the obama campaign in a little over a year. mailto:topacademicjournals@gmail.com american journal of art and communication vol.8, issue 4; july-august 2023; issn: 2994-0540 impact factor: 6.91 1252 columbia rd nw, washington dc, united states https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac; mail: topacademicjournals@gmail.com 24 | american journal of art and communication | https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac in language that echoes plouffe’s message to supporters, many pundits and academics argue that millions of citizens organizing from the bottom-up were the driving force behind the obama campaign. in this telling, a major technological shift from static web pages to what in the marketing language of silicon valley is known as the social technologies of “web 2.0” (scholz, 2008) culminated in a radically participatory “movement” to elect obama. citizens planned fund-raising events and knocked on the doors of their neighbors identified by the campaign, all while using an unprecedented array of digital campaign tools. these tools included the campaign’s own social networking platform and campaign site, mybarackobama.com (mybo), as well as an array of commercial technologies, such as facebook and myspace. all of which led many to agree with media theorist henry jenkins when he stated that the obama campaign was “as much structured around connections between voters as it is around connections between the candidate and the electorate” (jenkins, 2008). this account of the obama campaign, however, mentions little about political data. yet, as plouffe (2009) makes clear in his firsthand account, data was central to the campaign’s ability to take on a well-funded front-runner in the primary and trounce the republican candidate during the general election. millions of volunteer phone calls to voters, click-throughs on the campaign’s web site, and small donations generated data that the campaign then acted upon. targeted door-to-door voter contacts updated databases so the campaign quickly knew the strength of its support in key districts and where to deploy more resources. the campaign continually analyzed user behavior on its web site and made minor adjustments in design and content that increased the percentage of citizens who signed up for its e-mail list and donated money. together, the electoral databases maintained by the democratic national committee and by the private firm catalist, in conjunction with a vast array of online behavioral and relational data collected from use of the campaign’s web site and third-party social media sites such as facebook, provided the obama campaign with data on more than 250 million americans. the obama campaign was only the fullest realization of trends in the political field toward crafting better means of collecting, storing, analyzing, and acting upon data about citizens, their online behavior, and their social relationships. at various points over the last two decades, both parties embarked on extensive projects to build comprehensive voter files and model the electorate so campaigns would have a good sense of who their supporters were, which individuals were open to persuasion, and which citizens were likely to turn out. while cable and broadcast television advertising outlays still dominate campaign spending (miller, 2008), the profusion of technologies since the 1990s facilitating more targeted communication to a fragmented electorate—from email and banner advertising on the internet to advertising in video games—offer new opportunities for campaigns to “narrowcast” persuasive political communication based on media consumption habits (howard, 2006). while direct mail attests to the fact that narrowcasting has been around for over 20 years, when combined with new social networking technologies, campaigns now have expanded opportunities to use supporters and their social networks as the vehicles of strategic communication. building from the innovations of howard dean’s primary run (kreiss, 2009, 2010), campaigns deploy event planning tools, build facebook applications, mailto:topacademicjournals@gmail.com american journal of art and communication vol.8, issue 4; july-august 2023; issn: 2994-0540 impact factor: 6.91 1252 columbia rd nw, washington dc, united states https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac; mail: topacademicjournals@gmail.com 25 | american journal of art and communication | https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac and create online calling tools that help make social networks both visible in the form of data and productive for fundraising, mobilization, and voter identification efforts. despite two decades of research into the new media practices of campaigns, the workings of the data and analysis “backend” (hindman, 2007) of electoral politics and the industry that supports it are still largely hidden from view, particularly given the press focus on social media. that said, scholars have made some important inquires into these practices. as gandy (2000) noted at the beginning of the decade, political organizations were segmenting and directing narrowly targeted persuasive communication to the electorate based on detailed data profiles. as a consequence, scholars have suggested not only how the range of democratic debate will become more narrow (bennett, 2008; bennett & manheim, 2006) but that certain people and ideas are likely to be excluded from political communication (howard, carr, & milstein, 2005). these data analyses and communication practices mirror changes in other domains of social activity. turrow (2006), for instance, powerfully documents marketing to niche audiences based on consumer data in commercial contexts (see also andrejevic, 2003; elmer, 2003). the uptake of digital media in campaigning is primarily about voter identification, persuasion, and mobilization in the service of very narrow electoral ends. this distinguishes these practices from the far more troubling consequences of surveillance by a repressive state (baruh, 2007) and the collection of data by governing bodies, which the supreme court has found threatens associational freedom (hunter, 2002). and from the selling of commercial wares. yet, this does not mean that there are not troubling downsides to the way that modern campaigns are conducted. while strategic and tailored political communication can increase turnout and electoral participation, particularly when compared with broadcast politics (kang, 2004), as a body of literature discussed throughout this article suggests, there are ample reasons for scholars to be concerned about the data and analysis practices of campaigns. for example, there is a pervasive lack of transparency around what data political campaigns and parties collect, purchase, and generate, as well as how it used in practice. ironically, this opacity regarding the practices of campaigning often comes from the very candidates that are at the forefront of calls for open government. citizens can legally access their fbi files, for instance, but have no legal right to see what the obama campaign knew about them. at the same time, there are widespread possibilities for data breaches, a concern that grows with each election cycle, given the increasingly sensitive information stored on citizens and the ways it is traded on an enormous, open and unregulated market. the general lack of regulation and transparency around this market of personal information also raises concerns regarding who has access to this data and how it is used in the context of democratic debate. data moves fluidly across commercial and political contexts. quasi-state actors, such as parties and campaigns, purchase data from commercial providers, just as corporate interests build their databases from a host of publicly available information. all of which means an increasing constellation of interests have the ability to track the social and intellectual associations of citizens. and, while campaigns have very transactional ends, the lack of transparency means that it is often hard to know where data is housed, who has access to it, and where it migrates once a mailto:topacademicjournals@gmail.com american journal of art and communication vol.8, issue 4; july-august 2023; issn: 2994-0540 impact factor: 6.91 1252 columbia rd nw, washington dc, united states https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac; mail: topacademicjournals@gmail.com 26 | american journal of art and communication | https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac candidate is elected. finally, data can be used to truncate public debate and narrow political representation. scholars have long feared a “democratic deficit” when campaigns can tailor their communication to particular voters, while ignoring sizable portions of the electorate. this means that candidates vie to represent segmented and small slices of the public. furthermore, the ability to compete in modern, data-driven campaigns comes at enormous fiscal cost, meaning that only the well-funded candidates can effectively compete. the sophisticated data gathering and analysis techniques of contemporary campaigns both catalyze political participation and undermine important democratic norms. given that much of the scholarly account of the 2008 elections, particularly that of obama’s campaign, has centered on digital technologies as a boon to electoral participation, this article seeks to spark a critical discussion of the data practices that underpin contemporary campaigning. this article draws from an older, established body of literature to provide an initial inquiry into a set of questions rarely considered in much scholarship on campaigning in the facebook and web 2.0 era, where networked technologies are celebrated for facilitating new modes of social relationships. we ask relatively simple questions: what political data is collected about citizens? what is it used for? who owns it? how is it stored, and with what consequences for democratic practice? in doing so, we hope to provide the initial groundwork for a larger discussion about the centrality of data gathering and analysis in contemporary campaigns. in keeping with our aim to begin a scholarly conversation, we do not provide the definitive theory of political data or a clear set of policy recommendations. simply raising the issue of political privacy is overdue and timely, particularly given the pervasive celebration of the impact of digital media, especially web 2.0 technologies, on democratic life. we begin by providing a brief history of political data practices, focusing on innovations that took shape over the last decade. we then detail the regulatory context in the united states around political data. finally, we issue a call for critical scholarly work on the generation, use, and storage of political data, given the potential implications of data for democratic practice. evidence for this article is drawn from a comprehensive review of primary and secondary sources, including journalistic reports and academic texts on new media campaigns, as well as the authors’ research work in other related contexts. a brief history of political data in the united states a series of institutional changes beginning in the 1960s are at the origins of the modern data practices of campaigns. one change was the move to direct primaries in the wake of the 1968 chicago democratic convention, given the crisis in democratic legitimacy (polsby, 1983). a second shift was the rise of political consultants as a distinct class of professionals independent of parties. this professional field helped develop new polling techniques, more sophisticated broadcast advertising and ways of working with television news, and new modes of fundraising, given that campaign finance reform in the 1970s capped the amount of money citizens and corporations could give to campaigns. together, these changes helped produce a new electoral environment with independent candidates, autonomous campaign organizations, and a thriving class of political consultants operating independently of, yet servicing, political parties. meanwhile, powerful advances in computing during mailto:topacademicjournals@gmail.com american journal of art and communication vol.8, issue 4; july-august 2023; issn: 2994-0540 impact factor: 6.91 1252 columbia rd nw, washington dc, united states https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac; mail: topacademicjournals@gmail.com 27 | american journal of art and communication | https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac the 1970s made data management skills and raw datasets stored on mainframes newly bankable assets for consultants and parties (howard, 2006; sabato, 1981; whitman & perkins, 2003). during this time, political professionals began thinking more seriously about their knowledge of the citizenry and the ways that it could be leveraged in the service of electoral ends. the important turning point towards more portable, national, and comprehensive data, however, came with “prospect direct mail,” developed in the 1980s. driven by republican innovations, direct mail enabled consultants and party operatives to micro-target political communication to discrete individuals, based on sophisticated knowledge of the electorate. consultants used small desktop machines to gather public and commercial information, such as magazine subscription lists, and to identify prospective donors and voters. by the 1990s, direct mail was a potent fund-raising and communications tool, and political marketing of this sort became a professional undertaking distinct from political communications and polling work. with elected leaders perpetually on the campaign trail, a constant flow of data about fundraising prospects and voter intent was crucial for dynamic image management (lees-marshment, 2002; scammell, 1996). republican party databases of the electorate during this time became much more national in scope. the democrats, however, lacked many of these systems. throughout the 1990s and well into the 2000s, the democratic party’s collection, storage, and analysis of data on the electorate was largely a haphazard affair, coordinated mostly by state parties or the stewards of local precincts. during this time, the internet emerged as a new technology for political campaigning. its use by campaigns was halting throughout much of the 1990s, as communications staffers and consultants largely appropriated it as a broadcast medium to push information out to undecided voters (foot & schneider, 2006). by the 2000 presidential election, however, it was increasingly clear to campaigns that many visitors to campaign web sites were already sympathetic to, if not supporting, the candidate (bimber & davis, 2003). in response, candidates began using the internet as a tool for mobilization, providing supporters with opportunities to contribute to finance and communication efforts. it was during this time that the twin features of internet campaigning emerged that defined the online efforts of the 2008 presidential cycle. both features were pioneered by democrats. the first came with respect to campaigns creating expanded opportunities for supporters to participate in the electoral process as active fundraisers, canvassers, and communication agents. al gore’s online campaign, for instance, enabled supporters to create and circulate their own personalized web pages to their friends and family. howard dean’s campaign explicitly made supporter participation in fundraising and electioneering a central part of the campaign’s strategy (kreiss, 2009). the campaign used commercial sites such as meetup and developed their own event planning tools to help supporters host fund-raisers and other events. dean’s internet staffers also developed and deployed tools that enabled supporters to create their own affinity group sites for dean, as well as an application that enabled supporters to create personalized fund-raising goals and reach out to their friends and family for contributions. mailto:topacademicjournals@gmail.com american journal of art and communication vol.8, issue 4; july-august 2023; issn: 2994-0540 impact factor: 6.91 1252 columbia rd nw, washington dc, united states https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac; mail: topacademicjournals@gmail.com 28 | american journal of art and communication | https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac the second feature was the development of the data infrastructure that helped campaigns coordinate this supporter involvement and reach the electorate. in this sense, the internet has largely “amplified” (agre, 2002) institutionalized campaign practices extending back over 40 years. after the 2004 election cycle, the veterans of presidential bids, especially those of dean and wesley clark, became political professionals specializing in digital media (kreiss, 2010). with lessons learned during 2004 in hand, they set out to develop better systems to manage interactions and communicate with supporters. after 2004, the firms founded by these professionals developed dedicated “customer relations management” (crm) systems for political purposes that enabled campaigns to keep better records on supporter involvement, including tracking donations and volunteer actions. these systems also provided campaigns with the capacity to send targeted e-mails to supporters based on any number of individual characteristics, from their zip codes and demographics to their level of involvement with the campaign. these online systems powerfully came together during the 2008 campaign cycle, especially on the obama campaign. whereas john kerry, the democratic nominee in 2004, lacked the basic capacity to e-mail all of his supporters, the obama campaign built an e-mail list of 13 million members that was continually segmented, depending on the action the campaign wanted supporters to perform. this e-mail list, in turn, was synched with both the log-in data on the campaign’s main barackobama.com site and with the 2 million profiles that supporters set up on the campaign’s mybarackobama.com platform. supporters used mybo to set up personal fund-raising pages and to plan visibility and other events for obama. the campaign then tracked this supporter involvement, telemarketing and e-mailing standout volunteers, and first-time donors to increase their involvement. the affordances of the internet offered new opportunities for the obama campaign to know its supporters and craft effective appeals. the analytics team within the new media division of the campaign—many staffers of which were engineers and analysts with extensive commercial experience— continually ran statistical tests on use of the site and on communications with voters to determine optimal content and design. for example, “cookies” installed on web browsers helped the obama campaign deliver content on barackobama.com tailored to each individual. analytics lay behind everything, from the shape, color, and content of the buttons asking individuals to donate to the content that first-time, repeat, and active users encountered on the site. the campaign continually tested the design and content of its e-mails by sending different versions to small samples of supporters. they then tracked the “clickthrough” rates of these e-mails, enabling the campaign to see which message resulted in more donations. all of these online data practices, in turn, were backed up by extensive databases on the electorate, which was behind obama’s extraordinarily successful field campaign. democrats finally caught up to the republicans in voter data during the 2008 cycle. the republican party had developed a national voter database in the mid-1990s called voter vault that integrated various direct mail databases. it went online for the 2002 midterm elections, mailto:topacademicjournals@gmail.com american journal of art and communication vol.8, issue 4; july-august 2023; issn: 2994-0540 impact factor: 6.91 1252 columbia rd nw, washington dc, united states https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac; mail: topacademicjournals@gmail.com 29 | american journal of art and communication | https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac providing a common interface for republican field organizers throughout the country to access and update the database based on field efforts. by 2004, it was reputed to have information on 168 million citizens. republicans were the widely acknowledged leader in voter identification and field turnout efforts throughout much of the 1990s and onward until dean’s tenure as the chair of the democratic party began in 2005. after evaluating a number of firms, dean hired voter activation network to develop votebuilder, an advanced interface launched in 2007 for field organizers to use in canvassing, event organizing, and volunteer management. the dnc subsequently provided this technology to state parties, while retaining their data. this arrangement ensured that one central national voter database, stewarded by the party, was being continuously updated with the on-the-ground data gained across election cycles. during the 2008 presidential cycle, candidates supplemented this party-supplied data with other voter databases of public, commercial, and generated data. the obama, clinton, and edwards campaigns, for instance, utilized the services of catalist, a private firm founded by prominent democratic political consultants and backed by george soros (edsall, 2006). the catalist database is reputed to encompass 450 points of data compiled from public and commercial sources on more than 250 million people in the united states. to a lesser extent, these campaigns used the services of aristotle, the most well-established and largest bipartisan provider of data, which is also often the subject of investigative journalists (verini, 2007; zetter, 2003). campaigns use these vast troves of data to generate profiles of their likely supporters and then build their voter contact operations around this modeling. these voter databases capture an extraordinary range of public, commercial, and generated information. public information includes voter registration, party identification, turnout records, vehicle registration, and zip code-based census data. commercial data entails everything from magazine subscriptions to credit card and grocery store “club-card” purchases. firms such as strategic telemetry poll groups of likely voters and then work backwards to figure out the demographic and lifestyle characteristics of likely supporters and undecided voters. for example, the obama campaign utilized strategic telemetry to develop complicated correlational data models that assigned each member of the electorate an overall score of 1–100 that indicated the voter’s predicted preference for obama. based on these scores, the firm generated a universe of targets that campaign volunteers then followed up with door-to-door or via phone. the data generated from these contacts were then used to test and update the models. these data and analysis practices in turn shaped everything from the campaign’s marketing and communications efforts to candidate visits to swing states. they were also behind a big innovation of the obama campaign: the merging of field efforts and new media. the campaign took the first, fraught steps toward integrating the national democratic party voter database with the online tools created for the campaign by the consulting firm blue state digital. in doing so, the campaign was better able to direct its distributed network of volunteers toward field efforts. for example, during the general election, the campaign opened up its voter files to volunteer canvassers across the country through calling tools such as “neighbor to neighbor,” which the democratic party had mailto:topacademicjournals@gmail.com american journal of art and communication vol.8, issue 4; july-august 2023; issn: 2994-0540 impact factor: 6.91 1252 columbia rd nw, washington dc, united states https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac; mail: topacademicjournals@gmail.com 30 | american journal of art and communication | https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac commissioned blue state digital to build for the nominee. this online tool enabled volunteers in uncontested states to call voters the campaign had targeted. campaign volunteers using “neighbor to neighbor” could access voter profiles through webbased systems. volunteers typically could see the address, age, gender, size of household, and primary language of a prospective voter. they could also see the results of previous canvasses. the volunteer was instructed to speak only to the targeted voter in question and was provided with an online script soliciting the voter’s preferences. the volunteer then recorded the outcome of the call instantly on mybo, according to predetermined response categories. the door-to-door canvas of voters to ascertain their likely poll behavior was thus supplemented with an online tool that enabled supporters to collect data on the national electorate from the convenience and comfort of their own homes. this not only increased the number of potential volunteers available for obama but also provided data on voter contacts to the campaign nearly instantaneously. field organizers, for instance, could dispatch volunteers based on the results of these calls. the integration of online, web-based tools, and voter databases is expected to become more sophisticated in the years to come. a number of early forays in this direction were pioneered by the obama campaign and other advocacy organizations. for example, the campaign gathered data from individuals who “friended” the campaign on commercial social networking sites such as facebook. this data was then synched with voter databases and used to organize youth volunteers in early primary states. the campaign’s facebook connect application, meanwhile, enabled supporters to urge their friends in early primary states to vote. this merging of voter registration files with social network data in such a way that leverages the data about links between people, not just variables about people (ambinder, 2008), is also taking root outside of electoral campaigns. moveon.org, a progressive advocacy organization, built an application called “vote poke” in partnership with catalist that allowed citizens to find out if friends in their online social networks were registered to vote and then reach out to them if they had not (stoller, 2008). finally, campaigns took initial forays into online advertising during this electoral cycle. spending on traditional cable and broadcast ads still dwarfed the online advertising budget, but the obama campaign used new media to deliver messages to targeted demographic and geographic groups. through online advertising networks, his campaign also targeted advertising based on browsing behavior. this targeting, in turn, was integrated across sites. a profile of the online advertising practices of the 2008 presidential campaigns describes it this way: for example, when people visit the volunteer section of the obama web site but click away without signing up, the campaign puts a cookie on their web browser. then, as surfers move around the web, the campaign looks for opportunities to bring them back. if they go to a parenting blog, obama can deliver an ad about education policy. if they read a story on a tech news site, the campaign can serve up something about technology policy. (green, 2008) mailto:topacademicjournals@gmail.com american journal of art and communication vol.8, issue 4; july-august 2023; issn: 2994-0540 impact factor: 6.91 1252 columbia rd nw, washington dc, united states https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac; mail: topacademicjournals@gmail.com 31 | american journal of art and communication | https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac these data practices can spur turnout in elections, and they amplify citizens’ ability to participate in institutionalized electoral activities. yet, as the next section reveals, the data practices of campaigns are generally unregulated and proceed almost entirely without public attention. the u.s. regulatory context despite the massive amount of political information generated by political campaigns and parties in the united states, these entities face almost no regulation with respect to the collection, use, storage, and dissemination of data on citizens. in contrast to the greater restrictions on the use of data for expressly commercial purposes (turow, 2006), provided they remain non-state actors, candidates and parties enjoy broad latitude with respect to their data practices, generally on the grounds that their ability to speak to citizens is protected by the first amendment. this section provides an overview of the patchwork of regulations that govern political data in the united states, then makes the case that scholars and citizens should be concerned about this lack of oversight, given advances in gathering, storing, analyzing, and acting upon data. there have long been distinctions between the use of data by official state agencies and representatives in the course of governance versus quasi-state agencies, such as parties and campaigns for the purposes of electioneering. there is, for instance, an extensive body of privacy law that governs the executive branch. the 1974 privacy act and the electronic communications privacy act, for example, restrict the types of data that federal agencies can collect while mandating how it is to be used, stored, and disclosed. outside of the executive branch, there are rules that govern other state actors. the franking commissions of the house and senate regulate congressional representatives by distinguishing between and setting separate rules for official governance and electioneering activities. for example, the rules issued by these commissions place restrictions on the types of content permitted in publicly funded messages to constituents, on the databases that can be used for e-mail communications, and on the information that can be posted on official web sites. the fear of potential abuse of data and of office is the logic undergirding these rules for state bodies and representatives concerning the use of data on the electorate. congress passed the privacy act in the wake of watergate, which revealed the pressing need to protect the citizenry from governmental surveillance. franking rules, which date from the earliest days of the republic, balance the need for representatives to communicate with their constituents on matters of state affairs with the value of competitive elections. in restricting some of the ways that congressional members may communicate with constituents, franking helps ensure that incumbents do not have an insurmountable electoral advantage. while there are defined data and communication rules for official state actors, these do not extend to the actions of candidates. the logic here is that candidates for higher office, as well as political parties, have a general right of free political expression. along these lines, lawmakers and courts have generally protected candidates and parties’ use of databases to know who to speak to and what to say. indeed, public information collected by state agencies serves as the foundation of the voter databases used by campaigns and parties. as noted, these databases mailto:topacademicjournals@gmail.com american journal of art and communication vol.8, issue 4; july-august 2023; issn: 2994-0540 impact factor: 6.91 1252 columbia rd nw, washington dc, united states https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac; mail: topacademicjournals@gmail.com 32 | american journal of art and communication | https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac include information on voter identification and party affiliation, voting history, division of motor vehicle records, and campaign donations. while the availability of much of this information is determined by each state in lieu of a federal standard for accessing and purchasing public data, there is a general lack of regulation and broad protection for its political use. the california voter foundation, for instance, produced a comprehensive report detailing the public information collected by each state and subsequently made available to third parties (alexander & mills, 2004). they found that most states do not restrict the use of this data by even commercial entities. in the meantime, expressly political organizations, such as campaigns, advocacy organizations, and parties enjoy broad exemptions from any restrictions under these state laws―as do the commercial companies that furnish their data. for example, in 2003 the california secretary of state created a voter privacy task force, the only one of its kind, charged with looking into the risks of potential misuse of this data. california more generally has been at the forefront of protecting data, both public and commercial. it even implemented the nation’s first mandatory data breach law. nonetheless, even in california companies such as aristotle, the washington dcbased political data company, occupy a gray area in state law. california courts have held that even though firms such as aristotle are commercial, the ultimate end users of the data are political campaigns, which enjoy broad exemptions from regulatory efforts (k. alexander, personal communication, march 4, 2009). as is clear, campaign organizations, parties, consultants, and the firms that provide services to them enjoy broad latitude with respect to their use of political data. with exemptions from even the minimal laws governing the use of public and commercial data, these quasi-state entities have a free hand to collect data on and target the electorate. at the same time, the federal government is inadvertently making the job of firms, such as aristotle, even easier. the federal “help america vote act of 2002,” designed to help prevent the election chaos in 2000 from happening again, requires states to create statewide voter databases for administration purposes. while many states have been slow to implement the law, eventually it will result in the creation of one central site in each state to which parties and commercial data providers can go to receive public information on voters. while maintaining voter lists and targeting the electorate are practices that date to the earliest days of party politics, the increasing sophistication of database technology is raising significant new concerns for democratic practice. few could have foreseen how the storage capacities of digital technologies, coupled with the ability of new media platforms to generate real-time social and behavioral information, have exponentially multiplied the data collected on citizens. as detailed in the next section, the lack of transparency with respect to data practices, the possibility for data breaches, the potential for deeper intrusions into the privacy of voters, and the thinning of democratic deliberation and representation all suggest the need to rethink the regulatory context around political data. campaign data and democratic citizens contemporary political campaigns are built around data. and, in many respects, citizens endorse its use in conjunction with the electoral process. many supporters not only voluntarily give data to political campaigns, mailto:topacademicjournals@gmail.com american journal of art and communication vol.8, issue 4; july-august 2023; issn: 2994-0540 impact factor: 6.91 1252 columbia rd nw, washington dc, united states https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac; mail: topacademicjournals@gmail.com 33 | american journal of art and communication | https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac but also, through canvassing, quite consciously generate data on their fellow citizens to help the candidates they support get elected. consultants and scholars alike suggest that knowing and speaking to the issues that most concern voters increases political engagement and voter turnout. given this, why should citizens and scholars care about the profusion of political data? the lack of transparency in political data as previously detailed, changes in political technologies greatly amplify the possibilities for collecting, storing, and acting on citizen data in electoral politics. yet, few citizens or scholars know about the information practices of contemporary campaigns because this work is generally hidden from view. with wide latitude to collect, process, store, and share data, these entities and digital political consultants pursue their informational work without much in the way of oversight or accountability. this basic lack of transparency exists at a time when, as our research suggests, political data is among the most valued commodities in the market for consultant services. candidates hire consultants who have access to data or contract out to firms, such as catalist and aristotle, for information on the electorate. meanwhile, through new media tools that make online behavior and networks visible and that support virtual canvassing, campaigns are generating and capturing more sophisticated forms of data on supporters and voters. given this, with the proliferation of data has come a widening gulf between what is collected and what citizens know is being catalogued and stored. political data receives scant public attention, in part because elected officials have little interest in holding hearings on practices that benefit them, and campaign consultants seldom speak to the press. journalistic reports are far and few between and tend to focus on high-profile incidents, such as a web site getting hacked or a breach in a database (stephey, 2008; zetter, 2003), rather than on the routine functioning of data systems. many kinds of political organizations, including political parties, lobbyists, industry associations, non-profit groups, and political action committees, reveal little about their use of political data. even as there is little in the way of transparency with respect to data practices, much suggests that very few people have the expectation that campaigns will collect records of their grocery store purchases to profile them ideologically. yet, the linkages between our credit card purchases, demographic profiles, and voter registration records are increasing as is the use of this information by actors we do not know for purposes that we cannot control (clark, 1994; howard, 2003). for example, credit card records about contraceptive, gun, and magazine purchases are valuable data for lobby groups working on abortion, firearm control, and other political issues (howard, 2006; carr, & milstein, 2005; sides & karch, 2008). even if citizens know about the information that has been collected on them―exceedingly rare, given the lack of transparency―there is no clear way for them to “opt out” of political datasets or manage the circulation and use of their private data. data security to an alarming extent, an increasing number of political databases are lost, accidentally exposed online, or hacked. mailto:topacademicjournals@gmail.com american journal of art and communication vol.8, issue 4; july-august 2023; issn: 2994-0540 impact factor: 6.91 1252 columbia rd nw, washington dc, united states https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac; mail: topacademicjournals@gmail.com 34 | american journal of art and communication | https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac a decade of journalistic coverage suggests that breaches in political data occur (businessweek, 2006; grossman, novak, & roston, 2004; sanders, 2001; tynan, 2004; zetter, 2003). between 1990 and 2006, there were some 600 high-profile incidents of compromised data records in commercial and political contexts internationally, most of which occurred in the united states (erickson & howard, 2007). these breaches occurred due to such factors as administrative errors, accidental posting to web sites, insider abuse or theft, missing or stolen hardware, and hacker attacks. while most of these incidents involved private firms, since 2000, a number have involved the information infrastructure of political parties. in the united states, political data has been sold to shore up the finances of failing firms (sanders, 2001), campaign web sites have been hacked (newsweek, 2008; glendinning, 2008), questionable data practices have been exposed (tynan, 2004), and american voter data has turned up in surprising places overseas (grossman, novak, & roston 2004). while breaches in data are a concern in any context, political data is particularly sensitive and a unique order of security threat and violation of voter trust. the data held by campaigns and parties is explicitly used for political purposes, and thus reveal levels of detail about policy preferences and ideological perspectives that are less relevant to the advertisers of consumer goods. moreover, given that most people do not realize the degree to which the world of campaigns, elections, and political discourse is data driven, a breach is not just the loss of personal privacy but also an occasion for diminished faith in publicly supervised political processes. political privacy and freedom of association political privacy, and with it a freedom of association, is uniquely at risk with the increasing sophistication and use of voter databases. as hunter (2002) argues, a tradition of supreme court jurisprudence developed over the last half century protects anonymous speech and associational privacy. in doing so, the high court articulated a general value of “political privacy” that protects “a space apart, free from the gaze and influence of other citizens, political parties, the government, and business interests, where individuals can develop and experiment with their political views.” in each of these domains, privacy helps ensure robust public debate by providing the opportunity for citizens to form their own viewpoints, craft arguments, and develop political identities free from state surveillance and public pressures to conform to social norms. the logic is that if citizens are constantly being watched, they will be less likely to state their opinions or freely choose with whom to associate. at the same time, privacy also provides a secure environment for social movements and activists to prepare for engagement with the state. a number of striking cases demonstrate the consequences of the loss of political privacy and the value of remaining anonymous. the red scare in the united states during the 1950s, for example, laid bare the hazards of providing the state with associational data. while candidates and parties do not engage in these types of state-sponsored repression, given the lack of transparency around the data practices of campaigns, it is not always clear how data travels across legal contexts and organizational boundaries. theoretically, the rules that separate constituent service data from voter profiling mailto:topacademicjournals@gmail.com american journal of art and communication vol.8, issue 4; july-august 2023; issn: 2994-0540 impact factor: 6.91 1252 columbia rd nw, washington dc, united states https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac; mail: topacademicjournals@gmail.com 35 | american journal of art and communication | https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac data are designed to prevent the state from building an organizational memory of citizen associations (c. hoofnagle, personal communication, february 20, 2009). yet, even while there are restrictions on how elected representatives can communicate as agents of the state, the massive amounts of data collected for electoral and advocacy campaigns does not simply disappear when a candidate wins office. perpetual campaign organizations and political parties hold the political information generated during electoral campaigns and make use of it to achieve policy aims, given that they are not considered arms of the state under the law. this is illustrated by the way that president obama's extensive database of voter information, built up over the course of his primary and general election campaigns, changed hands soon after his election. this data is estimated to include the widely reported 13 million e-mail addresses, 7 million cell phone numbers, and data on 2.4 million facebook and 2 million mybo users, alongside the 223 million pieces of information that citizens volunteered about themselves to canvassers during the course of the election. while the white house cannot directly use this information for political purposes (rutenberg & nagourney, 2009), obama’s campaign team built an entirely new organization within the democratic party to house this data. organizing for america is an independent organization that coordinates its activities with the communications team of the administration in using the e-mail list to speak directly to the campaign’s supporters on policy matters (ibid.). to date, organizing for america has used the list to mobilize obama’s campaign supporters in conjunction with pressing congress to pass obama’s 2009 stimulus plan and 2010 health care reform. this suggests the ways in which political data exists in perpetuity and can migrate to other contexts— often with little transparency to the movement of these databases and without the consent of those who are profiled. this is particularly troubling with respect to the ways that the affordances of digital media give strategic actors the ability to track social and intellectual associations. data and the democratic deficit outside of concerns over political privacy, in the hands of political consultants, data are a potent tool through which to segment the electorate. public debate may be becoming more narrow as campaigns use detailed data on citizens to craft narrow political appeals to receptive audiences, while ignoring those either ideologically opposed to their message or unengaged in the political process. public discourse suffers whenever political actors segment the population and narrowcast information, because such fragmentation allows them to decide which citizens are worth engaging. this is occurring to such an extent that bennett & manheim (2006) argue that digital media are facilitating a “one-step flow” of political communication. in their assessment, elite actors are “increasingly less likely to ‘lead’ because they are more likely to reinforce latent opinions than to reframe them” (p. 213). this is clear in the ways that candidates and parties are most interested in identifying the people who will support them on election day. they will spend resources to engage citizens who might lean their way on a given issue and focus on creating narrow appeals that will have a maximal effect, given the political preferences they have identified through analytic modeling. mailto:topacademicjournals@gmail.com american journal of art and communication vol.8, issue 4; july-august 2023; issn: 2994-0540 impact factor: 6.91 1252 columbia rd nw, washington dc, united states https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac; mail: topacademicjournals@gmail.com 36 | american journal of art and communication | https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac the corollary to this phenomenon is that candidates are free to ignore entire slices of the electorate. campaign consultants have demonstrated that they will not spend significant resources engaging citizens who tend not to vote—often the urban poor and ethnic minorities (howard, 2006). why attempt to educate and energize people who have no history of voting and may seem politically marginal? in essence, while targeted communication may increase turnout among certain segments of the population, data also allows political actors to identify which citizens should be left entirely out of the conversation. on another level, contemporary data practices narrow political representation. one way that this happens is through affecting electoral competition, as the best voter data files and analytic services are often only available to wealthy candidates and parties. while networked technologies have made it easier to collect vast amounts of information about people, integrating, storing, and analyzing that data remains expensive. this means that data (and knowledge) itself is a form of campaign asset that is most often available to incumbents and large parties. less well-funded and insurgent candidates challenging their party’s standard-bearers often do not have access to the same intelligence on the electorate. meanwhile, the power of well-financed lobbyists, advocacy organizations, and incumbents is greatly amplified by large relational datasets. another consequence of increasingly sophisticated data on the electorate is a problem that has drawn increasing scholarly attention: gerrymandering. geographic information systems afford the layering of electorate data onto maps to allow elected officials to redraw congressional districts. a classic dilemma in democratic theory concerns the role of elected representatives: should she be simply a mouthpiece for constituents, or does her election empower her to speak of her own views? with expansive political data on individual citizens, this dilemma is solved by enabling elected officials to actually embody the represented, creating districts that faithfully resemble officials’ own views, as they can meticulously group voters in geographic space according to ideology, affiliation, and demographics. conclusion there is little to suggest that data transparency and regulation will come about on its own. the interests of our political leadership and large data mining firms are closely aligned against the state regulation that would secure transparency in data practices. indeed, these actors pay much lip service to information security to avoid discussion of the much more troubling undermining of political privacy. at the same time, the scholarly literature has celebrated the seemingly new forms of collective action and uncoordinated, bottom-up types of political participation made possible by digital media. yet, the technical infrastructure that underpins this online action, and the professionals who work behind the scenes with data to identify voters and coordinate collective action, remain largely unanalyzed. interfaces, databases, and consultancies form the largely invisible backend to web 2.0 politics. the opaqueness of this industry has meant that there is little discussion of the consequences of these data practices for democratic life. yet, this discussion could not be more timely. the lack of transparency and security in political data raises significant concerns for citizens. political privacy and freedom of association have the potential to be undermined as databases grow mailto:topacademicjournals@gmail.com american journal of art and communication vol.8, issue 4; july-august 2023; issn: 2994-0540 impact factor: 6.91 1252 columbia rd nw, washington dc, united states https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac; mail: topacademicjournals@gmail.com 37 | american journal of art and communication | https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac more expansive, enduring, and centralized. we also have to seriously worry about a democratic deficit where only the wealthiest candidates can seriously compete, and where vast swaths of the citizenry remain unengaged in the political process. while this article is intended to start the scholarly conversation on the generally invisible back end of internet campaigning, based on a comparative work on political privacy (howard & kreiss, 2009), we have identified some first steps for policy makers and scholars. for example, as a start, data practices and storehouses of information should be made transparent and accessible. citizens should have the means to find out what data is collected and stored about them and have the ability to opt out of political databases. parties and candidates should be required to develop privacy statements that cover the full range of personal data they manage and clearly state how political information is used, who it is shared with, what it entails, and how it is gathered. political data should be subject to the same breach reporting requirements that many states currently mandate of commercial providers. together, transparency and security would help to ensure that databases of citizens are more accurate, secure, private, and reliable, while raising public awareness of the flow of information about them. meanwhile, much more scholarly work is needed into the democratic effects of the data-driven polity. as this article suggests, advances in networked technologies have not only brought about opportunities for political participation in some domains but also the explosion of political data on individual citizens. as this data is carried across electoral cycles and continually updated, our profiles evolve alongside our political beliefs. in the process, we are marketed to and monitored to an unprecedented extent. our social and intellectual associations are tracked for the political marketers and elected officials who can tailor their appeals to us, based on some of our most intimate characteristics. accordingly, we lose opportunities for inclusive and substantive democratic debate. references agre, p.e. 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(2006). niche envy: marketing discrimination in the digital age. cambridge, mass: mit press. mailto:topacademicjournals@gmail.com american journal of art and communication vol.8, issue 4; july-august 2023; issn: 2994-0540 impact factor: 6.91 1252 columbia rd nw, washington dc, united states https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac; mail: topacademicjournals@gmail.com 41 | american journal of art and communication | https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac verini, j. (2007, december 13). big brother, inc. vanity fair. retrieved september 28, 2010, from http://www.vanityfair.com/politics/features/2007/12/aristotle200712 whitman, j. m., & perkins, j.w. (2003). the technological evolution of campaigns: a look at new and emerging practices. in r. p. watson & c. c. campbell (eds.), campaigns and elections: issues, concepts, and cases (pp. 47–56). washington, d.c.: lynne rienner publishers. zetter, k. (2003, december 11). for sale: the american voter. wired. retrieved from september 28, 2010, http://www.wired.com/politics/security/news/2003/12/61543 mailto:topacademicjournals@gmail.com technology and the changing idea of news: 2001 u.s. newspaper content at the maturity of internet 1.0 american journal of art and communication vol.8, issue 3; may-july 2023; issn: 2994-0540 impact factor: 6.91 1252 columbia rd nw, washington dc, united states https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac; mail: topacademicjournals@gmail.com 8 | american journal of art and communication | https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac digital transition: impact on u.s. newspaper content in 2001" sarah elizabeth anderson university of illinois at chicago abstract this content analysis examines the evolution of internet news in 2001, a significant year when traditional print media transitioned to the online realm. the study delves into the "who, what, when, where, why, and how" aspects of news stories, revealing intriguing trends. notably, news articles exhibited a growth in length and a heightened focus on providing comprehensive explanations of events. group-centric narratives gained prominence over individual-centric ones, with officials and external sources assuming greater roles. the shift to the digital landscape brought nuanced changes, aligning with traditional journalism's trajectory while redefining some aspects. local markets emerged as a renewed focus, emphasizing the interconnectedness of events within the community. news stories multiplied and began linking events to historical contexts, fostering a deeper understanding of their significance. moreover, the geographical scope of news coverage became more localized, reflecting a reversal of a century-long trend. this research underscores the dynamic nature of news dissemination in the digital age, shedding light on how news reporting has evolved while preserving the professional authority of journalists. these findings contribute to our understanding of the transformative impact of online platforms on the field of journalism. keywords: internet news, content analysis, journalism, news evolution, digital transition. introduction continuing prior research on print news, a content analysis provides baseline data on internet news for 2001. by that year, a point when most of the u.s. press had moved online, the “who, what, when, where, why, and how” of stories continued the trends found previously. stories grew longer and had more explanations of how and why. they emphasized more groups than individuals, and more individuals were officials or outside sources. the changes suggest that news after moving onto web 1.0 continued its former trajectory, enhancing the professional authority of journalists. but once online, the newspapers began refocusing on local markets and on the idea of connecting events. news stories included many more events and linked them to others in history. and the locations of news stories moved closer to the places where people act as citizens, reversing a century-long trend. in 1901, u.s. news was understood as the rapid transmission of many stories. reporters had recently developed the doctrine of the scoop, or first report (and the exclusive, or unique report). their definition of news emerged as the telegraph and telephone, along with wire services, became a network for covering the who, what, when, mailto:topacademicjournals@gmail.com american journal of art and communication vol.8, issue 3; may-july 2023; issn: 2994-0540 impact factor: 6.91 1252 columbia rd nw, washington dc, united states https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac; mail: topacademicjournals@gmail.com 9 | american journal of art and communication | https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac and where of journalism. an important story from washington would be printed as a stack of updates, in reverse chronological order, just as they came over the wire (barnhurst & nerone, 2001). the technology was an expression of event-centered reporting. ° earlier versions of the study were delivered to the political communication section, american political science association, august 31, 2002, and to the first nordic conference on innovation journalism, helsinki university, finland, september 25, 2009. thanks to matthew and joel barnhurst for coding assistance and to the faculty, staff, and fellows of the shorenstein center for feedback as the project developed. by the end of the 20th century, dictionaries and everyday conversations still defined news as a first report of events, but the news stories that u.s. journalists wrote had changed. an important political report from washington had to analyze and interpret what happened (barnhurst, 1991). as a result, news stories became generally longer, more analytical, and focused on interpretation, affecting every other aspect of news: who shifted to officials and interest groups, what shifted to fewer episodes, when to past and future contexts, and where to larger domains. the beginning of the 21st century was a pivotal moment when internet 1.0 was mature and internet 2.0 had not emerged. online newspapers were still young and unprofitable, and many publishers were not yet producing content initially for the web edition, preferring a more economical routine: mounting the text of their print edition online (barnhurst, 2002). but reporters were using networked resources to gather information and find connections among related events, past as well as present. editors and publishers had begun to think about competition from the internet, and scholars considered the worldwide web capable of enlarging what herbert blumer (1969) had called the media arena. did news content change when newspapers first moved onto the early internet? the answer matters because changes in the news historically have accompanied shifts in the power of the press and of journalists (barnhurst & nerone, 2001). a century earlier, news work was an industrial occupation, a form of piecework paid for by the line, and news workers (with few exceptions) had low status compared to politicians (weber, 1921/1958). each day’s newspaper published hundreds of brief items, with little differentiation among them and often without much discernible impact. in the 20th century, journalism became a salaried profession that required a college degree and conferred a status equal to or surpassing that of politicians. the new, long-form journalism of explanation helped advance the role of journalists, who became analysts passing judgment on events. political scientists argued that journalism had become a political institution (sparrow, 1999; cook, 1998; iyengar & reeves, 1997), but it remains unclear whether journalists continued expanding their interpretative role after the internet emerged. journalism practices of 2001 have now become the province of journalism history. in the intervening decade, u.s. journalism entered a crisis. newspapers began to shed thousands of jobs, shuttered their doors, or went online entirely. magazines like the nation held forth on cures for the death of journalism, and the u.s. senate held hearings on the future of newspapers, where web and print publishers exchanged barbs over business models, intellectual property, and the fate of the informed citizenry. what missed opportunities, wrong turns, or mailto:topacademicjournals@gmail.com american journal of art and communication vol.8, issue 3; may-july 2023; issn: 2994-0540 impact factor: 6.91 1252 columbia rd nw, washington dc, united states https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac; mail: topacademicjournals@gmail.com 10 | american journal of art and communication | https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac bright spots occurred at the moment when newspapers online reached critical mass? the analysis of mainstream content in 2001 presented here is a snapshot of the emergence of online news. early studies of online news sites the 1990s were a decade of high expectations for the internet and criticism of mainstream news organizations. in an early examination of online journalism, tom koch predicted that the then-new electronic technologies would “empower writers and reporters” and “eventually redefine the form of news in specific and of public information in general” (1991, p. xxiii). the result would “be a change in the narrative form currently accepted without thought by the contemporary news writer and editor” (p. 129). news written to convey the five ws emphasizes what happened, the boundary event: “information at this level of the boundary is naïve, without interpretation” (p. 130). the only interpretation it allows comes in quotations from official sources, and journalists risk acting as transcribers of official statements, or worse, making confused statements by officials seem coherent and authoritative. but a wealth of online information sources would allow reporters to change news in two ways. by supplying more background, drawing easily, for example, on the archive of previously published news, reporters could transform their narratives “from the ephemeral or trivial to the contextual story” (p. 134). by enlarging the temporal and geographic purview, reporters could expand the scale of news: “the death of an overweight man during surgery becomes, in this manner, a part of the mosaic of anesthetic misapplication and an element in the debate over medical insurance, tort reform, or physician review” (p. 143). a 1995 survey (ross, 1998) found that only 17% of newspapers had an online edition (although 52% had plans to begin publishing electronically). but reporters were already beginning to use online information (47% at least weekly and 30% less frequently). the respondents used the internet for a full range of reporting activities: research and reference (66%), downloading data (57%), e-mailing sources (57%), reading publications (45%), finding experts (41%), consulting press releases (26%), and gathering images (21%). a few years later, when estimates of the number of internet users rose to nearly 10 million worldwide, jon katz asked “whether papers will finally accept reality and radically change, or whether they prefer to die” (1997, p. 44). although he applauded the usefulness of newsprint, the sense of place found in local coverage, and the factual reliability of professional reporting, he called for a “journalism radically rearranged to become . . . better written, more sophisticated” (p. 68). print journalism should provide “the analysis and context of the stories we all heard about on tv the night before” (p. 68): “for history, significance and context, you want a newspaper with a squadron of experienced washington reporters” (p. 69). anecdotal evidence from the period suggested that working online was changing news stories. cornelia grumman of the chicago tribune, “a new breed of journalist” (harper, 1998, p. 73) producing the internet edition, found writing stories for online publication frustrating: “she started on the newspaper’s print side, where she covered suburban police departments. ‘my first instinct was to do quick hits,’ she recalls. ‘they went nowhere. they were up for a day and, boom, they’re gone’” (p. 77). she began writing complex stories, such as her analysis of a mailto:topacademicjournals@gmail.com american journal of art and communication vol.8, issue 3; may-july 2023; issn: 2994-0540 impact factor: 6.91 1252 columbia rd nw, washington dc, united states https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac; mail: topacademicjournals@gmail.com 11 | american journal of art and communication | https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac murder and police investigation, “who killed stacey frobel?” she compiled “a chronology of events, a list of the people involved in the crime and investigation, and a variety of background stories” (pp. 77–78), and her work stayed longer on the site and got more readers involved. in 1998, digital journalism was still in its infancy and experiencing growing pains, including the fear that the electronic edition might replace print. the internet loomed large as a threat but also built expectations for new ways of reporting and writing. few publishers in 1998 allowed the internet to scoop their print editions, and few journalists were “doing much original reporting on their web sites,” let alone developing “new storytelling techniques” (ross, 1998, p. 156). by 2000, 53% of print newspapers in north america had an electronic edition (norris, 2001). u.s. surveys from that year indicate that one in three americans were going online for news at least weekly (up from one in five in 1998). u.s. users were spending more time online but visiting a narrower range of sites. of thousands of web sites with information on a topic, only a handful accounted for the bulk of traffic. for news, three old-media companies—nbc (through cnbc), cnn, and the new york times—accounted for three-quarters of online traffic. a comparison of content from the two versions of six small colorado newspapers found that their online editions included fewer than half the stories from the print editions (singer, 2001). publishers withheld information to make the print editions more valuable to subscribers, and some used the web to advertise the added content in print. newspaper staffers produced most of the content initially for print, and the papers then ran identical text online (at most changing a headline or restoring paragraphs cut from the print version). reports that appeared online only were almost always from wire services, and web editions had more sports and fewer business stories. stories less often had images online (18%) than in print (48%). electronic editions from larger u.s. markets of the period had not reinvented the print product (barnhurst, 2002). web versions reproduced the substance and feel of their print editions for readers. reading online required multiple screen jumps and scrolls, but added few features such as hyperlinks or interactive resources. the text online appeared with fewer illustrations, just as in the colorado study, but unlike smaller newspapers, those from larger markets shoveled almost all their content online. the print publishers used a web presence as a placeholder to guard their local markets. although the internet had become a global medium, newspapers online tended to focus on local markets (chyi & sylvie, 2001). their market strategy raised barriers to alternative media entering the news arena. newspaper publishers had moved quickly to establish an online presence, but were slow to exploit new technology. reporters did adopt electronic techniques for gathering information and interacting with sources, but any shifts in story content had not been measured. historical studies have shown that the definition of news is always evolving. newspapers began moving away from transcribing official events after the mid-19th century (schudson, 1982), and they moved away from descriptive campaign coverage after the mid-20th century (patterson, 1993). on television, the shrinking sound bite pointed to the growth of analysis within news content (hallin, 1992; adatto, 1993). the vocabulary of news mailto:topacademicjournals@gmail.com american journal of art and communication vol.8, issue 3; may-july 2023; issn: 2994-0540 impact factor: 6.91 1252 columbia rd nw, washington dc, united states https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac; mail: topacademicjournals@gmail.com 12 | american journal of art and communication | https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac became more focused on change and on experts and data, while shifting away from human relationships (danielson & lasorsa, 1998). by century’s end, news media around the world no longer transmitted information without adding interpretation (freeman, 2000). journalists had become direct participants “no longer constrained by a need to place newsmakers’ words and actions at the center of the story” (patterson, 2000, p. 14). journalists also noted the change. bill kovach and tom rosenstiel observed that journalists spent “more time looking for something to add to the existing news, usually interpretation” (2001, p. 77). a large project had tracked the redefinition of news over the course of the 20th century. u.s. newspapers shifted emphasis to social problems and interpretations; stories grew longer, focused away from specific locations to broader regions, emphasized more history, and cited more groups, officials, and outside sources, while naming fewer ordinary people (barnhurst & mutz, 1997). newspaper format shifted away from pages filled with many small items and shifted toward spatial arrays that journalists designed to explain events (barnhurst & nerone, 1991). as politicians’ speech diminished on television, journalists tended to hold their ground and offered more judgments about politics (steele & barnhurst, 1996). newscasts adopted more dramatic forms, playing journalists’ images larger and more often on screen (barnhurst & steele, 1997). even on national public radio (npr), political reports on daily news programs grew longer by 2000, while becoming more interpretative and less neutral in tone (barnhurst, 2003). journalists acted as expert sources and they shifted from recounting to evaluating events. by the end of the 20th century, the trends across media outlets were strong: toward more analytical and explanatory news stories, with more reliance on official and expert sources, more references to past and future events, and more attention to wider geographical areas. journalists moved closer to the center of political life, acting as intermediaries who interpreted events. observers at the turn of the new century saw the internet as an agent for more democratic distribution of information. but was it so? this study examines newspaper content online in 2001, as internet editions became the rule, to discover whether the trends of the previous century continued in the new medium. a study on online newspapers did changes occur in the five ws of news writing and reporting once newspapers went online? to answer that question, this study replicates earlier research (barnhurst & mutz, 1997), which analyzed content for a century in three newspapers selected to represent a range of larger markets and to span geographical regions: the new york times, chicago tribune, and portland oregonian. the three newspapers operated web sites representing the spectrum of online newspapers in 2001. all three provided access to content from their print editions in different ways (barnhurst, 2002). the times reproduced the authoritative quality of its print edition, enhanced with a range of multimedia and interactive supplements. the chicago tribune operated a comprehensive city-based web portal that integrated print edition content with interactive response mechanisms and links to archives and current listings, such as sports scores and film reviews. the oregonian was part of a larger web portal, oregonlive, which had a range of content typical among city portals, but the newspaper site was separate and neither integral to the portal (as was the tribune) nor capable of interactive technology (as were both other sites). no selection of mailto:topacademicjournals@gmail.com american journal of art and communication vol.8, issue 3; may-july 2023; issn: 2994-0540 impact factor: 6.91 1252 columbia rd nw, washington dc, united states https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac; mail: topacademicjournals@gmail.com 13 | american journal of art and communication | https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac a few sites can represent the entire industry, but the three provide a snapshot of several early approaches for generating an online site from established print newspapers. the study analyzed the same topics as the previous research—employment, crimes, and accidents—but added a fourth, politics, and adopted categories and definitions from prior studies. a nonprobability sample was necessary because archives are not commensurable to each day’s live news site and because previous research found that probability sampling introduced errors in coding internet newspapers (singer, 2001). a purposive sample of stories was drawn during three consecutive weeks in late july 2001, a period away from the distortions of major events, holidays, or elections, just before the august legislative recesses and vacations. for each topic, an exhaustive search began from the home page, moved through the site following the order of the navigation bar, and used the site search engine to find additional stories. the selection adhered to the protocol established in the previous study (barnhurst & mutz, 1997), gathering all stories for each topic, classifying stories inclusively, and continuing daily until reaching a total of 40 stories per topic from each newspaper site. the strategy produced 160 stories per newspaper, and 480 stories in all including wire stories. for each story, coders noted the site, date, and topic of the story, whether it was staff or wire copy, its location on a home or secondary page, and the presence of links and images. coders counted the number of individuals and groups and the roles they played in the stories. they indicated mentions of current events, past and future periods, and changes over time. locations included street address, city or town, state, region, u.s. national, and foreign or international. coders also counted the number of times stories explained how or why events occurred. besides descriptors, the coders made three subjective assessments, rating story length (on a scale from 1 for very brief to 5 for very long) and emphasis (on a scale from 1 for the most eventcentered reporting to 10 for the most general news analysis), as in the previous study (barnhurst & mutz, 1997). they also rated the tone (on a scale from 1 for negative to 5 for positive, with 3 for mixed and ambiguous as well as neutral) of the story, a measure not included in the previous study but common in political communication research (e.g., patterson, 1993). after the initial coder processed a small sample of stories, an identically trained coder went through the same procedure. given the complexity of the coding scheme, the reliability was quite high (averaging .89) and ranged in predictable ways (from .98 to .76), with higher coefficients for simple descriptive observations and with marginally adequate coefficients for subjective ratings. the results stood up under inspection. the major findings proved consistent across news topics and across newspaper sites, usually following trends in previous research. testing also showed that sampling error could not account for differences (analysis of variance, f, with post hoc scheffe tests). to understand results contrary to previous trends, e-mail exchanges and interviews with journalists, including staff members from the three newspapers, provided insight into their experiences with online editions. the trends continue a post-hoc comparison of the study articles in print editions showed only minor differences (in headlines, datelines, and the like) in the texts themselves. the greatest contrast between print and internet editions was the flow of wire-service content online. different versions of the same event appeared on the same day’s site, mailto:topacademicjournals@gmail.com american journal of art and communication vol.8, issue 3; may-july 2023; issn: 2994-0540 impact factor: 6.91 1252 columbia rd nw, washington dc, united states https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac; mail: topacademicjournals@gmail.com 14 | american journal of art and communication | https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac generated by the newspaper staff, the associated press, reuters, and so forth, as well as near-duplicate postings, especially in the case of the new york times. the versions provided variation without difference, with the same events rendered in similar (or identical) ways. to compare the newspapers’ 2001 online content to the print content of the earlier study, this analysis included the staff-produced stories and excluded any duplicates. the current study is a conservative measure, coming after one-third the interval of the prior study, which sampled at 20-year intervals until 1994. any changes in the shorter time until 2001 would likely have been small by comparison. and, in general, the stories did continue earlier trends for length, explanation, and identifying groups and individuals. length, emphasis & tone the first question is whether the news had continued growing longer. over the previous century, stories grew on a scale from 1 to 5, from just under 2 in 1894 to just above 3 in 1994 (barnhurst & mutz, 1997, p. 32). by 2001, news stories had grown a bit more, to just above 3.5 on the scale (table 1). the increase matched an earlier jump in the 1970s and continued the trend that had leveled off between 1974 and 1994. (the previous study included mailto:topacademicjournals@gmail.com american journal of art and communication vol.8, issue 3; may-july 2023; issn: 2994-0540 impact factor: 6.91 1252 columbia rd nw, washington dc, united states https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac; mail: topacademicjournals@gmail.com 15 | american journal of art and communication | https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac some wire stories, which tend to be shorter and less analytical, with fewer explanations of how and why events occur.) the three newspapers lined up predictably, with the times running the longest and the oregonian the shortest (f = 11.09; for all tests reported here, the degrees of freedom are 2, 312), a pattern that held for most years in the previous study. until the 1970s, accident stories had consistently run the shortest, often well below crime stories, which came next in length every year. then in the 1990s, accident stories grew longer, and crime stories dropped slightly below them, a direction that continued in 2001. employment stories always ran longer in previous years, just as they did in 2001. the longest stories dealt with politics, a topic not included in the previous study. the spread between the longest and shortest topics is sensible but very small (f = 2.62, p = .051). a more complicated question is whether news grew more analytical, as it had in the previous century. measured on a 10-point scale, the emphasis had started below 2 in 1894, peaking at 3 in 1974 before dropping back somewhat (barnhurst & mutz, 1997). by 2001, the tendency had rebounded, reaching 4 on the scale (see table 1). even so, the reports remained lower than in other media, such as npr news (barnhurst, 2003). the four topics spread out predictably (f = 6.96), with stories about politics and employment including markedly more analysis than those about crime and accidents. the news sites differed as well (f = 4.84). results for the chicago tribune site differed more from the oregonian than from the times. the articles came from news columns, not opinion or editorial pages, and the only article labeled news analysis appeared in the times. the growth in length correlates logically with the expanding analysis, which requires more words (pearson correlation coefficient between length and emphasis is .64, p < .001, for the 313 cases). to give a picture of the range from shortest to longest and from most event-centered to most analysis-centered, consider a political report from the times alongside a crime report from the oregonian. the times article, “cities and their suburbs are seen growing as units” (july 10, 2001, national page), describes a report the united states conference of mayors released. rated high on the scale of emphasis (an 8), it explains the role of cities in creating jobs during the 1990s, reviews the urban renaissance beginning in the 1980s, and cites statistics on the gross metropolitan product as a growing share of national wealth and industrial output. it indicates that the mayors are about to mount a campaign “to pressure state and federal governments to invest more resources into metropolitan areas.” geographically, the story includes six major cities, as well as five minor ones. it compares the economies of several large u.s. cities to those of taiwan, australia, and south korea, and it reports the results from trade offices that u.s. cities have established in london and in china and germany. the story draws on research from an economic forecasting company and quotes two outside sources, an urban analyst with the fannie mae foundation and a brookings institution center director. a photo of the conference of mayors president accompanied the story, along with links to census maps, charts, and interactive features and to a discussion forum. all this took space, and the story rated among the longest in the sample (a 5). at the other extreme, an oregonian story, “sex offender alert” (july 24, 2001, local page), lists the name, age, physical description, address, and criminal record of a man convicted of sodomy several times, and it reports that he “is in compliance with the terms of his supervision,” then identifies his probation officer and provides contact mailto:topacademicjournals@gmail.com american journal of art and communication vol.8, issue 3; may-july 2023; issn: 2994-0540 impact factor: 6.91 1252 columbia rd nw, washington dc, united states https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac; mail: topacademicjournals@gmail.com 16 | american journal of art and communication | https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac information. the story received the lowest score for emphasis and the shortest for length (a “1” for both), running a single paragraph of text without images or links. crime reports were the briefest and least analytical on the whole, but similar coverage ran for some political stories, such as the election list in an oregonian report, “candidates file in droves for local agencies” (july 18, 2001, local page). journalists provided news analysis through the how and why of their stories (see table 1). to explain how events occur, a story describes the relationship among them and with the context, drawing out the implications or recommending responses. for example, the times report on cities explains how the mayors’ call for more federal investment relates to the context of declining schools, along with urban congestion and suburban sprawl that accompanied economic growth. the differences in the frequency of explaining were not small (f = 3.65), and the biggest difference among the news sites was between the tribune and the times. to explain why events occur, the journalists described the causes, problems, and collective social issues or themes behind the news. the times report on cities, for example, explains why the mayors have issued their appeal by arguing that metropolitan areas are not usually under a single or unified government and “do not have strong advocates” elsewhere in the u.s. system of government. the topics differed in the frequency of reporting why events occurred (f = 4.21). crime was especially low in explanations of why, differing markedly from politics and employment stories. on the scale for tone, the content in 2001 rated below the neutral point (of 3.0 on the 5-point scale; see table 1), more negative than npr coverage for most years (barnhurst, 2003). the news sites also varied (f = 3.59), with the oregonian slightly in the negative zone and the times even more negative. comparing topics, political reports were more negative, just as in the case of npr news. in print they rated the same as crime. employment reports were not as negative, and accident reports were, surprisingly, the only topic to be neutral (or a hair more positive than neutral), although the differences were slight. as reporting moved toward longer stories with more analysis and explanation, what changes had occurred in the other components of reporting: who, what, when, and where? who mailto:topacademicjournals@gmail.com american journal of art and communication vol.8, issue 3; may-july 2023; issn: 2994-0540 impact factor: 6.91 1252 columbia rd nw, washington dc, united states https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac; mail: topacademicjournals@gmail.com 17 | american journal of art and communication | https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac the number of named individuals, which had fallen from more than 1 per story in 1894 to below .04 in 1994 (barnhurst & mutz, 1997, p. 37), continued to dwindle; it was a negligible element in the 2001 reports (table 2). but referring to individuals by description, not by name, occurred in three out of four stories. the topics also differed (f = 8.09), with politics markedly unlike crime and accident stories, and employment differing from crime stories. in other words, crime stories were most likely to describe actors (perpetrators) or officials without naming them, and politics stories the least likely. a standard form of identification emerged; a typical report included five persons presented by name and description. the news sites differed (f = 7.18), with the times the most likely and the oregonian the least likely to follow the standard. topics also differed (f = 4.58), with stories on politics higher than stories on crime or employment. that is, in the most analytical news site and for the topics most amenable to analysis, journalists often used the name-plus-description formula. although individuals continued to appear in the news, groups came to outnumber them, growing from three per story in 1894 and peaking at almost six in 1974 (barnhurst & mutz, 1997). in 2001, the number was even larger, so that on average a report mentioned more than 8 groups. the differences emerged among topics (f = 7.84), with politics stories again the most likely to mention groups, especially compared to crime and accident stories. group mentions in reports on employment were also higher than in crime reports. mailto:topacademicjournals@gmail.com american journal of art and communication vol.8, issue 3; may-july 2023; issn: 2994-0540 impact factor: 6.91 1252 columbia rd nw, washington dc, united states https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac; mail: topacademicjournals@gmail.com 18 | american journal of art and communication | https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac an article by the times on the guest worker program, “calls for change in ancient job of sheepherding” (july 11, 2001, national page), turned ordinary individuals into a writer’s trope. the article begins with several paragraphs about a shepherd in the mojave desert, and when the anecdote closes, the writer states, “the man, who would not let his name be used for fear of angering his employer, is typical of shepherds in the united states, about 800 of whom toil in california.” the article then describes the geographical origins of the workers, the lack of change in shepherding, the work as a share of the labor pool, the regulation of wages, proposed legislation in california and its opposition by the ranching lobby, the industry’s balance sheet, and the activities of a labor advocacy group and a legal aid group on behalf of the legislation. in other words, the opening vignette about an individual is window dressing for the reporter’s real work, to cover the activities of organized groups. only at the end of the long article (it rated a 4 out of 5 for length) does the writer again introduce individuals who are actors, not official or expert sources. after a paragraph describes shepherds in fresno and kern counties, california, the article returns to the man from the opening anecdote. by contrast, the report included 10 groups and 5 other individuals, all of them politicians or experts. the story contained more than the average number of explanations (of how and why) and was rated very analytical (receiving a 7 on the 10-point emphasis scale). where over the long term, news reports encompassed larger geographic domains. the closest location— a street address—declined between 1934 and 1994 (from 1.4 to 0.8 references per article), and the most distant—foreign mailto:topacademicjournals@gmail.com american journal of art and communication vol.8, issue 3; may-july 2023; issn: 2994-0540 impact factor: 6.91 1252 columbia rd nw, washington dc, united states https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac; mail: topacademicjournals@gmail.com 19 | american journal of art and communication | https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac nations—almost tripled (from 0.1 in 1894 to 0.3 in 1994; barnhurst & mutz, 1997). in the 2001 news sites, both trends continued (table 3). on average, fewer than half the articles referred to street addresses, and more than a third referred to other countries. what was once a large difference— between how often reporters included the two geographic domains in stories—had converged by 2001. at the nearest and farthest extremes, the news sites were different (f = 5.40 for street address, 5.99 for city, 2.92 for region, 17.98 for nation, and 3.98 for foreign), with strong local coverage in the oregonian, and national and international coverage in the times. the geographic extremes also were where differences turned up among topics (f = 3.10 for street address, 3.46 for city, 8.00 for nation, and 4.20 for foreign). crime stories not surprisingly referred the most to street addresses (especially compared to employment) and to towns and cities (as compared to politics). employment was the topic with the most references to national or international venues, and politics also had a higher average number of references to other countries. although readers experience employment working at street addresses, most job-related stories attended to distant jobs. one of the infrequent articles on organized labor, which appeared in the times (“the a.f.l.-c.i.o. organizes in cambodia,” july 12, 2001, business page), came from phnom penh. it uses an opening vignette (the so-called anecdotal lead) to introduce “perhaps the most contentious issue on the international trade agenda today: establishing a floor under labor conditions in developing countries.” it mentions labor organizing in texas and policy debates in washington (and the world trade organization) and refers to china, vietnam, taiwan, hong kong, singapore, and mexico, as well as the headquarters of nike, the gap, levi strauss, and sears roebuck. the highly analytical story (an 8 for emphasis) was also long (a 5 for length), requiring readers to load another page to read the second half, and it focused on groups (14), on explaining how and why (5 times each), and on other time periods (5 references each to past and future). despite the trends continuing within location categories, the index of overall distance in the reports saw a reversal. the previous study found that the news moved from just below 1 in 1894 to above 6 in 1994 (barnhurst & mutz, 1997). using the same index, the coverage in the news sites for 2001 scored lower (table 3). the news sites differed predictably on the distance index (f = 32.15), with the times outdistancing the other two and the tribune taking in a broader geographical purview than the oregonian. the topics also differed (f = 14.60), with crime and accidents at the local extreme and politics and employment at the other. in part, the lower distance score results from the extreme local focus of the oregonian sample. in the previous study, the oregonian print editions included national and international coverage from the wire services (which appeared off the main 2001 site). expanding the study to include political news, in which national coverage dominates, also made the oregonian sample more local in contrast to the times or tribune, which used their own staffs to cover national politics. but the adding of politics stories to the study and the absence of wire stories from one paper’s site may not fully explain the turnabout in the index. what & when over the previous century, a substantial drop occurred in the number of different events each story included, with the biggest decline occurring from the high in 1894 (1.7 for the times) to a fairly consistent low (of about 1.1), mailto:topacademicjournals@gmail.com american journal of art and communication vol.8, issue 3; may-july 2023; issn: 2994-0540 impact factor: 6.91 1252 columbia rd nw, washington dc, united states https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac; mail: topacademicjournals@gmail.com 20 | american journal of art and communication | https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac and although stories contained fewer current events, they referred to an increasing number of other points in time, past and future as well as changes over time (from about 1.1 in 1894 to about 1.7 in 1994; barnhurst & mutz, 1997). by 2001, the average number of events included in a story had increased slightly (table 4). the original study expected analytical news to draw more connections among events (barnhurst, 1991), but roundups of related events after the 1890s rarely occurred within one report. a qualitative examination of reports in the 2001 sample found a surge of stories containing more than one distinct but topically related current event. differences among the three news sites on the measure were small. for different topics, the number of events per story varied (f = 4.27), with accident stories including the most references to related events, and employment stories the fewest. reporters at the newspapers tended to draw connections among several current accidents (one in four stories did so), but saw employment stories as essentially isolated events. besides describing one current event, stories typically referred to another time period: one out of three stories to the past, one in six to the future, and one in 10 to change. comparing the sites, the analysis found differences in references to the past and to the future (f = 6.83 and 7.29, respectively), and in both cases the oregonian differed most from the times. the oregonian listed many events in stories, such as past crimes in the police blotter and future activities in the events calendar. as a result, the outlier oregonian accounts for some of the measurable difference (f = 9.292) among the sites for the total references to all points in time. mailto:topacademicjournals@gmail.com american journal of art and communication vol.8, issue 3; may-july 2023; issn: 2994-0540 impact factor: 6.91 1252 columbia rd nw, washington dc, united states https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac; mail: topacademicjournals@gmail.com 21 | american journal of art and communication | https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac by topic, differences turned up in references to the past and future (f = 3.96 and 6.08). journalists were least likely to predict future events in crime stories. the topics with the most future events were employment and politics. a jobs-related story, “banks give polaroid time to renegotiate millions in loans” (new york times, july 12, 2001, business page), was full of predictions about the company’s plans and “strategic alternatives.” it included possible reactions of bondholders and crystal ball gazing by analysts, along with the expectation of 3,000 job cuts (35% of the polaroid workforce). likewise, a political story, “bush drug plan calls for using discount cards” (july 11, 2001, home page), previewed a future policy announcement along with the president’s hopes and intentions and the reactions expected in congress. although the topics varied somewhat in discussing changes over time, none of the differences were important. although the news on the whole continued to follow the one-event-per-story rule, the uptick in the 2001 data was the first in several decades. the references to other time periods and to changes over time also increased slightly that year, both occurring after the newspapers moved online. reversals & internet ideas the headline results from the study are the shifts in measures for what and when in news content. two trends— the index of distance and the average number of events included in a news story— reversed themselves after as long as a century of declines, and a third—references to different time periods and to changes over time— accelerated beyond the expected trend. even after discounting the sampling differences between results from this replication and the previous study, these shifts may matter. mainstream journalism in the united states appears to have been changing in some ways as the press was settling into online publishing. after many decades of business as usual, the contents by 2001 were covering more events in stories, including roundups of related occurrences, especially for accidents and especially at the oregonian, which drew connections to more past and future events. although specific locations continued former trends, the changed direction in the locations index appears to confirm research from the period (singer, 2001), which found that some internet newspaper sites had an unusually local focus. the uptick in events, growth of roundups, and greater linkage to other time periods are a surprise. and the aboutface in the location index raises questions about what caused the turnabout. in other measures, the news the three organizations produced in 2001 continued to move toward the new long journalism of explanation. stories grew even longer, more than compensating for the lull after the 1970s. their emphasis also grew even more analytical, although not reaching the levels of other news outlets such as npr. and they focused even less on individuals as actors in events, and even more on groups, experts, and officials. despite the changes in where (distance) and what (events), the news content stuck with older patterns for the other ws (who, when, and why) and for length. although new technology was interactive, news workers, organizations, and the industry still presented content designed for an audience of receivers. the longer, more analytical stories presented the journalist as a professional with access to hard-to-reach locations and to authoritative information, whose principal responsibility was to provide expert explanation. the audience depended on news professionals for access to and knowledgeable mailto:topacademicjournals@gmail.com american journal of art and communication vol.8, issue 3; may-july 2023; issn: 2994-0540 impact factor: 6.91 1252 columbia rd nw, washington dc, united states https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac; mail: topacademicjournals@gmail.com 22 | american journal of art and communication | https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac interpretations of events. the citizen remained a passive recipient, requiring the intercession of groups and the intervention of experts with the power to judge what occurred. but using web 1.0, audiences already had alternative ways to get news and participate by sharing stories across networks. journalists at the time assigned technology an autonomous power (technology, 2000). in the mid-20th century, the means of transmission supposedly gave television reporters an edge, allowing them to scoop newspapers routinely; print journalists had to start explaining news instead of merely reporting events, as a way to compete in the news arena (see barnhurst & mutz, 1997). but the internet, as a means of transmission, did not return that competitive edge to newspapers. when allowing the web edition to scoop the print edition would lose money— letting a free product compete with a profitable one— publishers continued to invest as little in web editions as necessary to prevent rival sites from competing directly. a contemporary study showed very little of the technological potential of the internet incorporated into news presentation online, even among relatively prosperous newspapers (barnhurst, 2002). news sites added few links or interactive features. technology by itself did not change the content of news stories. but in sociology, what groups believe to be true becomes true in its consequences. interviews with journalists at the time suggest that the changes in news content may have responded to practitioners’ idea of a powerful technology. increases in events included in the average story and in references to other time periods resemble the concept of the link (not original to the web). as the internet came into popular use, reporters could link events together and also gained access to networked information (ross, 1998). the content of their stories began including more events and more references linking past, present, and future. reporters did not necessarily change their practices for the internet editions (m. mclellan, then special projects editor, portland oregonian, interviewed october 3, 2001), but interviews at the time suggest that their understanding of the network and its popularity was an element in the background as they produced print stories that would also post online (m. marriott, then technology reporter, new york times, interviewed october 25, 2001; l. stone, former editor-inchief, women.com, interviewed november 1, 2001). journalists also took seriously the idea of the internet as a power in the market. interviews suggested that another idea that journalists saw as a factor in the shift toward local coverage was fear of competition. in the mid-1990s, newspaper owners, publishers, and editors expressed alarm when city sites began to appear online (a. j. glass, then senior correspondent, cox newspapers, interviewed december 3, 2001), especially when a software giant announced microsoft sidewalk, a system of localized web pages on community activities, government services, and retail businesses, including event listings, sports results, and advertisements. the profitability of local newspapers depended on their position in the market for local information, such as classified advertising. the return to coverage closer to home may have served readers better, reversing the long movement of u.s. news away from events affecting the immediate lives of citizens. the drawing of linkages to a story’s background and to related current events may also have served readers by providing more of the context that made occurrences meaningful. as one analyst wrote, “democratization is not the driving force behind the move of the news media into the digital world, but in the longer term it might well be the consequence” (norris, 2001, p. 185). mailto:topacademicjournals@gmail.com american journal of art and communication vol.8, issue 3; may-july 2023; issn: 2994-0540 impact factor: 6.91 1252 columbia rd nw, washington dc, united states https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac; mail: topacademicjournals@gmail.com 23 | american journal of art and communication | https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac the content in 2001 did not anticipate that within a decade journalists would face a crisis in their role as expert explainers. the news media had already become a political institution, and in the previous century news workers and organizations had grown in authority. but the internet—capable of offering news in a richer environment, with video, audio, chat, and feedback, as well as a generous store of images and related texts—had interactive and dialogic qualities (sparrow, 1999), tools for citizens to circumvent the institutional power of news media. the newspapers, in the maturity of web 1.0, moved in contradictory ways. they provided links, at least textually, among events and they shifted their coverage overall toward closer locations. but they also resisted investing to make news interactive, while holding back competitive pressures. and the content they published continued to assert journalists’ authoritative position as an intermediary between citizens and government. in hindsight, the turn-of-the-new-century resistance to technology and to audience autonomy likely contributed to the present crisis in american news. ◊◊◊ kevin g. barnhurst (phd, university of amsterdam) teaches philosophy of communication, media studies, and qualitative research methods and does research on political and visual communication as professor in the department of communication, university of illinois at chicago. a fellowship at the joan shorenstein center on the press, politics, and public policy, john f. kennedy school of government, harvard university, along with a goldsmith research award supported this study. references adatto, k. (1993). picture perfect: the art and artifice of public image making. new york: basic books. barnhurst, k. g. (1991). the great american newspaper. american scholar 60(1), 106–112. barnhurst, k. g. (2002). news geography & monopoly: the form of reports on u.s. newspaper internet sites. journalism studies 3(4), 477–489. barnhurst, k. g. (2003). the makers of meaning: national public radio and the new long journalism. political communication 20(1), 1–22. barnhurst, k. g., & mutz, d. (1997). american journalism and the decline in event-centered reporting. journal of communication 47(4), 27–53. barnhurst, k. g., & nerone, j. c. (1991). design changes in u.s. front pages, 1885–1985. journalism quarterly 68(4), 796–804. barnhurst, k. g., & nerone, j. (2001). the form of news, a history. new york: guilford. barnhurst, kevin g., & steele, c. a. 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(original work published 1921). mailto:topacademicjournals@gmail.com “they expect us to all be yellow”: rhetorical construction of asianness in blackface controversy around jella’s yellowish-brown tanning makeup on youtube american journal of art and communication vol.6, issue 5; september-october 2021; 1252 columbia rd nw, washington dc, united states https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac; mail: topacademicjournals@gmail.com 19 | american journal of art and communication | https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac “the rhetorical construction of asianness in the blackface controversy around jella's makeup john david smith, mary elizabeth jones, sung-hyun kim university of washington, usa abstract: jella (젤라) is a south korean beauty influencer who creates makeup tutorials, skincare how-to, cosmetic reviews, and daily vlogs. her beauty-related content production is unique in that she caters to darkskinned women who use tanned or bronze, sun-kissed skin-color foundations. jella's makeup style is depicted as "yellowish-brown tanning makeup" and is differentiated from other korean beauty creators' performances of mainstream beauty. jella's distinct makeup can be seen as a form of resistance to mainstream beauty discourse in the korean context, where light skin is historically preferred for cultural and social upward mobility. keywords: jella, south korean beauty influencer, dark-skinned women, tanned makeup introduction jella젤라 (hereafter jella) is a south korean (hereafter korea) beauty influencer who creates makeup tutorials, skincare how-to, cosmetic reviews, and daily vlogs. with more than 840,000 subscribers and 69 million views (as of march 2023), jella’s beauty-related content production is unique in that she caters to dark-skinned women who use tanned or bronze, sun-kissed skin-color foundations. jella’s makeup style is depicted as “yellowish-brown tanning makeup” and is differentiated from other korean beauty creators’ performances of mainstream beauty (park, 2019, para. 1). jella’s distinct makeup can be seen as a form of resistance to mainstream beauty discourse in the korean context, where light skin is historically preferred for cultural and social upward mobility (li, min, & belk, 2008). however, jella’s resistance to mainstream korean beauty discourse is complicated when her makeup and style are circulated through the transnational space of digital media and consumed by nonkorean viewers around the globe. in fact, jella’s makeup style has generated online debates about whether jella does blackface. in 2019, a post on reddit titled “apparently jella is being accused of doing blackface?” (beauty-freak, 2018) sparked comments from reddit users either defending or judging whether her makeup seonah kim: seonah@uw.edu date submitted: 2022-09-05 copyright © 2023 (seonah kim). licensed under the creative commons attribution non-commercial no derivatives (by-nc-nd). available at http://ijoc.org. and style could be considered a case of digital blackface. that same year, a black fashion model and beauty creator (identified as) eloho posted a video titled “asian influencer in blackface. reaction video” (i mailto:topacademicjournals@gmail.com american journal of art and communication vol.6, issue 5; september-october 2021; 1252 columbia rd nw, washington dc, united states https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac; mail: topacademicjournals@gmail.com 20 | american journal of art and communication | https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac am eloho, 2019), in which she explicitly called jella out on her inappropriate consumption and presentation of black beauty and culture. not surprisingly, jella’s youtube beauty channel has become a significant platform for the ongoing debate surrounding her use of blackface in makeup tutorials. what sets this debate apart is the defense put forth by her transnational viewers, who bring complex and conflicting notions of skin color and race into discussions about jella’s racial identity. specifically, the vocal defense of transnational viewers disrupts binary discussions based in the united states, which often center around the black-white dyad in examining blackface, and it highlights the active role that asian bodies play in building racial scripts and constructing racial hierarchies (bonilla-silva, 2004; molina, 2014). thus, my interest in this controversy lies in understanding the rhetorical strategies employed by jella’s transnational viewers, which do not fit neatly into the framework of blackness versus whiteness and investigating how u.s.-based notions of race and skin color are being played out in transnational spaces of digital media. figure 1. a thumbnail image of jella’s popular makeup tutorial video titled, “(eng 👀) 핑크빔 뿜뿜 메이크업/젤라 jella [pink beam makeup]” (jin, 2018a, 10:47). to analyze viewers’ rhetoric in response to jella’s beauty performances, it is essential to critically examine the phenomenon of digitally performed blackface. this phenomenon involves non-black individuals intentionally using images and cosmetically altered personas to present themselves as black individuals and commodify blackness within the realm of digital media (tosaya & joseph, 2021). for instance, in 2018, emma hallberg, an instagram model from sweden who identifies as white, came under fire for appropriating black culture and aesthetics. despite being a white woman from sweden, she presented herself to her audience with shiny dark skin and glamorous makeup; by using dark facial makeup and sporting cornrows, a traditional black hairstyle, she portrayed herself as a light-skinned black woman (rasool, 2018). mailto:topacademicjournals@gmail.com american journal of art and communication vol.6, issue 5; september-october 2021; 1252 columbia rd nw, washington dc, united states https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac; mail: topacademicjournals@gmail.com 21 | american journal of art and communication | https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac the act of digitally performing blackface is a type of racial tourism, where individuals engage with digital representations of blackness without fully investing in or acknowledging the impact of historically constructed anti-blackness in society. under the postracial condition in digital media, individuals embrace the idea of being portrayed as a racial other in the virtual realm, as a form of humorous expression in internet culture, and subsequently use virtual self-representations to playfully engage with this notion (phillips, 2019). this creates an opportunity for avid consumption, resulting in digital blackface, which can be viewed as a contemporary form of cross-racial mimicry that renders black identity and culture a consumable commodity (stevens, 2021). what remains largely absent in the discussion of digital blackface is how asian beauty artists and influencers accused of doing blackface fit within larger conversations about racial appropriation and beauty. it is important to examine asian influencers’ engagement with and exploitation of blackface to garner attention in digital media because it makes difficult to confine digital blackface solely to white influencers and, in turn, complicate the dominant discourse about the racial binary interpreting blackface performances in digital media. particularly within the transnational space of youtube, where viewers from across the globe converge to share and comment, there exist multiple and contrasting interpretations of asians’ cross-racial performances, and these readings, situated in different contexts, interact with, and impact one another. as a case study of this phenomenon, i investigate how jella’s transnational viewers interpret her beauty and react to the blackface controversy by triangulating discourses surrounding asians engaging in the cosmetic darkening of their identity in digital media. specifically, i examine the rhetorical construction of asianness, which is being pulled and pushed in different directions by non-korean audiences who have supported jella’s cosmetically darkened appearance in her beauty channel. by “non-korean viewers,” i refer to those globally and regionally shaped with distinct racial and ethnic ideas and experiences. accordingly, i draw on research from the interdisciplinary discussions about cross-racial embodiment between asian and black people within and beyond u.s. racial contexts to provide textural readings of asianness. in this article, my textual reading of asianness is informed by kim’s (1999) critical analysis of racial triangulation to underscore the importance of including asian bodies in the examination of racial discourses and performances within the realm of digital blackface. in this light, i analyze non-korean viewers’ rhetoric about jella to offer nuanced readings of asianness in relation to blackness transnationally articulated. through this analysis, i aim to shed light on fresh and alternative understandings of asianness, utilizing their contextualized understandings and embodiment of race and skin color as rhetorical spaces for “afroasian encounters” (prashad & okihiro, 2006). i argue that this space serves as an opportunity to highlight the mutual influence and relationship between asianness and blackness and to challenge persistent racialized cultural stereotypes that have been characterized and constructed within the confines of the white-black binary. as findings of the article, i illustrate three ways non-korean viewers defend jella from the accusation of doing blackface, constructing the rhetoric of asianness. first, viewers critique skin-color politics in performing beauty as asians and target white influencers who are free from the accusation of doing blackface. through their critique, viewers expose the imposition of imperialist ideology on asian bodies, categorizing them as the “yellow race.” second, in their defense of jella, self-identified asians, specifically south and southeast asian viewers, mailto:topacademicjournals@gmail.com american journal of art and communication vol.6, issue 5; september-october 2021; 1252 columbia rd nw, washington dc, united states https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac; mail: topacademicjournals@gmail.com 22 | american journal of art and communication | https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac provide a critical perspective on the prevalent issue of colorism within asian popular culture. third, viewers articulate what constitutes blackface and determine blackness through explicitly racist comments about black people. based on the analysis, i claim that jella’s cosmetically darkened appearance creates a rhetorical space for asians to critique colorism and recognize heterogeneity in asianness. however, this effort falls short of being fully inclusive or resistive when transnational viewers also celebrate jella’s appearance through the rhetoric of “less blackness” and mixed raciality. triangulating (digital) blackface the concept of whiteness is a political construct that exists in a parasitic relationship to blackness, as evidenced by the blackface minstrel shows that were prevalent in nineteenth-century american culture. blackface minstrelsy involved white americans delving into the visual realms of black racial fantasy to stage and construct black-and-white boundaries (lott, 1992). it went beyond just denigrating black bodies and consuming their otherness for entertainment. blackface minstrel shows were designed to present slavery as amusing and natural and thus normalized it (lott, 1992). as a form of racial subordination, blackface minstrelsy served as a site where racial hierarchy, especially the white-black racial binary, was reaffirmed, and white supremacy was upheld through the exaggerated performances of black otherness. to complicate this white-black dyad in theorizing blackface minstrelsy, it is important to admit and incorporate the role of asian americans in constructing racial dynamics and producing cultural scripts of racism in the united states. according to kim (1999), asian americans are valorized as a model minority group to relatively evaluate african americans as a lazy, aggressive, and failed minority group and to reinforce white dominance in the united states. this asian americans’ narrative is deployed in a racial context to promote the notion of meritocracy over african americans, demanding that individual effort alone is sufficient to overcome the challenges posed by racial injustice. these two racial minorities are valorized differently to maintain white supremacist social order in the united states, reflecting each other. kim’s (1999) triangulation provides a framework for understanding the cultural significance of blackface minstrelsy as a site where asianness and blackness are triangulated to expose and challenge white supremacy, and an interracial coalition can be anticipated. roxworthy (2013) explored this notion by examining young japanese american women who performed blackface in japanese american internment camps and called for more “nuanced readings of blackface performances that fall outside the black-white binary” (p. 124). by triangulating white imperialism, blackface minstrelsy, and japanese foreignness, roxworthy (2013) situated yellowface as a representation and performance of culturally possessing or excessive bodies in a mirroring position to blackface as bodies lacking cultural and social resources. the triangulation model is also applicable for analyzing and criticizing how the media (re)produces whiteness through the construction of blackness and asianness in contemporary cultural spheres. analyzing character development in the popular film rush hour (birnbaum, glickman, & sarkissian, 1998), banerjee (2006) demonstrated how desirable representations of asianness are constructed through comparison. this construction is described as the “simultaneity of blackface and yellowface minstrelsy” (banerjee, 2006, p. 205) since jackie chan’s portrayal of a model minority reinforces stereotypical depictions of african american mailto:topacademicjournals@gmail.com american journal of art and communication vol.6, issue 5; september-october 2021; 1252 columbia rd nw, washington dc, united states https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac; mail: topacademicjournals@gmail.com 23 | american journal of art and communication | https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac characters in the movie. these stereotypes serve to maintain racial hierarchy and white dominance in hollywood by pitting african and asian americans against each other. considering asianness in the interpretation of blackface performances or the cultural appropriation of blackness further opens up new or different understandings of blackness and asianness. for instance, waegner (2006) examined the work of nikki s. lee, a korean american photographer who darkened her face to immerse herself in african american hip-hop culture and considered her passing as a new form of empowerment for blackness and asianness. it is because lee explicitly acknowledged her performance as racial passing and leveraged it to envision an asian and afro-american coalition. her passing thus challenges the notion that these two racial minorities occupy incompatible cultural and political positions in the united states (waegner, 2006). sharma (2010) takes up a similar discussion in her investigation of south asian americans, or “desis,” who incorporate hip-hop into their lives. they perform blackness to critique their place in the white-black dynamics and interrupt the black-only hip-hop racial configuration in the united states. this performance is framed as “both/and” and “cross-racial” identification, contesting the essentialist views of both asian and african americans. the use of digital cultural production is another area where cross-racial identification between asianness and blackness is found, as it is heavily shaped by visual capital and technology (nakamura, 2007). for instance, lopez (2021) examined how asian americans used african american gifs to express their emotions about the film crazy rich asians (jacobson, simpson, & penotti, 2018) on twitter. while critical of non-black people using black reaction gifs as a form of digital blackface, lopez (2021) also interpreted this as asian americans recognizing their interlocking emotions with other racial minorities when they use blackness to communicate their feelings. furthermore, chun (2013) analyzed the linguistic performance of black masculinity by kevin wu, a chinese american youtuber. although wu’s performance on youtube features familiar images of racialized black masculinity, the transnational reach of his video allows for alternative interpretations that challenge and undermine hegemonic stereotypes of asian masculinity. particularly, chun’s (2013) study offers an important view of youtube as a transnational space to contextualize comments about jella and her cosmetically darkened beauty performance, which this article will analyze, as it highlights the changing racial salience in a transnational community of digital media. the production and circulation of cross-racial performances through digital media’s transnational space creates a discursive arena where viewers can bring diverse and divergent perspectives on these performances. in digital media, viewers work within their own contextualized and racialized identities, thus bringing transnationally nuanced interpretations to their consumption of cross-racial performances (swan, 2018). these transnationally hybrid interpretations of cross-racial performances also give rise to alternative understandings of racialized visuals and performances, which foster culturally resistant discourses that defy traditional notions of racialized identities in digital media (chun, 2013). to examine jella’s cosmetically darkened beauty performance within the transnational racial discourses of digital media, it is crucial to consider the specific regional racial contexts of asia. one example of cross-racial performances and the embodiment of blackness can be found in japan during the 1990s through the kogyaru mailto:topacademicjournals@gmail.com american journal of art and communication vol.6, issue 5; september-october 2021; 1252 columbia rd nw, washington dc, united states https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac; mail: topacademicjournals@gmail.com 24 | american journal of art and communication | https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac style, a popular subculture embraced by teenage japanese girls. this subculture was characterized by frequent visits to tanning salons, darkened faces, brown-dyed hair, heavy makeup, and vibrant clothing choices (kawamura, 2006). in japan, the reactions to and evaluations of the kogyaru style were ambivalent. the japanese media criticized this trend, using terms like “nega-makeup” (negative makeup) or “panda makeup” to describe the facial expression of kogyaru, depicting the fashion as ugly, primitive, and animalistic (kinsella, 2005). however, despite the criticism, the kogyaru style was also seen as an emerging subculture that resisted traditional gender roles and beauty standards in japan, resisting patriarchal notions of femininity (ho, 2017). the discussion of resistance through the consumption and performance of dark skin or skin darkening practice extends to korean popular culture as well. for instance, in her examination of blackness in korean hiphop, oh (2014) argued that korean hip-hoppers engage in a versatile boundary-crossing through the (re)appropriation of blackness and their representation obscures distinctions between blackness/non-blackness, asian-ness/non-asianness, and korean-ness/non-korean-ness. however, as condry (2007) challenged, the interconnectedness of media and cultural hybridity does not automatically translate into actions that promote greater equality in race and gender representations on a global scale. in the realm of korean hip-hop, in fact, black bodies are appropriated and consumed as symbols of capitalist values by korean hip-hoppers who take financial and sociocultural advantages on the black racial fantasy of coolness in korea (kim, 2020). the various aspects and perspectives on asians’ cross-racial embodiment of blackness presented in this section emphasize that the framework of the white-black binary is not necessary for understanding race in the transnational space of digital media. instead, different introductions exist for (re)interpreting the meanings of asianness and darkness. this recognition of different starting points can complicate the sociocultural and historical lens through which blackness has been conceptualized in the united states and generate different ways of understanding blackness as well as asianness in transnational contexts. as an attempt to accomplish this, i focus on the complex intersection of race, skin color, and beauty, which are constructed regionally and globally, to interpret viewers’ reactions to jella’s cosmetically darkened representations in digital media. method: critical textual analysis i use critical textual analysis to collect and examine written comments posted in response to jella’s q&a video (jin, 2018b). the q&a video is a suitable subgenre for examining the discursive co-construction between creators and viewers because vloggers often use an intimate tone when addressing issues and questions sent by audiences and fans (torjesen, 2021). i specifically selected the q&a video titled, “[eng] 💌blackface? 50만 기념 q&a수면용 영상/젤라 jella [blackface? celebrating 500,000 subscription q&a videos for sleep]” (jin, 2018b), since it addressed personal information related to jella’s skin color, childhood experience, and cosmetic tanning. in the video, jella directly mentioned her naturally dark skin complexion and shared her personal story about why she started tanning her skin in response to questions about her skin and racial identity from nonkorean viewers. regular viewers of jella’s beauty community wrote comments to defend her based on the information she shared during the q&a. the video’s title also indicates that jella clearly responded to the blackface controversy, making it an ideal video to analyze for this article. mailto:topacademicjournals@gmail.com american journal of art and communication vol.6, issue 5; september-october 2021; 1252 columbia rd nw, washington dc, united states https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac; mail: topacademicjournals@gmail.com 25 | american journal of art and communication | https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac to collect data, i used ytdt (youtube data tools; rieder, 2015), which provided information about the video, the number of views, likes, dislikes, shares, and comments. i organized 873 comments (as of january 2022) and went through three coding phases. the comments were in both korean and english, and i intentionally selected english comments for this article’s focus on the non-korean audience’s construction of meanings related to skin color and racial identity. based on the data collected, i explored how different text categories interacted and generated analytic themes, such as colorism, asian race, and anti-blackness. then, i conducted an in-depth reading of the coded themes to identify the ideological and cultural reasoning implied in each analytical theme. the sample comments were selected based on the article’s goal. for instance, despite their small number, explicit racist comments were purposefully selected and displayed in the anti-blackness theme because they displayed problematic racial notions about blackness. this, in turn, elucidated viewers’ rhetorical constraints in generating productive critiques of skin color and race in their defense of jella. analyzing comments as units of analysis, i am also mindful of the ethics involved in collecting, organizing, and analyzing digitally produced and circulated media content. since it is challenging to distinguish between private and public in digital media spaces like youtube (lange, 2007; kim, 2021), i avoid citing viewers’ names or ids directly. instead, i anonymize viewers’ information and use pseudonyms such as viewers, audiences, or commenters to refer to them. the asian problem: they expect us to all be yellow in defending jella, some viewers criticize the racial politics that limit asians from performing diverse types of skin beautification. this critique highlights the dilemma asians face when it comes to skin color modification, specifically skin lightening and darkening, within the context of the white-black binary. to illustrate the rhetorical process in which the theme of “asian problems” is constructed by viewers, i first examine comments that discuss this dilemma. for instance, one viewer addresses the double bind of modifying skin color as asians by critiquing how asians are accused of performing blackface while white people are not: how is that white people get away with tanning all the time and when asians tan it’s all about the blackface. literally when asians appear in the media people always complain about their skin tones; either they’re whitewashing or they’re exercising the blackface like stuff. (personal communication, november 2018) similarly, another viewer expresses their frustration with performing beauty as an asian and blames tanned white people for escaping from the public accusations of blackface: did you ever blamed tanned white people?? you might think they are sexyyy but you r blaming tanned asians dont luv their skin tone. if there’s anything to say then go to tanned white people and blame them like this okay. (personal communication, september 2019) in addition to these examples, other commenters specify these white people, such as emma hallberg, a swedish influencer accused of digital blackface, and further differentiate jella’s performance from typical cases of blackface in digital media, calling her out as “a recent instagram white swedish girl” (personal communication, november 2018). the critique of self-indulgent white influencers is further complicated by the racial dilemma surrounding asian skin color in beautification. one viewer goes as far as rearticulating the issue with selfindulgent white mailto:topacademicjournals@gmail.com american journal of art and communication vol.6, issue 5; september-october 2021; 1252 columbia rd nw, washington dc, united states https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac; mail: topacademicjournals@gmail.com 26 | american journal of art and communication | https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac people as an “asian problem,” highlighting the power dynamics at play in the global racial system: “asian problems: asians with lighter skin are whitewashing, while asians with darker skin are blackface... lol. their logic: asians can’t whitening nor tanning but other races can... bruh” (personal communication, november 2018). responding to this comment, a different viewer who is assumed to be an asian says, “because they expect us to all be yellow. lol” (personal communication, november 2018). the rhetorical frame of “asian problems” politicizes the conundrum of portraying beauty with asian bodies as it reveals the racialization of asians through oriental narratives. asian bodies have been under the surveillance of the imperial gaze to maintain an orientalist image of asia where asians are expected “to all be yellow” since asian subjectivities are constructed as byproducts of eurocentric knowledge systems (chen, 2010; said, 1979). the ideological construction of “yellowness” is linked to the racialized othering of asian bodies as threats, carriers of disease, and attackers from the east. in the united states, for example, the persistence of the yellow peril ideology has deemed asian and asian american individuals as perpetual outsiders and global threats, legitimizing racial violence and exclusion toward them (lee, 2007). the ideology of “yellowness” is both somatic and cultural, as the most immediate trigger for discrimination against asian bodies is often based on corporeal aspects, with these somatic aspects of asians strategically selected and emphasized in modern colonial knowledge to construct the idea of the “yellow,” mongoloid, or asian race (miyake, 2021). in this context, the comments above can be interpreted as a critique of the essentialization of asianness as “yellow” in terms of physical appearance. this also relates to the politics around asians’ skin alternation, which is always under the ideological surveillance of the eurocentric gaze on asian bodies and cultures. by identifying who (they) expects whom (us) to be “yellow,” since “they” do not allow “us” to be either lighter or darker than what they should be, viewers reveal the construction of asianness as the object of the white imperial gaze, which is often deprived of agency or subjectivity (vats & nishime, 2013). furthermore, when viewers compare the “asian problem” with tanned white people, they reveal that this imperialist gaze encompasses the privileges of white bodies, which are considered racially transparent, neutral, and a blank slate since the invisibility of skin color and race of a certain social group is the result of their grip on power (frankenberg, 2008). as illustrated above, viewers express their frustration with white influences getting away with tanning but often not being accused of doing blackface. since the construction of racial boundaries is based on power dynamics, these comments indicate the privilege of whiteness, which allows white people to cross those boundaries without feeling limited or stereotyped. coupled with these comments that explicitly blame white influencers, the undetermined subject, “they,” who perpetuate the yellow position of “us,” can be assumed to be a racially privileged white subject. the construction of “yellowness” by viewers also hints at the racial politics of placing asians between white and black bodies. historically, asian skin color has been situated and evaluated within the racial context of the white-black dyad, as asians’ racial positions are used to maintain the line between the two groups (kim, 1999). moving along the white-black racial dichotomy, asian and asian americans have been forced to keep an intermediate position that does not threaten the privileged status of whiteness and remains politically and socially mailto:topacademicjournals@gmail.com american journal of art and communication vol.6, issue 5; september-october 2021; 1252 columbia rd nw, washington dc, united states https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac; mail: topacademicjournals@gmail.com 27 | american journal of art and communication | https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac abject, unlike blackness in the united states (kawai, 2005). regarding skin color and beauty politics, the intermediate position of asians is (re)demanded when jella’s skin color becomes a moving target between white/light and black/dark since there is not one skin tone that all black people or all white people have. hence jella’s asianness can be accepted if she maintains her intermediate position by appearing “yellow,” and when her skin tone does not fit into this middle position, her asianness is called into question and dismissed as either whitewashing or blackface, disrupting the binary opposition between black and white. in the given discussions, the construction of “yellowness” by viewers finally unmasks and questions the imperialist gaze of evaluating jella’s not-asian-enough appearance and potentially serves as pan-asian rhetoric. according to kibria (1997), developing a pan-asian consciousness involves politicizing individual experiences based on shared histories, cultures, and experiences of racial discrimination and oppression. even though this short comment exchange does not invite more other asian/american voices to amplify pan-asian awareness, it rhetorically addresses a collective racial position of asianness through the word “us,” being impositioned as “yellow” between the white and black racial dichotomy. voices of south and southeast asians and critiques of colorism the construction of “yellowness” is further complicated and diversified, with comments arguing that skin tone varies through race, so people cannot always assume someone with a dark skin tone, other than black people, is practicing blackface. interestingly, this claim is made by asian viewers who disclose and identify themselves as dark-skinned asians in their comments. for instance, one viewer identifies her as “a tanned chinese girl” (personal communication, november 2018), and says she was born dark and uses a dark-colored foundation to match her face color to the rest of her body. similarly, another viewer identifies as “a korean that has tan skin” (personal communication, january 2021) and rebukes that people accusing jella of being racist are real racists because they expect all asians to be pale. among the many self-identified asian viewers who support jella, the voices of south and southeast asians are particularly prominent. these viewers’ comments highlight the racialized nature of perceiving all asians as having pale skin. south and southeast asian viewers problematize the homogeneous image of asia as racialized, with light-skinned east asians (e.g., koreans, chinese, and japanese) assumed to be the only “real” asians, while dark-skinned asians outside the east asian region are ignored. one viewer, for instance, remarks: i’m laughing at all you uneducated air heads. asians come as dark as blacks do, how do i know? because i’m south asian. we too are asian, south asians come as indians, bengalis, pakistanis and more. you all cherry pick chinese, koreans, japanese etc. as asian but you exclude the rest of us asians who are the same but come as dark as the rest. asians come in all skin tones, not just blacks… (personal communication, november 2018) this point is also found in another viewer’s comment: y’all acting like asians are only chinese, korean and japan. guess what? there are plenty of darker asians like filipinos and guess what? indians are classified as asian. now before someone accuses you of blackface, tell them to educate themselves. (personal communication, november 2018) mailto:topacademicjournals@gmail.com american journal of art and communication vol.6, issue 5; september-october 2021; 1252 columbia rd nw, washington dc, united states https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac; mail: topacademicjournals@gmail.com 28 | american journal of art and communication | https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac while self-identified chinese and korean viewers assert that east asians can have naturally dark skin, south and southeast asian viewers’ comments center on the omission and invisibility of dark-skinned asian bodies in constructing the imagery of asianness. such invisibility has perpetuated the marginalization of south and southeast asian people, both within and outside asia (lee, kim, & lee, 2015; wallitt, 2008). through their comments, south and southeast asians assert their existence to add heterogeneous layers of asianness and combat representational exclusion. it is also noteworthy that south and southeast asian viewers’ comments function to instruct other viewers about the heterogeneity among asians. the first commenter informs diverse ethnic and national bodies, such as indians, bengalis, and pakistanis, constituting the category of south asia, and the second commenter highlights indians and filipinos as asians. these points made by south and southeast asian viewers reflect nakamura’s (2015) argument that people of color and their intervention in racism and sexism require them to engage in instructing others about their bodily experiences and feelings in digital media (nakamura, 2015). south and southeast asian viewers’ claims on the heterogeneity of asian skin color and race are thus pedagogical and collective, as they insist on their inclusion in asianness by highlighting the diversity within them. with the amplified voices of south and southeast asians in the comments, it is not difficult to find viewers who attribute this ignorance to popular cultural media that create and circulate a specific standard and representation of asianness. for example, one viewer voices the problem of representations in asian popular culture: people are so ignorant to think that all asians are white just because of what you see in asia pop culture. pale skin is much preferred in most asian countries, but dark-skinned people exist too! in fact, most people are not paperwhite like you see with k-pop and jpop stars. as a tanned asian girl this really upsets me that people think we are racist for having a darker natural skin tone... wtf. (personal communication, november 2018) with an issue of representing skin color in asian popular culture, another viewer directly points out the beauty standard portrayed through k-pop in asia: “the point is in most korean media especially in television or kpop people want to have lighter skin since it is the ‘beauty standard’. some even say that dark skin isnt ideal or pretty idk” (personal communication, june 2018). with the personal narratives shared by dark-skinned asians, the controversy about blackface in jella’s beauty community is reframed as an issue of colorism in asia. the comments illustrate that viewers’ frustration comes from the fact that asian popular culture lacks the visibility of dark-skinned asian celebrities, resulting in the skewed production of asian beauty representations as pale. these comments critique colorism in asian popular media, represented through light-skinned k-pop and j-pop celebrities. this is an acute critique, considering that k-pop, a big part of the increased popularity of korean culture, has reinforced light-skin privilege across asia (lam, 2019). the figures of k-pop girl groups are idolized as beauty standards, comprising slim bodies, thin faces, and fair and white skin (tresna, sukamto, & tondok, 2021). these images of k-pop idols with fair and light skin infiltrate societies and continue to shape the ideal body standard that excludes dark-skinned asians. beyond constructing beauty standards, k-pop representations can evoke a new desire to have light/white skin in other asian countries as it signals both aesthetic and economic mailto:topacademicjournals@gmail.com american journal of art and communication vol.6, issue 5; september-october 2021; 1252 columbia rd nw, washington dc, united states https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac; mail: topacademicjournals@gmail.com 29 | american journal of art and communication | https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac possibilities for newly developing countries in the asian region. tu (2019) interprets this aspiration as a sense of whiteness (re)constructed and (re)coded through east asian pale/light skin, specifically korean, japanese, and chinese skin in south and southeast asian countries. the following comment exemplifies this point: “you just see mainstream, especially korean society, push this trend to look like the damn snow which eventually spread to other south east asian countries. vietnam especially you see girls covered up head to toe as if it’s winter” (personal communication, november 2018). the rise of east asian media culture has de-westernized or de-americanized the media cultural industry, demystifying unidirectional media production and circulation from the west to the east and thus reconfiguring global cultural power relations (iwabuchi, 2010). however, the production of east asian media is also not free from american influences, and the korean media industry emerges as a part of the nation’s sub-empire building project to reproduce and promote a liberal ideology of cultural consumption (shim, 2006). indeed, colorism in asia is a deep-seated problem shaped and reshaped by multiple historical and sociocultural conditions in and across asia, hierarchizing people in order of shades of skin (bettache, 2020). the favoritism of light skin is, then, a structured feeling and preference when light skin becomes a signifier of racial, national, social, and cultural privilege in and outside asia. as the commenters illustrate, korean popular culture and media production accelerate this structured preference for light skin in other asian countries, particularly southeast asian countries. to defend jella, south and southeast asians challenge colorism by considering issues of idealized body images and the unfair perception of dark-skinned asians in asian popular media. this pushback is significant because these viewers embrace and claim their darkness to critique the cultural politics of privileging lightness in construing beauty and identity in asia (jha, 2015). thus the point of different shades among asians made by south and southeast asian viewers is a regionally nuanced political gesture to poke a hole in the positioning of asians as a homogeneous racial group in and outside asian regional contexts. through their comments of defending jella, south and southeast asians identify themselves, diversify the imagery of asianness, and finally challenge colorism. anti-blackness and mixed raciality jella’s defenders have also constructed a rhetoric of anti-blackness to protect her and her beauty representation from accusations of blackface. unlike other comment examples presented, the following comments are explicitly racist and have no grounds to justify the resentment poured out toward black people. although these comments contain racist undertones, i have chosen to showcase them to reveal the rhetorical constraints that viewers have when defending jella and appreciating her beauty. in the following comments, viewers assume that black people are stirring up the conversation about blackface on jella’s beauty channel: “ugh some black people are so embarrassing and annoying on the internet” (personal communication, november 2018), “they weren’t trying to look black dumbass but biracial lmfaoo black people need to stop being delusional” (personal communication, november 2018), and “you are not black and have no right to answer for the black community. move on. j” (personal communication, november 2018). in these examples, viewers assume that the “black community” is accusing jella of doing blackface and proceed mailto:topacademicjournals@gmail.com american journal of art and communication vol.6, issue 5; september-october 2021; 1252 columbia rd nw, washington dc, united states https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac; mail: topacademicjournals@gmail.com 30 | american journal of art and communication | https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac to attack them by calling them “embarrassing,” “annoying,” and “delusional.” while white people are condemned for their liberal consumption of black beauty and culture, there is no specific reason to blame black people in these comments. instead, hatred is directed toward them, with one viewer calling them “delusional” and “dumbass.” by attacking black people, viewers demonstrate their internalized anti-blackness and perceive blackness as powerless and absurd while critiquing white people for their abuse of power and perpetuation of the imperial gaze. in addition to expressing random contempt toward black people, one commenter singles out blackface as an issue that only the “black community” must confront, excluding other racial groups. although blackface is a critical discursive space for the black community in digital media (davis, 2020), this comment isolates the black community as the only group resisting the racialized appropriation and consumption of blackness. by doing so, it denounces resistance raised by the black community and hinders interracial alliances formed to challenge racist attempts to consume otherness to strengthen one’s multicultural capacity (tate, 2021). lacking intersectional awareness to comprehend racial justice and social movements (collins & bilge, 2020), this comment reinforces racial inequality and anti-blackness by limiting the possibility of interracial coalitions in digital media. additionally, a viewer dismisses the issue of jella performing blackness by describing black people as “delusional” and arguing that jella is performing the aesthetic of being a mixed race rather than a black person by artificially darkening her skin. this notion of black people being labeled as “delusional” can be intensified with other comments that define blackface solely based on essentialized racial characteristics of black individuals and assert jella’s innocence on the grounds that she does not conform to these features. for instance, one viewer says, “she’s not trying to be ‘black’ by receiving artificial tanning, she has come to terms with her dark skin tone and come to love it because of that. she didn’t try to be a different race through the tanning” (personal communication, june 2020). other viewers reiterate the notion that jella does not try to alter her race by simplifying the visual aspects of black people through their racially stereotyped facial features: “blackface? um, all she’s doing is making her skin a tad bit darker. she isn’t making her hair like a black girl’s or doing that stereotypical bs like overlining her lips or whatever” (personal communication, november 2018). similarly, another viewer comments, “it’s wearing a darker foundation. she’s not making herself have big lips or a wide nose, she’s not making a specific way to make fun/encourage stereotypes” (personal communication, april 2019). according to these viewers, accusing jella of doing blackface is unwarranted because she wears a darker foundation to appear tanned rather than intentionally engaging in racist mockery by mimicking stereotypical black racial features. they note that these physical features are often seen as the primary signifiers of blackness and emphasize that jella does not have them, absolving her of suspicion of doing blackface. this comparison highlights the clear distinction between jella’s use of a darker foundation and deliberate, malicious blackface. despite their racist remarks, it is also important to note the nuances made by viewers, acknowledging the historically exaggerated and mocked stereotypical physical features of black people by blackface performers in their comments. they evaluate acts of performing racialized black bodies as “stereotypical bs,” arguing that jella mailto:topacademicjournals@gmail.com american journal of art and communication vol.6, issue 5; september-october 2021; 1252 columbia rd nw, washington dc, united states https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac; mail: topacademicjournals@gmail.com 31 | american journal of art and communication | https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac is innocent because she does not incorporate those racially fetishized performances to “make fun/encourage stereotypes” of black people. additionally, one commenter mentions black girls’ hair as a way to racialize blackness, implicitly indicating that hair style and texture have been a significant cultural and political site of struggle for black women who have braided their hair “in the exercise of private, personal prerogatives taken for granted by women who are not black” (caldwell, 1991, p. 369). although viewers show awareness of these physical elements racially representing and fetishizing black people, this awareness is restricted when they use these features to claim that jella does not perform race change and reaffirm somatic differences between asian and black bodies. furthermore, the ideology of mixed-race identity is crucial to rearticulate the rhetoric of blackness in relation to asianness in jella’s beauty community. as illustrated, one viewer critiques black people as “delusional,” since jella never wants to be a black person but a mixed race. in addition, other viewers comment that jella looks mixed race, with one viewer even stating that jella, with dark makeup, resembles a “half japanese and half native hawaiian mixed” (personal communication, july 2018) individual. importantly, when the rhetoric of biracial and mixed-racial identity is used to maintain jella’s beauty persona, it is considered a compliment rather than an attack. one of the previous comments attacking black people implies this nuance by suggesting that non-black people want to look biracial rather than black people. this celebratory tone in constructing a mixed-race identity is not new or refreshing since the appearance of multiracial identities has been used as a signifier of neoliberal multiculturalism, a contemporary cultural agenda that celebrates and commodifies the diversity brought by multiracial identities (washington, 2017). postracial politics is a key engine behind this celebration, providing a justification for visual representations of race and gender that supposedly transcend identity categories through the consumption of other races (vats & nishime, 2013). additionally, the currency and marketability of mixedrace beauty are essential in making racially ambiguous individuals consumable in digital media (nishime, 2017), given the visual-oriented nature of social media platforms such as youtube. viewers’ interpretation of jella as biracial further implies the visual politics of reading race, particularly asianness. in the comment above, the viewer mixes a japanese with a native hawaiian to imagine jella as biracial. given the previous comments that jella does not attempt to change her race by wearing a dark foundation and distinguishing asians’ physiognomy from black people’s, the racial mix between japanese and native hawaiians can be viewed as a safe choice to consume jella’s appearance, without crossing the racial line to be seen as a black person. however, the fact is that jella is neither japanese, native hawaiian, nor mixed japanese native hawaiian. by assuming her korean identity as japanese and coding her artificially tanned skin tone through the visuals of native hawaiians, the viewer repeats the visual markers of essentializing east asian bodies and exoticizes the darkness of native hawaiians and pacific islanders. this idea thus stresses and simultaneously obscures the politically contested nature of the pan-national and pan-ethnic entity “asian americans and pacific islanders,” which is especially unique to the u.s. racial phenomenon (hall, 2015). in this sense, viewers’ mixed-racial imagination of jella’s cosmetically darkened appearance can be seen as a way to leave her room to avoid critiques of blackface by highlighting her “less blackness” (lee, 2021). mailto:topacademicjournals@gmail.com american journal of art and communication vol.6, issue 5; september-october 2021; 1252 columbia rd nw, washington dc, united states https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac; mail: topacademicjournals@gmail.com 32 | american journal of art and communication | https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac instead of imagining her as a japanese and native hawaiian mixed race, viewers could also consider her a darkskinned asian person from south or southeast asia. by interpreting her with mixed-racial possibility, viewers consume her as an “ambiguous mulatto” (sharpley-whiting, 2007), not a dark asian, and add value to her “exoticness,” resulting from her mysteriously and ambiguously dark appearance as a korean. however, this mixed-racial discourse ironically invokes racial scripts of blackness (molina, 2014), where a black-toned or black-touched look is accepted and celebrated as cool (washington, 2017), while actual black people face antiblack racism, police brutality, and cultural and political segregation, specifically in the u.s. context. this script extends to oppression and discrimination against other dark-skinned bodies, particularly dark-skinned asians and pacific islanders, when viewers understand jella’s beauty representation through mixed raciality instead of dark asianness. conclusion by analyzing defenders’ comments, i have demonstrated the rhetorical possibilities and limitations of conceptualizing asianness in relation to blackness through jella’s beauty community. this community offers a contesting space where resistive and perpetual discourses on skin color and race intertwine. while some viewers critically point out the racially intermediate position of asianness and expose the power and domination of whiteness, others use anti-black rhetoric to defend jella’s cosmetically darkened appearance. thus, defenders’ critiques fail to effectively challenge the white imperial gaze, which has historically racialized and sexualized black people in oppressive ways. furthermore, when viewers highlight jella’s mixed raciality to justify her cosmetically darkened beauty, it solidifies the white privilege that assumes blackness needs to be moderated and enhanced by other races, preferably light-skinned races, to be celebrated in society. these limitations arise from ideological forces that situate jella’s beauty and appearance within the white-black racial binary. within this binary, defenders may hesitate to associate jella’s dark appearance too closely with blackness, fearing accusations of blackface. as a result, the cross-racial coalition between asianness and blackness is discouraged when viewers interpret jella’s cosmetically darkened representation, mainly through the racial binary in their defense. despite its limitations, i argue that jella’s beauty community has the potential to create a third space where alternative meanings of blackness/darkness can be (re)presented and (re)negotiated by darkskinned asians (bolatagici, 2004). by decoupling lightness from asianness and darkness from blackness, south and southeast asian viewers share their embodied identities and experiences as dark-skinned asians; in so doing, they push back against dominant representations of asianness and amplify heterogeneous asian voices in digital media. therefore, constructing new/different imagery of asianness is not a game that “you can never win” (personal communication, november 2018), as one viewer expresses. instead, the amplified voice of dark-skinned asians offers a hopeful glimpse into empowerment, producing self-representations that are otherwise muted and invisible in mainstream media. finally, this third space can be envisioned when the blackface controversy around jella is triangulated with the consideration of asianness centered on construing blackness and whiteness. moving beyond the whiteblack racial binary allows for the creation of new interpretations of asianness and darkness and exposes the mailto:topacademicjournals@gmail.com american journal of art and communication vol.6, issue 5; september-october 2021; 1252 columbia rd nw, washington dc, united states https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac; mail: topacademicjournals@gmail.com 33 | american journal of art and communication | https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac underlying white imperialist ideology in cultural perceptions of skin color and race in digital media. this approach also contextualizes jella’s beauty practices within regionally specific colorism topics that reveal the heterogeneity of asianness. in the transnational context of digital media, jella’s cosmetically darkened appearance is interpreted by viewers from diverse cultural and social backgrounds, featuring the need to examine multiple perspectives on asians’ cosmetically darkened or cross-racial representations. this examination should consider the possibilities and limitations of such representations to prevent the repetition of dominant ways of conceptualizing asianness that perpetuate the link between asianness and whiteness while positioning it against blackness and reducing it to an intermediate position. by expanding the scope of asianness beyond the white-black racial binary, this article argues that new understandings of blackness/darkness and asianness can emerge, which facilitates the formation of a third space where alternative meanings can be negotiated, and diverse voices can be amplified in digital media. references banerjee, m. 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(2007). pimps up, ho’s down: hip hop’s hold on young black women. new york, ny: new york university press. shim, d. (2006). hybridity and the rise of korean popular culture in asia. media, culture & society, 28(1), 25– 44. doi:10.1177/0163443706059278 stevens, w. e. (2021). blackfishing on instagram: influencing and the commodification of black urban aesthetics. social media+ society, 7(3), 1–15. doi:10.1177/20563051211038236 swan, a. l. (2018). transnational identities and feeling in fandom: place and embodiment in k-pop fan reaction videos. communication culture & critique, 11(4), 548–565. doi:10.1093/ccc/tcy026 mailto:topacademicjournals@gmail.com american journal of art and communication vol.6, issue 5; september-october 2021; 1252 columbia rd nw, washington dc, united states https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac; mail: topacademicjournals@gmail.com 38 | american journal of art and communication | https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac tate, s. a. (2021). “i do not see myself as anything else than white”: black resistance to racial cosplay blackfishing. in m. l. craig (ed.), the routledge companion to beauty politics (pp. 205–214). abingdon, uk: routledge, taylor & francis group. torjesen, a. (2021). the genre repertoires of norwegian beauty and lifestyle influencers on youtube. nordicom review, 42(2), 168–184. doi:10.2478/nor-2021-0036 tosaya., l., & joseph., r. (2021, april 27). a look into digital blackface, culture vultures, and how to read racism like black critical audience. flow journal. retrieved from https://www.flowjournal.org/2021/04/a-lookinto-digital-blackface/#comments tresna, k. a. a., sukamto, m. e., & tondok, m. s. (2021). celebrity worship and body image among young girls fans of k-pop girl groups. humanities indonesian psychological journal, 18(2), 100– 111. doi:10.26555/humanitas.v18i2.19392 tu, l. n. t. (2019). white like koreans: the skin of the new vietnam. in s. h. lee, c. h. moon, & l. n. t. tu (eds.), fashion and beauty in the time of asia (pp. 21–40). new york, ny: new york university press. vats, a., & nishime, l. (2013). containment as neocolonial visual rhetoric: fashion, yellowface, and karl lagerfeld’s “idea of china”. quarterly journal of speech, 99(4), 423–447. doi:10.1080/00335630.2013.833668 waegner, c. (2006). performing postmodernist passing: nikki s. lee, tuff, and ghost dog in yellowface/blackface. in v. prashad & g. okihiro (eds.), afroasian encounters: culture, history, politics (pp. 223–242). new york, ny: new york university press. wallitt, r. (2008). cambodian invisibility: students lost between the “achievement gap” and the “model minority”. multicultural perspectives, 10(1), 3–9. doi:10.1080/15210960701869298 washington, m. s. (2017). blasian invasion: racial mixing in the celebrity industrial complex. jackson: university press of mississippi. mailto:topacademicjournals@gmail.com two tales of one war: understanding the media coverage of the yemeni civil war in saudi arabia and qatar american journal of art and communication vol.7, issue 1; january-febuary 2022; 1252 columbia rd nw, washington dc, united states https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac; mail: topacademicjournals@gmail.com 24 | american journal of art and communication | https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac the need for independent and objective media coverage of war mustafa kemal aksoy, ayşegül güler, baran yavuz sakarya university, turkey abstract: the role of news media during and in pursuit of war has been a hotly debated topic since the vietnam war. some argue that the media can play a positive role by informing the public and holding governments accountable, while others believe that it can be used to manipulate public opinion and support for war. this paper examines the instrumental and genuine value of media during conflicts, drawing on research from political science, communication studies, and journalism. keywords: news media, war, conflict, media effects, public opinion introduction what is the instrumental or genuine value of media during conflicts? the role of news media during and in pursuit of war has been a hotbed of discussion since the vietnam war (robinson, goddard, parry, & murray, 2009). the invasion of iraq by the united states under the bush administration even generated concepts such as the “cnn effect,” and the last two decades have largely focused on how media was operationalized during wars (gilboa, 2005). it is often asserted that in times of war, media outlets obtain a key role in mobilizing public support for the persuasion of political interests through the coverage of violence (chong & druckman, 2007; entman, 2003; lecheler & de vreese, 2018; pan & kosicki, 1993). news media has the potential to conceal losses, cover up non humanitarian tactics for their political authority, and exaggerate these sorts of incidents for political rivals. this approach and explanations of media performance were formulated into three models: elite-driven, independent, and oppositional (robinson et al., 2009). these media-performance models were often used to make sense of warmongering, constraining, and oppositional news flows during wars that had a regional and global impact. the yemeni civil war, which started in the aftermath of the arab spring, has been one such case in the sense that it caused a plethora of regional and global concerns about interstate conflict and humanitarian issues. the study acknowledges the previous scholarship on the securitization of borders and its effect on interstate conflict (arıeli, 2016). the local, regional, and global media outlets have presented contrasting views on the incidents during the war (abdullah & elareshi, 2015; bajs, 2019; efe, 2019; elzahar, 2019; grigoroudis, 2017; mejalli, 2019). by investigating two different media sources, this study tries to analyze this contrast in the presentation of the war utilizing the media-performance models typology of robinson, goddard, parry, and murray (2009). the news media outlets were sampled from saudi arabia and qatar as these states have presented very divergent conflict-management systems through their most prominent media outlets. several studies have mailto:topacademicjournals@gmail.com american journal of art and communication vol.7, issue 1; january-febuary 2022; 1252 columbia rd nw, washington dc, united states https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac; mail: topacademicjournals@gmail.com 25 | american journal of art and communication | https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac already revealed that the countries of the middle east have been following different conflict-management strategies (posthuma, 2011). the focal point of the data acquisition term revealed how these media outlets would fit into the performance models and what the practical results of each performance type were. the pilot tests and the data analysis showed that there was not much activity that could be considered under the oppositional model (gause, 2000). hence, the spectrum of modeling was made bipolar for less fuzzy results. this study makes two distinct contributions to literature through a unique data set and its focus on the non-western context. first, it contrasts the news media’s performance and tone toward war depending on the direct and indirect engagement in a specific war. while analyzing saudi news media outlets’ presentation of the yemeni war, the study focuses on avoiding incidents that may hurt the influence and leverage of the saudi elite classes. second, the study examines the qatari news media’s attitude toward the yemeni civil war to show that the less belligerent states or indirect engagers of war have a higher potential for more independent media performance. third, by analyzing qatari news media’s presentation of the civil war, the study will illustrate how bilateral political rivalries may affect news media independence on the same issue. this contract reveals itself in qatari news media’s presentation of the yemeni war before and after the 2017 gulf crisis. the study presents its theoretical approach and a summary of the media environments in saudi arabia and qatar. the results are presented after explicating the details about the methodology and measurement. theoretical approach the traditional understanding of the journalistic media simply postulates that it serves as a strategic actor in the policymaking process (baum & potter, 2008). rather than independently conveying the facts, the media ill-informs the public for the interests of the ruling elite (brody, 1991; djankov, mcliesh, nenova, & shleifer, 2003). this traditional understanding has inspired many academic studies, especially after edward herman and noam chomsky published their path-breaking study, manufacturing consent, in 1988. unlike this propaganda model, a new strand of scholarship suggested that the live coverage of events, especially in war zones, dramatically altered the relationship between elites and the media (beaufort, 2018; bennett, 1990; mullen & klaehn, 2010). popularized as the “cnn effect,” this argument suggests that the media pressures the leaders and forces them into a certain policy by influencing public opinion in a certain direction (gilboa, 2005). the u.s. decision to invade iraq in 2003 revived the traditional approach in different subdisciplines, such as terrorism and critical security studies. scholars rushed to investigate the large corpus of media reports to show “the political and constructed nature of threats” (lusk, 2021, p. 2). for example, securitization theory has been employed extensively to investigate how political leaders use the media (security agencies) to construct some subjects as a threat (balzacq, léonard, & ruzicka, 2016). building on traditional and critical literature on the relations between the media and political elites, this article suggests hypotheses to understand the representations of the yemeni civil war in two big media outlets of the arab world, al arabiya, and al jazeera. first, media institutions controlled by countries directly involved in the war present the facts by demonizing one of the warring sides. robinson (2012) asked two fundamental questions about the extent of media cheerleading in pursuing wars and its capacity to limit states from engaging in such antagonism. especially after the 2003 invasion of iraq, the relevant literature has been preoccupied with mailto:topacademicjournals@gmail.com american journal of art and communication vol.7, issue 1; january-febuary 2022; 1252 columbia rd nw, washington dc, united states https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac; mail: topacademicjournals@gmail.com 26 | american journal of art and communication | https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac the debate over whether the news media promote wars or soothe them. in this regard, many studies proved that media is, in fact, elite-driven and, therefore, a faithful servant of the state (balci, 2010; robinson et al., 2009; wolfsfeld, 1997). the present study derives from this hypothetical ground. it exposes how autocratic settings promote warmonger and elite-driven news media even at a higher scale through al arabiya’s presentation of the yemeni civil war. however, the scholarship did not completely omit the human essence in journalism and paved the way for media-performance models independent of the political setting and state interests (althaus, 2003; robinson, goddard, parry, murray, & taylor, 2016). this was not just a perspective toward how the news was presented to the audience through news media, but it also had faith in public opinion. often referred to as liberal-democratic, this approach argued for the necessity and possibility of independent, unbiased, and impartial news media performance (entman, 2003; hallin, 1994). the idea of independent news media and public opinion was rooted in creating democratic constraints on politics through news flow (baum & groeling, 2009; baum & potter, 2015). however, the insistence on impartiality and virtues in autocratic political settings seems to be leading the news media outlets to focus on the humanitarian issues caused by the conflicts between states. the study aims to test and scrutinize this hypothesis through al jazeera’s efforts to impartially present the humanitarian side of the war to raise global awareness. the study also used substantial contributions from the mediatization literature. the study applies a triangulation method through quantitative content analysis and the qualitative evaluation of these findings (olsen, 2004). the authors also used news media paradigms such as mediatization, media-performance models, and news framing. despite the heavier derivation from media-performance models, the study also used the stages of mediatization with a specific focus on the third and fourth stages, where the framing of news, agenda setting, and execution occurs (strömbäck, 2008). the news media literature almost always focuses on the media performances of the states that were engaged in wars directly and are mostly driven by issue salience (carruthers, 2011; dimitrova & connolly-ahern, 2007; hutchinson, 2008). however, to what extent the news media content is affected by war when a state is an indirect party is a question that remains ambiguous to the field. it is arguable that the distance to the war-making, both in territorial and political means, may provide a cushion for news media to have some maneuvering space. al jazeera’s case poses a great potential to see if states leverage such indirect engagements to use the tone and content of the news media for bargains during bilateral and regional problems such as the gulf crisis in 2017. how did the diplomatic crisis between qatar and saudi arabia affect al jazeera’s presentation of a war in which riyadh is directly involved? case selection and methodology the yemen war was chosen to scrutinize the research question as it comprises an ongoing war with at least two external parties involved with influential news media outlets. since middle eastern states with major media outlets are involved in this war, there is a certain chance of a content tone divergence. to observe and analyze the differences in news performance models, qatar and saudi arabia were selected to conduct the most similar systems with different outcome (msdo) methods with a deductive approach. the msdo technique is mailto:topacademicjournals@gmail.com american journal of art and communication vol.7, issue 1; january-febuary 2022; 1252 columbia rd nw, washington dc, united states https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac; mail: topacademicjournals@gmail.com 27 | american journal of art and communication | https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac usually used for intermediate large-n studies that are variable-oriented for pattern determination (berg-schlosser & de meur, 2009). as several scholars have asserted, comparative media studies are mostly based on the “most similar systems” design in search of particularities (hallin & mancini, 2011). a typical “most similar systems” design requires all control variables to be similar except for one aspect. for the saudi and qatari cases we can say they are both authoritarian political settings, kingdoms, have natural resources, rich economies, high gdp per capita, etc., but their way of news framing (the independent variable studied) is quite different, which makes it accurate for a comparative study between saudi arabia and qatar (anckar, 2008). this study applies a variableoriented analysis under msdo, which is thought to be applicable to several cases. al arabiya and al jazeera come to the front in an almost intrinsic manner since they, especially the latter, have become the ruling presenters of mainstream ideas in the region (seib, 2005, 2008; zayani & sahraoui, 2017). this study was designed to test and compare two similar systems to discover particular patterns of differences about the coverage of the yemeni war. the frequency test resolved the question about the uniformity of news representation for the relatively lengthy period of five years. with the help of a clear-cut coding sheet, the news articles were categorized with a significantly high level of intercoder reliability/concord between the two coders. additional qualitative analyses supporting the quantitative (chisquare and frequency) analysis elaborated on the insights revealed through the relatively large data set. the abstract nature of raw data in largen studies was avoided by implementing on-the-point assertions about the patterns of differences. measurement and variables a quantitative content analysis was applied for this research as it is a widely used measurement tool in media and communication studies (krippendorff, 1989). content analysis helps scholars trace the absence or presence of content in output for a certain period (krippendorff, 2018; neuendorf & kumar, 2016). this study analyzes the arabic coverage of the yemeni war in two leading arab news websites, al jazeera (https://www.aljazeera.net/) and al arabiya (http://www.alarabiya.net) for five years, from april 1, 2015, to march 31, 2020. this period experienced the aftermath of the arab spring, the yemeni war, and the qatari/gulf crisis in 2017. the english versions were also analyzed, and it was discovered that there are several differences between the two versions, with the arabic websites being more comprehensive in content and frequency. it should also be underlined that the social or mental mobilization of the arab societies should categorically necessitate the analysis of the arabic media outputs rather than english, which has a narrower audience in the region. this study considers news content as the outputs of certain political situations and developments to direct public opinion in the desired way. the independent variable in this research was the interstate political rivalry that then affects the intervening variable of the belligerence status of a country in a war, explaining the dominance and the salience of news content toward that issue. hence, the dependent variables were the aspect of interest and the nature of coverage affected by the political authority’s position in or toward a salient issue. among the several potential control variables, the united nations’ active role in the yemeni civil war and its position were selected to test this study’s causality chain. this selection comes with feasibility measures since the data were already obtained within this research. most news articles about statements of u.n. envoys, u.n. meetings, and so on, 67.9%, are coded as mixed. this shows that the nature of coverage of u.n.-related mailto:topacademicjournals@gmail.com american journal of art and communication vol.7, issue 1; january-febuary 2022; 1252 columbia rd nw, washington dc, united states https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac; mail: topacademicjournals@gmail.com 28 | american journal of art and communication | https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac news was objective at a certain level, which indicates that u.n. actions generally do not affect the nature of coverage in any direction. the positive and negative nature of coverage about the u.n.-related news articles has a ratio of 26.6% and 5.5%, respectively. for the u.n.’s position toward the yemeni civil war to be a control variable, the variances between precrisis and postcrisis periods should coincide with the research data. the data bout the positive nature of coverage shows that the u.n.’s position toward saudi actions shows a slight increase of 2%, from 25.7% to 27.7%, although al arabiya poses much higher percentages with a significant increase in the postcrisis period from 79.5% to 92.1%. however, al jazeera shows a change in the opposite direction, from 61.5% to 15.5%, in the positivity of the content. for the negative nature of coverage, the united nations’ position toward the issue favored the qatari side with an increase from 0.5% to 11%, although the negativity in the news used in al arabiya decreased from 2.7% to 1.5%, showing no proof of interdependence. al jazeera on the other hand, increased the negative tone in the news articles from 9.2% to 57.1%, which indicates that the united nations’ negative approach was instrumentalized by this outlet without a general accord. last, the objective approach of the united nations shows a significant decrease from 73.6% to 60.3%. al arabiya’s objective/mixed coverage decreased from 17.7% to 6.3%, indicating clear irrelevance between the united nations’ position and its nature of coverage despite moving in the same direction. al jazeera followed a mixed nature of coverage ranging from 29.1% and 27.3% between the preand postcrisis periods, which plainly signifies that the united nations’ position did not cause any similar shifts in al jazeera’s mixed coverage of the yemeni civil war. the control variable tested the data and the causality chain in terms of serendipity and specified that there is a clear interdependence between the variables selected within this study. about other variables examined in accordance with the aforementioned research questions, salience is the variable that illustrates the prevalence of an issue. the salience variable helps the coders in terms of crystallizing the selectivity of the websites on certain issues, such as humanitarian crises, war crimes, and lack of public services. naming indicates the coverage of the yemeni war focused on the political and military structures like houthis, the yemeni government, coalition forces, national armies, and more. the difference in naming these structures reveals how the newspaper sources diverge in coverage. the wpr (what’s the problem represented to be?) approach offered by bacchi (2012) enables coding to single out the core of any content. this method focuses on how a news story is built and what lies in its center. the wpr variable was divided into four categories as actions, issues, naming, and news events. moreover, the tone of content variable was used for detailing the positive and negative tones in the coding of news articles. if the tone of content in a news article was found to be leaning positively toward the yemeni government, saudi army, or the coalition forces, that news article was coded as positive. but news articles with delegitimizing or an overall negative tone of content toward these organs were coded as negative. thus, the content’s positivity or negativity is determined by the news articles’ presentation of the yemeni government, houthis, coalition forces, saudi army, yemeni army, u.n. bodies, and war-caused issues. a positive tone indicates that the yemeni government, coalition forces, and saudi and yemeni armies are supported and affirmed. conversely, the negative tone specifies the news articles with delegitimizing or negating aspects designed to hurt the saudi-uae-yemeni government’s prestige. mailto:topacademicjournals@gmail.com american journal of art and communication vol.7, issue 1; january-febuary 2022; 1252 columbia rd nw, washington dc, united states https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac; mail: topacademicjournals@gmail.com 29 | american journal of art and communication | https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac sampling the unit of analysis for this study was the news stories published and stored in the website archives. the unitizing process was implemented through categorical distinctions, which include references to names—as in our case, some keywords bear multiple interpretations (krippendorff, 2018). for instance, houthis are putschists to one side and rebels to the other. overall, 3,016 news stories were sampled in this research. the content about action, problem, naming, and news events was included. the sampling was realized with a stratified sampling method with a certain approximate number of units previously determined for each newspaper as subpopulations. the news archives of the two media outlets were searched using five specific keywords as yemeni war through a systematic .[التحالف] and coalition ,[الحوثي] houthi ,[الیمن] yemen ,[ةمزأ نمیال] yemeni crisis ,[الحرب الیمنیة] random sampling method, we gathered 3,016 news articles (1,502 news from al arabiya and 1,514 news from al jazeera). this number was reached with certain considerations for the outlets’ feasibility and equal monthly representation. to reduce content repetition, the minimum number of days between articles was coded as three, and the maximum was seven to include at least one story per week. articles representing the tone of content published on the same days were rarely used, and news from noncorrespondent days was included occasionally. coding and intercoder reliability a coding sheet was constructed for the content analysis alongside an elaborated visual presentation provided to coders. coders were selected from phd students who are native arabic speakers. two types of questions categorize the objective and subjective features of the news sampled. objective features include the date, size, indicative words, and so on, whereas subjective features focus on the aspects of interest and the nature of coverage. there were specific pejorative words defined after the dummy test, such as terrorist, separatist, putschist, and militia, and legitimizing words, such as legitimate, humanitarian, and aid, were highlighted to increase the intercoder compliance. the coders were provided with three categories (positive, negative, and mixed/unclear) in terms of grouping the news according to the subjective features of a news story. the positive news was coded as one, while negative and mixed were coded as -1, 0, respectively. the coders determined the positivity or negativity of a news article considering the nature of coverage that is observable in at least 75% of the text. the intercoder reliability was measured through a dummy test including 300 units. the reliability tests were applied to measure the independent variables’ impact accurately. per holsti’s method, the intercoder reliability scores were above .85 for all categories. the agreement on the mixed/unclear category was above .95, while positive and negative categories presented varying levels between .85 and .90. another intercoder reliability test made was scott’s pi, which is specific to coding processes with two coders only. the scott’s pi test generated 0.85 overall consistency between coders, which is in the top-level accord between coders. the detailed scott’s pi tests for al jazeera and al arabia generated intercoder reliability scores of 0.79 and 0.87, respectively. media environments led by al jazeera and al arabiya scholarship hints at severe reservations about the media environments’ liberty in terms of saudi arabia and qatar, often highlighting the high level of mediatization (guaaybess, 2013; mejalli, 2019; pintak, 2008). maintaining a tight grip on the media, the saudi and qatari monarchies present their arguments through these mailto:topacademicjournals@gmail.com american journal of art and communication vol.7, issue 1; january-febuary 2022; 1252 columbia rd nw, washington dc, united states https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac; mail: topacademicjournals@gmail.com 30 | american journal of art and communication | https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac international media outlets for greater bargains in the international arena. the instrumental value of these outlets is elaborated in the following section with an emphasis on how they have become the leading regional sources of targeted news presentation. al jazeera established in 1996 with the support of the state of qatar, al jazeera quickly became one of the most influential media organs in the arab world. though the network’s live coverage of operation desert fox in 1998 enabled it to be recognized regionally and globally for the first time, the palestinian intifada in 2000, the afghanistan war in 2001, the iraq war in 2003, the israel-hezbollah war in 2006, gaza war in 2008–2009, and the arab spring in 2010–2011 all increased its reputation as one of the leading global media outlets (abdelmoula, 2015). although al jazeera introduces itself as “an independent news organization funded in part by the qatari government” (al jazeera english, 2018, para. 1), the network’s relationship with the political authority in qatar has always been a matter of debate. the network, while expressing many human rights violations in arab countries, has preferred to remain silent on some political issues related to qatar (figenschou, 2014). on the other hand, al jazeera has been criticized for its news media performance through the reports like shiite protests in bahrain against the monarchy and muslim brotherhood–sided coverage in egypt (al-rawi, 2017). the economic support provided by the qatar administration to al jazeera has always been the subject of discussion on the network’s claim of having an independent broadcasting policy. the u.s. embassy cables leaked by wikileaks pointed out that qatar used al jazeera as a bargaining tool in foreign policy negotiations. the cables, for example, reported that qatari-saudi relations “are generally improving after qatar toned down criticism of the saudi royal family on al jazeera” (booth, 2010, para. 7). although al jazeera chose not to comment too much on the u.s. cables, the network presented itself as an example of independent journalism by publishing the palestine papers, which “look inside the continuing negotiations involving high-level american, israeli, and palestinian authority officials” (carlstrom, 2011, para. 2). this one-sided policy falsified the claim that “al jazeera is state-funded in terms of financial resources, but independent operationally” (figenschou, 2014, p. 27) and suggested that this independence is contextual and conditional (figenschou, 2014). the findings of some studies provide a powerful demonstration of this suggestion. for zayani (2013), who examined media politics through al jazeera’s palestine papers, the network’s decision to publish these leaks was “a political decision as it is hard to disengage al jazeera from its qatari sponsor” (p. 30). samuel-azran’s comprehensive study, based on al jazeera’s coverage of saudi arabia during the qatarisaudi conflict, also enables us to scrutinize whether al jazeera’s editorial policy confirms qatar’s political discourse. he has found a strong correlation between al jazeera’s tone toward saudi affairs and the existence of the qatari-saudi conflict and argued that “qatar invented a new model of public diplomacy by operating al-jazeera as a hybrid statesponsored/private network, effectively transforming the network into a highly potent public diplomacy tool” (samuel-azran, 2013, p. 1293). ajaoud and elmasry (2020) and kharbach’s (2020) studies on the 2017 gulf crises, comparing al jazeera and al arabiya, also conclude that “both networks adopted the positions of the governments to which they are allied” and supported their employers to gain political influence (kharbach, 2020, p. 12). mailto:topacademicjournals@gmail.com american journal of art and communication vol.7, issue 1; january-febuary 2022; 1252 columbia rd nw, washington dc, united states https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac; mail: topacademicjournals@gmail.com 31 | american journal of art and communication | https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac al arabiya al arabiya has been broadcasting since 2003, and its website (alarabiya.net), used in this study, went online only a year later. the channel was established with impactful saudi sponsorship under the middle east broadcast centre façade (behravesh, 2014). thus, in return, the biggest consumer market of this media outlet is, by a large margin, the saudi and united arab emirates nationals. similar to al jazeera, al arabiya also produces news content under a state-dominated media structure with certain limitations to its maneuvering (al-rawi, 2017; mellor, ayish, dajani, & rinnawi, 2011; rugh, 2007). two structural aspects illustrate the limitations of al arabiya's objectivity: financial dependence and ideological exclusion. this news outlet was a state-based project as a reaction to al jazeera's rise after the 9/11 terrorist attacks in the united states and the 2003 iraqi war (iskandar & el-nawawy, 2004; seib, 2007). the rich oil industry has been fueling al arabiya to develop a regional media outlet that promotes “saudi” opinions with a certain potential to resonate with arab audiences (zayani & sahraoui, 2017). this has built an immense financial dependency on the media organization as it became increasingly ideological in its news and broadcast (abdulmajid, 2019). a close analysis of more than 1,500 news articles on the yemeni war plainly illustrates that the organization does not have a broad palette of opinions, especially on political issues. as the freedom house records specify, the saudi arabia media environment functions under “not free” conditions. it is observable in the quantitative analysis that al arabiya is almost always on the monarchy’s side. as the 1992 basic law does not endow journalists with judicial leverage, there have been several cases of official harassment, lengthy prison sentences, and even assassinations, like in the recent case of jamal khashoggi. with all these contractions and limitations on opinion diversity, al arabiya stands closer to pro-western monarchies such as kuwait, jordan, egypt, and saudi arabia, under the “moderation axis” (zeng & tahat, 2012). although there is an inclination to modernize the media sphere, the saudi arabian media environment has only modernized in terms of more inclusiveness for content. several scholars still argue that saudi media outlets have a conventional obligation to be “loyal” to the monarch (rugh, 2004; zayani, 2012). findings this study illustrates how al jazeera and al arabiya portrayed the yemeni war and the impact that the 2017 gulf crisis had on how this specific war was presented in these media outlets. the study is based on the claims that the content and intensity of the media coverage of the war, presented by the statesponsored media organs of the countries that are parties to the yemeni war, differ according to their active positions in the war. the crisis and political rivalries that broke out during the war-caused changes in the way these media outlets presented the war to their readers. mailto:topacademicjournals@gmail.com american journal of art and communication vol.7, issue 1; january-febuary 2022; 1252 columbia rd nw, washington dc, united states https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac; mail: topacademicjournals@gmail.com 32 | american journal of art and communication | https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac table 1. the frequency test's results for each media outlet. al jazeera frequency analysis (quarterly) al arabiya frequency analysis (quarterly) quarter observe expecte obspearson d d exp observe expecte obspearson d d exp 2015q2 79 75.100 3.900 0.450 90 75.700 14.300 1.644 75.100 -5.100 -0.589 74 75.700 -1.700 -0.195 75.100 0.900 0.104 77 75.700 1.300 0.149 75.100 4.900 0.565 74 75.700 -1.700 -0.195 75.100 4.900 0.565 82 75.700 6.300 0.724 75.100 -9.100 -1.050 70 75.700 -5.700 -0.655 75.100 7.900 0.912 74 75.700 -1.700 -0.195 75.100 -4.100 -0.473 66 75.700 -9.700 -1.115 75.100 -2.100 -0.242 75 75.700 -0.700 -0.080 75.100 5.900 0.681 77 75.700 1.300 0.149 75.100 15.900 1.835 76 75.700 0.300 0.034 75.100 9.900 1.142 74 75.700 -1.700 -0.195 75.100 3.900 0.450 75 75.700 -0.700 -0.080 75.100 -0.100 -0.012 76 75.700 0.300 0.034 75.100 -13.100 -1.512 77 75.700 1.300 0.149 75.100 -1.100 -0.127 74 75.700 -1.700 -0.195 75.100 -10.100 -1.165 76 75.700 0.300 0.034 75.100 -4.100 -0.473 76 75.700 0.300 0.034 75.100 -5.100 -0.589 78 75.700 2.300 0.264 2020q1 71 75.100 -4.100 -0.473 73 75.700 -2.700 -0.310 notes. al jazeera stats for pearson chi = 13.2064 (pr = 0.828), likelihood-ratio chi2(19) = 13.1657 (pr = 0.830); al arabiya stats for pearson chi2 = 5.3395 (pr = 0.999), likelihood-ratio chi2(19) = 5.2394 (pr = 0.999). the frequency test, conducted for the salience variable and shown in table 1 (see appendix here: https://docs.google.com/document/d/11hgdkcpv77t_iozq_apssvrecrlvrgb1/edit), which measures the distribution of news selections from al jazeera and al arabiya over the years, reveals that the distribution does not cluster around a single period. instead, the data indicate that there is a balanced distribution. the test result, χ2(19) = 13.2, p = .82, in which al jazeera’s news distribution is divided into quarterly periods, shows a balanced distribution of news across quarters. likewise, the quarterly frequency test results for al arabiya, χ2(19) = 5.33, p = .99, indicate a uniform distribution of news over the sampling period.2 2015q3 70 2015q4 76 2016q1 80 2016q2 80 2016q3 66 2016q4 83 2017q1 71 2017q2 73 2017q3 81 2017q4 91 2018q1 85 2018q2 79 2018q3 75 2018q4 62 2019q1 74 2019q2 65 2019q3 71 2019q4 70 mailto:topacademicjournals@gmail.com american journal of art and communication vol.7, issue 1; january-febuary 2022; 1252 columbia rd nw, washington dc, united states https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac; mail: topacademicjournals@gmail.com 33 | american journal of art and communication | https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac the tone of content parameter was included to show how these two sites differed in news flows. to understand how al jazeera’s coverage of saudi arabia and the saudi-led coalition has changed with the gulf crisis in the context of the yemeni war, the chi-square test was conducted to assess the association between the interstate dispute and the tone (negative, positive, mixed) toward saudi arabia/the coalition. the results illustrated in table 2, χ2(2) = 454.0, cramer’s v = .54, p < .001, show a strong correlation between the time factor and al jazeera’s tone of content in presenting news. moreover, al jazeera’s tone of content toward the parties in the yemeni war is mostly compatible with qatar’s political position both before and during the crisis. the rate of negative news for saudi arabia and the coalition before the crisis, 9.2% (n = 61), dramatically increased to 57.1% (n = 482) during the crisis. similarly, al jazeera’s positive tone in presenting news decreased sharply with the crisis from 61.5% (n = 405) to 15.5% (n = 131). the only area where no significant difference emerged between the two periods was in the news with mixed tones. the analysis emerging from the data obtained from al jazeera confirms the hypothesis that media controlled by state apparatus is forced to adopt the tone at least to a certain extent that best suits the political position of its sponsoring country during the war. that al jazeera retained almost a 10% negative news flow threshold toward a coalition ally of qatar before the 2017 gulf crisis, revealed that this media source had a fabric of independence, but it had to adapt to the political agenda under certain circumstances. moreover, the finding that al jazeera’s positive tone of content toward saudi arabia even after the gulf crisis was 15.5% shows that it is not merely confined to the political agenda. table 2. al jazeera chi-square test results. 0 1 total -1 61 482 543 0 192 231 423 1 405 131 536 total 658 844 1502 notes. pearson chi2 = 454.0025 (pr = 0.000), likelihood ratio chi2= 498.5824 (pr = 0.000), cramer’s v = 0.5498. table 3. al arabiya chi-square test results. 0 1 total -1 18 13 31 0 117 54 171 1 526 786 1312 total 661 853 1514 notes. pearson chi2 = 52.0294 (pr = 0.000), likelihood ratio chi2= 52.0290 (pr = 0.000), cramer’s v = 0.0854. al arabiya stood out with news presentations in favor of the coalition, adhering to the position of saudi arabia, the leading force of the yemeni war, before and during the gulf crisis. however, the results of the chisquare test shown in table 3, χ2(2) = 52.02, cramer’s v = .18, p < .001, show that there is a moderate correlation between timing and the tone of al arabiya’s news about the yemeni war. al arabiya’s news discourse, which has become more defensive with the gulf crisis, consolidates this correlation. the rate of positive news, which was mailto:topacademicjournals@gmail.com american journal of art and communication vol.7, issue 1; january-febuary 2022; 1252 columbia rd nw, washington dc, united states https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac; mail: topacademicjournals@gmail.com 34 | american journal of art and communication | https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac 79.5% (n = 526) before the crisis, reached 92.1% (n = 786) with a certain increase during the crisis. negative news, which was also low (2.7%; n = 18) before the crisis, dropped further during the crisis, by 1.5% (n = 13). another category in which a significant change occurs proportionally is the mixed news category. the proportional decline in this news—before the crisis, it was 17.7% (n = 117) but fell to 6.3% during the crisis (n = 54)—corresponds to the increase in positive news. the analysis emerging from the data obtained from al arabiya also confirms the hypothesis that states use mass media outlets to legitimize their political goals and their actions in wars to which they are a party. the problems represented in the negative and mixed-style news of both media outlets (particularly about al jazeera), on the other hand, cluster around certain categories. negative news on saudi arabia is gathered under the following headings: (1) houthis: relations within the houthi-led alliance, foreign aid to the houthis, the statements of houthi leaders and the allies, and the international declarations in favor of the houthi are included in this category; (2) human rights: news covering all the criticisms of the saudi-led coalition and its components in the context of human rights violations and war crimes, news covering the protests against the saudi-led coalition in different regions of the world, critical articles in the western press, and statements by countries that sell arms to the coalition forces to suspend agreements because of the coalition’s human rights violations are included in this category. (3) coalition forces: news about the disagreements between coalition components, particularly saudi arabia and the united arab emirates, and the loss of life and financial difficulties experienced by coalition forces are included in this category. the naming parameter scrutinizes how media outlets describe political or military organizations. moreover, was their level of interest and their position in the war a factor? although 51.65% (n = 32) of al jazeera’s negative tone of news (n = 61) in the precrisis period was mostly houthis, 43.35% (n = 26) was coalition forces, and 5% (n = 3) was human rights. the significant increase in negative news (n = 482) during the crisis leads to a change in the proportional distribution of content categories. human rights news, the weakest category before the crisis, came to prominence with the crisis with a rate of 41.9% (n = 202), indicating the compatibility of al jazeera for the independent news performance model. coalition forces news, with a rate of 32.15% (n = 155), follows human rights–related content in terms of density. the coverage of houthis was in last place with 25.95% (n = 125). these rates suggest that al jazeera restricted its pro-houthi coverage while highlighting antisaudi news during the crisis. this is also quite significant in showing that al jazeera stood on its ground of objectivism and independence and did not exploit war content even when the political setting allowed it. in other words, despite its problems with saudi arabia, al jazeera avoided following an editorial policy that would create the impression it was a pro-houthi media outlet. for al arabiya, although 50% (n = 9) of the few negative news (n = 18) published in the precrisis period mentioned the achievements of the houthis in the war front, another half of the negative news (n = 9) was in the coalition forces category. human rights criticisms against the coalition were not included in the sampled news. al arabiya, which further reduced the number of negative content (n = 13) during the crisis, did not feature reports on human rights criticism during this period and shared houthis (n = 8) and coalition forces (n = 5) news. mailto:topacademicjournals@gmail.com american journal of art and communication vol.7, issue 1; january-febuary 2022; 1252 columbia rd nw, washington dc, united states https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac; mail: topacademicjournals@gmail.com 35 | american journal of art and communication | https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac discussion about the main research question and the quantitative tests applied to the obtained data, it can be asserted that the mass media outlets in countries that are belligerent in wars tend to present it more positively or less negatively. requiring larger quantities to measure and conduct further testing, the case study provided promising insights on several dimensions. at first, the study provided another proof-like study for the arguments that political authority controls and channels the media outputs (mellor, 2005; mohammed, 1987). this question is relevant today as numerous dimensions of mainstream arguments are still vigorously investigated through different case studies. second, the initial point of the study was to illustrate the diversity in the tone of content in political issues and war in particular. this study also provides potential insights with a large data set open for further inquiries. the houthi keyword highlighted the impact of naming and demonization in news media while comprising an important part of the data. the usage of naming in war content or conflictual situations is a highly engaging topic in modern content analysis studies as this study also proved that identity comes to the fore. in the case of the coverage toward houthis, al arabiya put forward a certain characteristic of being a putschist, militia, and terrorist rather than being a historical arab tribe that could be constructive for its pan-arab cause. this study also provides data for further research on naming and blame-oriented content with its data acquired on the crisis, yemen, and coalition keywords. qatar’s diversifying activity level in the yemeni war and the fluctuating course of saudiqatar bilateral affairs provided a suitable platform for providing these insights on news content on war. furthermore, this study also contributed to the idea that media outlets use independence depending on their political surroundings about salient issues (bacchi, 2012; robinson et al., 2009). it was observed that bilateral or regional crises had caused fluctuations in both intensity and the tone of the news articles. al arabiya’s firm stand on the saudi side has crystallized the impact of active leadership in conflicts about the tone of the content. in addition to confirming the claim that al jazeera is the “soft power tool” serving qatar’s political agenda, the analysis of the data also shows, even during the most critical periods of the war, the tone of content and intensity of coverage by two separate state-sponsored media outlets is different. whereas the changing news policy of al jazeera after the gulf crisis was expected, its tone of news presentation in the precrisis period was not on the same level as that of al arabiya, despite all its support for the saudi-led coalition. al jazeera directed a few accusations of human rights violations toward saudi arabia in the precrisis period and tried to establish a balance under the principle of objectivity by including some of the news on the progress of the houthis on the war fronts and the losses of the coalition forces. therefore, based on the tone differences in the news of al jazeera and al arabiya, which were on the same side in the precrisis period, we determined that the content and intensity of the news presented by these state-sponsored media outlets differ depending on the fabric of independence and ideal of objectivism. likewise, it was observed that al jazeera’s news presentation style during the crisis period changed gradually. al jazeera broadcasted negative news on the united arab emirates, one of the coalition’s main allies in the crisis’s first periods. but during the war and based on the critical statements of the international public, the dose of criticism against saudi arabia increased. however, al jazeera avoided negative news about the mansour mailto:topacademicjournals@gmail.com american journal of art and communication vol.7, issue 1; january-febuary 2022; 1252 columbia rd nw, washington dc, united states https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac; mail: topacademicjournals@gmail.com 36 | american journal of art and communication | https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac hadi administration, the local saudi ally. it was also found that al jazeera, which refrains from making news affirming the houthis and attaches importance to international legitimacy, avoids moves that isolate its host country in international public opinion and pays attention to the independence policy while reporting against saudi arabia. however, al arabiya has presented news with a harsher turn of expression and content. although al arabiya branded the houthis as terrorists in the news about the coalition’s operations, it also refers to them as putschists in the operations of the yemeni army. again, when talking about the houthi administration, the phrase coup administration and when talking about social events, rebel militias are frequently used. as a reflection of the saudi rhetoric, al arabiya also uses the iranian-backed label when discussing the houthis’ missile attacks. moreover, another notable change discovered through this research is that the positive tone of news articles also rises above the standard thresholds during salient crises. the increased frequency and the positive tone of the news articles published on al arabiya after the 2017 crisis indicate that statesponsored media usually tend to overlegitimize and promote schemata that conserve their political superior’s prestige. thus, not only does the negative and critical tone in the news articles published by a media outlet sponsored by a political authority become sparse but also the positive and legitimizing opinions become prevalent over time. about the four main findings of the keyword content analysis, it can be asserted that al jazeera’s support for saudi arabia and the coalition in the precrisis period was a balanced endorsement, as the network occasionally published critical news about the coalition. these also included news against saudi arabia in the context of human rights and shared some news that might be useful to the houthis. however, during the crisis period, the network intensified the coverage of saudi arabia and the coalition in the context of human rights violations. it gave more space to the disagreements among the coalition components. on the other hand, while al jazeera covered peace talks and humanitarian/economic crisis content in mixedtoned news under the same keywords in both periods, it published mutual attacks content mostly under the keyword “coalition” during the crisis, differently from the precrisis period. therefore, it can be argued that the positive tone of content in al jazeera’s news flow toward the coalition actions before the crisis left its place to a mixed tone of news during the crisis. that the negative tone of content used by al arabiya was mostly in the news on houthis is an expected finding. the very limited negative tone of content seems to be a used instrument to create a sense of objectivity in the readers’ minds. al arabiya’s news content on responsibility, mostly used in news articles about peace talks, was gathered mostly under the crisis theme. this might indicate that al arabiya covered news articles on peace talks to put the responsibility on larger international organizations and others. moreover, al arabiya’s problemoriented news content was observed to accumulate in the yemen keyword as the humanitarian side of them was crystallized. a substantial portion of the action-focused content, such as mutual attacks or military operations, was focused on the houthi keyword for two potential reasons. first, to legitimize the military intervention in yemen and, second, to delegitimize and demonize the houthi rebels. conclusion this study was an endeavor to contribute to the content analysis literature with the much needed and widely omitted studies on non-western contexts. another aspect of this study, thought to be a beneficial mailto:topacademicjournals@gmail.com american journal of art and communication vol.7, issue 1; january-febuary 2022; 1252 columbia rd nw, washington dc, united states https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac; mail: topacademicjournals@gmail.com 37 | american journal of art and communication | https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac contribution, is providing data and analysis about media-politics interaction in totalitarian media environments such as monarchies. the content analysis literature led by the u.s. scholarship usually focuses on democratic environments where a certain level of free competition is a fundamental aspect of the media environment. however, the news content produced in non-democratic political settings is still valuable research material for tracing patterns of similarities and differences. three main discoveries of this study may be presented in the following order. first, this study has proven that turbulence in interstate affairs affects how mass media outlets present each other’s actions. second, english or local language (arabic in this case) usage has a remarkable impact on the actions, naming, and news events which might be a resourceful topic for further inquiries. last, the media outlet’s position in wars may experience swift changes toward the other pole if the context and the environment are highly polarized. however, this does not mean that a mass media outlet is completely confined to the political agenda, as al jazeera’s news content showed that it protected a level of independence even under bilateral and regional crises. another important aspect revealed during the research is the access to websites and their archives about feasibility, as the newspapers in arabic or other non-western languages are harder to delve into. this might be the reason behind the lack of recent content analysis studies on past political crises, the lack of diversity in studied media outlets, and the frequent preference for english versions about news content in the middle east. further studies applying different methodological approaches, such as most different systems, to compare a media outlet from the middle east with one of the outlets from mass media such as bbc, cnn, and more, or a major outlet of another region interested in the same topics may lead to alternative arguments. last, should the world society consider polarized war news's legitimizing and prolonging effect? may this be one of the reasons that wars and innocent deaths have become a natural part of people’s daily routines? references abdelmoula, e. 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(2013). al jazeera’s palestine papers: middle east media politics in the post-wikileaks era. media, war & conflict, 6(1), 21–35. doi:10.1177/1750635212469910 zayani, m., & sahraoui, s. (2017). the culture of al jazeera: inside an arab media giant. jefferson, nc: mcfarland. zeng, l., & tahat, k. (2012). picturing terrorism through arabic lenses: a comparative analysis of al jazeera and al arabiya. asian journal of communication, 22(5), 433–448. doi:10.1080/01292986.2012.701317 mailto:topacademicjournals@gmail.com climate airwaves: community radio, action research, and advocacy for climate justice in ghana american journal of art and communication vol.8, issue 5; september-october 2023; issn: 2994-0540 impact factor: 6.91 1252 columbia rd nw, washington dc, united states https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac; mail: topacademicjournals@gmail.com 1 | american journal of art and communication | https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac empowering communities: the climate airwaves initiative in ghana" jennifer louise anderson institute of development studies at the university of sussex, uk abstract: community radio in africa is a powerful tool for advocacy and social change, but its potential in addressing climate change remains underutilized. this article explores lessons learned from the climate airwaves initiative, which aims to empower community radio broadcasters in ghana to investigate, communicate, and engage in discussions about climate change's impact on vulnerable communities. the initiative emphasizes action research for social change and its broader role in climate justice efforts. key lessons include the need to address complexity and uncertainty effectively, framing climate change within the context of rights and responsibilities, fostering sustainable partnerships, and aligning with broadcasters' and communities' long-term visions of change. keywords: community radio, climate change, climate justice, ghana, action research introduction community radio is well recognized as a powerful vehicle for advocacy and social change in africa, but its use in the field of climate change has remained very limited, and then largely for top-down transmission of information to communities. this article discusses lessons learned to date from the climate airwaves, an initiative aimed at developing new approaches for supporting community radio broadcasters to investigate, communicate, and engage in broader debates on the impacts of climate change on vulnerable communities in ghana. it also discusses in depth the central role that action research aimed at effecting social change plays in this particular initiative, and in climate justice initiatives more broadly. lessons learned to date have highlighted the challenges of addressing complexity and uncertainty appropriately, the importance of framing climate change in the context of rights and responsibilities, the role of sustainable partnership models, and how this work can contribute to broadcasters‘ and communities‘ longer-term visions of change. background and justification for the study climate change and development in africa: dimensions of local engagement according to the intergovernmental panel on climate change (2007), by 2020, between 75 and 250 million people in africa could be exposed to increased water stress, and agricultural yields in some areas of the continent could be reduced by up to 50% as a result of climate change, resulting in widespread loss of lives and livelihoods across the continent. these and other impacts are already being mailto:topacademicjournals@gmail.com american journal of art and communication vol.8, issue 5; september-october 2023; issn: 2994-0540 impact factor: 6.91 1252 columbia rd nw, washington dc, united states https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac; mail: topacademicjournals@gmail.com 2 | american journal of art and communication | https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac this work was supported by the carleton university/idrc radio convergence and development in africa research program [grant number rcda.c89]. sincere thanks to the members of ghana community radio network and two anonymous ijoc reviewers for their valuable inputs to this paper. felt and will continue to worsen for the foreseeable future. for vulnerable communities in africa, the emerging local-level impacts of climate change compound the already-existing challenges of persistent poverty, hiv/aids, and social vulnerability. as a result, increasing levels of attention and funding are being directed toward helping vulnerable communities, particularly in developing and least-developing countries, build strategies to adapt, although current funding flows are still widely viewed as grossly insufficient (brown, nanasta, & bird, 2009). despite the increased international attention on the projected socio-ecological impacts of climate change on africa, studies suggest that research uptake at the local level has been limited, partly due to the challenges involved with communicating scientific research in ways that are appropriate to local stakeholder needs (gauthier, 2005), as well as failure to meaningfully engage existing local institutions (agrawal & perrin, 2009) and local cultural practices (ensor & berger, 2009). alongside these challenges, numerous studies have called for increased scientific engagement with local or indigenous ecological knowledge as a valuable source of adaptive practice and a pathway to integrating new approaches to adaptation (berkes, colding, & folke, 2000). one of the key barriers to meeting these challenges, this study agues, has been a failure to harness effective locallevel forums that allow for dialogue and exchange between researchers, community members, intermediaries (individual or institutional), and policy makers. much of what has been termed ―knowledge sharing‖ or ―research communication‖ in climate change adaptation has relied on institutionally-managed online databases and ―knowledge portals,‖ periodic workshops for climate change focal points, or occasional meetings to coincide with particular projects being implemented in a given community or district. these approaches tend either to engage those already ―in the know‖ and familiar with the discourse and institutional processes around climate change, or to engage with those at the margins of this discourse as passive or uninformed targets of information. as a result, these initiatives have frequently failed to span the ―last mile‖: to engage vulnerable communities in ways that address barriers presented by technology, language, and power relations; to link with the existing channels of communication that communities rely on; or to build upon ongoing activities and social spheres of vulnerable groups. they fail to capitalize on the important role that local culture and ways of knowing must play within community-based climate change adaptation (see figure 1), and thus, they limit the potential for lasting change. mailto:topacademicjournals@gmail.com american journal of art and communication vol.8, issue 5; september-october 2023; issn: 2994-0540 impact factor: 6.91 1252 columbia rd nw, washington dc, united states https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac; mail: topacademicjournals@gmail.com 3 | american journal of art and communication | https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac figure 1. multiple roles of culture in community-based adaptation. (adapted from ensor & berger, 2009) the failure to effectively employ appropriate communication channels to involve local stakeholders in sustained discussion on climate change has prompted a series of reflections on needs and recommendations for both researchers and journalists (fahn, 2009; godfrey, pauker, & nwoke, 2008; ochieng, 2009). in general, these recommendations have highlighted the urgent need for spaces for interaction between research, policy, and media actors throughout the research and implementation of adaptation actions. this interaction must be supported, they argue, by strengthening the capacity of media actors to understand the fundamentals of climate change and how it relates to local-level concerns, how research is conducted, and how to investigate climate change locally. these studies also recommend that research institutions link with media actors to provide them with relevant and up-to-date scientific information. literature/document review community radio as a tool for advocacy and social change in africa despite the attention given to the exponential growth in access to new icts in africa, radio remains the continent‘s dominant mass-medium. radio has the widest geographical reach and the highest audiences when compared with television, printed press, or other icts, such as the internet (balancing act, 2008; myers, 2008; panos institute of west africa, 2008). recent surveys conducted by intermedia in ghana and kenya (comparatively well-connected countries by sub-saharan african standards) reveal that only mobile telephones approach the level of popular use enjoyed by radio (see figure 2). mailto:topacademicjournals@gmail.com american journal of art and communication vol.8, issue 5; september-october 2023; issn: 2994-0540 impact factor: 6.91 1252 columbia rd nw, washington dc, united states https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac; mail: topacademicjournals@gmail.com 4 | american journal of art and communication | https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac figure 2. access to icts in kenya and ghana (bowen & goldstein 2010). studies from elsewhere in sub-saharan africa (cited above) suggest equal or still-greater dominance of radio as a communications medium, with the exception of some parts of southern africa where television is in wide use. radio station ownership in africa tends to fall under three categories: state-controlled public radio, privately owned commercial radio, and community-controlled radio, though distinctions between the categories can be somewhat unclear in certain cases. community radio, in particular, has been recognized as having great potential as a tool for popular expression and advocacy, with a democratization of content. myers observes that ―radio seems to have proven itself as a developmental tool, particularly with the rise of community and local radios, which have facilitated a far more participatory and horizontal type of communication‖ (2008, p. 5). this said, myers also notes that community radio is not uniformly or uniquely beneficial, as . . . there are some radios with a community license that can be appropriated by negative political forces and, at worst, can turn into ―hate radio.‖ many commercial radio stations have impressive development content. so, ―community‖ is not necessarily ―good,‖ and ―commercial‖ is not necessarily ―bad‖ and many community radios are semicommercial anyway. (ibid., p. 13) community radio also faces significant and persistent capacity challenges in terms of formal training and education (on the issues, on conducting research, and on broadcast production) of broadcasters, insufficient human and financial resources, and a heavy existing agenda of issues to cover amid these challenges. these are particularly important when stations are moving into new and complex issues to cover, such as climate change, as will be discussed below. mailto:topacademicjournals@gmail.com american journal of art and communication vol.8, issue 5; september-october 2023; issn: 2994-0540 impact factor: 6.91 1252 columbia rd nw, washington dc, united states https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac; mail: topacademicjournals@gmail.com 5 | american journal of art and communication | https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac with these reservations in mind, community radio seems to offer a potentially valuable medium for engaging in local discussions of the political, environmental, and social dimensions of climate change adaptation, especially in the african context, where access to other communication channels is often limited. current research suggests that community radio programming which is developed with the participation of communities and complemented with the use of organized listening groups and other channels of communication (such as new icts) can provide a very effective means of learning and influencing behavior (affri, 2008). beyond this role, community radio is able to provide a compelling platform for community voice in areas where language, transportation, and poverty present major barriers to popular expression. gauthier notes that, . . . with its lower production costs and extreme versatility, radio lends itself just as well to rapid interventions as to the broadcasting of in-depth reports, and is just as suitable for the dissemination of information as it is for entertainment or educational purposes. radio allows villagers to make their voices heard directly, regardless of their level of education or social standing. (2005, p. 1) this facility is due not only to the technological appropriateness and accessibility of radio in the context of rural africa, but to the mandate that community radio is expected to fulfill ―as the voice of the voiceless, the mouthpiece of oppressed people (be it on racial, gender, or class grounds) and generally as a tool for development‖ (amarc africa and panos southern africa, 1998). to date, however, the majority of initiatives linking community radio and climate change have been focused on the top-down delivery of messages informing listeners about strategies for adapting, preparing them for such anticipated climate-induced events as floods and droughts, and influencing decision-making at the household level (godfrey et al., 2008). while this is, indeed, a valuable role in the context of climate change adaptation, it fails to capitalize on the much greater potential of community radio to strengthen citizens‘ voices, and even to fundamentally challenge existing sociopolitical power structures, by helping people to ―define, claim, and give meaning to their citizenship, and re-create the social and political openings and alternative spaces where their voices might be heard‖ (pettit, salazar, & dagron, 2009, p. 445). doing so, as i describe in the following section, involves moving radio beyond the role of information transmission, into the process of knowledge production. community radio as action research this paper has highlighted the growing recognition of the importance of involving communities and their knowledge in assessing, prioritizing, communicating, and implementing research and action on adaptation to climate change (jennings, 2009). this invokes similar discussions around the value and forms of participation in international development cooperation, and the potential pitfalls of certain framings or deployments of participation (cooke & kothari, 2001) and north-south research collaboration (bradley, 2006). participatory forms of inquiry share a common political and ethical interest in ―sharing in the way research is conceptualized, practiced, and brought to bear on the life-world‖ (mctaggart, 1991, p. 171). this includes shifting both the aims and the ownership of research findings away from the researcher and toward the participating people, with the ultimate goal of achieving community action that challenges hegemonic structures and practices (fals-borda, 1988; kemmis & mctaggart, 2000). these ambitions resonate closely with the stated potential of community mailto:topacademicjournals@gmail.com american journal of art and communication vol.8, issue 5; september-october 2023; issn: 2994-0540 impact factor: 6.91 1252 columbia rd nw, washington dc, united states https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac; mail: topacademicjournals@gmail.com 6 | american journal of art and communication | https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac radio as a vehicle for social and structural change. however, the degree to which any of these shifts toward community participation and action occur within the context of participatory research can vary from case to case, depending on the particular approach adopted. also, what research actually qualifies as ―participatory‖ is frequently debated (jordan, 2003). for instance, there is often disagreement about how the notion of ―meaningful‖ participation should be interpreted. peet and hartwick underscore these variations, noting the . . . real differences between institutional views of participation (in which local populations serve only as ‗extras‘ or ‗human resources‘) and the more radical views of par theorists, who admit that their knowledge is irrelevant if local people do not regard it as useful and believe in full participation. (1999, p. 141) there are, therefore, strong parallels in the concern over voice, ownership, and representation of knowledge (and ways of knowing) voiced by proponents of participatory action research and those evoked by community media, including community radio. cornish and dunn highlight some of these overlaps: citizen-led approaches to communication as means of both creating and expressing knowledge . . . have the power to complement and enhance more formalized and analytical research findings, because of their ability to access and convey other ways of knowing, which may be intuitive, tacit, embodied, artistic, cultural, symbolic, or spiritual in nature. they also have potential to contribute to a broader empowerment process within communities; to allow people who are traditionally the ―researched‖ to have a sense of ownership over the research process and potentially take action on their own behalf. (2009, p. 670) indeed, as i have argued, community radio can and should be an active participant in action research on climate change adaptation within communities. it has a strategic position, as the actors are permanently embedded within and working alongside communities, and may well have a clearer understanding of stakeholder groups, local history, and community needs than researchers or other practitioners coming from outside. its abilities to convene community representatives, ensure democratic representation within the community, keep communities appraised of work being conducted, and collect local testimonies are all important principles of action research which are often overlooked in conventional research. also important is its mandate for challenging existing systems by transmitting upward to dutybearers (elected and appointed officials who bear responsibilities vis-àvis the community) and powerbrokers (see figure 3). this role is not greatly different from the one that many community radio stations or networks have already defined for themselves (white, 2007). in ghana, where the pilot study discussed in this paper is being implemented, alex quarmyne, founder of the ghana community radio network (gcrn), describes the challenge that confronts these broadcasters to . . . ensure that listening communities are not only consumers of information, however rich and appropriate. rather, to be consistent with its objective of promoting indigenous knowledge, the station will need to work . . . to enable the listening communities, especially the most disadvantaged groups, to upload and grow their own knowledge. (ibid., para. 22) mailto:topacademicjournals@gmail.com american journal of art and communication vol.8, issue 5; september-october 2023; issn: 2994-0540 impact factor: 6.91 1252 columbia rd nw, washington dc, united states https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac; mail: topacademicjournals@gmail.com 7 | american journal of art and communication | https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac figure 3. information sharing and advocacy intervention model. scope and objectives of the research climate airwaves: linking climate change and advocacy through african community radio the climate airwaves initiative is a pilot project aimed at testing many of the theoretical assumptions outlined above through a network of community radio broadcasters in ghana. it was launched in june 2010 with the aim of piloting and validating a methodology for strengthening community radio capacity to draw upon icts and intermediary networks to ngage in action research and advocacy on climate change adaptation and climate justice. the methodology was designed to help community radio strengthen local knowledge and voices on climate change impacts and adaptation by increasing their input into local research and policy dialogue, and sharing their experiences of and responses to climate change. the initiative therefore sees community radio as playing a convening, knowledge-brokering, and advocacy role among community members, decision makers, and researchers. it sees action research as a key to both building broadcasters‘ capacities to perform this role and strengthening their engagement with local communities. the project is being implemented through a partnership of networks working on climate change and community radio in africa. these are the ghana community radio network (gcrn), the africaadapt knowledge sharing network on adaptation to climate change, and amarc (the world association of community radio broadcasters). another core partner in the initiative is the institute of development studies at the university of sussex, uk (ids), which works extensively on climate change and participatory development. ghana, like many countries in west africa, faces significant vulnerability to the projected impacts of climate change, particularly in terms of water-stress, land degradation, and coastal zone erosion, which are expected to lead to drops in agricultural productivity, power shortages (nearly 80% of ghana‘s electricity is from hydroelectric generation), and loss of key coastal land, among other impacts (dazé, 2007; mcsweeney, new, & mailto:topacademicjournals@gmail.com american journal of art and communication vol.8, issue 5; september-october 2023; issn: 2994-0540 impact factor: 6.91 1252 columbia rd nw, washington dc, united states https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac; mail: topacademicjournals@gmail.com 8 | american journal of art and communication | https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac lizcano, 2008). there is also concern that these projected impacts could prompt internal (north-to-south) and cross-border migration and conflict (bbc world service trust, 2009; dazé, 2007). the three gcrn member stations participating in the project—radio ada, radio afram plains, and radio tongu—all lie on the volta river. radio ada has been on the air for 12 years and is the effective forerunner and living laboratory for many of the participatory methodologies applied by gcrn. radio afram plains went on the air in 2001 following a participatory design process facilitated by gcrn. radio tongu is the youngest gcrn member-station, having gone on the air in mid-february 2010, but it has benefitted from the full range of gcrn participatory training programs. communities served by the three stations have all had their lives and livelihoods significantly diminished by the damming of the volta river. the impact of climate change on the ebb and flow of the river has made them even more vulnerable. the harm is most evident in communities in ada, at the estuary of the volta and the atlantic ocean, where entire communities are being displaced by the silting of the river and coastal erosion. although they are 18 km inland from the sea, the other communities are seeing their future mirrored in ada, particularly as fishing activities have increasingly had to be replaced by alternative livelihoods, such as petty trading. afram plains, an island created by the dam, is host to migrants displaced by the same dam. the communities of radio ada are dangme-speaking, but they feel a kinship to the ewes on the other side of the river. the tongu language is part of ewe, which is also the native language of many of the migrants in afram plains. in all three communities, women bear the brunt of sustaining the day-to-day economy, and their empowerment is a focus of their community radio stations‘ programming. mailto:topacademicjournals@gmail.com american journal of art and communication vol.8, issue 5; september-october 2023; issn: 2994-0540 impact factor: 6.91 1252 columbia rd nw, washington dc, united states https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac; mail: topacademicjournals@gmail.com 9 | american journal of art and communication | https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac the partnership and capacity strengthening model that has been piloted in the climate airwaves initiative was collaboratively developed between 2008 and 2010. one of the aims of the model was to build on the existing strength of ghana‘s community radio stations by convening local stakeholders and creating a space to share knowledge on the causes, impacts, and responses to climate change. however, it is also recognized that climate change presents a complex challenge which spans spatial, temporal, and jurisdictional scales, and which therefore extends beyond the knowledge or influence of singular institutions or actors (cash et al., 2006). thus, in order to achieve the full potential posited above, there is also a need for access to and understanding of information, political processes, and actor-networks which extend beyond the local community level. as a result, the engagement model being piloted here contains a strong focus on capacity and network strengthening, where capacity is understood as the capability to act intentionally amid complex constraints, to generate desired development results, to relate to other actors, to adapt and self-renew, and to bring things together and achieve greater coherence (morgan, 2006). methodology and tools used methodology: the value of action research it is important to emphasize that the pilot study and the questions that frame it were conceived around participatory, action-oriented methodology, reflecting the belief that, ―if you choose to regard your subjects as self-directing agents, whose creative thinking determines their actions, then you cannot do research on them or figure 4. map with location of the three station areas (adapted from google). mailto:topacademicjournals@gmail.com american journal of art and communication vol.8, issue 5; september-october 2023; issn: 2994-0540 impact factor: 6.91 1252 columbia rd nw, washington dc, united states https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac; mail: topacademicjournals@gmail.com 10 | american journal of art and communication | https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac about them, but only with them‖ (heron, 1996, p. 202). as such, the validity and usefulness of its findings should, first and foremost, be confirmed by those engaging directly in the study‘s activities, particularly local broadcasters and community members. the choice of approach for the study was fundamentally important given that the model of practice piloted with radio stations is, itself, built upon the same principles of the benefits of participation and co-production of knowledge. thus there are two levels of action research at play: the overarching collective testing and validation of the action research method, and the inquiries led by community radio broadcasters at community level as a part of the process. the initiative had three implementation phases. during each of these phases, there was a strong emphasis on documenting the reflections, processes, and outcomes of engagement through the production of radio broadcasts which could then be aired in the communities to keep community members informed about work that was being undertaken. the first phase consisted of a baseline assessment of the existing experience and knowledge on climate change and participatory research approaches within the radio stations and the communities they serve, followed by capacity-building activities to address the knowledge gaps identified by participants. the assessments were designed by ids and gcrn, carried out by the station members themselves, and analyzed collectively at a workshop in ghana. on the basis of these assessments, workshops on ―understanding and communicating climate change‖ and ―conducting and communicating community-based action research on climate change‖ were developed collaboratively by gcrn and ids. they were implemented over the course of several months by members of ids, as well as in-country experts from international and civil society organizations who, wherever possible, had existing ties to the network. this approach was used to strengthen the stations‘ ties to resources which will continue to be available to them beyond the life of the climate airwaves initiative and may, therefore, continue to contribute to their investigation and interpretation of climate impacts in the future. the second phase involved piloting the engagement process between the radio stations, their broadcast communities, applied climate research taking place in the region, and local authorities and power-holders. broadcasters conducted inquiries into community experiences and understanding of climate change using a systemic action research approach (burns, 2007), engaging with researchers working on climate-related issues in their regions to understand what they were prioritizing and finding, and finally, bringing these groups together with decision makers to collectively reflect on what communities are experiencing, what research is revealing, and whether or how this is being translated into policy and action. the systemic action research approach is a multi-step process where teams of investigators (the broadcasters themselves in this case) first identify a broad set of community members with whom they then conduct openended interviews aimed at first listening to the members‘ stories and their concerns. the stories gathered are shared among investigators and mapped (as quotes and storylines) onto a series of boards where all team members can analyze and contribute to them. from this initial inquiry, areas of focus where common or key issues have emerged are identified, and a series of follow-up questions and targeted interviews are developed to deepen the investigation. once these additional inquiries have been conducted, the mapping is revisited, this mailto:topacademicjournals@gmail.com american journal of art and communication vol.8, issue 5; september-october 2023; issn: 2994-0540 impact factor: 6.91 1252 columbia rd nw, washington dc, united states https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac; mail: topacademicjournals@gmail.com 11 | american journal of art and communication | https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac time with participants drawing links between different community members‘ experiences, the policies or practices that bear influence on them, and the other actors who intervene into the system within which the experience unfolds. the focus here is on revealing, with increasing levels of detail, the complex set of relationships and influences which underlie a particular challenge as it experienced by local people. what is frequently revealed through this process is that a given experience (of coastal zone erosion, for example) can have a wide range of other stressors beyond the effects of climate change (land tenure policies, power relations between authorities and communities, infrastructure development, etc.). the draft mapping is then reviewed with communities and other participants in the inquiry for input, and on this basis, the broadcasters are then able to identify points within this map where they feel that their intervention may be able to promote positive change within the system. the first community-level inquiry was conducted in the ada region (villages of azizanya and agfiedenyigba) as a part of the action research training. members from all three stations participated to model the methodology. through the inquiry, they were able to investigate impacts of climate change in the greater ada region and link these to existing drivers of vulnerability in order to identify key areas for action. after the modeling workshop in ada, stations from afram plains and tongu repeated the same process in their own broadcasting regions to identify key areas of focus. the table below outlines the final areas of focus for the investigations that were determined by each of the stations through their preliminary systemic action research inquiries and mapping. figure 5. a participant adding to a system map during a workshop in ada, ghana. mailto:topacademicjournals@gmail.com american journal of art and communication vol.8, issue 5; september-october 2023; issn: 2994-0540 impact factor: 6.91 1252 columbia rd nw, washington dc, united states https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac; mail: topacademicjournals@gmail.com 12 | american journal of art and communication | https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac table 1. summary of research focus at each participating station (gcrn interim report, april 2011). station afram plains tongu ada theme low crop yield *in-migration from volta region for rich cocoa farming *akosombo dam + cc *no cocoa / no crops *out-migration > ―ghost town‖ drought & floods * displaced by akosombo dam * drought a constant issue * spillage from akosombo > relocation – returned * spillage expected to be worse/more frequent * out-migration cc > coastal erosion > land tenure & community rights community bethel avadiwoe-kome (island community) azizanya people (discussants & interviewees) chief; mofa; women; men; children; youth d.a.; ngos; assemblymembers assembly members; headmen; farmers & fishermen‘s groups; youth & children; elderly women/men; market women; agricultural extension officer; district chief executive; district planning officer azizanya chief; 1 female youth; elderly fishmonger; girl, 10–15 yrs; ada foah chief; district chief executive; mp language of broadcast ewe tongu dangme key questions and notes how, in the process of the research/inquiry, can we deepen reflection and expression by using such “tools” as proverbs/songs etc? how, based on our rich experience, can we involve the community in developing the system map? (use of the ground, stick and symbols) mailto:topacademicjournals@gmail.com american journal of art and communication vol.8, issue 5; september-october 2023; issn: 2994-0540 impact factor: 6.91 1252 columbia rd nw, washington dc, united states https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac; mail: topacademicjournals@gmail.com 13 | american journal of art and communication | https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac how can the process lead to dialogue and negotiation toward communitydriven change? note potential implications from any legal issues (may need legal advice / draw on legal allies). after these themes of investigation were determined, broadcasters were put in contact with climate researchers working on similar issues within their region in order to obtain additional feedback specific to the climate dimension of the challenges they identified. the evidence produced by these researchers in reports and publications also served to confirm findings that broadcasters had produced, and to add additional credibility to their arguments with outside actors. this process was supported by the africaadapt network, which hosts a large community of researchers and practitioners working on climate change. the third and final phase of this initiative involved compiling the findings and experiences of the three stations, and then sharing them at national and international levels to raise awareness of, and prompt responses to, community-level experiences of climate change, as well as to share lessons on the potential of community radio as a catalyst for social and political action on climate change in ghana and elsewhere in africa. community forums or ―durbars‖ were held at each of the three station locations, bringing together community members, elders, chiefs, and district representatives to re-listen to the broadcasts, discuss the findings, and raise questions for leaders and duty-bearers. these durbars provided a space where community members could articulate their concerns and get commitments from their representatives on issues such as disaster relief, alternative livelihoods projects, and the introduction of new policies. these discussions were then broadcast out to the broader listening community, so as to ensure that those who were not present could also provide input. the reporting on community experience at the national level was then facilitated through gcrn via a national forum held in accra, the national capital, where broadcasters and community members presented the results of these investigations to national representatives and members of the international community, highlighting common concerns from across the different broadcast areas and seeking to gain national support for the needs articulated at district levels. beyond the national scale, lesson-sharing with the broader radio and climate communities continues to be facilitated through amarc and the africaadapt network. learning and participatory evaluation of the process the process has been designed to maximize and make visible the value of linking learning and action research in an ongoing process of learning in action. while learning is often understood to be deeply intertwined with the action research process, the climate airwaves initiative‘s emphasis on capacity development has led this to be a point of much more deliberate emphasis. at each stage of the training and implementation process, the members of the project team (broadcasters, trainers, gcrn staff, etc.) have both reviewed the impacts and implications of the work that they have done, and considered how it might be relevant for them in their daily activities. the participatory monitoring and evaluation process developed for this initiative is also aimed at embedding learning and reflection into the implementation of both training and piloting the methodology. mailto:topacademicjournals@gmail.com american journal of art and communication vol.8, issue 5; september-october 2023; issn: 2994-0540 impact factor: 6.91 1252 columbia rd nw, washington dc, united states https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac; mail: topacademicjournals@gmail.com 14 | american journal of art and communication | https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac ultimately, the success or failure of this initiative will be assessed by the broadcasters themselves and the communities that they represent. as noted above, one of the key frameworks for reflecting on the success of this initiative is the extent to which it strengthens the capacity of participating community radio broadcasters to do the following things: act intentionally amid complex constraints, generate desired development results, relate to other actors, adapt and self-renew, and bring things together to achieve greater coherence (morgan, 2006). a second approach which has been adapted and frequently employed by gcrn to envision and develop strategies for social change in their action research initiatives is appreciative inquiry (cooperrider & srivastva, 1987). these two approaches are applied using both faceto-face reflections at capacity-building workshops and stakeholder dialogues, and through the use of audio journaling by community broadcasters as they move through the different phases of the methodology. audio journaling allows the evaluation process to play a central role in the actual implementation, rather than construing it as an ―add-on‖ procedure merely carried out for auditing or accountability purposes. broadcasters, who already possess strong capacities in designing, recording, and editing discussions for airing, use these reflections as part of the broadcasts they produce throughout the initiative. these journals can be used to reflect on the challenges of understanding and communicating climate change knowledge, the value of the action research process, overall impressions of the initiative, etc., and they can also be revisited periodically to track how people‘s experiences have evolved over time in line with the dimensions of capacity outlined above. some audio journaling moves beyond broadcaster experiences and engages community members in reflections on the value of, or approaches to, addressing climate change. regular audio journaling, paired with both the baseline self-assessments conducted at the outset of the initiative and a re-assessment conducted at its conclusion, provide a body of participantgenerated evidence that can then be reviewed collectively to establish what has been learned, what changes have occurred, and what the next steps should be, using the model of appreciative inquiry developed by gcrn. appreciative inquiry is fundamentally concerned with taking a co-constructive and positive approach to adaptive learning and planning by ―inquiring into organization existence in ways that are economically, humanly, and ecologically significant‖ (cooperrider & whitney, 2005). it typically follows a ―4-d‖ approach, inviting participants to reflect on discovery (appreciating and valuing the best of ―what is‖), dream (envisioning ―what might be‖), design (dialoguing ―what should be‖), and destiny (innovating ―what will be‖). to these, gcrn has added a fifth ―d‖, discernment (reflecting on ―what has become‖). as a visioning exercise used across the range of gcrn programming activities, it was important to include this as a part of climate airwaves activities, to ensure that this work is seen as a component of the broader advocacy and social change project pursued by the network. key findings and reflections the process outlined here is currently in its final stages, with a closing national discussion forum for sharing results held in august 2011, and the lesson-sharing and evaluation currently being concluded. thus, the longterm impact and value of the methodology being piloted in this partnership is difficult to gauge, although some mailto:topacademicjournals@gmail.com american journal of art and communication vol.8, issue 5; september-october 2023; issn: 2994-0540 impact factor: 6.91 1252 columbia rd nw, washington dc, united states https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac; mail: topacademicjournals@gmail.com 15 | american journal of art and communication | https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac early outcomes are already beginning to emerge. these relate primarily to broadcasters‘ own appreciation of the current and potential impacts of climate change on their communities and other communities in the region; their growing awareness of the complexity of climate change as a phenomenon; and an increase in participants‘ capacity to, and interest in, exploring the question of climate change within their communities. challenges have also emerged around the interface of this work with competing narratives and interests which sit in tension with the principles and priorities that were explored in the program, as will be discussed below. through capacity building workshops paired with field visits to communities affected by climaterelated impacts, participants report having a much more concrete understanding of the challenges that climate change may present to their communities. capacity building which has emphasized both the social and physical dimensions of vulnerability has helped them to identify those populations who would most likely be at risk within their own communities, and to consider how these new vulnerabilities intersect with existing vulnerabilities they are already working to address through their broadcasting, such as health, sanitation, women‘s rights, and social or political marginalization. this points to the strength of many community radio broadcasters as partners in action research, as they are able to quickly re-frame new issues within the contexts of the local communities for whom they are advocates. the use of systemic action research—where issues of investigation are always assumed to be both embedded in, and influenced by, broader structural dynamics—helped to build on this strength. the capacity building program also identified and targeted the specific need for additional training for female broadcasters on the basics of climate and environmental science, and provided an additional one-day womenonly session on this, which resulted in increased confidence when those women joined the full group for the main training workshop. at the same time, growing awareness of the local dimensions of climate change has had to be presented alongside a framing of climate change as a global phenomenon. establishing the link between global drivers and localized impacts is recognized as a major challenge to communicating climate change knowledge, as people, including the media, are likely to focus on localized behaviors, such as charcoal burning, deforestation, and pollution as the causes of climate change (bbc world service trust, 2009). thus, time has been invested into pointing to differences (as well as similarities) between climate change and environmental degradation in order to clarify the global dimensions of the former, and to frame it within both notions such as climate justice and common but differentiated responsibilities, as well as to link advocacy at the local level to similar national and international struggles that are underway. through the use of visual supports, multimedia resources, and discussions, progress has been made in clarifying these distinctions for participants. another significant outcome of work thus far has been progress made in developing appropriate language and analogies to explain key climate-related concepts in local languages. research conducted by the bbc world service trust (ibid.) notes that there is no local-language equivalent for the term ―climate change‖ in ghana, and that the technical and political discourses of climate change are virtually inaccessible to those who are most at risk. this was echoed in capacity-building workshops with broadcasters, the majority of whom, for example, had never seen a greenhouse, making the notion of a ―greenhouse effect‖ difficult to illustrate. thus, a key area mailto:topacademicjournals@gmail.com american journal of art and communication vol.8, issue 5; september-october 2023; issn: 2994-0540 impact factor: 6.91 1252 columbia rd nw, washington dc, united states https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac; mail: topacademicjournals@gmail.com 16 | american journal of art and communication | https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac of focus has been on the development and testing of a glossary of climate-related terminology into the three languages used by the participating stations. terms and concepts such as adaptation, vulnerability, greenhouse gas, and resilience were described in local languages with accompanying analogies, and participants developed strategies for discussing these concepts with differently-situated community members, such as village elders or district representatives. the term greenhouse effect, for example, was instead described through an analogy to closed traditional coal-fired ovens. the broadcasting teams also sought to link their new understanding of the drivers and impacts of climate change with proverbs, which have a powerful role in ghanaian culture. both of these activities led to a noted increase in confidence in taking these discussions back into the community and engaging with those who have technical expertise on climate change, such as researchers. finally, there are already concrete outcomes beginning to emerge from the process at the level of the communities themselves. among the more marked outcomes to date has been the initiation of new dialogue between community members from azizanya (ada), local and traditional authorities from the area, and neighboring communities facing similar challenges. azizanya is a community facing rapid coastal erosion and a tense related conflict over land tenure rights between fishing communities and authorities looking to develop coastal land for tourism. broadcasters report that the community durbar helped to renew an open (and broadened) dialogue on these issues, which have been the source of significant conflict and secrecy to date. in afram plains, the durbar organized by broadcasters brought district authorities into direct contact with island-dwelling communities for the first time outside of an election drive. the exchange highlighted the great disconnect between authorities and the community‘s needs, and prompted commitments of support from the district chief executive, who later attended the national forum in accra and reiterated this commitment in plenary discussion before its 130 participants. while this pilot research has succeeded in producing some early outcomes that have been noted above, it has also been useful thus far in revealing some key challenges and lessons to be learned from the initiative to date. many of these are not exclusive to this approach, but should nonetheless be retained as important points of caution. a first such difficulty is the challenge of maintaining coherence in a complex, multi-stage process amid competing priorities. in the case of community radio in ghana (and elsewhere), the largely voluntary nature of station staffing means that maintaining the same team of actors for an extended period of time can be challenging. in the context of a capacity building initiative, this can sometimes mean that certain individuals are involved in some elements of the work, but may then miss other key steps. this poses challenges to ensuring a broad-based understanding of an approach within stations. this was the case in one of the three stations involved in this study, and it may have influenced the outcomes that station experienced. closely related to this first challenge is a second on the delivery of capacity support. one area for improvement in this approach which was noted by broadcasters was the need for capacity support to be maintained throughout the entire process, as opposed to having it emphasized at the outset. the importance of support in validating findings, designing broadcasts, and conducting community forums was noted, particularly as stations are using this approach for the first time. mailto:topacademicjournals@gmail.com american journal of art and communication vol.8, issue 5; september-october 2023; issn: 2994-0540 impact factor: 6.91 1252 columbia rd nw, washington dc, united states https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac; mail: topacademicjournals@gmail.com 17 | american journal of art and communication | https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac a further challenge involves recognizing that these efforts take place within a broader social and political economy which may, at times, be at odds with the principles being put forward. in these cases, a key concern is the extent to which broadcasters can disrupt these dominant and often deeply embedded discourses while maintaining a community-driven dialogue. this occurred in one case, where broadcasters sought to engage members at a community forum on how climate change was impacting agriculture in the region, and community members wished to make links to the overgrazing and degradation of their lands by nomadic fulani herdsmen, a group frequently at odds with the farmers of the region (sarpong, 2006; tonah, 2006). for broadcasters interested in maintaining an open dialogue who may also be sympathetic to these community viewpoints, this can present a significant challenge, despite the fact that such viewpoints sit in tension with the principle of connecting local impacts of climate change with their global drivers. as such, maintaining a balance between the community-driven approach pursued by both community radio and action research, and ensuring that the concept of global climate justice sits at the root of these investigations can prove difficult. when working with a topic as complex as climate change, this challenge is amplified, and it may, in fact, go beyond the capacities of what is achievable by broadcasters working on their own. this recalls the principle of network strengthening noted above, and it highlights the importance of seeing capacity as not only resident in the broadcasters themselves, but in a broader network of allies, collaborators, and resources upon which they can draw. implications of findings and recommendations challenges and lessons learned dealing with complexity amid competing priorities some of the challenges encountered and lessons learned from this initiative to date can be grouped around three main themes: understanding, framing, and communicating climate change; establishing appropriate partnerships; and building and sustaining capacity. on the first point, climate change is recognized as a complex (rind, 1999) or ―wicked‖ (from a policy perspective) problem, even for those who have specialist knowledge of the issue. as noted above, for community radio broadcasters, most of whom are volunteers who may have had limited formal education (this is particularly prevalent among women in this initiative), this complexity can prove to be a major stumbling block in terms of linking local experience to global phenomena. this complexity is further complicated by frequent conflation between climate change and other environmental issues that have been heavily covered in the ghanaian media in the past, particularly deforestation and depletion of the ozone layer (bbc world service trust, 2009). it has also led, as noted above, to a discourse of ―self-blame‖ within many african community broadcasters, who attribute poor environmental stewardship in their communities (or those competing with their communities for resources) to being key drivers of the rise of climate change and global warming, and in turn, pass this message on to their communities. in reality, sub-saharan africa is responsible only for a fraction of global co2 emissions (robinson & miller, 2009). this complexity has led either to limited coverage of the climate change agenda, or to the use of scripted ―kits‖ developed outside of the community, which are then customized for local language and context. in the case of gcrn, they have done programming in the past on climate change with ngo partners in ghana, as well as regular programming at some of the stations on other environmental issues, but these challenges still remain mailto:topacademicjournals@gmail.com american journal of art and communication vol.8, issue 5; september-october 2023; issn: 2994-0540 impact factor: 6.91 1252 columbia rd nw, washington dc, united states https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac; mail: topacademicjournals@gmail.com 18 | american journal of art and communication | https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac despite the experience they have accrued. as a result, initiatives seeking to help broadcasters produce their own reporting on local dimensions of climate change must invest heavily in ongoing capacity development and partnerships that can support these efforts. the time and resources needed for this type of investment present a significant challenge for stations that are largely run by volunteers, have limited financial resources to draw upon, and are often expected to cover the full breadth of issues relevant to community well-being, including health, governance, and other environmental concerns. thus, the prioritization of climate change as an issue to which investments should be directed must be balanced with the perceived relative importance of the issue in comparison to the needs for investment in work on good governance, hiv/aids, land rights issues, and so on. in view of this, it should be expected that not all stations would see the value of devoting the required time and investment into this process if they are already struggling to provide adequate attention to those issues that their communities deem to be higher priorities. framing climate change as a question of politics, rights, and duties this second point of learning may actually provide a way of addressing, or at least clarifying, the point raised above. in many community radio stations like those that form gcrn, addressing local dimensions of rights, justice, equity, and citizen empowerment are central to the stations‘ broadcasting objectives (white, 2007), and this presents both an opportunity and a requirement. for these stations to fully appreciate the local relevance of climate change and invest themselves into the development of capacities for covering it as an issue, it is essential that climate change be framed in the context of social and environmental rights and justice. this framing allows broadcasters to begin integrating climate change into the range of other interlinked issues that they are already covering, such as poverty, marginalization, and governance, as well as to understand its relationship with their communities‘ interests and challenges. while broadcasting that is uniquely designed to raise awareness of current and anticipated impacts of climate change and promote behavioral change is already used through community radio, our findings suggest that these broadcasts tend to provide insufficient engagement with broadcasters or stations themselves, seeing them largely as conduits for transmitting messages produced elsewhere. this not only undervalues the broadcasters‘ agency and the contributions they can make, but it also risks compounding the confusion they experience in relaying the latest trends that science and policy actors wish to see passed on, potentially leading to the spread of misinformation. much research has suggested that radio listeners have higher levels of understanding and information retention when they are engaged in active listening (for example, through listening and discussion groups, or through call-in question and answer segments). we argue that broadcasters will serve as better intermediaries with local communities if they, too, are actively engaged in processes of inquiry, interpretation, translation, and transmission of information and messages. this perspective is very much in line with educational theories of inquiry-based or constructivist learning, and critical or liberation pedagogies (freire, 1972). by understanding climate change in the context of the existing points of struggle in which they are already engaged (gender, citizen voice and participation, political accountability, social inclusion, etc.), broadcasters are able to embed new knowledge within these existing frameworks and improve their grasp of the issues. mailto:topacademicjournals@gmail.com american journal of art and communication vol.8, issue 5; september-october 2023; issn: 2994-0540 impact factor: 6.91 1252 columbia rd nw, washington dc, united states https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac; mail: topacademicjournals@gmail.com 19 | american journal of art and communication | https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac sustainable partnerships it is important to distinguish between the types of engagement that community radio mobilizes to support and inform community development, and those that have become commonplace in international development practice. while development projects tend to be quite time-bound, targeted to a specific issue or set of stakeholders, implemented in an isolated manner (often independent of other initiatives which are taking place in the community or district, for example), and with an ―exit strategy‖ built into the project design to avoid creating dependency, community radio seeks to embed itself into the fabric of the community, hoping both to maximize community appropriation of its services (and thus its sustainability), and to cover the range of issues that their communities deem important. given the different nature of engagement and incentive structures found in radio and development intervention, it follows that the types of partnership models each pursues differs as well. in keeping with these realities, the climate airwaves initiative has tried to build upon existing networked partnerships for capacity support for broadcasters, particularly with organizations sharing similar priorities or values as the broadcasters. this has meant trying to limit, for example, the role that external partners, such as ids, play in the ongoing implementation of the work. it has also meant orienting the partnership toward the existing network of partners that gcrn has developed over the years, rather than aiming to engineer partnerships with new actors who may be very competent in their fields, but lack a strong desire to develop long-term alliances with limited financial incentives, or may simply be busy with their own initiatives. in cases where capacity support has been offered solely by such outside partners as ids, we have sought to ensure that, in order to maximize its value, the support is aligned with the objectives of stations beyond the scope of the project itself. this model of partnership engagement can be challenging in projects where two quite distinct communities of practice are working together, but it may also be important to ensuring that stations‘ capacities to carry out this work do not fade over time. a long-term vision of capacity building on the points raised above, the final area of learning we wish to highlight has, so far, centered on the approach to collective (as well as individual) capacity building pursued through the partnership. this view of capacity is based on the notion that collective learning is a prerequisite to affecting broader social change (harvey & langdon, 2010), a core objective of community radio broadcasters in ghana. it privileges work that builds collective capacity over work that sees individual skills development as an end in itself, and longer-term social change objectives over the outcomes of individual projects. this does not mean that individual development and shorter-term goals are not pursued, but rather, that these aims must be understood in the context of the longerterm, more transformative aims to which they should contribute. conversely, there may also be more targeted forms of capacity building that are needed in order to move toward the longer-term vision of change, such as strengthening women‘s capacities to engage with action research activities, as was exemplified in the case of gcrn. mailto:topacademicjournals@gmail.com american journal of art and communication vol.8, issue 5; september-october 2023; issn: 2994-0540 impact factor: 6.91 1252 columbia rd nw, washington dc, united states https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac; mail: topacademicjournals@gmail.com 20 | american journal of art and communication | https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac balancing an emphasis on longer-term change with demonstrating impacts in the shorter-term in this way can create challenges for initiatives that are funded for shorter periods of time. these realities should be communicated to funding partners in advance to avoid situations where donor demands are in tension with the aims of those who the project activities are intended to serve. references afrri. 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(2010). radio, mobile phones stand out in africa’s media/ communication landscape. new york: intermedia. bradley, m. (2006). north–south research partnerships: literature review and annotated bibliography. ottawa: idrc. brown, j., nanasta, d., & bird, n. (2009). financing climate change adaptation and mitigation in africa: key issues and options for policy-makers and negotiators. presented at the third financing for development conference on climate change, kigali, rwanda (may 21–22, 2009) and the african ministerial conference on the environment (amcen) special session on climate change, nairobi, kenya (may 25–29, 2009). burns, d. (2007). systemic action research: a strategy for whole system change. london: policy press. mailto:topacademicjournals@gmail.com http://www.amarc.org/documents/manuals/what_is_cr_english.pdf american journal of art and communication vol.8, issue 5; september-october 2023; issn: 2994-0540 impact factor: 6.91 1252 columbia rd nw, washington dc, united states https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac; mail: topacademicjournals@gmail.com 21 | american journal of art and communication | https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac cash, d. w., adger, w., berkes, f., garden, p., lebel, l., olsson, p., pritchard, l., & young, o. (2006). scale and cross-scale dynamics: governance and information in a multilevel world. ecology and society, 11(2), 8. cooke, b., & kothari, u. (eds.) (2001). participation: the new tyranny. london: zed books. cooperrider, d. l., & whitney, d. 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(2009). climate change: how to report the story of the century. science and development network. retrieved from http://www.scidev.org/en/practical-guides/climate-change-how-toreport-the-story-ofthe-cent.html freire, p. (1972). pedagogy of the oppressed. harmondsworth, uk: penguin. gauthier, j. (2005). popularize, produce, disseminate! reference sheets for field researchers. sheet 12: radio. ottawa: idrc. godfrey, a., pauker, e., & nwoke, l. (2008). is this climate change? formative research on knowledge and perception of climate change amongst policy makers, opinion formers and mass audiences in nigeria. london: bbc world service trust. harvey, b., & langdon, j. (2010). re-imagining capacity and collective change: experiences from senegal and ghana. ids bulletin, 41(3), 79–86. mailto:topacademicjournals@gmail.com http://www.scidev.org/en/practical-guides/climate-change-how-to-report-the-story-of-the-cent.html http://www.scidev.org/en/practical-guides/climate-change-how-to-report-the-story-of-the-cent.html http://www.scidev.org/en/practical-guides/climate-change-how-to-report-the-story-of-the-cent.html american journal of art and communication vol.8, issue 5; september-october 2023; issn: 2994-0540 impact factor: 6.91 1252 columbia rd nw, washington dc, united states https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac; mail: topacademicjournals@gmail.com 22 | american journal of art and communication | https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac heron, j. (1996). co-operative inquiry: research into the human condition. thousand oaks, ca: sage publications. ipcc. (2007). summary for policymakers. in m. l. parry, o. f. canziani, j. p. palutikof, p. j. van der linden, & c. e. hanson, (eds.), climate change 2007: impacts, adaptation and vulnerability. contribution of working group ii to the fourth assessment report of the intergovernmental panel on climate change (pp. 7–22). cambridge, uk: cambridge university press. jennings, t. l. (2009). exploring the invisibility of local knowledge in decision-making: the boscastle harbour flood disaster. in w. n. adger, i. lorenzoni, & k. o'brien (eds.), adapting to climate change: thresholds, values, governance (pp. 240–254). cambridge, uk: cambridge university press. jordan, s. (2003). who stole my methodology: co-opting par. globalisation, societies and education, 1, 185– 200. kemmis, s., & mctaggart, r. (2000). participatory action research. in n. denzin & y. lincoln (eds.), the handbook of qualitative research (2nd ed.). thousand oaks, ca: sage publications. mcsweeney, c., new, m., & lizcano, g. (2008). undp climate change country profiles: ghana. oxford university. retrieved from http://country-profiles.geog.ox.ac.uk mctaggart, r. (1991). principles for participatory action research. adult education quarterly, 41(3), 168– 187. morgan, p. (2006). the concept of capacity. brussels: ecdpm. myers, m. (2008). radio and development in africa: a concept paper. ottawa, canada: international development research centre. ochieng, b. o. (2009). effective communication of science and climate change information to policy makers. nairobi: idrc. paavola, j., adger, w. m., & huq, s. (2006). multifaceted justice in adaptation to climate change. in w. n. adger et al. (eds.), fairness in adaptation to climate change (pp. 264–277). cambridge, ma: mit press. panos institute of west africa (2008). radios et ntic en afrique de l’ouest: connectivité et usages [radios and ict in west africa : connectivity and uses]. dakar: panos institute of west africa. peet, r., & hartwick, e. (1999). theories of development. new york and london: guilford press. mailto:topacademicjournals@gmail.com http://country-profiles.geog.ox.ac.uk/ american journal of art and communication vol.8, issue 5; september-october 2023; issn: 2994-0540 impact factor: 6.91 1252 columbia rd nw, washington dc, united states https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac; mail: topacademicjournals@gmail.com 23 | american journal of art and communication | https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac pettit, j., salazar, j. f., & dagron, a. g. (2009). citizens‘ media and communication. development in practice, 19(4), 443–452. rind, d. (1999). complexity and climate. science, 284, 105–107. robinson, m., & miller, a. (2009). expanding global cooperation on climate justice. london: brighton woods project. sarpong, g. a. (2006). toward the improvement of tenure security for the poor in ghana: some thoughts and observations. rome: fao. tonah, s. (2006). farmer-herder conflict in volta region of ghana. journal of social sciences, 2(1), 6–10. white, g. (2007). community radio in ghana: the power of engagement. retrieved from http://www.c3.ucla.edu/research-reports/reports-archive/editors-perspective/community-radioin-ghana mailto:topacademicjournals@gmail.com http://www.c3.ucla.edu/research-reports/reports-archive/editors-perspective/community-radio-in-ghana http://www.c3.ucla.edu/research-reports/reports-archive/editors-perspective/community-radio-in-ghana fans, romans, countrymen: soccer fandom and civic identity in contemporary rome american journal of art and communication vol.8, issue 4; july-august 2023; issn: 2994-0540 impact factor: 6.91 1252 columbia rd nw, washington dc, united states https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac; mail: topacademicjournals@gmail.com 1 | american journal of art and communication | https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac constructing civic identity through soccer fandom in rome emily r. anderson indiana university abstract: this article explores how italian football (soccer) fandom shapes civic identity, focusing on roman soccer fans. through ethnographic data, it delves into the construction of civic identity using various communication forms, including verbal and visual expressions. drawing from museum studies, the study emphasizes the significance of fan-created displays in shaping fan identities. these discursive practices reveal fans' notions of place and local identity. despite the global reach of mass media fan cultures, sports fan culture maintains strong ties to locality. while many cultural practices have become deterritorialized, sports, including high school, college, and professional teams, continue to represent local identity. teams compete against rivals from nearby or distant locales, symbolizing community pride. however, the market economy complicates this representation, as professional teams often consist of athletes from a global labor pool. this research highlights the enduring connection between sports, locality, and fan identity. keywords: football fandom, civic identity, communication, fan-created displays, local identity introduction in italy, football (soccer) fandom is an important site on which to construct and perform civic identity. based on a constructivist, communication-oriented understanding of identity, this article uses ethnographic data to illustrate how roman soccer fans construct civic identity through various communicative forms, such as verbal performance and visual display. the essay draws from museum studies scholarship to highlight the role of fancreated displays in the construction of fan identities. ultimately, the fans’ notions of place and local identity emerge through these discursive practices. in mass media fan cultures, geographic boundaries tend to recede as nationally or globally dispersed fans have virtually simultaneous access to media texts and spatially transcendent online forums in which to socialize. in most cases, the physical proximity of the viewer to the setting of a text seems trivial, if not irrelevant. conversely, sports fan culture remains firmly rooted in notions of locality. despite global trends of deterritorialization that weaken the “spatial connections of cultural practices, identities, products, and communities” (giulianotti & robertson, 2009, p. 34), the local team, be it at the high school, college, or professional level, always plays against the team from over there—down the street, in the next city, across state lines, or from another continent (dunning, 1999, p. 5; giulianotti & robertson, 2009). as various scholars (including kraszewski, 2008; maguire, 2005; mailto:topacademicjournals@gmail.com american journal of art and communication vol.8, issue 4; july-august 2023; issn: 2994-0540 impact factor: 6.91 1252 columbia rd nw, washington dc, united states https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac; mail: topacademicjournals@gmail.com 2 | american journal of art and communication | https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac williams, 1994) have argued, sports can symbolize local identity. teams at all levels claim to represent local community as they compete for pride and glory at the expense of their geographically othered adversaries. simultaneously, sport fandom, defined as a “series of acts of consumption” (sandvoss, 2003, p. 17), is inextricably linked to the market economy. a professional team’s marketing campaign touting local authenticity is liable to be undercut by a roster of athletes sourced from a global labor market (bale & maguire, 1994). sport constitutes an intriguing site for fans to construct and perform local identity within contemporary western culture (crawford, 2004). first, sports teams are visible symbols to which community members may attach amorphous notions of local pride (dunning, 1999). second, sporting events are popular public rituals in which people regularly and actively participate. few public rituals allow for such large-scale public co-presence, and even fewer are as consistently effervescent or provide ritualized, embodied engagement, that is, singing, shouting, gesticulating, feasting, and costuming (bromberger, 1999; gaffney & bale, 2004; guschwan, 2007). third, sports evince human drama staged with heroes and villains, neatly packaged into discrete, media-friendly units (andrews, 2001; rowe, 2004). finally, the popular appeal of sports bridges many social, political, and economic gaps in ways that few social initiatives can. though the cost of attending professional sports matches is becoming increasingly prohibitive, viewing games on tv or following the team in the news requires relatively modest expenditure. sport fandom must be understood within the context of globalizing forces marked by cultural disruption, fragmentation, and international flows of people, ideas, technology, and money (appadurai, 1990). dunning (1999) speculates that the growing significance of sport may be that it responds to, “a type of need which, for increasing numbers of people, is not met elsewhere in the increasingly secular and scientific societies of our age” (p. 7). crawford (2004) describes communities of sports fans as “neotribes,” a term that bridges traditional notions of collectivity with present-day society. similarly, maguire (2005) asserts that the need for identification through sport “may be symptomatic of the sense of insecurity people feel in an increasingly globalised world and their rejection of more cosmopolitan values” (p. 3). globalization and its complex ramifications have been addressed by too many scholars to cite here. the relationship between sport and globalization has been covered elsewhere (bairner, 2001; miller, lawrence, mckay, & rowe, 2001; tomlinson & young, 2006). i would like to frame this article with the question articulated by griswold and wright (2004): “what cultural formations survive or emerge when the forces of global culture come bearing down on local cultures?” (p. 1415). my concern here is with demonstrating how actual people construct identities in a particular time and place set against the backdrop of global capitalism with its limitations and opportunities. griswold and wright borrow raymond williams’ (1994) typology of “residual” (steeped in the past) and “emergent” (building and rebuilding) culture to consider how the local—typically marked as residual—might incorporate the emergent in new forms of locality. the two argue that a return to the local should not be understood as a rejection of cosmopolitan values, but instead as a cosmopolitan strategy for constructing mailto:topacademicjournals@gmail.com american journal of art and communication vol.8, issue 4; july-august 2023; issn: 2994-0540 impact factor: 6.91 1252 columbia rd nw, washington dc, united states https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac; mail: topacademicjournals@gmail.com 3 | american journal of art and communication | https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac identity. they add regional literature as a form of “place-based cultural expression” (p. 1411) to the standard repertoire of regional food, dialect, and music as incarnations of the local; i would add football fandom. in italy, football (aka soccer or calcio) teams become important vessels of local identity. in rome, constructing a civic identity is enriched by extraordinary cultural history, but complicated by the realities of contemporary life. football fandom provides a viable, contemporary possibility to construct, organize, and perform a powerful sense of roman-ness, or romanità. while there is no single authentic way of being roman, this essay demonstrates how particular fans use culturally available resources to construct deeply felt civic identities. one reason why this social form is worth studying is because of the depth of feeling experienced by fans. they know fandom not as a trivial hobby but as a lifestyle. this article describes fans expressing romanità within the context of organized fan clubs and pays particular attention to the spaces in which fans construct identities. in the first example, the space is a physical, neighborhood clubhouse; in the second, the “clubhouse” is online. in both instances, fans create displays that exhibit roman identity while creating the conditions for the performance of romanità. methodology and theoretical framework my understanding of the interconnectedness of identity, media, and performance guides my research. this article is a product of a larger project rooted in ethnographic data collected in rome during the 2005–2006 football season and in subsequent visits and continuing relationships sustained through modern telecommunications. in rome, i attended dozens of games, conducted fan interviews in italian, spent time at fan clubhouses, traveled to away games with fan groups, archived various forms of media, and developed strong relationships with numerous individual fans and organized fan groups. i attained fluency not only in the italian language, but also in romanesco, the roman dialect, and paid particular attention to fan performances and to the numerous media used by fans to express themselves. i understand media in a wide sense to encompass the full range of communication, from the most primitive (grunting) to the hi-tech. examples of pertinent media include fan-generated songs and banners displayed at the stadium, as well as newsletters, websites, and radio programs. i was also concerned with the circulation of mainstream media and how images, in particular, were assembled to express and bolster particular identities. identity my understanding of identity is rooted in a constructivist and performative perspective articulated by erving goffman (1959), judith butler (1999), and stuart hall (1996). i understand identity not as a static, essential element of one’s being, but as a multifaceted nexus of features that emerge through discursive acts within particular contexts. in this view, identity is constructed in social life through myriad communicative acts, including the use of one’s body in physical movement and vocalization, as well as through the deployment of expressive mediated forms such as clothing and flags. this is not to ignore physical or biological difference, but rather to emphasize the way in which particular elements of identity are foregrounded (or even come into being) as salient to the situation. this definition acknowledges personal agency in constructing identities, as “individuals may engage in strategic communicative work that permits them to interactionally foreground or suppress specific mailto:topacademicjournals@gmail.com american journal of art and communication vol.8, issue 4; july-august 2023; issn: 2994-0540 impact factor: 6.91 1252 columbia rd nw, washington dc, united states https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac; mail: topacademicjournals@gmail.com 4 | american journal of art and communication | https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac identities” (kroskrity, 1999, p. 112). conversely, societal mechanisms may limit individual agency. for instance, classification by skin color becomes a salient feature of identity in many sociohistorical contexts, but classification by a single element of identity risks masking and distorting similarities and differences in other relevant facets of identity. identity is a relational concept that relies on what is excluded as much, if not more, than on who or what is included. in this sense, “identities are constructed through, not outside, difference” (hall, 1996, p. 4) or, for elias, as “they-groups” and “we-groups” (dunning, 1999, p. 4). for the fans, being an avid follower of the a. s. roma team is the opposite of being a fan of s. s. lazio. to be roman is defined, in part, by what is not neapolitan. scholarly definitions of identity are not necessarily shared or understood in the same way by research subjects. for some, being roman means being born and living in rome, or by the strictest of standards, one must be of the seventh generation. in other words, popular notions of roman identity carry essentialist features. vital to my understanding of identity and to this article is the idea that even those who anchor their identity in place and blood continually express, communicate, and perform these identities. these performances are done for social affirmation, as well as to shore up the individual’s sense of authenticity, which is never quite complete. the need to display or reaffirm identity is motivated, in part, by the destabilizing forces of late modernity’s globalization that disrupt unified identities and force previously “settled” (hall, 1996, p. 4) populations to confront the other. hall explains how identities might be constructed through representation: identities are about questions of using the resources of history, language, and culture in the process of becoming rather than being: not “who we are” or “where we came from” so much as what we might become, how we have been represented, and how that bears on how we might represent ourselves. (p. 4) the ethnographic description and analysis i offer moving forward show how particular fans construct roman identities through communicative acts that re-present identities drawn from a rich repertoire of “resources of history, language and culture.” fandom as performance performance is a multivalent term connected to intellectual perspectives on theatre, linguistics, psychology, and literary criticism, among other disciplines (cf. schechner, 2002). the framework of performance employed here is rooted in the multidisciplinary work of richard bauman (1992), who conceives of performance as a frame of understanding wherein a performer calls special attention to himself or herself, thus taking responsibility for a set of communicative acts. performance is “an aesthetically marked and heightened mode of communication, framed in a special way and put on display for an audience” (p. 41), or as bauman (2004) states it more plainly, performance is, “a mode of communicative display, in which the performer signals to an audience, in effect, ‘hey, look at me! i’m on! watch how skillfully and effectively i express myself’” (p. 9). performances are worth considering not only in terms of the aesthetic pleasure of the audience, but because performance “provides a frame that invites critical reflection on communicative processes” (bauman & briggs, 1990, p. 61). the performance frame calls audiences to evaluate performances according to situationally relevant criteria informed by genre. for example, a performance of hamlet invites comparison to contemporary, past, and future performances of hamlet, mailto:topacademicjournals@gmail.com american journal of art and communication vol.8, issue 4; july-august 2023; issn: 2994-0540 impact factor: 6.91 1252 columbia rd nw, washington dc, united states https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac; mail: topacademicjournals@gmail.com 5 | american journal of art and communication | https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac other shakespeare plays, and theatrical performance, writ large. the critical reception of performance points to the imminently social aspect of performance. as such, “all performance, like all communication, is situated, enacted, and rendered meaningful within socially defined situational contexts” (bauman, 1992, p. 46). thus, the scholar of performance should pay close attention to the social and material context in which performances are staged and in which they are understood and appreciated. i conceive of fandom as accomplished through everyday performances (goffman, 1959) that foreground fans’ passionate attachment to a team. by wearing a special scarf, singing at the stadium, arguing in a clubhouse, or through modes of writing, these fans, communicate, in effect, “look at me. notice how passionately i support my team.” fans’ declarations of identity take shape within the spaces of fandom. the individual fan or performer is held accountable to the standards of fandom that develop within the fan community. a fan’s authenticity may only be ratified by other fans. one of the underlying functions of a performance-based fan culture, if not the essential function, is to create the context in which fandom and its manifestations are accepted, understood, and encouraged, as well as disciplined and critiqued. this article, discusses, in ethnographic detail, the ways that fandom takes shape through performance in specific contexts. this article pays particular attention to the spaces of two contrasting fan clubs that not only provide a place to socialize, but in their artful construction also enact identities. regional identity and rivalry in italy for romans, football fandom becomes a vital way to express civic identity. after italy was unified in 1861, the marquis d’azeglio famously said, “we have made italy, but now we must make italians” (doyle, 2002, p. 39). his comment underscored the deep economic, linguistic, and cultural divisions among italy’s regions that have endured to the present day. economic disparity between the relatively prosperous north and the struggling south has fueled regional antipathy and vocal sentiment for northern secession, spearheaded by umberto bossi’s xenophobic political party, the northern league. in the early 1990s, italian scholar angela zanotti (1993, p. 182) wrote, “now, for the first time in the history of the republic, there is an attempt to spell out the problems of the italian state on the basis of [regional] ethnicity.” she finds that the region-based cultural and ethnic differentiation echoes the color-based racism found in other parts of europe. within this historical context, football has become a highly visible outlet for the expression of regional rivalry in contemporary italy. the organized fan groups that i describe are fans of associazione sportiva roma, (aka a.s. roma, or hereafter, roma), a professional football team based in rome that plays in italy’s highest tier of competition, serie a. the team was formed in 1927 through the merging of three smaller teams. roma’s primary rival, societa sportiva lazio (aka s. s. lazio, or hereafter, lazio), was founded in 1900. lazio is a region of italy of which rome is the capital. the rivalry between the two teams distinguishes both fan cultures. historically, roma represented the working class and leftist politics while lazio represented the aristocratic right. the link between fans’ political affiliation and team affiliation has never been absolute, though lazio’s fan base retains a reputation for conservative politics. mailto:topacademicjournals@gmail.com american journal of art and communication vol.8, issue 4; july-august 2023; issn: 2994-0540 impact factor: 6.91 1252 columbia rd nw, washington dc, united states https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac; mail: topacademicjournals@gmail.com 6 | american journal of art and communication | https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac roma wears city colors (golden-yellow and deep red), and the team’s official logo is the capitoline she-wolf that suckled romulus and remus, mythical founders of rome (see figure 1). at the outset of every roma home game, fans sing the anthem written by pop singer antonello venditti that features the lyrics, “roma, roma, roma, heart of this city, the one great love, that takes the breath away from so many.” this melodramatic song self-consciously invigorates the emotional connection between fans and city. the team’s appropriation of roman symbols strengthens the bond with (and weakens the distinction between) roma, the football team, and rome, the city. figure 1. official logo of a. s. roma: the capitoline she-wolf. roma fans are defined by rivalries with, or in the words of gray (2003), the “anti-fandom” of opposing teams and fans. roma’s primary rivalries with lazio, napoli, and juventus are inflected by geography. lazio is its crosstown rival, napoli is the nearest big-city rival, and juventus is roma’s powerful rival from the so-called “cold, industrial” north. roma fans construct their identity most strongly in opposition to lazio and consider their team to be the one that represents the real people of the city, whereas lazio is the team for “country bumpkins” outside the city. mailto:topacademicjournals@gmail.com american journal of art and communication vol.8, issue 4; july-august 2023; issn: 2994-0540 impact factor: 6.91 1252 columbia rd nw, washington dc, united states https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac; mail: topacademicjournals@gmail.com 7 | american journal of art and communication | https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac the rivalry with lazio peaks twice a year in the “derby” games between the two sides. these derby games are the site for the most exuberant fan performances of the year. fans arrive at the stadium hours before the start of the match to shout insults, to sing derisive songs, and to display messages that mock their crosstown “cousins.” for example, roma fans sing to the dainty melody of “don’t cry for me argentina”: laziale pezzo di merda lazio fan, piece of shit, tutta la curva ti insulta all of us in the stands insult you, questa canzone per te this song is for you, con tutto l’odio che c’e with all the hate that there is, sempre piu grande growing ever larger! lazio fans have their own repertoire of aspersing songs, as exemplified by the following lyrics sung to a melody stolen from roma fans: dici a tutti che sei romano you tell everyone that you are roman ma sei solo un napoletano!!! but you are only a neapolitan!!! for a roman, calling someone “neapolitan” derides that person’s sophistication. it also asserts roman authenticity. at one derby game, lazio fans raised a banner that read, “welcome visitors to rome,” referring to the fact that lazio was founded in 1900, 27 years before roma was founded. singing in unison with thousands of others is a powerful mode of performance that creates a powerful sense of unity. simon frith (1996) writes, “music seems to be a key to identity because it offers, so intensely, a sense of both self and others, of the subjective in the collective” (p. 110). mark slobin notes how performers work out “a shared vision that involves both the assertion of pride, even ambition, and the simultaneous disappearance of the ego” (p. 111). slobin captures the intent of football fan songs: to invoke pride and ambition and to invite fans to lose themselves in the collective. part of the attraction of the football stadium is clearly the validation of identity that can only be found in a crowd that momentarily comes together as one—akin to turner’s (1982) communitas. fandom sits in places: the roma club testaccio the administrative “dirty work” of fan culture occurs in the organized fan clubs away from the intensity of the stadium. organized football fan clubs have long been entrenched in the fabric of italian social life (podaliri & balestri, 1998). in eras past, neighborhood fan clubs were an essential link between professional teams and ticket buyers, that is, fans. while fan groups are no longer the primary distributor of tickets, organized fan clubs remain a vital part of local social life for many italians. keith basso (1996) laments fellow anthropologists’ disattention to, “the elaborate arrays of conceptual and expressive instruments—ideas, beliefs, stories, songs—with which community members produce and display coherent understandings of [the physical environment]” (p. 106). basso’s words underscore the understanding that meaning of place is the product of a social process rather than of the predetermined effect of a stable and absolute essence. this article highlights the process in which fans understand and display the significance of their neighborhood. mailto:topacademicjournals@gmail.com american journal of art and communication vol.8, issue 4; july-august 2023; issn: 2994-0540 impact factor: 6.91 1252 columbia rd nw, washington dc, united states https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac; mail: topacademicjournals@gmail.com 8 | american journal of art and communication | https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac the roma club testaccio is a traditional fan club that supports a. s. roma. their clubhouse is situated in testaccio, a working-class neighborhood located a few miles south of the historic center of rome. this fan club, founded in 1968 with 15 members, has grown to more than 250 soci [dues paying members] as of 2008. members tend to be male testaccini [testaccio residents] over 40 years old who speak with roman accents. the longserving president of the club, sergio rosi, is a sprightly man in his late 60s. the roma club testaccio is a space for roman men to perform their version of roman masculinity. the social life of the club consists of gathering at the clubhouse every evening after work to play cards or just to socialize. similar to the “male spaces” described in other mediterranean contexts (de almeida, 1996; driessen, 1992; herzfeld, 1985), the roma club testaccio is a gendered space where men use foul language, tell bawdy jokes, and play cards in a competitive atmosphere of masculine showmanship. at the club, the men seem to feel liberated from the demands and restrictions of home and work life. testaccio epitomizes a vision of traditional, working class rome. it is both a residential and commercial neighborhood and is one of 22 central rioni [neighborhoods] of modern rome. testaccio is the site of the monte di cocci [hill of amphorae], composed of broken clay jars discarded by ancient romans. at the outset of the 20th century, testaccio housed the city’s stockyards that supplied the cheap pig intestines and ox tail that inspired distinctive roman recipes. in recent decades, testaccio has come to signify nostalgia for a simple life of manual labor and neighborhood sociability. the local news website (www.testaccio.roma.it) calls testaccio, “the heart of the old rome” and “perhaps the last surviving neighborhood of the old rome.” testaccio has mythic significance for a.s. roma fans. in 1929, the team began playing and training in the campo testaccio [testaccio field], nestled in the middle of the neighborhood. in the 1940s, a. s. roma moved to the other side of town, but testaccio is still revered as the place where a.s. roma was founded and as the spawning ground of authentic roma fans. the largest national newspaper, il corriere della sera, has referred to the roma club testaccio as the “most roma-crazed place that there is” (menicucci & stracca, 2006). the mayor of rome recognized the club as “a historic place that has represented for almost forty years an important social place to congregate” (menicucci, 2006). for members of the roma club testaccio, the image of testaccio as a bastion of traditional roman life and as the origin of the football team is intertwined. the roma club testaccio’s clubhouse is the heart of the club, and it is the place where roma, the football team, and rome, the city, are conjoined. every surface of the clubhouse is decorated with images or objects that represent testaccio, rome, and a.s. roma. the clubhouse functions as a museum devoted to the exposition and celebration of culturally significant artifacts. dondrea thompson (2002) wrote, “public displays of any cultural sort . . . are inescapably based on a constructed ideology intended to promote a shared vision of history, identity, and heritage” (p. 38). roma club testaccio’s “shared vision of history, identity and heritage” is literally taped, painted, and tacked onto the walls of the clubhouse as a selection of highlights from roman history. carol duncan (1991) argues that museums edit out messy details in preference for uncomplicated narratives. “in the museum, art history displaces history, purges it of social and political conflict, and distills it down to a series of triumphs, mailto:topacademicjournals@gmail.com american journal of art and communication vol.8, issue 4; july-august 2023; issn: 2994-0540 impact factor: 6.91 1252 columbia rd nw, washington dc, united states https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac; mail: topacademicjournals@gmail.com 9 | american journal of art and communication | https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac mostly of individual genius” (p. 92). in this case, art history is replaced by football historiography that is spearheaded by the efforts of “individual geniuses” who score goals and command squads of players. at the clubhouse, images of star players and championship teams are flanked by roman columns. alongside photographs of fans young and old, plastic centurions occupy the corners. yellow and red, the colors of both team and city, blanket interior and exterior walls. several images depict players in the guise of gladiators. the clubhouse contains artifacts that recall imperial rome and present-day testaccio. a replica coccio [clay jar] that symbolizes testaccio rests in a corner near the ceiling. on separate walls are two large, framed, black and white photos of the campo testaccio, one of which bears the words “testaccio the cradle of roma.” on one of the main walls of the club is a billboard entitled, “from testaccio—the roots and the history of a. s. roma” (see figure 2). under these words hangs a series of black and white photographs with captions that describe the early history of the team and the old stadium that stood a few blocks away. above this billboard, black and white pictures depict the team from early in its history. through these images, the fan club retains the memory of past players and managers. the images also imply: roma was born here in this very place, and there is a tradition that continues here. though the team now plays on the other side of the city, the roma club testaccio documents and sustains roma’s roots. these images create a sense of historical continuity among generations of a. s. roma players and fans. figure 2. “at testaccio—the roots and the history of a. s. roma.” this display constructs what bahktin (1981) calls a chronotope—a narrative construct where “time takes on flesh and becomes visible for human contemplation.” chronotopes “stand as monuments to the community itself, as symbols of it, as forces operating to shape its members' images of themselves” (p. 7). the walls of the roma club testaccio are where the identity of the club, the identity of its members are laid bare—the images connect the fans to the timeless community of a. s. roma. current team captain francesco totti is the most celebrated player on the walls of the roma club testaccio. born and raised in rome, he speaks with a thick roman accent. totti has spurned offers to leave his home team to play mailto:topacademicjournals@gmail.com american journal of art and communication vol.8, issue 4; july-august 2023; issn: 2994-0540 impact factor: 6.91 1252 columbia rd nw, washington dc, united states https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac; mail: topacademicjournals@gmail.com 10 | american journal of art and communication | https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac for more glamorous and powerful teams in milan, turin, and abroad. he is roma’s bandiera [flag]: literally, the player who anchors the identity of a team. at the roma club testaccio, images of totti document his rise from 16-year-old prodigy to incomparable icon. he is framed as a soldier, fashion icon, gladiator, and philanthropist, as well as a football player. for roma fans, totti is not only the quintessential roma player, he is the quintessential roman. images of lazio rivals serve as counterpoints to that of totti. one derogatory poster reads: “a clean rome depends on you” (see figure 3). it features a cartoon image of a wolf attired in a roma jersey and holding an eagle in lazio colors over a garbage can. another image shows the roma wolf biting the championship emblem off the lazio eagle’s chest. this image commemorates the 2001 season when roma won the championship, thus ending lazio’s one-year reign. these images reflect, in a comical way, the strong feelings of identity and difference felt by the respective fan bases. club president sergio rosi insists that he is an a.s. roma fan because he was born in rome. in other words, his fan identity is inseparable from his civic identity. he claims that the real romans are roma fans and that lazio fans are burrini [country bumpkins] who live outside of the aurelian wall, the 800-year-old wall that marks the old border of rome). sergio jokes that lazio fans come into the city only to sell cheese, and when he speaks about the rivalry with lazio, he speaks faster, uses romanesco, and has a mischievous look in his eye. while much of the banter between fans of the two teams is often done with a sense of playful exaggeration, it reveals tactics by which the fans position themselves as authentic romans. their sense of identity is created in figure 3. “a clean rome depends on you!” mailto:topacademicjournals@gmail.com american journal of art and communication vol.8, issue 4; july-august 2023; issn: 2994-0540 impact factor: 6.91 1252 columbia rd nw, washington dc, united states https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac; mail: topacademicjournals@gmail.com 11 | american journal of art and communication | https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac contrast to those who most closely resemble them—the football fans who share the same city and to whom they sometimes refer to as cugini (cousins). linguistic performance through romanesco a vital resource for the performance of roman identity is roman dialect (romanesco). few have stated the strength of the ties between language and social identity as forcefully as anzaldúa (1987) did when he wrote, “ethnic identity is twin skin to linguistic identity—i am my language” (p. 59). the power of language to express regional identity is embraced by italians despite national education efforts that mandate standardized italian and the power of national television to homogenize speech. as language scholar kenneth pratt (1966) noted, “however functional, rich and persistent their dialect, [italians] have been taught that their way is divisive and déclassé” (p. 167). roman dialect is alternately called romano (roman), romanesco, which is associated with 19th century roman poet g. g. belli, and trilussa (or romanaccio), referring to slang or vulgar roman language. i prefer romanesco, as it implies a sense of artistry. in spite of—or perhaps more accurately because of—the notion that roman dialect is considered “low,” vulgar, or inappropriate, roma fans embrace roman dialect as a resource for the performance of romanità. romanesco has distinctive pronunciation, phrasing, and unique vocabulary. for example, users may cut off the end of a word: rather than say or write arrivederci, one might use arrivedé, or ragà instead of ragazzo [boy]. roman speakers tend to talk quickly and accompany their words with demonstrative hand gestures. the roma club testaccio provides the setting for the linguistic performance of romanità through romanesco. as previously mentioned, an essential part of the social life of the club is for members to gather in the evenings for card playing and masculine socialization. typically, club members tell stories and jokes and compete for attention by speaking passionately in an argumentative tone of romanesco. these conversations are performances in which members may gain or lose status with every turn. bauman (1977, p. 37) names this power the “emergent quality of performance” wherein, through a display of communicative skill, a performer may gain status and thereby alter the social structure of the group. the documentary, core de roma [heart of rome], directed by gwin sannia (2006), captures a sample of this banter. in one scene, a few members of the club are gathered around a table, playing cards. one of the members relates an anecdote about testaccio, saying that the neighborhood used to be filled with “thieves and bandits.” a second member, giorgio, questions the storyteller, “when?” and then asserts, “you come from the mountains of abruzzo.” giorgio then accuses the storyteller of being a thief himself, saying, “look at the way you play cards.” this playful confrontation is met with laughs from the other members who witness this assertion of dominance. giorgio’s performance is marked by his use of romanesco and his general combativeness. he is the club vice president and has, no doubt, utilized his performance skills to gain a position of authority within the club’s hierarchy. surrounded by images of rome and roma, these fans perform romanità every evening. core de roma [heart of rome]: rise of the online roman empire mailto:topacademicjournals@gmail.com american journal of art and communication vol.8, issue 4; july-august 2023; issn: 2994-0540 impact factor: 6.91 1252 columbia rd nw, washington dc, united states https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac; mail: topacademicjournals@gmail.com 12 | american journal of art and communication | https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac core de roma, is the name of another fan club devoted to a. s. roma. unlike the local enclave of the roma club testaccio, core de roma does not have a physical clubhouse, and its members are not bound by neighborhood proximity. members of core de roma are located throughout rome and around the world. while many its members meet at the stadium and at banquets, the bulk of their daily interaction occurs on the website, www.corederoma.it. the website houses an impressive collection of fan-produced material, ranging from an endless stream of commentary in its chat room to essay-length historical articles, songs by fans, travel photos of fans in front of world monuments, and other fan-friendly items. the core de roma is a website on which members perform fandom and romanità on a daily basis. the demographics of the core de roma community contrast with those of the roma club testaccio. members of the former tend to work in white-collar jobs that afford consistent online activity. club members include a travel agent, a retired swiss patent office worker, an advertising consultant who relocated to miami, florida, a former sports journalist, a contractor and a trader in the import/export business. the founding members of the group are family-oriented men over 30, though women are welcome to be part of the group as full participants. in addition to wives and girlfriends, who are regular members, there are “independent” members such as paoletta, a devout roma fan who regularly participates online and at club gatherings. in general, the membership of core de roma is middle-aged, internet savvy, white collar, geographically dispersed around the periphery of rome, and less confined by traditional gender roles. the group represents a generational shift away from the extremely localized social life of the roma club testaccio and toward the media-dependent, mobile social life of a younger generation of romans. the core de roma homepage is designed to showcase the identity of the fans and provide an appropriate space for the daily performance of romanità. the site promotes its roman identity through visual imagery. the homepage features a banner with an image of the roman coliseum on the left and an image of a roman soldier on the right, (see figure 4). yellow and red—the team colors—dominate the color scheme. the homepage also features an iconic roman gladiator with sword unsheathed; a cartoonlike centurion beckons new members. the fan club’s logo is a football player in a roma jersey, framed by laurels, a symbol of military victory. the focal point of the homepage is the “front page” image that illustrates the fan club’s preoccupation for the day. many front page images contain visual references to rome such as the initials, s.p.q.r. (senatus populus que romanus), the famous acronym that marks property belonging to the senate and people of rome. mailto:topacademicjournals@gmail.com american journal of art and communication vol.8, issue 4; july-august 2023; issn: 2994-0540 impact factor: 6.91 1252 columbia rd nw, washington dc, united states https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac; mail: topacademicjournals@gmail.com 13 | american journal of art and communication | https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac the 2008–2009 membership campaign slogan, l’ultima legione [the last legion], refers to the 2007 pseudohistorical film about the “last legion” of roman soldiers who, after having disbanded in britain, heroically regrouped to defend the legacy of rome. a 2008–2009 scarf was emblazoned with the campaign slogan. these club-produced scarves are an important marker of identity that club members wear proudly at the stadium. core de roma uses these pop culture texts to conjure a vibrant sense of romanità. figure 4. core de roma homepage (w ww.corederoma.it) from june 8, 2010). mailto:topacademicjournals@gmail.com american journal of art and communication vol.8, issue 4; july-august 2023; issn: 2994-0540 impact factor: 6.91 1252 columbia rd nw, washington dc, united states https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac; mail: topacademicjournals@gmail.com 14 | american journal of art and communication | https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac the affinity for roman military is highlighted in a section of the website that documents an historical reenactment of roman soldiers marching on the via fori imperiali in the center of historic rome. though core de roma has no explicit connection to this reenactment, the images serve as symbols of a shared roman pride. another section of the site showcases tattoos of proud romans with roman centurions, she-wolves, and various other overtly roman symbols etched on their bodies. imperial roman images and references symbolize the group’s general pride in roman history, but the gladiators and centurions also symbolize more specific qualities of bravery and tenacity that the fans project onto the roma players. these belligerent symbols are part of a widespread, agonistic sports fan culture that employs the metaphor of war to describe the actions of players and the competition between teams. romanesco announces, or serves as a “key” (bauman, 1977, p. 16), to the performance of romanità on the core de roma website. in written form, romanesco often contrasts with standard italian. among its intricacies, the letter l becomes r when preceding a consonant such as in the case of the phrase il capitano (the captain), which becomes er capitano. romanesco spelling condenses certain words by removing vowels such as in the name of this fan group, core de roma, which uses core in place of the standard cuore [heart]. as with its oral form, written romanesco is a vibrant enactment of romanità. though romanesco is intelligible to most italians, it is still a barrier to participation for outsiders not versant with its form. on the website, romanesco serves to punctuate ideas and to perform authenticity with its implied rebelliousness and pure romanità. romanesco flourishes on the website. for example, the chat room (see figure 5) is called er muro instead of il muro,(the wall), and the link to the merchandizing section is spelled er merciandising. the chat room is the primary forum for the use and proliferation of romanesco. participants habitually use the roman saying, daje [let’s go!]. club member romanaico (2010) uses romanesco (underlined in the following) to express his disagreement with the comments of an opposing coach: “nun ce sto' a capi' piu' un cazzoooooooooooooooo . . .” [“i don’t understand a fucking thing anymore . . .”]. in addition to romanesco, capital letters, curse words, and a string of os frame this message as performance because they draw attention to the form and style of communication beyond its referential content. through the inventive style of written text, this message conveys a belligerent attitude indicative of roman fandom. mailto:topacademicjournals@gmail.com american journal of art and communication vol.8, issue 4; july-august 2023; issn: 2994-0540 impact factor: 6.91 1252 columbia rd nw, washington dc, united states https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac; mail: topacademicjournals@gmail.com 15 | american journal of art and communication | https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac throughout italy, romans are stereotyped as being vulgar and rude. core de roma embraces this identity and performs it in the chat room through exaggerated claims and jests. the core de roma chat room fosters an environment where members foster identities that are more bombastic than would the circumstances of one’s daily life allow. core de roma reserves a portion of its site, named pallone koatto [trashy football], for the most vulgar comments and provocations. the use of the letter k in place of c in the spelling of koatta is another indicator of the unofficial nature of this section (at http://www.corederoma.it/pallonekoatto/index.php). the site section is introduced by the following disclaimer: “this section was born from the necessity to gather the typical language of the fan, who, transformed by the passion for their team, becomes . . . coatto [trashy].” in this section, fans regularly use vulgarity to amplify their rants and raves. entries are structured into a format listing a victim, figure 5. screen shot of er muro (t he wall) chat room from june 8, 2010. mailto:topacademicjournals@gmail.com american journal of art and communication vol.8, issue 4; july-august 2023; issn: 2994-0540 impact factor: 6.91 1252 columbia rd nw, washington dc, united states https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac; mail: topacademicjournals@gmail.com 16 | american journal of art and communication | https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac motive, and the koatto remark. in the following rant (with romanesco underlined), giacoparma criticizes roma’s coach for not playing jeremy menez: “secondo me e sor claudio lo deve fa giocà e mannà a casa batista . . . menez potrebbe esse un foriclasse se solo je se da l’opportunità de giocà cò continuità,” (“in my opinion, sister claudio must play him and send baptista home . . . menez could be a superstar if only given the opportunity to play consistently”]. the writer refers to the coach, claudio ranieri, as “sister claudio” [sor claudio] and replaces standard italian with romanesco—for example, giocà in place of the full verb, giocare [to play], esse in place of essere [to be], je in place of gli [him]. the performance frame is invoked through a disregard for the standardized rules of capitalization, punctuation, and spelling. instead, the author plays with language to perform a brusque attitude and roman authenticity, as well as rhythm and rhyme with the repetition of the à sound. participants in the chat room and in pallone koatto perform within the linguistic codes of written romanesco, but they also play with formal elements of spelling and capitalization, and they invent language to suit their purposes. the website documents romanesco—a specialized language that emerges from italian—and improvised football fan discourse. performing the roman attitude the display of imagery and the use of linguistic forms such as roman dialect illustrate the attachment of core de roma’s fans to rome, but their roman attitude is expressed through displays of brashness and defiance. for these fans, to be roman is to be aggressive, resilient, and passionate rather than calm and reasonable. roman selfperception fits into the spectrum of regional stereotypes that describe northern italians as cold, logical, and materialistic and southerners as warm, excessively emotional, and lazy. rome is located in the center-south geographically and shares some of the southern stigma, but is culturally exceptional due to its unique history and its modern status as national capitol and urban center. though rome is popularly portrayed as a beautiful honeymoon destination, long-term residents grumble about inefficient government, stagnant economy, urban congestion, and damp weather that persists through much of the year. while proud of their city’s accomplishments and beauty, romans are accustomed to daily struggles. in response to these and innumerable other factors, many of today’s romans learn to be tough. fandom becomes a way of shaping and funneling roman attitudes. though a. s. roma is an important team with a large fan base, they have won the italian championship only three times in over 80 years. roma fans have had to learn how to accept defeat while still taking pride in their team. core de roma co-founder luca commented, “you do not become a roma fan because they win a lot” (luca, personal communication, may 5, 2006). another co-founder, gigi, explained that a fundamental part of being roman is the combative and defiant spirit. he said, “you may not always win, but you must continue to fight” (gigi, personal communication, february 10, 2006). this attitude is enthusiastically embraced by core de roma. in fact, the fan club was founded partly as an act of defiance when their team was struggling and archrival lazio was enjoying great success. the core de roma founders reacted to lazio’s success by rallying support for their beloved roma. mailto:topacademicjournals@gmail.com american journal of art and communication vol.8, issue 4; july-august 2023; issn: 2994-0540 impact factor: 6.91 1252 columbia rd nw, washington dc, united states https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac; mail: topacademicjournals@gmail.com 17 | american journal of art and communication | https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac the members of core de roma embrace and embellish their civic identity. in an attempt to explain the connection between rome and roma (the football team), luca said, “sometimes, roma (referring to the city) and la roma (the team) become the same thing” (luca, personal communication, november 5, 2005). roma fans exhibit an immense pride in their city as well as in their team. club member claudia wrote in an article, “to be romans and roma fans is a modus vivendi, an attachment to a team, to a city.” dedication to rome is evident in the club’s “about us” identity statement. “the core de roma association has existed since 1997 with the aim/scope of promoting fan support for a. s. roma football and to develop the study and dissemination of the city’s traditions.”13 civic identity in contrast to national identity though many romans pledge allegiance to their city, many harbor ambiguous feelings toward the italian state. the discourse on the core de roma website following roma team captain francesco totti’s retirement from the italian national team, reveals such ambiguity. in 2006, totti announced his retirement from the italian national team to focus on playing for roma. in a survey hosted by the core de roma website, almost 80% of the 2,500 respondents were happy about totti’s decision, implying the fans’ allegiance to rome over national concerns. members often display contempt for the nation in the core de roma chat room. for example, italy was a finalist to host the 2012 european cup, a major football tournament that crowns a european champion every four years and that is second only to the world cup in terms of its economic and football significance. the european cup gives the host nation a symbolic boost, as well as millions of dollars allotted by the european football federation to spend on projects such as transportation infrastructure. however, italy lost to a joint bid by poland and ukraine, two nations that lack italy’s football pedigree. in the core de roma chat room, the club members’ response to this loss was to ridicule italy. chat room participant romatto referred to a recent refereeing scandal and to incidents of fan violence. he wrote, “ha! these jerks really thought that they would have assigned the euro cup after all that has happened between the scandal and the fights outside the stadium??? what idiots.” criticism of the nation goes beyond mere football concerns. chat room user, er pasquino wrote, “we must not wait for a european cup or world cup to improve things in italy. now we need to do this without these resources.” the comment reflects dissatisfaction with italy’s basic infrastructure and also reflects a widespread malaise that is echoed in many sectors. the economist dubbed italy, “the real sick man of europe” (“italy: the real sick man,” 2005). in the core de roma chat room, participants commonly refer to italy as itaglia, a derogatory nickname that combines italia [italy] with the verb tagliare [to cut], implying a torn nation. football is an institution that can symbolize a nation, but it can also invigorate local affiliation and rivalry antithetical to national unity. in the core de roma fan space, the themes of civic pride and regionalism are much stronger than are the themes of nationalism. conclusion one aim of this essay is to document the expression of fan identity through communicative means—specifically, performance and mediated representation. drawing from bauman’s conception of performance (1977), i have mailto:topacademicjournals@gmail.com american journal of art and communication vol.8, issue 4; july-august 2023; issn: 2994-0540 impact factor: 6.91 1252 columbia rd nw, washington dc, united states https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac; mail: topacademicjournals@gmail.com 18 | american journal of art and communication | https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac illustrated several instances in which fandom is accomplished through performance. in terms of representation, the analysis draws from museum studies to demonstrate how real and virtual clubhouses use images to evoke romanità and its attendant modes of participation. this article uses ethnographic data in support of the theory that social identities are constructed and reinforced through multiple communicative means (or media), ranging from embodied forms such as voice and gesture to disembodied, “virtual” media (i.e., the internet). rather than focus on a single medium, this article embraces a view that contemporary social life, and the identities it produces, are ceaselessly and unrepentently poly-, multiand/or “trans-” mediated (jenkins, 2006) and therefore, not easily reduced to online/offline dichotomies or other medium-centric strictures. another aim of this article is to highlight the function of fan groups as creating the necessary physical and social conditions (aka spaces or contexts) in which fandom can flourish. this article refers to the organizational labor that goes into to creating such fan spaces. fan spaces not only require mundane administration such as rent payments, but also the energetic efforts of committed followers to create the aesthetic, identity-friendly, social space in which exuberant fandom is openly exhibited and cultivated—a space where a fan can be a fan, learn to be a fan and teach others to be fans in the right way (by the standards of each fan club). therefore, instead of conceiving of fandom as formed prior to social engagement with other fans, which is conceivable with mediatext fans, this article demonstrates the power of football fan groups to shape and continually reshape fandom. finally, given the power of fan groups to shape social identities, this article highlights the particular ways that these fans have created distinctly roman identities. within the constraints and possibilities of a globalizing world, sport can come to represent a sense of place. this article shows the particular ways that these fans draw from the astoundingly rich history of the eternal city to create identities that are relevant within the vibrant contemporary idiom of our time and their place: roman football fandom. i find justification for this research in the sheer vibrancy of this social form and in the commitment of these fans. within the discourse of globalization and modernization, the two fan clubs discussed here represent a generational shift in the conduct of social life. the roma club testaccio locates their identity in the territorialized, neighborhood-based community that features co-presence as the primary mode of sociality. core de roma is a group of fans geographically dispersed, primarily around the urban outskirts of rome. in their online home, they attempt to reterritorialize through the conscious construction of an online roman forum that features gladiators and centurions and that displays fan-written flourishes of romanesco. in raymond williams’ (1994) terminology, the roma club testaccio is largely “residual” culture while core de roma is “emergent,” but echoing the arguments of griswold & wright, (2004), the more cosmopolitan core de roma has turned to the local to inspire a strong sense of romanità. perhaps it should come as no surprise to find a roman civic pride that embraces the past, given the current realities of a stagnant italian economy and a less than laudatory political culture. these fans look to a. s. roma to restore a sense of pride, as well as to find a new sort of empire on the football pitches in naples, milan, and abroad. they look to themselves when they raise their scarves to sing, “roma, roma, roma, tu sei nata grande, and grande hai da resta” [rome, rome, rome, you were born great, and great you shall remain]. mailto:topacademicjournals@gmail.com american journal of art and communication vol.8, issue 4; july-august 2023; issn: 2994-0540 impact factor: 6.91 1252 columbia rd nw, washington dc, united states https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac; mail: topacademicjournals@gmail.com 19 | american journal of art and communication | https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac references andrews, d. l. 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(1993). undercurrents of racism in italy. international journal of politics, culture and society, 7(2), 173–188. mailto:topacademicjournals@gmail.com digital personal storytelling of union supporters and opponents in neoliberal organizational settings american journal of art and communication vol.6,issue 6;november-december-2021; 1252 columbia rd nw, washington dc, united states https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac; mail: topacademicjournals@gmail.com 14 | american journal of art and communication | https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac the ethical and strategic dimensions of using workers' personal stories yair cohen-barzilai university of haifa, israel abstract this study explores how workers' digital personal storytelling is used as a persuasive tool in organizational conflicts. the study examines how workers use personal storytelling to self-promote, brand their employers, and engage in social activism. the study also examines the tensions and implications involved in using workers' personal stories as part of digital campaigns. keywords: digital personal storytelling, organizational conflicts, neoliberal settings, self-promotion introduction this study explores how workers’ digital personal storytelling—in tandem with performances of selfpromotion, employer branding, and social activism—evolves as a discursive practice in organizational conflicts that are embedded in neoliberal settings. personal storytelling emerges on social media in various workplacerelated contexts: job seekers and candidates narrate their professional persona as means of marketing themselves as desirable employees on platforms such as facebook, linkedin, and twitter (gershon, 2014), and experienced workers endorse their employers’ brand by sharing their occupational success stories on extra-organizational online communication platforms (e.g., braddy, meade, & kroustalis, 2006; cervellon & lirio, 2017; maagaard, 2014; madia, 2011). at the same time, in the social activism sphere, individuals join digital campaigns through which they expose their personal stories, reaching out to various audiences in promoting their collective causes (e.g., gal, shifman, & kampf, 2016; ganz, 2001; gerbaudo, 2022; lénárt-cheng & walker, 2011; polletta, 2009; polletta, docarmo, ward, & callahan, 2021; shifman, 2018; vivienne, 2016). my purpose is to unpack the ways in which digital personal storytelling serves as a persuasive tool during labor struggles, as well as the tensions and implications involved in using workers’ personal stories as part of digital campaigns led on public social media by contending organizational parties. drawing on literature in the fields of organizational communication, social movements, digital activism, and labor studies, this article contributes to scholarship on workers’ online discourses surrounding precarious employment situations in neoliberal organizational settings. while some studies explore how freelance, selfemployed workers cope with their job insecurities (e.g., fleming, 2017; norbäck, 2021; scharff, 2016), this study aims to understand how workers in “standard” work arrangements contend with their increasing exposure to uncertainty in the labor market (vallas & christin, 2018). by focusing on the use of digital personal storytelling, mailto:topacademicjournals@gmail.com american journal of art and communication vol.6,issue 6;november-december-2021; 1252 columbia rd nw, washington dc, united states https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac; mail: topacademicjournals@gmail.com 15 | american journal of art and communication | https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac the study also contributes to the growing body of scholarship examining the different ways in which union activists around the world use social media in their struggles (e.g., diamond & freeman, 2002; salamon, 2022; upchurch & grassman, 2016) as well as how labor struggles are shaped through the adoption of digital discourse practices in mobilizing workers surrounding work and employment issues (geelan, 2021). during labor struggles, union organizers use online platforms to publicly address workers and employers. their practices include posting straightforward why we’ve organized statements in which they list their collective demands (salamon, 2022). in this study, i focus on unionization-related online statements that are individualistic in essence: i analyze personal stories by which workers introduced themselves and outlined their career paths and prospects as they partook in digital campaigns supporting or opposing unionization efforts in their organizations. the personal stories i examine are short selfnarrations in which participants explained why they joined the campaigns, by reflecting on their own experiences and expectations as organizational members. the stories were posted on designated facebook pages during unionization efforts in three major israeli telecommunication companies—pelephone, cellcom, and partner (between 2012 and 2014). these labor struggles were waged against the backdrop of the erosion of the protective labor system in israel, a process typical of other neoliberal economies around the world (kristal, 2013; rosenhek & shalev, 2014). the workers’ online unionization discourse was embedded in a global and israeli culture that celebrates individualism and selfpromotion (fisher & fisher, 2019). such neoliberal ideals, which prevail in their workplace, are also embodied in the design of the platforms these workers used (marwick, 2013). to explore how workers used personal storytelling as a discursive practice during pro-union or antiunion campaigns on facebook, i first examine how the participants—facebook page administrators and storytellers— reached out to their audiences. following that, i examine how, based on their personal stories, workers from both sides of the conflict explained their position for or against unionization in their organization. my analysis illustrates how—through personal storytelling that underlines one’s own accomplishments and ambitions—union supporters advocated unionization without committing to collectivist ideas that might dim the glow of their individualistic image as entrepreneurial selves, and, at the same time, how union opponents expressed commitment to their employer despite the hurdles they experienced as individuals facing an increasingly precarious work environment. while workers from both sides were encouraged by page administrators to join the digital campaigns, they used the technological affordances of facebook to fine-tune their personal exposure. furthermore, conforming with the value placed on authenticity in such social media interactions, they composed their stories in creative ways that allowed them to simultaneously engage with a collective cause and perform self-promotion. literature review people publicly share stories about their individual experiences as means of legitimating their actions. such personal stories from workers or job-seekers serve as “lenses through which leaders as well as rank and file assess opportunities and obstacles, costs and benefits, and success and failure” (polletta, 1998, p. 430). by publishing their life stories, people convey who they are and how they accomplished their personal and social achievements, claiming their worth as valued members of a community (linde, 1993). storytellers link their mailto:topacademicjournals@gmail.com american journal of art and communication vol.6,issue 6;november-december-2021; 1252 columbia rd nw, washington dc, united states https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac; mail: topacademicjournals@gmail.com 16 | american journal of art and communication | https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac identities to those of their readers to gain credibility among their audience and to construct common interpretations of how to pursue their shared journey (ganz, 2001). celebrated for its authenticity, personal storytelling bears the capacity to inspire and mobilize action by those in power as well as by those fighting against social injustices (polletta, 2009). storytelling campaigns have become part of the strategic repertoire of contemporary social activism as means of drawing wide attention among audiences surrounding various issues (polletta et al., 2021). with the emergence of online social networking, the age-old practice of self-narration has become more accessible to users and the time spans of interactions between storytellers and their readers have reduced (sauter, 2014). thus, responding to the technological affordances of platforms such as facebook, individuals engage with different audiences in different contexts by posting short personal stories. in what follows, i begin with discussing performances of digital personal storytelling in workplacerelated contexts. then, i turn to digital storytelling movements and consider the tensions that workers might face when they join such campaigns, in general, and particularly as part of unionization struggles. finally, i focus on selfnarration strategies that workers may adopt as they engage in digital campaigns during organizational conflicts embedded in neoliberal settings. workplace-related digital personal storytelling in organizational discourse, storytelling is a discursive practice by which individuals construct their identities as workers and present themselves to others by articulating ideas, aspirations, and concerns, drawing on the prevailing sociocultural narratives of personal success (ybema et al., 2009). coping with the precarity of neoliberal labor markets, workers wish to appear employable as part of their continuous effort to secure a job within, or outside, their organization (wittekind, raeder, & grote, 2010). in this quest, job seekers and candidates advertise their qualifications and experience by providing appealing indications of their “employable self” (gershon, 2014, 2017). in doing so, they adopt the predominant commercialized discourse of self-branding (vallas & christin, 2018). furthermore, in correlation with social, economic, and technological changes, different genres of organizational communication—including those involving self-narration—are created, reproduced, and altered through continual interactions between institutionalized systems and individual actors (salamon, 2022; yates & orlikowski, 1992). as part of these ongoing processes, organizations are able to use the technological affordances of social networking sites, which encourage users to generate and consume life stories for different purposes (morrison, 2014). in this framework, companies elicit, produce, and publish employee self-told stories on extraorganizational channels such as corporate websites, blogs, facebook pages, youtube, twitter, or linkedin accounts to enhance their online recruitment communication and image management (braddy et al., 2006; madia, 2011). through such personal stories, workers embody the special qualities of their organization (maagaard, 2014). this practice of involving workers in endorsing the corporate brand exemplifies how, in a precarious labor environment, workers take on the burden of promoting the reputation of their employers to secure their own employment prospects (neff, 2012). at the same time, workers who are less satisfied with their job tend to tone down their employer endorsement, for instance by sharing less workplace-related information on their personal mailto:topacademicjournals@gmail.com american journal of art and communication vol.6,issue 6;november-december-2021; 1252 columbia rd nw, washington dc, united states https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac; mail: topacademicjournals@gmail.com 17 | american journal of art and communication | https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac social media accounts (cervellon & lirio, 2017). such ambivalence in expressing employer identification is inherent in situations of organizational resistance (mumby, thomas, martí, & seidl, 2017). while workers may generally acknowledge their relatively advantageous employment terms, they might share personal stories about specific experiences that are inconsistent with the appealing narratives that their employers wish to present (li, 2022). workers’ participation in activist digital storytelling campaigns alongside commercial performances, sharing personal life stories emerges in the sphere of social activism as part of digital campaigns through which community members engage in a democratic process, aiming to promote social change (lénárt-cheng & walker, 2011). digital activist campaigns may involve site administrators who facilitate—invite, produce, and interpret personal stories—and orchestrate storytellers who, with their individual experiences, stand together simultaneously and represent their social group (vivienne, 2016). such curated digital storytelling campaigns reproduce “modern liberal notions of the self as rational, unitary, and assured of its free agency” (fernandes, 2017, p. 11). in coordinated social protests on social media, participants value internal authenticity: individuals tend to express their “true selves” by candidly conveying their own information, emotions, and judgments and constructing authenticity by sharing subjective evidence from personal experiences rather than objective scientific facts about the world (shifman, 2018). deliberating their mutual causes online, participants comply with (or subvert) the discursive practices of others by adopting or altering textual components of content, form, and stance that previous speakers have created and used as means of self-positioning (gal et al., 2016). through personalized repetition with variation, which social networking technologies afford and encourage, participants in digital rallies “utilize a shared formula as a basis for individual expression” (shifman, 2018, p. 181). such repetition in personal stories of employment experiences—which are unique but similar— enables highlighting the structural characteristics of organizational problems and the need for institutional, rather than incidental, solutions (gerbaudo, 2022). with the proliferation of personal storytelling as a discursive practice in social justice movements, individuals who consider joining activist digital campaigns may face a dilemma: sharing one’s personal story in support of external, noncommercial, collective causes contradicts the idea of the career as a life project of the self—according to which workers direct all personal resources toward excelling in professional achievements and being remunerated with high financial earnings (grey, 1994). this tension surfaced, for example, when top american athletes shared their personal stories in supporting the #blacklivesmatter movement (zirin, 2016). by doing so, they added an activist element to their online persona, and as a result, they risked public criticism, which could jeopardize their opportunities for profitable brandendorsement campaigns. by the same token, in neoliberal economies, joining unionization campaigns might compromise the prevalent self-branding of a knowledge worker as an “individualistic, pull-yourself-up-byyour-bootstraps” kind of person (rodino-colocino, 2007, p. 219). however, visible performances of support are essential in unionization efforts. labor activism historically involves public displays in the form of picket lines, marches, and demonstrations—in which groups assemble, raise placards, chant slogans, and invite others to join in (bonilla, 2011). these practices include storytelling: prior to the widespread implementation of digital social movements, the campaigning toolkit of labor organizers mailto:topacademicjournals@gmail.com american journal of art and communication vol.6,issue 6;november-december-2021; 1252 columbia rd nw, washington dc, united states https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac; mail: topacademicjournals@gmail.com 18 | american journal of art and communication | https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac included distributing printed flyers containing photos and testimonials of union supporters. the purposes of publishing such workers’ personal narratives of how they were mistreated by their employer were to demonstrate the participants’ fearless commitment to the struggle, enhance cohesiveness among workers, and engage others with the cause (brimeyer, eaker, & clair, 2004). as events of organizational resistance emerge in different workplace contexts, activists emphasize symbolic discursive practices, including storytelling, as effective forms of protest (cloud, 2005; putnam & real, 2005). furthermore, in neoliberal economies, such as israel, where union density is low, industrial action derives its power and legitimacy from the qualitative dimension of workers’ active participation in labor campaigning, more than from the quantitative dimension of large membership numbers (mundlak, 2020). therefore, union organizers are likely to urge workers to personally present their support by visibly partaking in pro-union digital campaigns, and management might try to delegitimize unionization by urging workers to similarly join anti-union digital campaigns. such coordinated processes may be defined as hybrid collectivist and connectivist digital campaigns, which are orchestrated top-down and performed through individualistic expression (pasquier, daudigeos, & barros, 2020). self-narration in neoliberal organizational settings in neoliberal societies, the government and business sectors have abandoned their traditional responsibilities of securing citizens’ essential livelihood and welfare, leaving families and individuals to cope with major life risks on their own (hacker, 2004). the social safety net offered by the state and by collective institutions such as trade unions has been reduced in favor of a labor market that emphasizes individuals’ accountability for their occupational success or failure (harvey, 2007). with the increasing role of financial markets in the global economy, firms focus on generating profits for shareholders, and workers are urged to consider themselves as investors instead of employees—having their employment stability, compensation, benefits, as well as their retirement pension tied to stock market values (davis, 2009). as a result of such structural developments, the definition of job security has changed from “lifetimeemployment” to “lifetime-employability,” signifying that individuals are expected to find and keep a job by continuously developing their personal skills and competencies and by managing their own career (boltanski & chiapello, 2005; forrier & sels, 2003). the neoliberal perspective sees people “in terms of corporate individualism—a flexible bundle of skills that reflexively manages oneself as though the self was a business” (gershon, 2011, p. 546). thus, in neoliberal organizational settings, employers promote a culture that encourages workers to pursue excellence and “to become an ‘entrepreneur of the self,’ where the achievement of success is dictated by one’s consumerist, innovative, and youthful performance” (gill, 2013, p. 336). by doing so, workers enact the ideal “neoliberal subject,” which is fulfilled through individual agency and risk-taking (mumby, 2015). in this spirit, people often narrate their career as a personal journey—constructing the stories of their lives as if they were travelers moving between (or staying in) organizations, roles, jobs, and occupations along the way (inkson, 2004). as individuals bear increased risks and responsibilities in pursuing and securing their employability, they relate to their work using financial terminology such as gaining ownership in the company by investing their time and effort in work (neff, 2012). at the same time, social media platforms encourage individuals to present a marketable “edited mailto:topacademicjournals@gmail.com american journal of art and communication vol.6,issue 6;november-december-2021; 1252 columbia rd nw, washington dc, united states https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac; mail: topacademicjournals@gmail.com 19 | american journal of art and communication | https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac self,” which is “entrepreneurial, positive, informationrich, and self-motivated” (marwick, 2013, p. 348). such intensive use of online self-promotion is embedded in the platforms’ business-growth model: corporate clients, including employers, are interested in leveraging digital displays of users’ personal narratives for purposes of effective targeted advertising (van dijck, 2013). in such precarious work relationships, then, workers simultaneously pursue successful careers within their existing employment circumstances and try to avoid organizational changes that they believe might harm them. therefore, when navigating with these contradictory purposes, they may prefer to avoid public confrontations (ybema & horvers, 2017). however, joining a digital campaign entails overt performances, which might compromise workers’ reputation as committed employees (collinson, 2003). hence, to gain credibility, participants may adopt a demystification (goffman, 1959) approach by providing significant personal details about themselves (vaast, 2007) or performing authenticity through animating “fresh talk” (goffman, 1981) by displaying “spontaneous, unrehearsed discourse” (montgomery, 2001, p. 447) and by intentionally risking embarrassment (schudson, 1984). when participating in digital campaigns, workers may also try to maintain a positive impression by constructing their ideological selves in ways that maximize their right to be heard over that of their contestants (potter & wetherell, 1987). claiming a warrant involves displaying better knowledge, reasons, intentions, as well as more passionate engagement (with the cause, others, the organization, etc.) and a higher moral ground (gergen, 1989). referring to such selfnarration strategies, i explore how—through digital personal storytelling—workers from both sides of the organizational struggle navigated the tensions of pursuing their individual career ambitions while collectively engaging in overt digital campaigns surrounding controversial employment issues. method background the unionization campaigns i examine were part of a wave of unionization initiatives in israeli organizations (weisberg, bior, & heruti-sover, 2013) that emerged against the backdrop of social justice protests in israel during the summer of 2011, when activists challenged the growing socioeconomic inequality and, among other consequences, their precarious employment terms (ram & filc, 2017; rosenhek & shalev, 2014). i focus on salaried employees in prominent telecommunication companies— pelephone, cellcom, and partner—that may be characterized by the broad definition of knowledge workers, those “involved in the chain of producing and distributing knowledge products” (mosco & mckercher, 2008, p. xi). they include professionals in technology, customer service and relations, sales, marketing, logistics, and administration, which enjoy a relatively high degree of privilege and status (ozana, 2015; swirski, konor-atias, dagan-buzaglo, & lazar-shoef, 2015). in the context of the local telecommunication sector, these unionization struggles evolved in resistance to drastic steps of workforce downsizing, pay reductions, and task overloads, which employers took to maintain profitability while facing enhanced market competition. managements in the three companies aggressively attempted to prevent workers from joining the fledgling unions. specifically, the vigorous unionization struggle at pelephone led to a precedent ruling (national labor court , 2013) that emphasized the role of communication technologies in union organizing and prohibited managements across the board from formally interfering in such mailto:topacademicjournals@gmail.com american journal of art and communication vol.6,issue 6;november-december-2021; 1252 columbia rd nw, washington dc, united states https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac; mail: topacademicjournals@gmail.com 20 | american journal of art and communication | https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac campaigns. at the same time, there were many workers who personally sided with their employers by explicitly rejecting the idea of unionization. eventually, during a period of two years, these labor-organizing efforts effectively achieved the purpose of establishing a formal union (lazar, ribak, & davidson, 2020). the corpus in this study, i conducted an interpretive qualitative analysis of the discourse surrounding personal stories that 52 storytellers (workers who composed their personal stories) shared on four public unionization related facebook pages: 27 union supporters on three different unionization facebook pages (five in pelephone between september and november 2012; vaad ovdei pelephone, n.d.; two in cellcom in april 2013; irgun ovdei kvutzat cellcom, n.d.; 20 in partner between march and august 2014; hitagdut ovdei partner, n.d.; and 25 union opponents in partner on the anti-unionization facebook page named “real partners”; partnerim amitiyim, n.d.) in march 2014. quantitatively, the numbers of storytellers who participated between september 2012 and april 2013 during the pro-union campaigns in pelephone (five) and cellcom (two) were trivial. the majority of stories were composed by storytellers during the pro-union (20) and anti-union (25) campaigns taking place in partner more than a year later. these relatively higher numbers, which could be part of the general rise in activist personal testimony campaigns on social media, may indicate these participants’ intention “not only ‘to be heard’ but also to be ‘counted in’” (gerbaudo, 2022, p. 12). in their personal stories, the storytellers provided identifying information about themselves. from their self-presentation, i extracted general details regarding their gender, age, seniority, managerial rank, occupational roles, and family status. the storytellers included 30 men and 22 women (as indicated by their name, photo, and interaction grammar, which in hebrew reflects the writer’s gender). in 43 stories (83%), the storytellers stated their role in the company, indicating a wide array of occupations. seventeen storytellers stated they were in managerial rank (nine department managers and eight team leaders), of which 12 (70%) were union opponents. of the 35 storytellers who did not state managerial rank, 22 (63%) were union supporters. overall, 24 storytellers (46%) stated their age, which averaged 32 years. thirtythree storytellers (63%) indicated family status, and 25 (48%) specifically mentioned their spouse and/or children. all but one of the storytellers (98%) stated their seniority with an overall average of seven years and no difference between union supporters and opponents. throughout the online debates surrounding unionization efforts, workers quite often provided particular details about their professional seniority, department, job, and other aspects. however, for the purpose of this study, i included only texts in which workers narrated their employment experiences in explaining their position for, or against, unionization. analytical approach this study examines how workers used the discursive practice of digital personal storytelling during prounion or anti-union campaigns, comparing and contrasting union supporters and opponents. addressing the first research question, regarding how page administrators and storytellers reached out to their audiences, i focus on meta-discursive expressions indicating how writers try to engage with their readers by stating their communicative intentions (hyland, 2005). hence, i analyze expressions by which writers referred to the use of personal storytelling as part of the digital campaigns. then, addressing the second research question, regarding mailto:topacademicjournals@gmail.com american journal of art and communication vol.6,issue 6;november-december-2021; 1252 columbia rd nw, washington dc, united states https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac; mail: topacademicjournals@gmail.com 21 | american journal of art and communication | https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac how—based on their own employment experiences and expectations—the storytellers justified their position for, or against, unionization, i analyze expressions by which writers referred to their career, their role in their company, their organization, and their motivation to join the campaign. the online interactions i study were and still are, at the time of this writing, visible and accessible on public facebook pages to all users, including academic researchers. nevertheless, i took measures to conceal the identity of participants: i used pseudonyms in quoting from personal stories, and the translation from hebrew to english complicated retrieving specific texts. in addition, in the course of time since these events occurred, the risks associated with exposing their participation may reduce. findings engaging through digital personal storytelling by sharing their personal stories on pro-union or anti-union facebook campaigns union supporters and opponents alike leveraged the visibility afforded by social media in addressing potential allies across the public, organizational, and private contexts of their lives (bimber, flanagin, & stohl, 2005; flyverbom, leonardi, stohl, & stohl, 2016). this process included actors assuming two different parts: the facebook page administrators in promoting and framing workers’ personal stories, and the storytellers themselves in composing and sharing their stories. the following analysis examines meta-discursive expressions by which page administrators and storytellers from both sides of the unionization conflict clarified the meanings and purposes of using personal storytelling in their digital campaigns. the facebook page administrators quite early in the pelephone unionization facebook campaign, a page administrator posted the personal story of union supporter alon with the comment “i simply must share [this story] because these are precisely the feelings and emotions of all the union activists, and i think also of most of the pelephone workers, and even the managers” (personal communication, september 26, 2012). this facebook page administrator constructed alon’s storytelling as a representation of widespread pro-union consensus among organizational members and portrayed his own intervention as spontaneously responding to the authentic display of workers’ voices rather than as facilitating and orchestrating a predetermined labor-organizing campaign. this practice of placing workers as the main actors on stage was also applied by “real partners” facebook page administrators in the following post: what pride! what a feeling of belonging! so great to be united and to feel the togetherness! thanks to the devotion of all of us, tens of real partners who are proudly wearing an orange color t-shirt with the wording “i too am a real partner.” a delightful sight with a clear message—backing the company, rejecting the union! continuing together with full force, together we are unbreakable! we are inviting you to send your photos wearing the tshirts, in order to upload on facebook. (personal communication, march 18, 2014) following that call, over the next few days, all the 25 personal stories of union opponents were posted on the “real partners” facebook page, with up to 10 stories in a single day, often including photos of the storytellers wearing the campaign t-shirts. however, notwithstanding such indications of institutional coordination, an analysis of the wording by which page administrators of both pro-union and anti-union facebook pages referred mailto:topacademicjournals@gmail.com american journal of art and communication vol.6,issue 6;november-december-2021; 1252 columbia rd nw, washington dc, united states https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac; mail: topacademicjournals@gmail.com 22 | american journal of art and communication | https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac to such personal storytelling shows they generally refrained from directing participants to follow a certain form or style in their self-narration. rather, they portrayed the workers’ stories as displays of individualistic agency. the storytellers to create engagement with their readers, both union supporters and opponents composed their personal stories using informal, self-reflexive language in candidly disclosing personal and professional information (goffman, 1959, 1981; montgomery, 2001; schudson, 1984; vaast, 2007). union supporter yaniv actually spelled out such discursive intentions: i am yaniv, 29 years and eight days old. father of shani who will be six in five days. i am six years and eight months in the company (with half a year break in the middle) and i like to create empathy by providing accurate details about things that are not related to the subject i’m speaking about. and now seriously: these days i work as a professional specialist in the strategic customer department and before that i worked as a service representative for top-priority business clients. (personal communication, august 17, 2014) in a similar, straightforward manner, union opponent ronen presented himself, his family, and his career advancement. furthermore, the inclusion of other partner employees (his wife, his team members) in his story implies ronen’s intention to represent them as well: i am ronen, age 30, married to ilana (she too is a partner employee), and father of two wonderful children, rotem and yael. i started working in partner as a service representative in 2005. i had a very nice history of personal and professional advancement and an amazing development in operational and managerial aspects. afterwards, i was promoted to a call-center shift manager, then to departmental shift manager, and two years later to divisional coordination and operation manager. now i manage the tier-1 team and am proud to lead a team of senior experts, amazing people, but most important—orange [partner logo color] in their hearts. (personal communication, march 19, 2014) table 1 summarizes the type of information the storytellers generally included in their stories. the high frequencies of seniority, role, and career data suggest that the storytellers based their claim to be heard (gergen, 1989; potter & wetherell, 1987) by underlining their professional experience and competence as indicators of their personal contribution as organizational members. table 1. type of information the storytellers included. parameter age family seniority role career number of storytellers 24 33 51 43 41 frequency 46% 63% 98% 83% 79% explaining pro-union or anti-union positions in their self-narration, the storytellers coped with an inherent tension: the unionization initiative set out to obtain a collective agreement aiming to enhance job security and improve employment terms for all company workers. however, this mission contradicted their neoliberal meritocratic organizational cultures, which emphasized rewarding each worker according to their worth to the company (fisher & fisher, 2019). the following analysis examines how, dealing with such tensions, the participants made the case for their respective pro-union or anti-union positions. mailto:topacademicjournals@gmail.com american journal of art and communication vol.6,issue 6;november-december-2021; 1252 columbia rd nw, washington dc, united states https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac; mail: topacademicjournals@gmail.com 23 | american journal of art and communication | https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac union supporters to justify unionization, union supporters emphasized the connections between their own successful careers, the devotion of workers to the company, and its high profits. for example, union supporter alon linked his professional accomplishments to those of his coworkers who strive to promote pelephone’s market leadership, (referring to the blue color of the company’s logo): my name is alon, an outstanding worker (according to the certificate i received) and part of an excellent team of workers. a pelephone worker with over 10 years of seniority. loving the company with all my body organs. my soul and heart are blue [. . .]. my journeys on the company’s trails led me to see its beautiful and sublime sides, its workers who are full of motivation, will, and devotion to paint each summit in blue. but regretfully, from the height of my experience, i have also known the less flattering sides, unpaved roads and many obstacles and pits. [. . .] every quarter i enthusiastically await reading the financial report of the company’s achievements and each time again i feel proud for our shared accomplishments in strengthening the company as the most profitable and growing in the cellular market. on the other hand, it breaks my heart because the workers do not receive a decent portion of these amazing profits. (personal communication, september 26, 2012) alon adopted the prevalent narration of the career as a personal journey, conceptualizing workers as individual agents striving to excel and gain rewards for their investment in precarious organizational and economic environments (inkson, 2004; marwick, 2013; neff, 2012). while alon emphasized his merit, union supporter dina addressed the possibility that—even if she excelled—her employment was at risk: i fear, and i ask: will i continue at work? will my chair be in its place tomorrow? is my employment secured? even if i excel? do i have job security? what will happen to me if i lose my job? (personal communication, april 11, 2013) in a similar way, union supporter susan justified joining the union by describing how—although she was “truly ‘orange’” [loyal to the partner brand logo]–the deterioration in employment terms severely impacted her livelihood and prospects: when partner recruited me, i felt really proud. i am truly “orange” [. . .]. so why unionize? i joined the union because employment terms in the company deteriorated. over the years, sales objectives have persistently increased. if you don’t achieve these objectives, you might lose your job. if you don’t sell enough—you get minimum pay only, can’t pay your mortgage, and have no future. (personal communication, march 12, 2014) alon, dina, and susan—each in their own way—expressed disillusion and frustration with their employment situation. they conveyed ambivalence as workers who identify with their employer’s brand and aspire to stay and succeed in their career but, at the same time, resist unfavorable changes in organizational policies. through such repetition in discussing the same personal employment problems, they and other union supporters reemphasized the complex nature of their organizational circumstances (gerbaudo, 2022). union opponents much like union supporters, union opponents reflected on their own journey as company employees. dan, for example, introduced himself with a photo of his employee badge imprinted with his name, the partner brand mailto:topacademicjournals@gmail.com american journal of art and communication vol.6,issue 6;november-december-2021; 1252 columbia rd nw, washington dc, united states https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac; mail: topacademicjournals@gmail.com 24 | american journal of art and communication | https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac logo, and the slogan “orange family.” he conveyed self-awareness by admitting that, when he joined partner, he was cynical about the idea of the employer as a family but, as time passed, he changed his mind: [day. month. 2008]. that’s the date i received this badge with the inscription “orange family.” back then i thought to myself: “seriously? a family?” but a month later and until now whenever i look at my badge, i think to myself: “wow . . . a family!” [. . .] undoubtedly these are the most successful, enjoyable, and challenging years of my life. (personal communication, march 19, 2014) in a similar spirit, union opponent rose shared a touching story portraying partner as her companion in moments of grief and joy: i am rose, a widow, mother of four children and grandmother of four. 10 years in the company. partner for me is a family. partner for me is a home. they always treated me with respect and fairness, even during the difficult days when my husband was ill and when he died, they wrapped me with warmth and love and cared for all my needs. even for the shiv’ah [the jewish mourning gathering] they took care of supplying beverages, cookies, and all other needs. i am proud to work here. there is no one happier than me when my grandchildren come to company events and see with their own eyes what an amazing place employs their grandmother. (personal communication, march 19, 2014) referring to the company as a family, union opponent batia also made the connection between her private family and her professional advancement: i am part of the orange family already eight years. the most significant eight years of my life, eight years in which i have developed in the professional and personal aspects and have also created my private family. when i say orange family, i mean a caring and attendant company, a company that endlessly invests in its workers—it is not trivial that we are the best company to work at!!! so, whoever thought to insert foreign elements into the family, we are not interested. (personal communication, march 23, 2014) batia based her claims on the company’s leadership in the “best place to work” arena, perhaps referring to the annual survey rating of employers in israel, which ranked the parameters of salary, job security, and stability, as most important for employees in evaluating their workplace (heruti-sover, 2015). in a similar manner, union opponent tamir explained the destructive consequences of unionization: during my time in the company, i understood that partner is not just another company to work at, partner is a family [. . .]. a union will create a different reality, intrigues, conspiracies, schemes, and splits. in short: it will harm the partner family!!! you do not insert a union into the family!!! (personal communication, march 19, 2014) dan, rose, batia, and tamir each described how, based on their personal experience, they came to recognize the unique advantages of belonging to the “partner family,” which was threatened by the external force of unionization. table 2 summarizes how participants narrated their stories about their careers, their roles in the company, their organization, and their motivation in joining the campaign. it demonstrates intrinsic contradictions in both pro-union and anti-union arguments: union supporters advocated collective action but justified their position using individualistic and meritocratic values, whereas union opponents rejected collective labor organizing but emphasized values of organizational belonging and caring. mailto:topacademicjournals@gmail.com american journal of art and communication vol.6,issue 6;november-december-2021; 1252 columbia rd nw, washington dc, united states https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac; mail: topacademicjournals@gmail.com 25 | american journal of art and communication | https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac table 2. key arguments in explaining pro-union and anti-union positions. self-narration union supporters union opponents my career challenging journey steady advancement my role in the company i produce value i am a family member my organization disappoints me encourages me my motivation improve employment terms protect employment terms discussion by examining workers’ personal storytelling on facebook campaigns supporting or opposing unionization efforts in three leading israeli telecommunication companies, this study sheds light on the intertwined tensions of collective action in contemporary neoliberal societies: government policies, labor market dynamics, organizational cultures, and the business model of social media platforms concurrently encourage workers to promote a neoliberal self that is individualistic, autonomous, entrepreneurial, and risk-taking. social activism, on the other hand, involves relying on others in striving for a common good. this complexity surfaced in how the participants engaged in the digital campaigns surrounding unionization initiatives. in their online engagement, participants in the examined campaigns carefully integrated commercial and activist forms of self-presentation in ways that indicate the ambivalence that knowledge workers experience when they overtly take sides in labor struggles (mumby et al., 2017; salamon, 2022). since their personal stories were posted by proxy—through the mediation of facebook page administrators— the storytellers’ online involvement remained visible mainly within the specific event of their unionization struggle, and thus they were able to grapple with the phenomenon of context collapse across different audiences (marwick & boyd, 2010). that is, the personal stories they contributed to the unionization-related digital campaigns appeared separately from the online identities that these individuals may have constructed for themselves using their own social media accounts (marwick, 2015). this distinction between their online personal and professional profiles and their unionizationrelated interaction allowed participants to introduce themselves in creative ways, thus conveying their enthusiastic involvement. by doing so, they signaled individual autonomy rather than mere compliance with the directives of union organizers or management. while their authorship may be perceived as a writer’s genuine beliefs and intentions, the employer brand endorsement—which both union opponents and supporters expressed— illuminates how workers in neoliberal economies bear the responsibility for protecting the image of their workplace (neff, 2012). this practice of placing the workers at the front of unionization campaigns (bonilla, 2011; brimeyer et al., 2004; cloud, 2005; pasquier et al., 2020) coincides with the neoliberal settings of the struggle: given the decreasing levels of union density, labor organizers rely on showcasing the personal qualities of their activists more than on overall membership numbers (mundlak, 2020). however, such public demonstrations of workers’ personal involvement in organizational resistance might be moderated by the technological affordances of the platform that labor organizers use. on facebook, as means of self-promotion, users shape their uniform online persona by displaying “multiple ‘stories’ about themselves, each story concerning different parts of their identities mailto:topacademicjournals@gmail.com american journal of art and communication vol.6,issue 6;november-december-2021; 1252 columbia rd nw, washington dc, united states https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac; mail: topacademicjournals@gmail.com 26 | american journal of art and communication | https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac and addressing a limited audience” (van dijck, 2013, p. 211). my analysis suggests that while personal storytelling served union supporters in advocating unionization, they narrated their stories as part of promoting their “employable self” (gershon, 2014, 2017). the analysis of workers’ participation in the “real partners” anti-unionization digital campaign also indicates backstage orchestration of individualistic performances: given the abovementioned court ruling, managements were obligated to refrain from overt involvement in the online unionization debate. therefore, managers were more likely to urge workers to individually present their opposition to labor organizing, partaking in counter-unionization digital campaigns. in this situation, the “real partners” facebook page administrators perhaps tried to create the impression that the personal stories were shared as genuine and spontaneous reactions of workers who actively rejected the notion of unionization and voluntarily pledged loyalty to their employer. the examination of how participants explained their choice to support or oppose the unionization efforts suggests that union supporters and opponents alike presented their contradictory arguments without challenging the shared common sense of their cultural and economic environments (billig et al., 1988). the difference was that union supporters conceptualized their activism as an opportunity for obtaining better employment terms, whereas union opponents defined unionization as a threat to preserving the advantages they already achieved. while union supporters shared their career accomplishments and livelihood anxieties as means of justifying their participation in collective organizational resistance, union opponents highlighted management’s part in ensuring their long-term occupational development and well-being. furthermore, at that time, workers in the israeli telecommunication sector generally tended to dismiss the idea of trade unions, which they considered to be corrupt, fossilized, and bureaucratic (preminger, 2018). this may explain why supporters distanced themselves from the problematic attributes associated with unions, drawing on images of entrepreneurship and market leadership that might better convince their audience, and opponents emphasized how unionizing would disrupt the success of both the workers and the company. in their self-narrations, union supporters and opponents alike performed the modern model of life stories through which people present themselves to others as unique and genuine individuals who are striving to actualize their authentic selves (fernandes, 2017; linde, 1993). the storytellers emphasized their own success— underlining their achievements, aspirations, as well as the opportunities that they were given or denied by their current employer—as a starting point for justifying or rejecting unionization. by accentuating personal experience and sincere emotions, they could appeal to their audiences, create a sense of togetherness, and yet bypass the difficult discussion about the complex problems of their precarious employment. particularly, through personal storytelling, union supporters were able to convey the unpopular ideas of labor organizing while they stay aligned with the neoliberal settings of their organization. they could simultaneously challenge existing power relations and reproduce them “in a single act of resistance” (mumby et al., 2017, p. 1161). the individualistic discursive practice of digital personal storytelling may seem inconsistent with the basic function of a union, which is to express the collective voice of all workers (freeman & medoff, 1984). however, as my findings suggest, the use of contemporary social media, which elicits performances of personal success and encourages individuals to focus on their own passions, may serve the aspirations of labor movements. such mailto:topacademicjournals@gmail.com american journal of art and communication vol.6,issue 6;november-december-2021; 1252 columbia rd nw, washington dc, united states https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac; mail: topacademicjournals@gmail.com 27 | american journal of art and communication | https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac personalized actions of individuals have the potential to inspire others and increase engagement among participants as they face their shared problems (bennett & segerberg, 2012; ganz, 2009). conclusion looking forward, as individuals are increasingly engaging in digital social movements, performing activism emerges as a component in crafting a desirable online professional identity (raun & christensenstrynø, 2021). therefore, it is plausible that workers may be more open to partake in overt digital campaigns that position them as pursuing collective good. furthermore, with the growing exposure of organizational struggles on public social media, workers are drawn to personally interact in online deliberations surrounding crucial social and economic issues that directly affect their job security and professional prospects (lazar, 2022). in this process, workers may adopt the discursive practice of digital personal storytelling as they reflect on the ways in which their own career might be influenced by such events. hence, as a practical implication of this study, labor organizers and managements are advised to take these entwined undercurrents and the tensions they entail into account when leveraging social media in general—and particularly digital personal storytelling—as means of mobilizing workers in contemporary activist and organizational communication arenas. further research, then, should follow up by exploring how the evolving online practices of both selfpromotion and grassroots activism continue to shape the nature of participation in organizational conflicts in different contexts. at the same time, scholars and professionals may consider how performances of digital personal storytelling surface and develop not only in crisis situations, such as bottom-up organizational resistance, but also how they are manifested by different participants as part of everyday uses of organizational communication genres, as well as how they may potentially shape common routines and norms of self-narration in various organizational settings. references bennett, w. l., & segerberg, a. 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(2016, july 8). 6 times athletes spoke out in support of #blacklivesmatter this week. retrieved from https://www.thenation.com/article/archive/6-times-athletes-spoke-out-in-support-ofblacklivesmatterthis-week/ mailto:topacademicjournals@gmail.com 051214-fa621-far.docx american journal of art and communication vol.7 , issue3 mayjune 2022; 1252 columbia rd nw, washington dc, united states https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac; mail: topacademicjournals@gmail.com 1 | american journal of art and communication | https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac harnessing the power of intelligent technology to improve community life liang, wei school of art design, jilin jianzhu university, changchun, china abstract: the development of intelligent products has led to a growing demand for smart construction in communities. smart construction can improve the efficiency, convenience, and comfort of community environments, and it can also pander to the diverse needs of community residents and foster good community relationships. this article focuses on designing intelligent devices within communities through the lens of environmental design. the goal is to create a smart environment that improves the happiness index of residents and promotes the level of modern high-quality living. keywords: smart construction, community, intelligent products, environmental design, happiness index 1. introduction at persent, socialism with chinese characteristics has ented a new era,and the main social contradictions have been transformed into the contradiction between the people’s growing needs for a better life and the unbalanced development[1].the market is witnessing a surge in the number of intelligent products, thanks to the development of technologies such as the internet of things and artificial intelligence. urban residents are increasingly demanding better quality of lives, and intelligent products which are meeting those demands directly. the convenience, safety, and comfort that these products bring to people's lives are making them constantly popular. communities, as the fundamental unit where urban and rural residents coexist, bears a significant responsibility in creating a convenient, comfortable, and safe way of life. to meet the demands of urban residents for an improved way of living, community environments must adapt to the digital age and adopt modern technology to effectively cater to the diverse living needs of different urban residents. the adoption of smart construction promotes urbanization and enhances the quality of life in cities. it panders to the diverse needs of community residents and fosters good community relationships[2]. as a symbol of efficiency, convenience, and comfort in community environments, smart construction is actually being adopted by communities nowadays. consequently, the construction of smart environments within communities has become a necessary means to improve the management of urban communities and enhance the happiness of urban residents. this article focuses on designing intelligent devices within communities through the lens of environmental design. the goal is to create a smart environment that improves the happiness index of residents and promotes the level of modern high-quality living. 2. basic theoretical concepts 2.1. intelligent community the intelligent community is a concept that integrates information technology with community services, which focuses on community participation and co-construction. it plays an important role in environmental governance and ecological protection, and strives to optimize service processes while enhancing service quality to meet the expectations of residents for intelligent, efficient, and convenient services. this promotes the sustainable development of the community. mailto:topacademicjournals@gmail.com american journal of art and communication vol.7 , issue3 mayjune 2022; 1252 columbia rd nw, washington dc, united states https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac; mail: topacademicjournals@gmail.com 2 | american journal of art and communication | https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac 2.2. environmental design environmental design involves intentionally shaping and modifying the physical environment to meet the standards of human needs and expectations. this interdisciplinary field incorporates factors such as human perception, cognition, emotion, behavior, building structures, and functionality, while also prioritizing the impact on the natural environment and implementing sustainable design strategies. the goal of creating a comfortable, healthy, safe, and aesthetically pleasing physical environment is to enhance people's quality of life and happiness. 3. the current status and user demands of intelligent technologies in communities 3.1. development status in recent years, the integration of intelligent technology and community construction has given rise to a new community model called smart community. the development of smart communities aims to improve communities’ management efficiency, optimize residential environments, and enhance the quality of life for residents. this trend is of great importance in global scale, and smart devices such as intelligent access control and security systems have been widely implemented in many communities. however, many devices still rely on traditional designs and fail to satisfy the demands of intelligent living, resulting in a subpar user experience. 3.2. user needs 3.2.1. information dissemination. the reliance on traditional written methods to convey important information is still prevalent in many communities due to the lack of effective smart communication devices. however, this method can be limited by factors such as poor communication and information .this practice not only detracts from the community's appearance, but also hinders the presentation of information in a user-friendly manner. this is particularly problematic for elderly individuals with visual impairments who struggle to read important information, as well as for younger individuals who work long hours (such as 996) and may have difficulty in receiving timely updates. in order to ensure that information is accessible to all, it is important to adopt inclusive and accessible design. this is particularly important for the elderly who may have visual impairments. additionally, modern technology can be utilized to create a more convenient living environment for the younger generation. by prioritizing inclusive design, we can create a more equitable society for all individuals. 3.2.2. interactive communication the current problem with smart devices in communities is the poor experience for user. quantities of people find it challenging to use the smart devices due to unfriendly interfaces, limited interaction methods, and inability to meet diverse user’s needs, resulting in low usage rates. to solve this issue, we must adopt a user-centered design approach and connect to the internet to set up a high-quality community environment. 4. application of smart technology in community environment design 4.1. intelligent public guidance screen an intelligent public guidance screen is a device that utilizes various technologies, such as artificial intelligence, big data analysis, interactive design, and so on, to deliver information from services to users. according to the needs of management services, design the framework of information management service platform [3].this can be achieved by touch screen, voice recognition, face recognition, scanning, and other methods. the purpose of intelligent public guidance screens is to digitize traditional forms of public information and provide a real-time information to users through clear and intuitive screen displays. this improves information dissemination efficiency and enhances user experience. the content displayed on these screens includes community announcements, public services, property management, and other relevant information. the implementation of intelligent public guidance screens can enhance the quality of service for community residents mailto:topacademicjournals@gmail.com american journal of art and communication vol.7 , issue3 mayjune 2022; 1252 columbia rd nw, washington dc, united states https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac; mail: topacademicjournals@gmail.com 3 | american journal of art and communication | https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac and visitors. it can also improve the accuracy and speed of information dissemination, increase the efficiency and level of community management, and contribute to the development of a smart city. 4.1.1. information dissemination the intelligent public guidance screen can be connected to the internet, providing real-time updates of community information. this allows residents to stay informed and ensures the accuracy and timely dissemination of important announcements. furthermore, the screen can display information in an enlarged format and has artificial intelligence voice-reading function buttons, making it more accessible for elderly individuals with visual impairments and hoist the efficiency of information dissemination, providing better services and experiences for community residents. by connecting to the public safety platform and utilizing data processing and connection technologies, the intelligent public guidance screen is capable of sharing and transmitting data with the public safety platform. this allows for timely alerts, evacuation routes, and prevention measures to be issued to residents in the event of sudden incidents, thereby improving their safety awareness and prevention capabilities. ultimately, this system is effective in preventing and reducing the occurrence of safety incidents. the intelligent public guidance screen not only provides safety information and real-time announcements, but also serves as a resource for information on public services in the community, including medical care, education, and community activities. this helps residents better understand the available services in their community and facilitates accessed to necessary resources. additionally, the screen can provide information on community events and activities, making it a more convenient resource for residents to stay informed and engaged in their community. by showcasing cultural, sports, and social events, along with local merchant discounts and promotions on the guidance screen, residents can effortlessly obtain information about community happenings and schedules, engage in community activities, foster communication and integration within the community, and enhance the cultural richness and quality of life for all residents. 4.1.2. interactive communication when designing interactive interfaces, it is essential to keep the design simple and clear. it requires the characteristics of easy-learning and easy-remembering, so that users are able to recall and master how to operate the equipments as soon as possible[4].this means highlighting the main theme and minimizing any unnecessary distraction. intuitive and concise design elements, adopting a quantity of slider modes in the interactive interface to assist the operation, which is much more convenient for the elderly to use. in the case of a limited interface, the slider of 5 mm is a more appropriate size and has good operation performance[5], can be used to help users quickly understand the interface. it is also crucial to prioritize usability and user-friendliness to avoid difficult operations, improve the overall users’ experience, save their time and energy, and ultimately increase satisfaction of them. by implementing ai voice functions, intelligent public guidance screens can establish a dialogue between users and devices through voice recognition and natural language processing technologies. this allows users to perform queries, operations, and other functions without physically interacting with the screen, thus improving users’ convenience and efficiency. this technology is particularly beneficial for elderly and young users.ai voice functions have the ability to recognize various voices, accents, and speech rates, which improves their accuracy and applicability. this allows individuals from different regions and language backgrounds to easily and efficiently comprehend the content of announcements. what’s more, the intelligent public guidance screen includes a built-in feedback module that allows for optimization and adjustment based on the needs and feedback of residents. this leads to a better user experience and increased user engagement. in the community environment design, the application of intelligent technology will further meet the needs and expectations of community mailto:topacademicjournals@gmail.com american journal of art and communication vol.7 , issue3 mayjune 2022; 1252 columbia rd nw, washington dc, united states https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac; mail: topacademicjournals@gmail.com 4 | american journal of art and communication | https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac residents, enhance community interaction and integration, and contribute to the sustainable development and progress of the community. 5. summary the intelligent public guidance screen plays an important role in improving the overall image and service level of the community in the context of a smart community, providing convenient and fast information services for residents, promoting the digital and intelligent services of the community, improving the living environment of residents, and enhancing the community's sustainable development capabilities. as china's comprehensive strength continues to improve, the standards of living and housing requirements of its people are also increasing, thus creating a greater requirement for communities. the emergence of smart communities provides a new way of thinking and solutions to meet these needs. smart community is the core part of smart city, and it is an indispensable application scenario of "new infrastructure"[6]. continuously improving the level of community information construction and the application of internet technology, exploring more innovative community service models and formats. using intelligent technology to focus on environmental protection, energy conservation, and effective use of resources to achieve sustainable development. in the future, the smart community will not only be a high-tech and efficient space, but also a comfortable, safe, and beautiful living environment. through smart community construction, people will enjoy more intelligent, high-quality, and diverse community services, improving the quality of living and overall happiness. references fan beibei. research on the construction of urban smart community in china in the new era [d]. bohai university, 2021. doi:10. 27190/d. cnki. gjzsc. 2021. 000043. zhen lan, ren cailing. the application of smart community property management app in residential property management. [j]. marketing circles, 2022, (07):77-79. lin kexing, lai shanhao. intelligent community correction information management service platform based on big data [j]. china computer & communication, 2022, 34(20):41-43. [4] huang xi. research on the development of intelligent home interaction design from the perspective of human-computer interaction[j]. shoes technology and design, 2023, 3(06):171-173. yu na, ouyang ziwei, wang hehe. study on smart home interface design characteristics considering the influence of age difference: focusing on sliders [j]. frontiers in psychology, 2022, 13. ling meixia, zhang ling, cheng lin. research on the construction and operation of smart community from the perspective of standardization[j]. market weekly, 2022, 35(09):36-39. mailto:topacademicjournals@gmail.com automated fact-checking to support professional practices: systematic literature review and meta-analysis american journal of art and communication vol.7, issue 2; march-april 2022; 1252 columbia rd nw, washington dc, united states https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac; mail: topacademicjournals@gmail.com 1 | american journal of art and communication | https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac the promise and challenges of automated fact-checking for professional practices kari anne olsen, stian andersen, kristine berg university of bergen, norway abstract:the prevalence of disinformation, misinformation, and propaganda online has been on the rise, with multiple political, societal, and cultural implications. automated fact-checking (afc) has increasingly garnered interest in research over the past years as a way to address this problem. afc systems use natural language processing and machine learning techniques to identify and verify claims made online. while afc systems have shown promise in some areas, they still face challenges, such as the ability to handle complex claims and the need for human supervision. keywords: automated fact-checking (afc), disinformation, misinformation, propaganda, natural language processing (nlp) introduction the prevalence of disinformation, misinformation, and propaganda online has been on the rise, accompanied by multiple political, societal, and cultural implications (kalsnes, 2018). as such, automated factchecking (afc) has increasingly garnered interest in research over the past years (guo et al., 2022). these different forms of information disorder are not new to the world’s history (kalsnes, 2018; posetti & matthews, 2018), but online social interactions contribute to their large-scale accessibility and visibility, considering the central role played by social media and platforms (guess et al., 2020). even though the verification of information has always been a part of editorial processes, it was popularized as a prominent subgenre in recent years (singer, 2021), referring to “good journalism” (singer, 2018) or “unbiased journalism” (graves, 2018). at the same time, the fact-checking community also encompasses political activists or fact-checkers acting on behalf of social progress (mena, 2019). although they share the same idea of defending and practicing a form of accountability reporting, these actors may view this ideal differently (graves, 2018). such heterogeneity is challenging for afc tool designers, particularly in defining the requirements or needs of potential end users whose various organizational contexts and professional standards contribute to shaping their practices. in this article, we define the end user as a fact-checker employed either in a fact-checking organization in a newsroom model or in a newsroom alongside or not alongside other journalistic activities. these professionals assimilate their identity and professional practices into journalism, considering that factchecking is a genre of journalism (cavaliere, 2020; graves & cherubini, 2016). therefore, the professional values that frame their practices are linked to the traditional ethical values of journalism—accuracy, fairness, and objectivity (frost, mailto:topacademicjournals@gmail.com american journal of art and communication vol.7, issue 2; march-april 2022; 1252 columbia rd nw, washington dc, united states https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac; mail: topacademicjournals@gmail.com 2 | american journal of art and communication | https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac 2015)—that support the social responsibility of the journalists regarding the audiences to whom they are accountable (bardoel & d’haenens, 2004). these principles are strongly connected to the transparency defended in the ethical principles of the international fact-checkers network (ifcn; mena, 2019) and the european factchecking standards network, which bring together fact-checkers to promote excellence in fact-checking. considering the speed at which misinformation and disinformation spread, afc can be fast and effective tools not only to find claims worth fact-checking, relevant previously fact-checked claims, or supporting evidence but also to translate or summarize content (nakov et al., 2021). the four stages of manual fact-checking are extracting statements, constructing appropriate questions, obtaining answers from relevant sources, and reaching a verdict using these answers (vlachos & riedel, 2014). concretely, they encompass four primary tasks: monitoring media and capturing content, detecting claims, checking claims, and publishing content (konstantinovskiy, price, babakar, & zubiaga, 2021). these activities require the conjugation of critical thinking and know-how related to online investigative journalism and multimedia forensics. the boundary object (bo) theory allows us to approach afc tools as technological artifacts that exist between adjacent communities of designers and end users. according to this theory, as boundary objects, afc tools “negotiate meaning to understand and articulate connections and disconnections between communities, cultures, and information infrastructures” (huvila, anderson, jansen, mckenzie, & worrall, 2017, p. 1812). the bo theory can be seen as a valuable instrument to highlight the issues that researchers face when technology and journalism intertwine because it involves distinct occupational and social worlds that do not necessarily share the same values or visions of journalism (lewis & usher, 2016; sirén-heikel, kjellman, & lindén, 2022). from the point of view of the approach to the relationship between design and use (or between developers and factcheckers), these issues are potentially linked to the work of interpreting what fact-checking is, that is, in terms of objectives or in terms of process. therefore, it would involve more than an accurate understanding or transfer of knowledge from fact-checkers to designers because interdisciplinary interactions transcend differences in meaning between disciplines (akkerman & bakker, 2011; fox, 2011; trompette & vinck, 2009). this systematic literature review maps the field of afc and its progress over the past five years to follow the recent developments in artificial intelligence (ai) in this field. it identifies how afc tools, as boundary objects, connect or disconnect adjacent communities on either side of the technological artifact. in other words, how do they adapt to journalism and infuse professional practices? the objective is to provide a comprehensive multidisciplinary state of the art that considers a holistic and sociotechnical approach to studying afc from a journalistic perspective to nourish future works. therefore, two research questions are investigated: rq1: to what extent does research on afc tools consider end users, and how? rq2: as boundary objects, how do afc tools connect and disconnect with the social world of journalism? method a systematic literature review is a means of collecting and synthesizing previous research, providing an overview of areas covered by the research, and demonstrating evidence on a meta-level (snyder, 2019). its main objective is to answer specific questions by relying on rigorous and explicit methods to ensure the work’s transparency, transferability, and replicability (thomas & harden, 2008). although systematic literature reviews mailto:topacademicjournals@gmail.com american journal of art and communication vol.7, issue 2; march-april 2022; 1252 columbia rd nw, washington dc, united states https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac; mail: topacademicjournals@gmail.com 3 | american journal of art and communication | https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac are commonly used in the medical and computer sciences, they can also be utilized in social sciences to provide an overall picture of the evidence in a topic area to guide future research (petticrew & robert, 2006, p. 21). metaanalysis refers to statistical techniques to obtain overall estimations or a synthesis of published research works (çoğaltay & karadağ, 2015; shelby & vaske, 2008). in this study, the meta-analysis was mobilized through descriptive statistics to highlight the corpus characteristics and provide quantified evidence to complement the systematic literature review (davis, mengersen, bennett, & mazerolle, 2014; mengist, soromessa, & legese, 2020). from a methodological perspective, this systematic literature review followed the preferred reporting items for systematic reviews and meta-analyses (prisma) guidelines to ensure transparent and complete reporting (liberati et al., 2009). it consists of a checklist of 27 items that frame the method, the writing of a systematic review report, and a flow diagram that shapes information retrieval and selection (page et al., 2021). the tool parsifal, available online (durier da silva, bicharra garcia, & matsui siqueira, 2022), was used to define the research planning (objectives, research questions, keywords, search strings, sources, and selection criteria) as well as to identify the articles published in scopus. the tool was also used to import all the collected data as spreadsheets containing the articles’ metadata to identify duplicate entries. the data collection was carried out via google scholar, semantic scholar, and scopus between march 14 and 31, 2022. the search terms were approached through three complementary queries to refine the quality of the corpus and limit the phenomena of noise (linked to unexpected results) and silence (referring to the absence of expected results). this iterative process followed an inverted pyramid model, that is, going from the general to the specific, considering that google scholar was the most general database used and scopus was the most specific: • fact-checking and “machine learning” (google scholar) • automated and fact-checking and journalism (semantic scholar) • (“machine learning” or automated) and fact-checking (scopus) these three queries returned 918 results. inclusion and exclusion criteria were applied to refine the corpus selection. published peer-reviewed articles; open-access articles published on arxiv, which are published after moderation but are not peer-reviewed; book chapters; and proceedings related to afc were included because the first objective of this review was to get a broad overview of the research works. duplicate entries were removed along with all the articles that fell into the scope of the exclusion criteria: non-english texts, articles dated before 2017, undated articles, articles unrelated to afc, and articles not available either in a pdf format or online. dissertations were excluded from the review due to their extensive length, which is not comparable to research articles, and their limited accessibility and availability. moreover, because their authors could publish their work in peer-reviewed journals, this exclusion criterion was also intended to limit the number of duplicate research. after the processes, the main corpus consisted of 267 articles used for a state of the art (figure 1). mailto:topacademicjournals@gmail.com american journal of art and communication vol.7, issue 2; march-april 2022; 1252 columbia rd nw, washington dc, united states https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac; mail: topacademicjournals@gmail.com 4 | american journal of art and communication | https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac figure 1. corpus selection process. to fit the scope of this study, the selection criteria were addressed using two complementary methods: (1) close reading of all of the collected abstracts and, in cases of uncertainty, additional close reading of the full texts, which concerned half of the collected corpus, and (2) distant reading of the abstracts through text mining and text analysis techniques using the programming language r (ramage, rosen, chuang, manning, & mcfarland, 2009; welbers, van atteveldt, & benoit, 2017) and dedicated packages to proceed a meta-analysis and n-grams frequencies (tidyverse, tidytext, tm, quanteda, highcharter), topic modeling (lda) and clustering (textminer). this process allowed us to define a first subcorpus of 72 articles that considered users or journalism, as well as a second subcorpus of 21 articles that referred to users and journalism (figure 1). the r packages previously mentioned were also used for the meta-analysis of the main corpus. the metaanalysis combined a deductive and an inductive approach (grimmer, roberts, & stewart, 2021; molina & garip, 2019) to support discoveries considering research questions that globally refer to the challenges of afc in the social world of journalism. in addition, we have created a database including a unique identifier, the title of the article, the abstract, the field of research, the type of article, the year of publication, and the number of citations. we added two columns to identify articles related to users and journalism or newsrooms. the datasets and the source code of all these operations are available on github (https://github.com/laurence001/afc_slr). the limitations of the research strategy are related to the level of accuracy provided by distant reading. indeed, it is recognized that topic modeling is not suitable for advanced data relationships and performs poorly when documents do not have a sufficient length (vayansky & kumar, 2020). clustering is also challenging for finding similarities between data points and grouping similar ones into the same cluster (qaddoura, faris, & aljarah, 2020). consequently, these results were primarily used to support human analysis. in addition, it is challenging to claim the completeness of a corpus queried through databases during a short period. nevertheless, the examination of the references in the articles collected indicates the representativeness of the corpus on recent research works on afc. mailto:topacademicjournals@gmail.com american journal of art and communication vol.7, issue 2; march-april 2022; 1252 columbia rd nw, washington dc, united states https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac; mail: topacademicjournals@gmail.com 5 | american journal of art and communication | https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac results the presentation of the results is divided into three parts: (1) a meta-analysis of the corpus to identify the state of the art of afc technologies as well as the general challenges of afc in journalism, (2) a review of the first subcorpus related to the uses and users of afc tools to answer rq1, and (3) an analysis of the second subcorpus identifying the challenges of developing afc tools in a journalistic context to address rq2. this three-level analysis aims to provide evidence to fuel the discussion about how research should consider end users more when designing afc tools. meta-analysis and challenges for journalism most of the articles collected were published in 2019, 2020, and 2021 (respectively 22.47%, 22.10%, and 29.96%). however, it does not mean that afc gained particular interest over this period, considering the time required for the research and the time needed for reviewing and publishing, although preprint articles represent 20.52% of the main corpus. this corpus also includes 51.49% of articles, 46.64% of proceedings, and 1.87% of book chapters. computer science was the main research area covered (80.90%), followed by social computing (9.74%), and the articles related to social science or journalism studies represented less than 7% of the corpus. it is not surprising that computer science is the most represented field given that the development of afc tools involves using specific technologies such as machine learning, natural language processing, and knowledge graphs (gallofré ocaña & opdahl, 2020; lakshmanan, simpson, & thirumuruganathan, 2019). in addition, social computing and information science are closely related to computer science, and journalism studies and social science intersect. afc covers four main functionalities that assist and support human fact-checkers: finding claims, detecting already fact-checked claims, evidence retrieval, and verification (nakov et al., 2021). based on this typology, automated analysis of the abstracts of the main corpus demonstrated that the current state of the art in afc technologies primarily covers claim detection (34.33%), followed by claim verification (14.18%) and evidence retrieval (8.20%). the technologies developed in afc are most frequently oriented to machine learning (supervised and unsupervised), followed by natural language processing and knowledge graphs. blockchain technologies are marginally represented (0.75%). afc technologies are essentially text focused. only 14 articles were dedicated to images and/or videos (5.24%). they included datasets of images and/or videos (e.g., papadopoulou, zampoglou, papadopoulos, & kompatsiaris, 2019; zlatkova, nakov, & koychev, 2019), supervised machine learning to detect deceptive images or for image classification (boididou et al., 2018; reis & benevenuto, 2021), the assessment of image forensics services (katsaounidou, gardikiotis, tsipas, & dimoulas, 2020; nakov et al., 2021), social-computing solutions for user-generated content verification (middleton, papadopoulos, & kompatsiaris, 2018), and deepfake detection (hoque, ferdous, khan, & tarkoma, 2021). four articles focused on multimodal solutions to detect misleading texts and images (abdelnabi, hasan, & fritz, 2021; dhankar, zaïane, & bolduc, 2022; gao, hoffmann, oikonomou, kiskovski, & bandhakavi, 2022; yang et al., 2018). one article was dedicated to verifying audio content associated with video (vryzas, katsaounidou, vrysis, kotsakis, & dimoulas, 2022). the full-text search results indicated that 129 articles were about experimental-stage systems (35%), and 179 articles mailto:topacademicjournals@gmail.com american journal of art and communication vol.7, issue 2; march-april 2022; 1252 columbia rd nw, washington dc, united states https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac; mail: topacademicjournals@gmail.com 6 | american journal of art and communication | https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac were about frameworks (48.5%). in addition, the authors of 45 articles provide online the source code of their fact-checking system (60%) and/or the datasets they built (62.2%) through a github project page. based on the abstracts’ content, datasets are the most prominent topic because it was found in 40% of the corpus. this is not surprising because afc tools rely on data for classification and prediction purposes: it is how machine-learning works. several articles focused more specifically on creating training datasets that are specific to one particular news context (e.g., on the syrian war, u.s. politics, or covid19). they are mainly published in english, except for one multilingual article and three others in spanish, arabic, and czech. they rely on several different classification systems such as “true,” “false,” or “halftrue” (wang, 2017); “unproven” (kotonya & toni, 2020); and “contradiction,” “compatible,” or “unrelated” (sepúlveda-torres, bonet-jover, & saquete, 2021). they also encompass variable amounts of data; for instance, the fever dataset—which consists of 185,445 claims generated by altering sentences extracted from wikipedia—comprises 185,000 rows (thorne, vlachos, christodoulopoulos, & mittal, 2018), whereas arastance has more than 4,000 rows. it consists of a multicountry and multidomain dataset of arabic stance detection for fact-checking, based on claim-article pairs from a diverse set of sources comprising three factchecking websites and one news website (alhindi, alabdulkarim, alshehri, abdul-mageed, & nakov, 2021). the reliability of dataset labeling (or annotation) required for supervised tasks is challenged by crowdsourcing as mentioned in the abstracts of 11 articles. at the same time, wikipedia was quoted as a source for data extraction in five out of 12 articles, and it was mentioned in 110 articles (41.2% of the corpus). training journalistic tools with wikipedia poses several issues because the content is generated by unknown users (umarova & mustafaraj, 2019), and encyclopedic texts differ from journalistic ones. from the broader perspective of machine-learning research, it has been pointed out that the crowd is not always made up of experts and that human biases can interfere with tasks’ accuracy and outcomes’ reliability (lease, 2011; miceli, posada, & yang, 2021). the performance of the afc systems relying on machine learning can be approached through the f1 score that is commonly used to evaluate the precision and recall of a classification model. hence, it is tackled as an error rate indicator. we found 92 articles (35.20% of the corpus) referring to this score, which ranged between 5% (hui xian ng & carley, 2021) and 99.6% (ebadi, choo, & rad, 2022). although the f1 score is not the only indicator to measure the performance of a model, it remains generic and can be considered a weak estimator for the uncertainty that can remain in the outcomes (kläs & vollmer, 2018). the performance of a model can also be tackled through the detection of overfitting, which occurs when the model is trained for too long and, as a result, comes to reflect the specifics of the training data rather than the general characteristics of the underlying domain. consequently, the model fails to find a general predictive rule (dietterich, 1995). in this corpus, the overfitting of the machine-learning model was pointed out in 24 articles. this does not mean that the research has failed, but it illustrates the challenges in developing efficient and scalable afc tools. as boundary objects, afc systems represent a clear division between their designers and factcheckers. this finding is confirmed in the second part of the analysis, which focuses on the relationship between afc systems and the social world of journalism. however, some attempts to connect technologies to work mailto:topacademicjournals@gmail.com american journal of art and communication vol.7, issue 2; march-april 2022; 1252 columbia rd nw, washington dc, united states https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac; mail: topacademicjournals@gmail.com 7 | american journal of art and communication | https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac environments and practices have also been observed, particularly when considering keeping the human factchecker in the loop. uses and end users of afc systems the proportion of articles considering end users and/or journalism is relatively low, representing 20.22% and 14.61% of the corpus, respectively. this highlights that attempts by developers in afc are driven by the goal to provide a technical solution to the social problem of information disorder. according to this approach, the growing importance of information disorder creates a need for new tools to speed up the process of detecting and verifying claims (e.g., azevedo, 2018; çarik & yeniterzi, 2021; du, bosselut, & manning, 2022; kar, 2020). however, we found 72 articles directly or indirectly related to the sociotechnical dimension of afc technologies, that is, 26% of the main corpus, comprising the first subcorpus devoted to the uses and end users. several articles highlighted the time-consuming aspects of human fact-checking activities and the challenge that human fact-checkers cannot keep up with the amount of misinformation and the speed at which it spreads (e.g., adair, li, yang, & yu, 2017; gencheva, koychev, màrquez, barrón-cedeño, & nakov, 2019; hanselowski & gurevych, 2017; jiang, baumgartner, ittycheriah, & yu, 2020). scholars also emphasized that human fact-checking requires expertise (jaroucheh, alissa, buchanan, & liu, 2020) and, in a certain way, human intuition and creativity that can’t be automated (nakov et al., 2021). furthermore, the relationship between afc tools and human users remains problematic (borges, martins, & calado, 2019) due to limitations related to credibility issues for automated systems and scalability issues for human factchecking (nakov et al., 2021). when researchers consider uses or end users, the focus is mostly on technological solutions to speed up the afc process or assist human fact-checkers (e.g., brand, roitero, soprano, & demartini, 2021; majithia et al., 2019). however, the fact-checkers toolbox is also explored (bañon castellón, 2021; nygren, guath, axelsson, & frau-meigs, 2021; svahn & perfumi, 2021), compared (školkay & filin, 2019), classified (nakov et al., 2021), and evaluated (komendantova et al., 2021; picha edwardsson, al-saqaf, & nygren, 2021). another perspective is related to the benefits of human-computer interactions (miranda et al., 2019; shi, bhattacharya, das, lease, & gwizdka, 2022; yang et al., 2019). these approaches can be understood in terms of challenges and opportunities that concern both users and developers (e.g., demartini, mizzaro, & spina, 2020; gallofré ocaña & opdahl, 2020). they encourage a hybrid process where humans are augmented by the use of ai, broadening a technical solution into a sociotechnical one, which is likely to result in the reconfiguration of professional practices (diakopoulos, trielli, & lee, 2021). this concerns not only the afc system’s functionalities but also how the tool was designed, considering the users’ requirements (nguyen et al., 2018) or the transparency of the model in facilitating human interactions (rony, hoque, & hassan, 2020). making an afc system transparent depends on its explicability. transparency concerns both the upstream components of the tool (reis, correia, murai, veloso, & benevenuto, 2019)—for example, the explanation of the model and the information sources used (gencheva et al., 2019) or why the expert assigned that label to a training dataset (berendt et al., 2021)—its interface (katsaounidou et al., 2020); and the results it provides (denaux & gomez-perez, 2020; middleton et al., 2018). therefore, the use of ai tools is first and foremost a matter of trust (demartini et al., 2020). providing explanations not only helps humans perform fact-checking but mailto:topacademicjournals@gmail.com american journal of art and communication vol.7, issue 2; march-april 2022; 1252 columbia rd nw, washington dc, united states https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac; mail: topacademicjournals@gmail.com 8 | american journal of art and communication | https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac also can foster trust toward the tool or improve afc systems (gad-elrab, stepanova, urbani, & weikum, 2019). however, this can be difficult when the system relies on black-box methods, such as deep neural networks (saeed & papotti, 2021). contextual information about the application domain is another topic that has characterized this first subcorpus. it implies some shared expertise between coders and end users (berendt et al., 2021). providing context with the results contributes to a better understanding of a claim (vizoso, vaz-álvarez, & lópez-garcía, 2021; vryzas et al., 2022) and suggests trustworthiness in the tool and its results (middleton et al., 2018). in addition, the lack of knowledge of the application domain may interfere with the correctness and the quality of a training dataset’s annotations (singh, das, li, & lease, 2021). it was also pinpointed that human fact-checking also requires human judgment and sensitivity (graves, 2018). therefore, research in afc also considers contextbased approaches (boididou et al., 2018; fairbanks, fitch, bradfield, & briscoe, 2020; gencheva et al., 2019), which can be interpreted as another form of an attempt to link boundary objects with the knowledge and practices of a given professional community (trompette & vinck, 2009). afc and journalism the analysis of the second subcorpus of 21 articles (7.86% of the main corpus) demonstrated that the most prominent perspective is about developing tools (42.85%) or supporting journalistic practices (52.38%), mainly for claims or stance detection (33.33%). nearly half of the articles (42.86%) presented prototypes (e.g., adair et al., 2017; horne, dron, khedr, & adali, 2018), of which five consisted of experiments (adler & boscaini-gilroy, 2019; boididou et al., 2018; jiang et al., 2020; masood & aker, 2018; vryzas et al., 2022). in addition, one article focused on fact-checkers’ needs by exploring the tools they use and how afc tools can support them (nakov et al., 2021), and four articles—all related to journalism studies—were dedicated to journalism practices within newsrooms (bañon castellón, 2021; de haan, van den berg, goutier, kruikemeier, & lecheler, 2022; diakopoulos, 2020; picha edwardsson et al., 2021). the world of journalism is less considered in research on afc. however, when it is considered, the complementarity between the journalist and the tool is the most frequently underlined aspect. that is mainly because fact-checking is a time-consuming process that still requires human input either to assess the validity of a claim or to adapt to dynamic news contexts by extending the daily collection of the source, for instance, as news information collection is a continuous process that occurs in a moving reality (berendt et al., 2021; hassan et al., 2017). several articles also stressed that human-machine complementarity is still needed because afc systems are not strong enough to give rise to fully automated solutions (komendantova et al., 2021). the question of the fact-checkers’ user needs was tackled either through a sociotechnical prism (diakopoulos et al., 2021) or by considering the cultural background and attitudes of journalists who may be skeptical toward technology and who generally lack algorithmic culture (de haan et al., 2022). still, from a journalistic point of view, other challenges are related to the “lack of collaboration between researchers and practitioners in terms of defining tasks and developing datasets for automated systems” (nakov et al., 2021, p. 5), the lack of time to learn how to use digital tools (picha edwardsson et al., 2021), the lack of consideration of the specific needs that can be expressed by fact-checkers, and the lack of transparency of some fact-checking mailto:topacademicjournals@gmail.com american journal of art and communication vol.7, issue 2; march-april 2022; 1252 columbia rd nw, washington dc, united states https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac; mail: topacademicjournals@gmail.com 9 | american journal of art and communication | https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac services (komendantova et al., 2021). although addressing some of these issues might be seen as a fruitful path to better intersect afc systems’ users and designers, all cannot be technically solved, mainly because they also rely on social and organizational variables that involve human decisions. designing an afc system is also challenging because of the complexity of defining central concepts such as “claim” and “verification” (e.g., konstantinovskiy et al., 2021). other issues can also be related to the limited availability of training datasets or to the overall quality of some existing ones, including the aspects related to the quality of their annotations (e.g., de haan et al., 2022). systems must also be adapted to the complexity of the newsroom’s workflows, where the multiplication of information channels is required to speed up the processes and provide newsworthy insights (gallofré ocaña & opdahl, 2020). discussion and conclusion regarding rq1, related to the integration of end-user perspectives, the findings indicated that most research focuses on providing technological solutions to a social problem without embedding end users’ views or needs. as machine-learning systems rely on training data, quality issues appear crucial, specifically when annotations are based on crowdsourcing by nonexperts. annotations are inherently prone to errors even when control procedures are set for correction (northcutt, athalye, & mueller, 2021). they are also language, domain, and context dependent, making them less adaptive or reusable. in addition, the datasets used for machine learning have various sizes, rely on binary classes for the labeling, and tend to be unbalanced, which is not ideal for training (zeng, abumansour, & zubiaga, 2021). because they are likely to rely on various annotation process types, the question is also that of developing a standardized annotation system (zeng et al., 2021). such diversity also complicates both comparing approaches and gauging their improvement over time. at the same time, there is no consensus on the best classification strategies and sets of features for afc tools developed for detection (silva, santos, almeida, & pardo, 2020). nonetheless, researchers have underlined that the datasets developed for natural language processing purposes are more valuable, cover different domains, and help progress research in automated claim validation (zeng et al., 2021). furthermore, automating detection and selection processes is also challenging because the criteria are likely to vary from one fact-checking organization to another, although common patterns are observed, such as prominence within the opinion or debate, virality, and measures of social engagement (micallef, armacost, memon, & patil, 2022). working with data from datasets based on wikipedia raises the same risk of potential quality issues as any other user-generated content in terms of accuracy or reliability because there are no guarantees about the users’ expertise. in this regard, quality control of the datasets and their maintenance over time also appeared as two other obstacles to efficiency, and data quality has “a huge impact on the efficiency, accuracy and complexity of machine learning tasks” (gupta et al., 2021, p. 1). in addition, the use of crowd workers raises “practical and ethical issues, such as funding and remuneration” (berendt et al., 2021, p. 11). although tremendous efforts are dedicated to gathering and annotating datasets for machine-learning tasks, the lack of relevant ones could be a constraint on developing afc tools (pathak & srihari, 2019). mailto:topacademicjournals@gmail.com american journal of art and communication vol.7, issue 2; march-april 2022; 1252 columbia rd nw, washington dc, united states https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac; mail: topacademicjournals@gmail.com 10 | american journal of art and communication | https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac at the same time, the lack of vision about the fact-checkers’ needs and requirements appears problematic as several fact-checking tools are developed without considering them (komendantova et al., 2021). the explicability of the system contributes to building a relationship of confidence between the user and the tool, and it plays a central role in using ai tools (stray, 2019). in a context where fact-checkers vigorously promote values of transparency, being able to explain algorithms at work and the results they provide katsaounidou et al., 2020) can be considered a lever for trust, or an instrument to demystify tools that might be considered black boxes (e.g., bartneck, lutge, wagner, & welsh, 2021; de haan et al., 2022; zhou, hu, li, yu, & chen, 2019). from the bo theory perspective addressed in rq2, afc tools might exist between the adjacent communities of researchers and fact-checkers by involving the latter in the process when it comes to assessing the performance and the usability of the tool, for instance because this is likely to help improve it (miranda et al., 2019). this implies a transfer of knowledge from one professional community to another, although the computational process results from a work of interpretation (huvila et al., 2017). the social aspects of factchecking also play a role in the adoption of the technological artifact, including in terms of its perceived advantages (fox, 2011). specific training in identifying manipulated images and deep fakes, along with the ease of use and integration of afc tools into editorial systems, are additional outcomes from journalism studies to enhance the integration of afc tools in newsrooms (katsaounidou et al., 2020; picha edwardsson et al., 2021; vizoso et al., 2021). afc tools are helpful to detect falsehoods, but they do not eliminate the need for human intervention (bañon castellón, 2021). moreover, afc tools should meet the users’ trust (nakov et al., 2021), which can be achieved only if both the system and its outcomes are trustworthy too. when professional fact-checkers use their human expertise and take charge of the labeling of training datasets for machine-learning-based systems (berendt et al., 2021), this “human in the loop” perspective is a means to achieve connection between the communities surrounding the bo. integrating the users’ knowledge also improves a system’s transparency and enhances its trustworthiness (nguyen et al., 2018) because it also emphasizes on the social components of technology. ultimately, “automated fact-checking works well in some cases,” but it “still needs improvement prior to widespread use” (lazarski, al-khassaweneh, & scotts howard, 2021, p. 1). reconnecting adjacent professional communities from either part of the bo may also be achieved by paying acute attention to the users’ beliefs and the possibility “to infuse their views and knowledge into the system” (shi et al., 2022, p. 315). furthermore, the necessary compatibility of a technological artifact with journalistic ideals and values was also stressed in the context of the diffusion of news automation within newsrooms (diakopoulos, 2019). however, in journalism, psychological and cultural barriers challenge the effectiveness of afc tools, although technology can make fact-checking easier and faster (cazalens, lamarre, leblay, manolescu, & tannier, 2018). we can draw a parallel with previous qualitative research on the possibilities of ai technologies within newsrooms where human journalists intend to keep the lead in these new forms of human-machine collaborations (dierickx, 2020; gutierrez lopez et al., 2022). effective afc tools require efficient technology. nevertheless, no technology can be used sufficiently on its own, despite various technical challenges. therefore, (re)connecting communities means responding to both mailto:topacademicjournals@gmail.com american journal of art and communication vol.7, issue 2; march-april 2022; 1252 columbia rd nw, washington dc, united states https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac; mail: topacademicjournals@gmail.com 11 | american journal of art and communication | https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac technological and social issues that arise upstream and downstream of the automated process. our observations provide useful reflections for further research in afc, whether working on improving data quality, models for standardizing annotations, the explainability of processes and results, or improving human-computer interaction and the overall user experience to better support professional practices. drawing links between the adjacent communities surrounding the bo also implies that is connects research fields because afc involves different but complementary scientific disciplines. references abdelnabi, s., hasan, r., & fritz, m. 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(2019). fact-checking meets fauxtography: verifying claims about images. in proceedings of the 2019 conference on empirical methods in natural language processing and the 9th international joint conference on natural language processing (pp. 2099–2108). stroudsburg, pa: association for computational linguistics. doi:10.18653/v1/d19-1216 mailto:topacademicjournals@gmail.com 051219-f1221-fap-91093-far.docx american journal of art and communication vol.8, issue 1; january-febuary 2023; 1252 columbia rd nw, washington dc, united states https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac; mail: topacademicjournals@gmail.com 1 | american journal of art and communication | https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac from subservience to empowerment: the portrayal of women in indian films kim, min-jeong, park, ji-hyun and choi, soo-yeon 1cheongju university, cheongju, 28503, south korea abstract: this paper examines the evolution of female images in indian movies from the early 20th century to the present day. it argues that the portrayal of women in indian cinema has been influenced by the changing social, political, and economic conditions of india. in the early years, female characters were often depicted as passive and subservient, reflecting the traditional view of women in indian society. however, in recent decades, there has been a growing trend towards portraying women as strong, independent, and capable individuals. this shift is due in part to the increasing participation of women in all aspects of indian life, as well as the growing influence of global feminism. the paper concludes by discussing the implications of the changing portrayal of women in indian cinema for social change. keywords: indian cinema, female images, social change, feminism 1. introduction indian film is an important part of indian culture and one of the largest film industries in the world. indian movies are not only the carrier of entertainment, but also an important window to reflect the changes and values of indian society. female images have always been a concern in indian films, and their evolution is closely related to the changes in indian society. this paper will study the relationship between the evolution of female images in indian movies and social changes, and explore the influence of movies on social concepts and values. 2. the evolution of female images in indian films 2.1 female images in early indian films in indian films, female images refer to films starring women. in the history of indian film, the 1930s, and 1970s were the golden age of indian film. the female images in indian films are mostly independent, self-reliant, and virtuous women. they are portrayed as independent, strong, and virtuous, and they also show the discrimination and oppression of women in indian society [1]. 2.2 the influence of the women's liberation movement on women's image in indian films, the evolution of female images has gone through a long process. from the 1930s to the present, the evolution of female images in indian films can be roughly divided into three stages. the first stage was from the 1980s to the 1930s, during which indian films centered on religious theocracy. the first stage showed the low status of women. the second stage was from the 1930s to 1970s, and indian films in this period showed the awakening and growth of women's consciousness and reflected the changes in indian social ideology. the third mailto:topacademicjournals@gmail.com american journal of art and communication vol.8, issue 1; january-febuary 2023; 1252 columbia rd nw, washington dc, united states https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac; mail: topacademicjournals@gmail.com 2 | american journal of art and communication | https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac stage was from the 1980s to the present, which was the fastest-developing stage of indian films. the female images in indian films began to break away from religious theocracy and feudal ideology, showing a diversified and positive trend. the representative films of this period include the last man on earth and toilet-ek prem katha. 2.2.1 women's status from the 1980s to 1930s india is a country ruled by a religious theocracy, and women have been oppressed and exploited in indian society. indian films show the low status of women at this stage. before the 1930s, the performance of female images in indian films was relatively simple, mainly centered on religious theocracy [2]. for example, the films such as kiss of god and marta harry all show the bondage of religion to women. the heroines in kiss of god and marta harry are devout believers. in these films, the female images are portrayed as victims of religious theocracy. through this stage of the film, we can see the oppression of the indian social hierarchy of women. at that time, indian women lived at the bottom of society and had almost no status at all. 2.2.2 women's consciousness awakening from 1930s to 1970s the films at this stage mainly reflect the awakening of women's consciousness. women's roles at this stage were no longer the unimportant part to men. they began to have their consciousness and started to resist the traditional patriarchy. for example, the female images in films such as lagaan: once upon a time in india, toilet heroes, and sikhs all have the consciousness of resisting men. at the same time, the role of women in the family had changed their image from the traditional wife and mother to a new woman with self-awareness. they are not weak women anymore. they can choose what kind of life they want to live according to their wishes and ideas. according to nisha, the heroine in toilet hero, "what do i want? i want to do anything. "under this background, women were not a needless part to men but a woman in the new era with independent consciousness, thought, and personality. 2.3 diversity and breakthrough of female images 2.3.1 the rise of the image of the housewife since the 1960s, the female images in indian films have gradually got rid of the traditional mode, and women are no longer regarded as attached to men. they occupy an important position in the family. during this period, a new image of a housewife appeared in movies. these housewives take the responsibility of caring for their husbands and educating their children in family life but they have not lost their self-awareness. for example, the heroines in films such as mom and love are all housewives. on the one hand, the rise of these female images shows that the status of women is constantly improving. on the other hand, it also shows that indian female consciousness has been further awakened. the image of the housewife has also made some breakthroughs and development from the traditional housewife to an independent woman in the new era. for example, the women in secret superstar and dangal are all independent and self-reliant. these women do not depend on men and become an essential part of social development and change. 2.3.2 breakthrough of female roles the diversification and breakthrough of female images are reflected in the independence, freedom, and equality of female roles. in the aspect of female role independence, the female image in this period gradually got rid of the mailto:topacademicjournals@gmail.com american journal of art and communication vol.8, issue 1; january-febuary 2023; 1252 columbia rd nw, washington dc, united states https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac; mail: topacademicjournals@gmail.com 3 | american journal of art and communication | https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac gender orientation of women in traditional society, and the female image was no longer the image of a good wife and mother in traditional society. moreover, they appeared as an independent, strong, brave, and optimistic image. for example, in dangal, jita and her sister sahana both appear as a strong female image. in terms of women's role freedom, women are no longer completely dependent on men to survive and they can realize their self-worth in their careers and pursue their dreams in life. for example, insia, the heroine played by zaira wasim in secret superstar, is not only a musician but also an actress. she has more opportunities in her career and is no longer a good wife and mother in the traditional sense. in terms of women's equality, women were no longer attached to men in this period [3]. 3. the relationship between female images in indian films and social changes 3.1 the impact of movies on social concepts and values based on the evolution of female images in movies, the rise of indian women's status is a long process and it is also a complicated and difficult process. in this process, indian films have shaped and transformed female images, showing a diversified and positive trend. before the new century, the female images in indian films were mostly traditional and conservative. during this period, the female images in films were mostly shaped by men, and the heroine's position in the films was mostly humble. after the new century, indian films began to break through the tradition, women began to appear in indian films gradually and the image of the heroine in the films also showed a diversified trend. jita, the heroine in dangal, was discriminated against and ridiculed by her father at the beginning and finally succeeded by her efforts. insia, the heroine in secret superstar, struggled hard to pursue her favorite music dream and finally succeeded. the film secret superstar is vivid, realistic, and inspiring, which causes the audience to think deeply about the status of women, the realization of women's self-worth, and the shaping of women's image. the film shows the low status of women in social reality by reflecting family conflicts between heroes and heroines. in the movies, the female images have changed from traditional to modern, from conservative to extrovert, from caring for their husbands and educating their children to pursuing self-worth. it can be seen that indian films have played an important role in reflecting social reality, spreading positive thoughts, and transmitting values. 3.2 the impact of social change on the image of women in movies 3.2.1 the breaking-down of the prejudices against women in traditional indian society in secret superstar, the mother is not a housewife in the traditional sense but a music teacher. in the film, the mother not only bravely pursues her musical dream but also encourages her daughter to pursue her dream bravely without being restricted by traditional ideas. in 3 idiots, the heroine pia is a woman who dares to challenge traditional ideas. in pia's view, everyone has their own values and should not be bound by traditional ideas. it can be seen that women in movies are no longer the symbols of decoration and birth in traditional society. they have their independent personality and pursuit, and their career and goals. therefore, the continuous evolution of female images in the film has broken the prejudice against female roles in traditional society and changed the audience's views on female roles [4]. mailto:topacademicjournals@gmail.com american journal of art and communication vol.8, issue 1; january-febuary 2023; 1252 columbia rd nw, washington dc, united states https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac; mail: topacademicjournals@gmail.com 4 | american journal of art and communication | https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac 3.2.2 the fighting for women's equal rights in the process of social change in india, women have gradually gained equal rights and status in various fields and become an important force in social progress. in secret superstar, insia won the support of her family and friends with her talents and dreams and strived for equal rights for her family through her efforts. in dangal, aamir hussain khan plays a male wrestling coach but his actions for women's equal rights have touched many audiences. with the influence of social changes on indian films, more and more indian films have appeared in the role image of fighting for equal rights for women, which also reflects the continuous development and progress of indian society. 3.2.3 the change in the audience's stereotype of female roles with the development of society, the female images in indian films began to break the stereotype. in dangal, the female wrestler played by the heroine has become a highlight in the film, and her spirit of hard work, tenacity, and strong is very touching. in traditional indian society, women's status is relatively low and women are always regarded as an extra part of men. the female wrestler played by fatima sana shaikh broke the audience's stereotype of female roles, and she proved with her actions that women can also become indispensable members of national competitive competitions. according to the constant changes and development of female roles in indian films, women began to gain equal rights and status. breaking the stereotype of indian female roles promoted the continuous development of indian society [5]. at the same time, it also reflects the gradual improvement of women's status in indian society. 3.3 the interactive relationship between movies and social change from the birth and development of indian films to the present prosperity, indian films are constantly developing and changing under the background of social changes. in india, the film is closely linked with social change. whether it is political change, economic development, or cultural innovation, it will have a certain impact on film. between film and social change, three factors have played an important role in the film. the first one is the cultural environment. india is a traditionally religious country, and religious thoughts have a profound influence on people's behavior. social changes will inevitably influence the ideas and values of religious culture. the second is economic conditions. india's economic level has developed rapidly, and people's living standards have improved, thus giving them more money and time to watch movies. the third is science and technology. india has a low level of science and technology so people may have some difficulties in learning new things. therefore, as an easy-to-understand and vivid art form, movies are easy for the audience to accept and understand. according to the changes in female images in indian films, we can see that indian society has undergone tremendous changes and development, and this series of changes are all produced in the process of social change in india. in this social background, movies have played an important role in promoting social change and changing people's ideas. the change in women's status and consciousness reflected by the female images in the films is the epitome of social change and development in india. 4. conclusion the evolution of female images in indian films is closely related to social changes. as an important cultural medium, the film has a far-reaching impact on social concepts and values. by studying the relationship between mailto:topacademicjournals@gmail.com american journal of art and communication vol.8, issue 1; january-febuary 2023; 1252 columbia rd nw, washington dc, united states https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac; mail: topacademicjournals@gmail.com 5 | american journal of art and communication | https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac the evolution of female images in indian movies and social changes, we can better understand the role and influence of movies on society and provide a reference for promoting social progress and realizing women's rights and interests. at the same time, it is necessary to further deepen the study of female images in indian films, explore more influencing factors and mechanisms, and provide more theoretical support and practical guidance for the interactive relationship between film creation and social change. references wei m. j. (2023). a study of female images in indian films in the 21st century [d]. shanxi normal university [2023-07-29]. song y. r. (2023). research on the construction of female images in indian contemporary films [j]. [2023-0729]. yang, q. w., & guan, m. (2020). presentation and shaping of female images in indian films (20052017) [j]. theatre house, 2020(2): 74-75. liang x., sun l., & chen y. k. (2022). the shaping of female images in contemporary indian films from the perspective of eco-feminist theory [j]. journal of harbin institute, 2022, 43(3): 3. feng h., he x. (2018). analysis of female images in indian films [j]. china after-school education, 2018 (11): 3. doi: cnki: sun: xwll. 0. 2018-33-057. mailto:topacademicjournals@gmail.com 051218-zy075-肖箐-英普-frontiers in art research.docx american journal of art and communication vol.7,issue 6;november-december-2022; 1252 columbia rd nw, washington dc, united states https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac; mail: topacademicjournals@gmail.com 1 | american journal of art and communication | https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac understanding the complexity of beethoven's piano sonata no.15 through schenkerian analysis jane elizabeth doe and maria sofia garcia university of miami, miami, florida, 33124, united states abstract: this paper uses schenkerian analysis to explore the beethoven piano sonata no.15 in d major, opus 28, focusing on the exposition sections of the first movement. schenkerian theory is an analytical method developed by austrian composer and theorist heinrich schenker. this theory can provide a deeper understanding of a piece's musical content by revealing its underlying structure. the relationship between theory and performance will be discussed to provide a more comprehensive analysis. this paper also demonstrates how schenkerian analysis can illuminate the characteristics of beethoven's music and influence how we hear his music. through this analysis, we can better understand this work and appreciate its complexity. keywords: schenkerian analysis, beethoven piano sonata no.15, exposition, d major, opus 28 1. introduction analyzing a musical composition provides profound insight into its structure and other components. this paper will use schenkerian analysis to explore the beethoven piano sonata no.15 in d major, opus 28, concentrating on the exposition sections of the first movement. schenkerian theory [1] is an analytical method developed by austrian composer and theorist heinrich schenker. this theory can provide a deeper understanding of a piece’s musical content. the relationship between theory and performance will be discussed to provide a more comprehensive analysis. also, this paper demonstrates how this analytical method can illuminate the characteristics of beethoven’s music and influence how we hear his music. through this analysis, we can better understand this work and appreciate its complexity. ludwig van beethoven was a german composer and pianist born in 1770 and died in 1827. he is widely considered one of the most influential composers of all time, with his works usually regarded as spanning the classical and romantic eras. during his lifetime, beethoven composed thirty-two piano sonatas, of which this is the fifteenth. beethoven’s composition time is separated into three periods; this work, created in 1802, is known as the “pastoral” and belongs to his last piano sonata from the early period. researchers have been fascinated by applying schenkerian theory[2] to beethoven’s piano sonata for many years. they used various methodologies to investigate the problem, the most prominent of which was a mix of music theory and analysis centered on harmony, progression, prolongation, and structure. 2. thematic development and harmonic progression firstly, the form of the first movement in this piece is a sonata form, which includes three parts: exposition, development, and recapitulation. here is the chart demonstrating the structure of the exposition part in the first movement.here is the chart demonstrating the structure of the exposition part in the first movement in table 1. the exposition is the opening portion of the sonata form and is regarded as one of the most essential components of the structure. the exposition section includes two themes: primary and secondary theme. the primary theme is in the key of d major, and creates a lyrical and flowing melody, while the secondary theme is mailto:topacademicjournals@gmail.com american journal of art and communication vol.7,issue 6;november-december-2022; 1252 columbia rd nw, washington dc, united states https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac; mail: topacademicjournals@gmail.com 2 | american journal of art and communication | https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac modulation to a major; the secondary theme is the contrasting part, using different materials from the primary theme; the second theme is more forceful. as the exposition progresses, beethoven introduces several transitional passages that help to modulate the key from d major to a major. the connecting episode uses different textures, changing the harmony and using different melodic materials. they help to create a sense of tension and anticipation leading up to the arrival of the second theme in a major. the initial theme includes two sections; each section has two phrases, each ending in a cadence. the second theme is developed in the exposition, with melody variations and accompaniment changes. beethoven introduces a closing theme, which ends the exposition. overall, the exhibition of beethoven’s piano sonata op.28 is an expert display of thematic development and harmonic progression. beethoven used various gestures and textures to create a sense of unity and coherence throughout the section while introducing contrasting material to keep the listener engaged. the first and second themes connect the episode and coda to create a colorful and complex musical tapestry. as a schenkerian music theory analysis researcher, it is fascinating to delve deeper into the inner progression of this section and uncover the intricate relationships between the various musical elements. table 1:music form exposition measure structure tonality primary theme 1-39 binary form (section a+ section b) d major connecting episode 40-90 part i (40-62), part ii (6376), part iii (77-90) a major, e major, f-sharp minor, a major, e major, f-sharp minor, a major, f-sharp minor, a major. secondary theme 90-135 a major coda 135-159 a major passage 159-163 a major the exposition section of the first movement is characterized by a clear tonal structure[3] that is established with critical relationships. the primary key of the movement is d major, which is introduced in the opening measures and uses the tonic note of the pedal point to emphasize the tonic function. however, beethoven also incorporates several secondary keys, which create tension and contrast within the tonal structure of the movement. one of the most significant things of connecting episode, this part changes the tonality frequently, using the f sharp minor, a major, and e major, using these relative and close keys to emphasize the function and transition naturally to the second theme. beethoven also uses the key of d major in the exposition's closing theme, which serves as a transitional key between the second key of the upcoming development section. the interaction between various keys is another critical feature of tonality in beethoven’s piano sonata opening movement. throughout the exposition section, beethoven employs key relationships to create tension and release. the link between f sharp minor and a major is a critical relationship in the connecting episode part, taking the bridge function. as mentioned above in the transition portion, the modulation establishes this link. harmonic progression is a fundamental aspect of music theory, and it plays a crucial role in sonata form analysis. in beethoven’ s piano sonata op.28, the first movement’s exposition section is an excellent example of harmonic progression, particularly the tonic-dominant relationship. the tonic-dominant-tonic progression is one of the essential harmonic relationships in tonal music, and it is used extensively in the sonata form. in the first movement’s exposition section, the dominant-tonic progression creates tension and release, a hallmark of the sonata form. he mailto:topacademicjournals@gmail.com american journal of art and communication vol.7,issue 6;november-december-2022; 1252 columbia rd nw, washington dc, united states https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac; mail: topacademicjournals@gmail.com 3 | american journal of art and communication | https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac uses this progression to build anticipation and create a sense of resolution, an essential aspect of the sonata form. in this part, beethoven used the secondary chord, making tension in the progression of music; on the other hand, he used the sequence to create music and used the tonic pedal point and repeat note and motive split all techniques to create. the harmonic and melodic variations found in this piece of the first movement in the exposition refine the structural elements of the piece. using schenkerian analysis, it is possible to identify the specific harmonic and melodic variations used to develop and refine the musical ideas presented in the piece. these abundant music textures include modulations, non-diatonic chords, secondary chords, and chromatic passing tones, embellishment notes. all these techniques serve to develop further the musical ideas presented in the exposition part. the colorful harmonica found in this piece is primarily used to create a sense of tension and movement. the most common gestures of harmonic variation used in this piece are modulations. through modulations, beethoven can change the tonal center of the music and create a sense of tension and movement. these harmonic variations help to refine the structural elements of the piece. harmonic progression in music relies heavily on chordal motion. the chordal motion is essential in the first movement exposition and contributes to the piece’s overall structure. a sequence, a recurring musical pattern at a new pitch level, is one of the most prevalent types of chordal motion. the composer borrowed sequences from the exposition in this passage. from measure forty to measure fifty-five, he used the fifth degree of sequence to create different tonality; the connecting episode used the new materials and combined them with the harmonic sequence to the composer, making the music full of tension. the employment of the pedal point is another crucial aspect of chordal motion. a pedal point is a note maintained as the other voices move around it. throughout the exposition, beethoven uses pedal points in various ways to create tension and release into harmony. 3. exploring tonal hierarchy and linear progressions schenkerian[4] music theory involves the concept of tonal hierarchy. schenkerian analysis tries to identify a composition’s “ustaz” (fundamental structure) or underlying structure. the underlying structure of the music is the tonal hierarchy, which is established by the composer’s usage of various musical components. the ustaz in beethoven’s piano sonata no.15 in d major, opus 28, is set by the piece’s opening tonic. this tonic is bolstered and sustained by harmonic progressions, melodic motives, and other tonal organizing aspects. the tonic sounds increasingly solid and secure throughout the piece using these devices. in the sonata’s first movement, for example, the ustaz is established by using a tonic pedal in the left hand, which provides a strong foundation for the rest of the music. additionally, the first movement’s cadences are built upon this tonic pedal, further reinforcing its importance. when analyzing beethoven’s piano sonata’s exposition section, it is critical to consider the piece’s form and periodic structure. the exposition is structured like a sonata, with an initial theme, a transition, a second subject, and a conclusion. this structure is distinguished by periodic phrases, which create a sense of symmetry and balance within the music in section a in the primary theme, and the second phrase in section a is a non-symmetry phrase. cadential phrases are also used extensively in the sonata’s exposition part. these sentences bring each component of the form to a close and resolution. a half cadence, for example, is employed in the opening theme to provide a sense of pause before the transition part. the second theme then ends with a beautiful realistic cadence, ending the passage. these cadences are a vital feature of the sonata form, contributing to the piece’s overall structure and cohesion. voice leading[5] is an essential aspect of schenkerian analysis, as it helps to understand the relationship between the individual voice within a musical composition. in the exposition section of beethoven’s piano sonata’s first movement, the voice leading plays a crucial role in the piece’s motivic development and linear mailto:topacademicjournals@gmail.com american journal of art and communication vol.7,issue 6;november-december-2022; 1252 columbia rd nw, washington dc, united states https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac; mail: topacademicjournals@gmail.com 4 | american journal of art and communication | https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac progression. using schenkeian analysis, we can identify the underlying harmonic structure and how the melodic and contrapuntal lines of the composition shape it. one of the most prominent features of the voice leading in the exposition section is the use of motivic development. the dissonant suspensions play a vital role in the music's progression, such as from 4-3; but beethoven used the parallel of the sixth interval frequently. this technique involves taking a short melodic or rhythmic motif and transforming it throughout the composition. in beethoven’s piano sonata’s first movement, the opening motive is repeated and develops throughout the exposition section, creating a sense of unity and coherence in the piece. additionally, the voice leading helps to emphasize the harmonic progression, highlighting the tonal relations between the different chords and creating a sense of tension and resolution. in schenkerian music theory, intervallic relationships play a crucial role in analyzing the structure and organization of a musical composition. the intervals of thirds, fourths, fifths, and sixths are significant, as they are often used to create harmonic and melodic connections between different parts of a piece. at the beginning of this piece, the composer uses parallel sixth continuously, making progression smooth and convenient. by examining these intervallic relationships in this piece's middle ground and foreground, we can gain insight into the composer's use of harmony and melody in seminal work. the primary theme of this piece in the opening phrase used a cluster of motives and gestures based on a descending d major scale. these motives and gestures are then developed and expanded into longer phrases characterized by a rising and falling melodic contour. the terms are structured in a way that creates tension and release, leading to the pivotal moment of the theme. the flowing shape of the composition is simple yet effective, conveying a sense of stability and resolution that is characteristic of beethoven's music. in the primary theme of the sonata, the descending scale motive is used as the basis for the music, while the rising and falling gestures create a sense of motion and development. the use of motives and gestures, combined with the melodic contour, creates a cohesive and unified structure characteristic of beethoven's music. in addition to the melodic contour, the use of motives and gestures is another vital aspect of the melodic structure in beethoven's music. motives are short musical ideas repeated throughout a piece, while gestures are more significant musical ideas developed and expanded over time. in the primary theme of the sonata, the descending scale motive is used as the basis for the theme, while the rising and falling gestures create a sense of motion and development. the use of motives and gestures, combined with the melodic contour, creates a cohesive and unified structure that is characteristic of s music; beethoven used the motive split to create music, the same melody in the different registers to development and use the same materials to repeat again and again, letting music full of tension. linear progression [6] is an essential element of schenkerian music theory, which focuses on the voice leading between two or more voices. it is a way of understanding how music progresses through time and relates to a piece’s tonality. in this piece, the linear progression of the first movement’s exposition is crucial to understanding its structure. the exposition starts with a presentation of the secondary chord to the dominant harmonies after the single tonic note, followed by the subdominant to go to the dominant and tonic. the prominent structure of the primary theme progresses in the vital function, emphasizing the tonality of d major, just using different chords, and changing the register, making the colorful melody layers. melodic contour refers to the shape of a melody represented graphically. it is an essential aspect of music analysis because it provides insights into a piece’s structure and emotional content. in this piece’s first movement, the exposition part’s melodic contour is created by a falling and rising pattern. the use of stepwise motion and sequential repetition of harmonic and melodic patterns characterize the secondary theme's linear progressions. the initial phase of the secondary theme begins with a descending stepwise motion in the melody, accompanied by a harmonic progression that moves from the dominant to the tonic. this mailto:topacademicjournals@gmail.com american journal of art and communication vol.7,issue 6;november-december-2022; 1252 columbia rd nw, washington dc, united states https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac; mail: topacademicjournals@gmail.com 5 | american journal of art and communication | https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac harmonic progression is repeated sequentially, with the melody moving up and down stepwise, creating a sense of continuity and coherence in the musical structure. using linear progressions in the secondary theme also highlights the significance of harmonic repetition and variation in schenkerian analysis. the repetition of the dominant-to-tonic harmonic progression in the secondary theme provides a framework for the development and variation of the harmonic and melodic material in the subsequent sections of the composition. the linear progressions, therefore, serve as a foundation for the overall harmonic and structural organization of the beethoven piano sonata no.15 in d major, emphasizing the composer's proficiency in form and structure in his music. heinrich schenker emphasizes the idea of fundamental structure in his theory. this theory believes that all structures of tonal music around a fundamental tone are the tonic note of a particular key. this graph simplifies the music into essential elements, highlighting the underlying harmonic and melodic structures. the fundamental structure is a hierarchy of musical events, with the most important events occurring at the top of the graph and the less critical events occurring further down. a piece of music's fundamental structure is used as a blueprint overview for the entire work. it provides a framework for understanding the relationships between different music sections and how they fit together to create a coherent whole. in the context of the beethoven piano sonata no.15 in d major, the structure of the first part of connecting episode is fundamental in the connecting episode of the exposition section. this episode serves as a bridge between the primary and secondary themes, and its function is to modulate the key to the secondary theme. the fundamental structure of this episode reveals the underlying harmonic and melodic structures that allow this modulation to occur. the fundamental structure of the first part in the connecting episode in this piece, emphasis from tonic to the dominant and tonic, through the use of modulation in the different keys, such as a and e major, figure that begins on the dominant to solve to the tonic, though by looking the graphic about this passages, the majority of the fundamental structure is from tonic to dominant and solve to the tonic or the movement from dominant to the tonic. interestingly, the same materials repeat again and again but are written in different registers; the last time, changing some notes and then letting the music listened to is close to the tonic in e major, and this figure is repeated several times; this creates a sense of tension and release. 4. schenkerian graphical analysis in addition, this graph demonstrates that the schenkerian analysis uses beethoven's piano sonata no. 15 in d major's exposition part of the primary theme in figure 1 and 2. the middle ground and foreground of this piece are essential elements of the piece. the middle ground refers to the intermediate level of harmonic organization between the structural bass and the melody. it includes the contrapuntal lines not as prominent as the melody but still contribute to the music's overall texture. the foreground, on the other hand, is the superior level of harmonic organization. it is where this graphic presents the melody and other essential musical elements to explain. in the exposition part of this piece's primary theme, the characteristics of the middle ground are used with counterpoint. the contrapuntal lines create a sense of tension and release that supports the melody. the middle ground also includes the harmonic progressions that connect the different phrases of the melody. in this section, beethoven uses a mixture of simple and complex harmonies to create a sense of forward momentum. mailto:topacademicjournals@gmail.com american journal of art and communication vol.7,issue 6;november-december-2022; 1252 columbia rd nw, washington dc, united states https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac; mail: topacademicjournals@gmail.com 6 | american journal of art and communication | https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac figure 1: schenkerian analysis graphic part i figure 2: schenkerian analysis graphic part ii 5. exploring the middle ground and foreground: rhythmic and melodic elements the foreground of the exposition is part of the primary theme of beethoven's piano sonata no.15 in d major's characteristics by the unique and charming melody. the melody is presented in the right hand and by the lefthand accompaniment. when playing this part, you should focus on the balance between the different parts, letting mailto:topacademicjournals@gmail.com american journal of art and communication vol.7,issue 6;november-december-2022; 1252 columbia rd nw, washington dc, united states https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac; mail: topacademicjournals@gmail.com 7 | american journal of art and communication | https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac the listener understand the line and layers and the basic progression of this piece. the melody is simple yet elegant, characterized by repetition and variation. the repetition of the melody creates a sense of familiarity, while the variation adds interest and complexity to the music. the rhythm plays a vital role in the schenkerian music analysis. in the exposition section of beethoven's piano sonata no. 15 in d major, the main theme displays various rhythmic characteristics, including syncopation and hemiola. syncopation refers to the displacement of accents from the expected strong beats of the meter to weaker beats or off-beats. in this sonata, beethoven employs syncopation in the primary theme to create a sense of tension and instability. by shifting the emphasis away from the expected strong beats, beethoven creates a sense of rhythmic unpredictability that adds to the overall drama of the piece. in addition to syncopation, beethoven uses hemiola as the exposition's main theme. hemiola is a rhythmic device that juxtaposes two different rhythmic groupings. in this sonata, beethoven uses hemiola to create a sense of rhythmic tension and contrast. specifically, he alternates between groupings of three and two beats, creating a sense of rhythmic instability and asymmetry. this rhythmic contrast helps to emphasize the melodic and harmonic aspects of the theme, highlighting the tension between stability and instability that characterizes the piece. 6. conclusion in conclusion, schenkerian analysis provides a valuable tool for understanding the intricate workings of beethoven's piano sonata no.15 in d major. closely examining the piece's exposition section has identified critical structural elements such as the primary and secondary themes and their associated harmonies and voice leading. furthermore, schenkerian analysis has allowed us to delve deeper into the piece's underlying tonal structure, revealing the intricate interplay between different levels of harmonic organization. by examining the relationships between individual pitches and their function within larger harmonic structures, we have gained a more nuanced understanding of beethoven's compositional technique and the expressive qualities of the music. ultimately, applying schenkerian analysis to beethoven's piano sonata no.15 has shed new light on the piece and the broader field of music theory and analysis. as we explore the intricacies of tonal organization and the insights gained through this analysis will prove invaluable for future generations of scholars and performers. references beach, david. “schenkerian theory”, music theory spectrum vol. 11 no. 1 (1989):3-14. https:// www.jstor.org/stable/745943. brown, matthew. explaining tonality: schenkerian theory and beyond. rochester, ny, university of rochester press, 2006. forte, allean and gilbert, steven. introduction to schenkerian analysis. new york: norton, 1982. [4] pankhurst, tom. schenker guide: a brief handbook and website for schenkerian analysis. new york and london: routledge, 2008. schenker, heinrich, et al. the masterwork in music: volume i, 1925. new york: dover publications, inc, 2014. mailto:topacademicjournals@gmail.com https://www.jstor.org/stable/745943 https://www.jstor.org/stable/745943 https://www.jstor.org/stable/745943 051209-fa2112-frontiers in art research.docx american journal of art and communication vol.7, issue 5; september-october 2022; 1252 columbia rd nw, washington dc, united states https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac; mail: topacademicjournals@gmail.com 1 | american journal of art and communication | https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac how to make tv programs that people will watch xin zhang school of art & design, shaanxi university of science & technology, xi'an, china abstract: the rise of cross-border hosting in television programs has brought new vitality to the industry, but it also poses challenges. this paper analyzes the current situation of cross-border hosting and discusses the role of tv program hosts and the characteristics of cross-border hosts in program development. the paper also assesses the opportunities and prospects for development of cross-border hosting in television programs. keywords: cross-border hosting, tv program hosts, role of hosts, characteristics of cross-border hosts, opportunities and prospects 1. introduction. with the continuous development and changes in the era of media integration, the traditional hosting style of television hosts is no longer accepted by the public. increasingly, professionals from various fields, such as actors, singers, and more, are transitioning into cross-border hosting, injecting new vitality into the industry. however, this transition also brings specific challenges. this paper analyzes the current situation to illustrate the role of tv program hosts and the characteristics of cross-border hosts in program development, which can serve as a valuable reference for enhancing ratings. moreover, this paper presents an overall assessment of the opportunities and prospects for development arising from crossborder hosting in television programs. 2. the phenomenon of cross-border hosting in recent years, there has been a significant increase in the popularity of crossover hosts, driven by both market demand and the desire to create captivating scenarios. to enhance the visual impact and optimize the flow and effectiveness of programs, it has become common for traditional hosts to collaborate with crossover hosts, establishing a seamless connection. the concept of crossover hosting first gained prominence during the 1983 spring festival gala, where comedians jiang kun and ma ji were paired with dance artist and tv actress liu xiaoqing. this pairing received widespread praise, leading to the emergence of more crossover hosts as co-hosts. over time, this phenomenon has become synonymous with the fusion of socialist media culture, forming a prominent household image. crossover hosts are continuously emerging, with many actors and entertainers transitioning into hosting roles for variety shows, tv programs, awards ceremonies, crossover concerts, and more. these crossover hosts usually bring a wealth of experience and achievements from their respective professional fields. often, they also have considerable public popularity and media presence, functioning as public figures. their involvement as hosts in mailto:topacademicjournals@gmail.com american journal of art and communication vol.7, issue 5; september-october 2022; 1252 columbia rd nw, washington dc, united states https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac; mail: topacademicjournals@gmail.com 2 | american journal of art and communication | https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac traditional and new media channels caters to the audience's fascination and curiosity toward collaborations between regular hosts and entertainers. this, in turn, helps to increase viewership and accumulate traffic. for instance, zhang guoli, known for his narration in "national treasure," made a memorable appearance at the start of the show wearing a white lab coat and delivered an opening speech that brought the national treasure to life. similarly, actors shen teng and deng chao successfully hosted the 33rd china golden rooster awards ceremony with humor and wit. overall, this breakthrough challenge undoubtedly presents new opportunities and challenges for tv programs, rejuvenating them with a fresh perspective. 3. role of the moderator the role and significance of the program host involve linking the program's content and serving as a bridge between the audience and the program. they control the process and rhythm of the program, manage performance time, and handle unexpected situations that may arise during recording or broadcasting. due to these responsibilities, hosts are required to have a relatively high overall level of quality. when it comes to hosting television programs, hosts must adhere to the guidelines set forth by the program category, story scene, creative purpose, and promotional methods. therefore, hosts need to pay attention to the following points in television programs. 3.1 driving the atmosphere and the audience's mood program hosts should strive to maintain a positive demeanor throughout the program. they should mobilize the audience's emotions based on the program's format, content, and overall mood. in interactive sessions, hosts should actively cooperate and engage with participants to foster a lively and engaging atmosphere. 3.2 on-the-spot strain ability and control program duration in live television programs, unexpected situations often arise, necessitating the host to possess the ability to react swiftly and adapt to the circumstances. they should be able to effectively address issues such as program length and filling vacant time between segments to avoid any awkward or embarrassing moments. 3.3 avoiding conversation hijacking interacting respectfully and positively with guests or audience members without causing delays or being rude is essential for a host's success. moderators should effectively engage with individuals, recognizing their opinions and contributions while ensuring the conversation flows smoothly. balancing attentiveness and efficiency enables hosts to foster a welcoming environment that encourages open dialogue and productive exchanges while ensuring the program maintains a timely pace. 3.4 attention to detail and etiquette when hosting on stage, the host must create a positive initial impression. they should strive to appear dignified and generous. if the program incorporates various dramatic or visual elements, attention to detail is important to prevent a negative visual impact. effective communication should also be prioritized to ensure that the host imparts the audience a sense of comfort and relaxation. 3.5 adequate preparation to prevent compromising the outcome the successful execution of a program relies heavily on the host's preparation work both before and after going on stage. this includes memorizing the host's lines, becoming familiar with the event's flow, and communicating mailto:topacademicjournals@gmail.com american journal of art and communication vol.7, issue 5; september-october 2022; 1252 columbia rd nw, washington dc, united states https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac; mail: topacademicjournals@gmail.com 3 | american journal of art and communication | https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac with the guests, among other tasks. these aspects require meticulous preparation, highlighting the host's dedication and sense of responsibility. by investing time and effort into these preparations, hosts can avoid making low-level mistakes during program recordings that could impact the overall quality of the presentation. 4. advantages and features from its inception to the present day, there have been noticeable changes in the role of television program hosts due to the increasing influence of integrated media and digital technology. crossover hosts have accumulated significant stage experience and program knowledge, allowing them to transition between segments adeptly. the emotions displayed by hosts in programs hold significant importance, as they convey the hosts' feelings and impact the audience's emotions. singers and actors, in particular, excel in emotional control due to the nature and requirements of their professions. these advantages and characteristics have positively influenced the quality and presentation of television programs. prominent actors, traditional comedians, and famous music artists have entered the hosting domain. by leveraging their unique characteristics and accumulated experience, these crossover hosts enhance their narrative ability in content dissemination and improve the program's ability to disseminate content. this has become a key factor in effective content dissemination. compared to traditional hosts, crossover hosts excel in interactive interviews, character commentary, professional interpretations, and receiving authoritative advice from experts. their advantages in these aspects are more pronounced. for example, music competition programs often select hosts from the professional performers of the season. these hosts, acting as music ambassadors, link and interact with participants throughout the program. their ability to express emotion, wit, specialized knowledge, and personalized storytelling adds an element of freshness and credibility to the program. 4.1 having a mass base and meeting the audience's inner expectations facilitators from other industries should also bring their distinct characteristics and features to the table when engaging in cross-boundary hosting. this enables them to showcase their styles while satisfying the psychological needs of the audience.[1] when crossover hosts enter the realm of television programs, they inject new vitality and energy. compared to traditional hosts, crossover hosts can offer the audience a fresh audio-visual experience, ultimately boosting program ratings and viewer engagement. a prime example was the 31st china tv golden eagle awards ceremony, where actor wang kai surprised the audience by hosting the golden eagle festival awards night. the atmosphere was positive, the presentation format was excellent, and the overall ambiance was dignified. similarly, the music program "i am a singer" benefits from having host singers who bring their personal identities and influence to the show. this becomes a point of interest, as these programs often generate numerous social topics, impacting ratings and serving as a catalyst for promoting the program. 4.2 professional working background cross-hosts who are experts in their respective fields contribute to the authority and credibility of the host's words. this, in turn, helps to build a positive rapport with the audience, keeping them engaged and interested. additionally, watching tv programs is a significant source of knowledge and information for viewers. therefore, the accuracy and effectiveness of information and the clarity of explanations have become crucial factors that mailto:topacademicjournals@gmail.com american journal of art and communication vol.7, issue 5; september-october 2022; 1252 columbia rd nw, washington dc, united states https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac; mail: topacademicjournals@gmail.com 4 | american journal of art and communication | https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac determine viewers' preferences. for instance, in the earlier years of the "today's law" program hosted by sabin, his legal expertise allowed him to navigate the program's professional knowledge effortlessly. consequently, the program exposed social injustices and gave the audience a more profound and simplified understanding of the law. 4.3 achieving effective communication from an information dissemination perspective, the diversification of program genres has led to a broader range of hosting styles. additionally, the industrialization and commercialization of the media system have given rise to a group of personalized hosts. these hosts contribute to improved communication effectiveness and attract higher market returns. combining diverse hosting styles and personalized approaches aligns with the evolving media landscape and facilitates more engaging and impactful content delivery.[2] many current cross-boundary expert presenters excel in their original fields, and their expertise is precious when taking on the role of a media presenter in a specific type of program. in programs that involve guest participation, the expert presenter can effectively communicate and interact with the audience alongside the traditional presenter. once they have acquired a certain level of expertise, traditional hosts better understand what the experts are conveying and what the audience wants to hear. achieving this requires hosts to grasp professional knowledge in advance thoroughly, frequently engage in communication with experts, and accurately deliver scripted content during the program. however, traditional hosts often struggle to provide answers when it comes to complex knowledge and questions in professional fields. in such cases, it is necessary to have professionals from the relevant fields interpret the information for the audience. this unobtrusive supply of knowledge is the most enjoyable way for viewers to receive information. for instance, during the winter olympics, sports commentators frequently invite athletes or coaches into the live studio to provide professional event commentaries. among them, wang meng, with her remarkable commentary, has gained significant attention, capturing the interest of viewers who strongly demand her continued presence as a commentator. 4.4 increasing participatory and interactive experiences hunan tv's "i am a singer" program is an excellent example of using guest hosts who are participating artists. these guest hosts compete as contestants and play a crucial role throughout the entire competition. by sharing their inner monologues and emotional states, they allow the audience to experience the tension of the competition more intimately. the hosts are not viewed as outsiders fighting against the contestants. they become emotional connectors who empathize with the contestants and befriend the audience. as music creators themselves, the singers have a deeper understanding of music and the significance of the competition. this understanding enhances their heartfelt expression of the songs. furthermore, their interactions with other singers as peers create a relaxed and comfortable environment without communication barriers, which results in an enjoyable experience for the audience. mailto:topacademicjournals@gmail.com american journal of art and communication vol.7, issue 5; september-october 2022; 1252 columbia rd nw, washington dc, united states https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac; mail: topacademicjournals@gmail.com 5 | american journal of art and communication | https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac 4.5 enabled personalized presentation through integrated media platforms cctv's cultural and biological exploration program, "national treasure," chose the well-known actor zhang guoli as the narrator. his presence adds a significant macro image to the program, aligning well with the calm hosting style and excellent language organizational skills. zhang guoli's composed voice greatly enhances the program's sense of history, contributing to its success. previously, cultural relic information was typically conveyed through text descriptions and pictures. the program presents itself on a stage, using visual scenes and excellent production techniques. this enables the audience to immerse themselves in cultural relics quickly. incorporating various media and modern technology enhances the audience's imagination and sensory experience, giving cultural relics a new vitality. 5. problems the rise of crossover hosts has resulted in several positive impacts, but it has also given rise to certain issues that cannot be ignored. these include damage to the hosts' image due to commercialization, a lack of professional norms in the crossover hosting field, and a decrease in credibility caused by excessive focus on performances. in the pursuit of high ratings, getting the audience's attention has become crucial for the success of tv programs. this has further magnified the commercial aspect of hosting. without clear role positioning, well-developed hosting skills, and a solid knowledge system, individuals from various fields are crossing into hosting to gain online traffic and market share. this trend gradually erodes the achievements made by crossover hosts in their original fields. the generalization of hosts goes against the professional rules and occupational standards that have traditionally governed hosting. despite the efforts of relevant authorities to assess the qualifications of hosts, the concept of a host's role remains ambiguous, posing a challenge in standardizing and regulating individuals who perform hosting functions without official host titles. addressing these issues requires a careful approach that retains the positive aspects of crossover hosting while preserving professional integrity and credibility. establishing clearer role definitions, strengthening qualification assessments, and encouraging continuous development of hosting skills and knowledge will ensure that crossover hosts positively contribute to the industry while upholding professional standards.[3] cross-border hosting has become something anyone can attempt, but not everyone can excel. as a result, we often witness hosts with non-standard mandarin, imprecise facial expressions, and the use of colloquial language that may be considered vulgar. these shortcomings diminish the academic level of news dissemination in hosting and have a negative impact by setting a wrong example. it is important to address these issues to uphold the quality and professionalism of hosting and ensure accurate and responsible news delivery to the audience. 5.1 inexperience in chairing crossover hosts often need more hosting experience and a platform to practice their skills. at this stage, they need to engage in continuous practice. just like actors who prepare by deeply understanding scripts and delving into characters' inner worlds, hosts also need to be familiar with their scripts. memorizing word for word is unnecessary, but they should be well-versed in the entire program process and smooth transitions. additionally, there is a difference between actors and professional hosts in terms of accumulating hosting experience and the ability to react on the spot. speaking too slowly or lacking control over the field can pose significant challenges. mailto:topacademicjournals@gmail.com american journal of art and communication vol.7, issue 5; september-october 2022; 1252 columbia rd nw, washington dc, united states https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac; mail: topacademicjournals@gmail.com 6 | american journal of art and communication | https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac in the "joyful china tour" program, dong qing seamlessly saved the moment, earning praise for her quick thinking and the "golden three minutes." in the final of "i am a singer," sun nan unexpectedly withdrew without discussing it with the program group, and wang han had to step in to stabilize the situation within six minutes, showcasing his value as a host. these instances highlight the need for hosts to possess the ability to react and mobilize the scene. however, developing these skills and quick-thinking abilities takes time. it takes time and practice to become proficient and use them effectively. 5.2 insufficient role adaptation transitioning from an actor or star to a host role takes time and effort. shen teng, for example, has primarily appeared in comedy films and various variety shows in recent years, showcasing his comedic talent and fan appeal. while he excels in these areas, awards ceremonies and certain television programs require hosts with a strong sense of ceremony and excellent hosting skills. when considering a crossover presenter hosting a program, it is crucial to assess the actors, stars, and the desired effect of the program, along with potential consequences. while crossovers can encourage individuals to explore and develop in multiple directions, it is essential to be fully prepared for the transition and dedicate oneself to adapting to the new role. if done half-heartedly, the outcome may be misguided. actor-host crossovers have advantages and disadvantages, but to overcome the drawbacks, actors must prioritize the development of their hosting skills. steady progress and continuous improvement are necessary to cross borders and successfully become proficient in the hosting domain. 6. opportunities and development common advantages and cognitive misconceptions of cross-border host communication.[4] regardless of the crossover presenter or the general professional presenter, the presenter is the driver of direct contact with the audience in the programme as well as the spokesman of communication and interaction with the audience, and must communicate his values to the audience with his own linguistic characteristics and the content of the programme, and to this end they are tightly linked. therefore, in today's highly inclusive and diversified tv programmes, cross-border hosting will be a brand new breakthrough, but while reflecting its advantages, it should also take into account the cultural and professional qualities and other standards possessed by traditional hosts, and the two should be integrated with each other to promote each other's advancement, so as to better display the charm of language and better convey the programme's connotations to each and every one of the viewers. 7. conclusion in the internet technology tells the development as well as the background of media convergence, cross-border hosts have become the inevitable trend of television programmes, hosts more towards the direction of the audience's expectations of the development and polishing, the output of the television programme is also more to increase the user's viscosity, to open up the television programme and the host of the new development. the professionalisation of cross-border presenters will lead to specialisation in the future, and the potential development momentum deserves more attention. mailto:topacademicjournals@gmail.com american journal of art and communication vol.7, issue 5; september-october 2022; 1252 columbia rd nw, washington dc, united states https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac; mail: topacademicjournals@gmail.com 7 | american journal of art and communication | https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac references sui xinyi. (2016). analysis of the impact of the phenomenon of cross-border hosts of various programs on the hosting industry in the era of integrated media. journalism research guide, (23), 117118. li junling. (2014). the common advantages and perceived misconceptions of crossover facilitator communication. modern communication (journal of communication university of china), (03), 167168. wang h. (2021). observation of the development trend of variety show hosts in the era of fusion media. journal of chinese radio and television, (03), 78-80+117. ge, y. & chen, r. k. (2021). crossover hosting: reinventing the new mode of variety program production and dissemination. china television, (05), 76-79. mailto:topacademicjournals@gmail.com 051211-fa2119-frontiers in art research.doc american journal of art and communication vol.8, issue 2; march-april 2023; 1252 columbia rd nw, washington dc, united states https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac; mail: topacademicjournals@gmail.com 1 | american journal of art and communication | https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac the art of children's recitation: authenticity and beyond yang meimei, zhang jiaqi china women's university, beijing, china abstract: the art of children's recitation has been developing rapidly in recent years. however, there is a noticeable decline in authenticity in this art form. this decline is due to a number of factors, including the increasing commercialization of recitation, the emphasis on winning competitions, and the lack of attention to the child's individual development. to preserve the true essence of children's recitation art, it is important to acknowledge and address this loss of authenticity. this can be done by focusing on the child's enjoyment of recitation, the development of their expressive skills, and the importance of authenticity in the selection of material. keywords: children's recitation art, authenticity, commercialization, competitions, individual development 1. introduction presently, recitation art has gained immense popularity among the public, and the audience groups for recitation have become more diverse. notably, the art of children's recitation has been developing rapidly. however, alongside its rapid growth, there is also a noticeable decline in authenticity that needs to be accurately recognized as a fundamental aspect of the art of children's recitation. it is crucial to acknowledge and address this loss of authenticity to preserve this art form's true essence. it is necessary to accurately understand the "truth" of children's recitation art and how to change the current situation of losing "truth." 2. an overview of the "truth" in the art of children's recitation 2.1 the art of children's recitation and its connotation of "truth" 2.1.1 an introduction to the art of children's recitation the art of recitation is a distinctive form of audio-visual art, with a history of thousands of years[1]. nowadays, the art of recitation has changed from a "cold art" to a hot art nowadays. people of all ages have a passion for the art of recitation. children's recitation is an artistic expression that belongs exclusively to children, but there are no clear criteria for defining the age of children. in the context of this study, the term "minor" is defined as an abbreviation of "child" and "adolescent," encompassing individuals under the age of eighteen. specifically, for this research, the term "children" refers to individuals aged between 3 and 16, divided into different stages based on their developmental characteristics. from 3 weeks to 6 years old, children are in the enlightenment stage. at this stage, it is important to focus on establishing the foundation for expressive abilities and building the confidence to vocalize. from 6 years old to 12 years old, children enter the budding stage. during this stage, they have accumulated a certain amount of knowledge, their cognitive abilities have improved, and they are better able to comprehend the meaning of recitation. from 12 to 16 years old, children enter the consolidation stage. at this point, they have established the fundamental habits of expression and have accumulated a greater amount of knowledge. they can receive and comprehend new knowledge at a faster rate and are capable of expressing mailto:topacademicjournals@gmail.com american journal of art and communication vol.8, issue 2; march-april 2023; 1252 columbia rd nw, washington dc, united states https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac; mail: topacademicjournals@gmail.com 2 | american journal of art and communication | https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac more complex content of the text based on their own understanding. this stage marks a crucial time for further development and refinement of their expressive abilities. for children of different ages, teaching methods and recitation works should be graded, and the effect will be more significant. 2.1.2 artistic features of children's recitatio the art of children's recitation is unique and complex. the art of recitation has a long history and is an earlier art form in the audible language. recitation involves transforming written literature into an auditory form. this process is highly creative and artistic, as the art of recitation enhances the beauty and depth of the text through a process of secondary creation. it injects additional spirituality and emotional depth into the work, enriching its overall meaning[2]. as far as the art of children's recitation is concerned, children's perception and imagination of words are very different from those of adults and have their uniqueness. considering the age and physiological characteristics of children, it is important to note that their literacy levels are relatively low. they often lack the ability to appreciate literature on their own, and their cognitive and receptive abilities are weaker compared to adults. therefore, the teaching methods and approaches used for children need to be tailored to their specific needs and abilities. it is essential to consider their developmental stage and employ appropriate techniques to facilitate their understanding and enjoyment of literature. at the same time, the way children and adults think and express themselves is quite different. the stage of children is a stage of rich imagination, and the perspective of seeing the world and words is significantly different from that of adults and has a uniqueness. in the field of children's recitation education, teachers have a vital role in explaining the content of recitation works to ensure children's understanding of the text. they also need to adopt a graded teaching approach, considering the varying age groups of children. the selection of appropriate works that are suitable and comprehensible for each age group is essential, although this process can be quite complex. through careful selection of works and the implementation of effective teaching strategies, teachers can effectively support children's expressive development in recitation. if teachers choose inappropriate teaching methods, it is easy to have "false expression" and "no emotion". the education of children's recitation art is to combine children's education and recitation art education, which is indispensable, so children's recitation art has its own uniqueness and complexity. 2.1.3 the connotation of "truth" in the art of children's recitation children's individual experience of the art of recitation. the art of recitation is not simply turning words into sound but an art form that brings the audience beautiful enjoyment in the visual, auditory, tactile, and other senses under the joint action of comprehension, expression, and imagination[3]. when it comes to the stage of expression in children, it's important to recognize that they perceive and experience things differently from adults. children bring their own unique understanding of the text and imaginative images. therefore, the teaching process should be appropriately guided to preserve children's natural characteristics, ensuring that the instruction allows for authentic and genuine expression. in the present time, the children's recitation training market has become saturated, with many training institutions and teachers lacking excellent professional abilities and a deep understanding of effective teaching methods for children. as a result, children's recitation performances often lack their own unique, expressive characteristics and instead become repetitive, devoid of spirituality and meaningful content. this situation arises because there is a lack of genuine understanding of children's education and the true essence of the art of recitation. instead, the focus is often solely on achieving a surface-level effect through superficial training methods. children's recitation art training necessitates a combination of children's education and recitation art training in an educational format. these two components are mutually dependent, enabling children to become adept at recitation and allowing them to experience the individuality of this art form. mailto:topacademicjournals@gmail.com american journal of art and communication vol.8, issue 2; march-april 2023; 1252 columbia rd nw, washington dc, united states https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac; mail: topacademicjournals@gmail.com 3 | american journal of art and communication | https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac by integrating education and training, children can truly master the art of recitation while expressing their own unique qualities. individual expression is crucial in the art of children's recitation. each form of art undergoes various changes and developments along its evolutionary process. both in terms of theory and technique, it is essential to adapt to the advancements of the time in order to bring forth innovation. by embracing new approaches, the art of recitation will have the ability to remain timeless and relevant. the branch of children's recitation in the art of recitation has its own development characteristics[4]. children's understanding and feelings are very different from those of adults. during the process of education and guidance, it is important to avoid using an adult way of thinking when working with children. instead, it is necessary to recognize the differences and engage in effective communication, immersing oneself in the world of children in order to understand their perspective on literature. by adopting a child-centered approach, educators can establish a better connection with children and facilitate their learning and appreciation of literature. children possess varying interpretations, emotions, and perspectives when it comes to literary works. therefore, during children's recitation art training, teachers should embrace these differences and engage in more communication to understand the children's unique emotional interpretations. if there are any cognitive biases, they should be guided appropriately, and differing viewpoints should be respected to promote diverse feelings. it is crucial not to undermine children's creative power in the process. the art of children's recitation then, becomes an artistic creation that showcases their distinctive sensibilities and creativity. it allows for the expression of their personalities through rich imagination and a unique perspective. 2.2 the true meaning of the art of children's recitation 2.2.1 recitation helps to improve children's expressive skills during childhood, children primarily acquire knowledge through direct observation, auditory experiences, and interactions with tangible objects. this process is closely intertwined with language, as language plays a pivotal role in their learning and understanding. additionally, the ability to express oneself through language has a significant influence on the formation of children's personalities[5]. by honing their language skills and fostering effective expression, children can develop a stronger foundation for personal growth and self-discovery. this period is the ideal time for enhancing language expression abilities and developing psychological resilience. many children in this stage begin to establish their own thinking structures and develop clearer and more independent ideas. however, it is not uncommon for children to experience "shyness" or a reluctance to speak in public settings during this phase. it is important to recognize this characteristic and provide the necessary support and encouragement to help children overcome their inhibitions and enhance their language expression skills. in the teaching of children's recitation art, teachers can create a relaxed and engaging classroom atmosphere to enhance children's ability to improvise and express themselves. through various activities, teachers can exercise children's creative abilities and improve their psychological resilience, enabling even shy children to find the courage to express themselves in front of others. in the training process of recitation art, exercises such as mandarin voice training, breath training, and voice elasticity training can be implemented. these activities are effective for correcting pronunciation issues, improving vocal techniques, developing proper pronunciation habits in children, enhancing the use of emotions and breath control during recitation, and ultimately boosting selfconfidence. moreover, these exercises can improve the accuracy of expression and the audibility of children’s recitations. the voice will become brighter and more pleasant to listen to. when expressing itself, it will effectively convey its intended message with greater clarity and accuracy, thereby achieving effective communication and improving its expressive abilities. mailto:topacademicjournals@gmail.com american journal of art and communication vol.8, issue 2; march-april 2023; 1252 columbia rd nw, washington dc, united states https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac; mail: topacademicjournals@gmail.com 4 | american journal of art and communication | https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac 2.2.2 recitation helps to improve children's recitation habits eloquence embodies human ability, wisdom, and cultivation. having excellent eloquence skills and recitation abilities can help children learn easily and joyfully. learning recitation and broadcasting hosting can enhance children's ability to express themselves freely and fluently[6]. during recitation training, students will develop good recitation habits. these habits will enable them to approach literary manuscripts and newly learned texts in the classroom with appropriate preparation. simultaneously, promoting the development of good reading habits in both children and adults is crucial. without systematic recitation training, individuals often overlook the importance of manuscript preparation. when encountering an article, they tend to skim through it without fully comprehending its content. however, by thoroughly preparing the material before recitation, one gains a more accurate understanding of the intended tone and message. this deeper comprehension enables children to develop a clearer logical framework and thinking process when writing. additionally, this process helps accumulate a wider range of vocabulary and sentences, improving their language skills and enhancing their ability to learn and read 2.2.3 recitation helps to enhance the humanistic qualities of young children during the recitation training process, individuals will be exposed to various types of literature spanning from the past to the present. through the practice of reading aloud, they will gain a deep understanding of the content of the articles and develop their ability to comprehend literary works. by engaging in recitation training, individuals will also be exposed to a broader range of articles and writers, enabling them to better grasp historical events and accumulate more literary materials and historical knowledge. this process contributes to the enhancement of their own humanistic qualities. for instance, let us consider the recitation of the poem "long march in seven diatribes." in preparing the manuscript, it is crucial to understand the poem's background and establish the desired emotional tone. as a classic language teaching material in primary schools, this poem vividly portrays the red army's arduous and grand journey during the long march, expressing their unwavering spirit and revolutionary struggle against all odds. to effectively recite the poem, conveying a sense of momentum is important, uplifting the overall emotional tone excitingly. the recitation should employ a high-spirited tone and maintain a slightly faster tempo to depict the red army's bravery in facing challenges and continuously moving forward while expressing admiration for their achievements. to effectively express themselves in every piece of literature encountered, individuals must engage in careful study and gain a deep understanding of the underlying connotations and emotions. exposure to a wider range of texts and comprehension of various creative emotions and approaches can significantly enhance the humanistic qualities of young children. 3. the challenges facing the art of children's recitation in the new era 3.1 the lack of "true" feelings in the artistic expression of children's recitation in recent years, children's recitation art has witnessed significant development with strong forward momentum. as a result, children's recitation art education has successfully introduced younger students to the world of audible language creation, yielding fruitful results. however, despite these successes, there is still ample room for further development and growth in this field[7]. because the art of children's recitation lacks a clear definition of the age group it pertains to and a standardized code of practice for teachers, the competence level of teachers engaged in children's recitation training varies. many teachers lack a systematic approach to teaching children's spoken language, which can lead to various issues. nowadays, it is common to see uniform and empty expressions in children's recitation activities and training classrooms. during practice, i have observed that children often recite with a continuous, monotonous accent and similar pause times. upon further investigation, it became apparent mailto:topacademicjournals@gmail.com american journal of art and communication vol.8, issue 2; march-april 2023; 1252 columbia rd nw, washington dc, united states https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac; mail: topacademicjournals@gmail.com 5 | american journal of art and communication | https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac that they only knew where to stop and where to emphasize without actually understanding the content of the recitation works. during training, the focus is solely on imitating the teacher's reading, with little guidance on understanding and conveying the emotions associated with the content. as a result, the recitations delivered by students lack the depth of emotion and fail to achieve a sense of "true feeling." instead, they become empty forms. while this training method may be the most convenient and energy-saving for achieving some results, i believe it erases children's natural abilities and their creative potential. moreover, the resulting content no longer qualifies as genuine recitation; it merely becomes an empty shell devoid of "true" emotions. 3.2 the lack of a "real" approach to children's recitation arts education most children's audio-language training institutions lack professional and scientific teaching materials, teaching systems, and mechanisms for evaluating teachers' qualifications. there is also a lack of uniform requirements for teachers' professional competence and quality, resulting in a diverse pool of teachers from various backgrounds. for audio language teachers, their own professional ability is of utmost importance, along with the use of a scientifically accurate education method. only with a precise understanding of the field and knowledge can they effectively teach this art to their students. without such understanding, it would be impossible for them to provide accurate instruction. there are many different training materials in the market of children's audio language training institutions today, lacking an accurate and scientific main line of teaching materials. the education system currently lacks systematicity, resulting in differences in teaching methods among individual teachers and even outdated teaching content. in the instruction of broadcasting and hosting arts in colleges and universities, the main teaching focus is on the four textbooks of the "practical broadcasting course," supplemented by other textbooks. this combination has proven to be successful and effective. it is evident that having a unified, authoritative, and standardized set of teaching materials and a comprehensive teaching system is crucial for children's audiolanguage training. the management and operation of children's recitation education lack in-depth investigation and oversight from relevant organizations. additionally, the art of children's recitation lacks a true method or approach that is universally recognized and accepted. 3.3 lack of "true" understanding in children's recitation arts presentations as the popularity of recitation art grows, many parents enroll their children in recitation classes in hopes of exposing them to the charm of this art form. however, there is an incomplete understanding of children's recitation and a lack of accurate judgment criteria. many organizations train children to recite fixed sentences with predetermined pauses and accents. they believe that this fixed and patterned recitation is the "essence" of recitation and a way for parents to witness their children's supposed learning achievements. unfortunately, this approach stems from parents' limited understanding of the true essence of children's recitation. partly due to the pressure to showcase "learning achievements," many education and training institutions focus on completing the task rather than instilling genuine emotions into the art of recitation. this lack of "true" feelings in children's recitation reflects the general public's deep misunderstanding of its true nature. ultimately, it is important for parents and institutions to foster a deeper understanding of the art of children's recitations, enabling children to embrace and express genuine emotions through their recitations. 4. the response to achieve the "truth" of children's recitation art 4.1 strengthening teachers' professional competence to enhance education an experienced and well-established team of teachers in the art of children's recitation is the key to success in elevating the quality of education. teachers of children's recitation need to possess an extensive knowledge base mailto:topacademicjournals@gmail.com american journal of art and communication vol.8, issue 2; march-april 2023; 1252 columbia rd nw, washington dc, united states https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac; mail: topacademicjournals@gmail.com 6 | american journal of art and communication | https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac and a clear knowledge structure. they should be able to provide accurate and clear answers to students' wild thinking and questions, enabling efficient knowledge transfer. to achieve this, teachers must employ effective critical thinking and identification of common characteristics and thinking styles among children, allowing them to develop more efficient teaching methods. additionally, teachers should excel in communication and have a deep understanding of children's characteristics, enabling them to accurately grasp the physiological, psychological, and interests of children. teachers with experience and strong communication skills can better maintain control over the pace and atmosphere of the classroom. 4.2 mastering the communication styles of children to enhance teaching and learning children are active and easily distracted, making it difficult for them to maintain concentration during the learning process. to enhance their focus in the classroom and promote more efficient learning, it is important to capture their attention. the total physical response (tpr) teaching method can be utilized for this purpose. its theoretical basis lies in the idea that children improve their ability to express themselves through repeated cycles of listening and speaking. by providing opportunities for children to naturally utilize language to convey their meanings, tpr combines listening and engaging physical actions. during language teaching, teachers incorporate games to guide students in thinking about the content being taught and expressing it both physically and verbally[8]. this interactive approach helps create an enjoyable and stimulating classroom environment, facilitating effective language learning for children. for example, in the course, you can start with simple words combined with movement such as "sad", "happy", "excited" and other words, and express them with movement. the teacher will further enhance students' understanding as they progress through different levels of content difficulty. eventually, the teacher will guide the children to give personal demonstrations, which can effectively achieve the desired teaching outcome of comprehending professional knowledge points, expressing them through body movements, and ultimately gaining a complete understanding. by employing teaching methods that are suitable for children and understanding their psychological characteristics, teachers can effectively deliver knowledge by incorporating content that aligns with children's interests. this approach helps to stimulate their curiosity and foster a genuine interest in learning. additionally, teachers should actively listen to children's expressions, making them feel understood and valued. this creates an environment conducive to more efficient and effective learning. 4.3 strict control of teaching methods to enhance teaching quality we implement a scientific and systematic approach known as the "six-step approach" in our teaching and training methods. this approach consists of the following steps: understanding the students' background information in advance, cultivating their interests, establishing a positive emotional connection with the students, focusing on personalized learning, setting appropriate goals for each student, and providing effective teaching guidance. by implementing these methods, students can learn more efficiently. regarding children's recitation art education, it is crucial to understand the students' basic information, such as their age and knowledge level. this knowledge allows teachers to select appropriate teaching materials and articles that are suitable for the specific stage of children's learning. it is important to cater the teaching approach to the individual needs of the students, rather than adopting a one-size-fits-all approach for students of all ages. following the "six-step" teaching approach, it is possible to integrate the recitation of the manuscript with the content covered in the language classroom. by selecting a relevant piece from the language textbooks of different grades, teachers can provide representative examples for students to study. by tailoring the selection to suit the age group of the students, they will have a better opportunity to comprehend and appreciate the texts presented to them. it is important to focus mailto:topacademicjournals@gmail.com american journal of art and communication vol.8, issue 2; march-april 2023; 1252 columbia rd nw, washington dc, united states https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac; mail: topacademicjournals@gmail.com 7 | american journal of art and communication | https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac on students' comprehension skills, emotional grasp of the text, and with accurate podcasting to improve the quality of teaching and learning. 5. conclusions in conclusion, as society continues to develop, the public's interest in the art of recitation has increased, leading to the emergence of a "recitation exclusivity" that caters to different age groups. the market for children's recitation art is flourishing, but it has also brought forth several challenges, including distorted recitation effects, uniform learning methods, and the lack of standardized education and teaching standards. to address these issues and improve the current state of children's recitation art, it is necessary for parents, teachers, and the community to collaborate. by working together, we can create better education and teaching methods, as well as an environment that fosters the development of children's recitation art. through these collective efforts, we can strive for a brighter future in this field. references ma, d, ren, c.y. (2020). the conception of recitation art education based on the enhancement of college students' core qualities. journal of aesthetic education, 11(05), 39-45. liu, y. (2019). the application of recitation art in broadcasting and hosting teaching. international pr, (10), 61+63. yao, s. j. (2021). imagination in the art of recitation. colourful language, (10), 8-9. li, j. (2022). analysis of the dramatic tendency of contemporary recitation art expression. art education, (09), 169-172. shen, x. y. (2021). the effect of broadcasting hosting training on children's language expression ability. journalist's cradle, (06), 54-55. chen, s. y. (2021). a study of teaching methods for children's broadcasting and hosting training. data, (09), 8890. wang, y. g. (2018). introduction to the 21st century on the children's broadcasting and hosting art education adaptation and thinking. communication research, 2(27), 227. li, q. y. (2018). exploring the existing problems of professional training of social children's broadcasting and hosting. media forum, (24), 66-67. mailto:topacademicjournals@gmail.com american journal of art and communication vol.8, issue 2; march-april 2023; issn: 2994-0540 impact factor: 6.91 1252 columbia rd nw, washington dc, united states https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac; mail: topacademicjournals@gmail.com 1 | american journal of art and communication | https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac cognitive dimensions of catharsis: aristotle's tragic pleasure explored prof. benjamin j. walker department of philosophy, indiana university south bend, south bend, indiana, usa. abstract: aristotle's concept of catharsis in tragedy has intrigued scholars for centuries, leading to various interpretations. this paper delves into aristotle's original text to decipher the essence of catharsis and its implications on the audience. aristotle's definition of tragedy as an imitation of serious and complete action, pleasurably embellished through speech, holds the key to understanding catharsis. he emphasizes that tragedy should evoke specific emotions of pity and fear in the audience, leading to a cathartic experience. this study explores three prevalent interpretations of catharsis: purgation, purification, and cognitive stimulation. through a meticulous analysis of aristotle's text, it sheds light on the multifaceted nature of catharsis and its role in the tragedy. the paper argues that catharsis serves as a cognitive process that stimulates self-reflection and emotional release in the audience. keywords: aristotle, tragedy, catharsis, purgation, purification, cognitive stimulation, emotional release, audience, interpretation. introduction at poetics i.6, 1449b25-29, aristotle articulates the definition of the essence of tragedy that includes its function.1 he states: tragedy, then, is an imitation [μίμησις] of serious and complete action, which possesses magnitude, by being pleasurably embellished through speech with each of the forms separately [employed] in the parts, [through] acting and not through a narrative, by bringing to fruition through pity and fear the catharsis [κάθαρσιν] of such kinds of emotions.2 mailto:topacademicjournals@gmail.com american journal of art and communication vol.8, issue 2; march-april 2023; issn: 2994-0540 impact factor: 6.91 1252 columbia rd nw, washington dc, united states https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac; mail: topacademicjournals@gmail.com 2 | american journal of art and communication | https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac then, aristotle proceeds to sharpen his point about catharsis in terms of the pleasure qua tragic pleasure that ought to be elicited from the audience: and the [poet], who produces not the fearful [effect] through spectacle but only the startlingsensationalism [effect], shares nothing in common with tragedy; for it is not necessary to seek every pleasure by means of tragedy but [to seek] the appropriate kind [of pleasure]. and since it is necessary for the poet to produce the pleasure from pity and fear through imitation, it is clear that this [kind of tragic pleasure] must be created within the circumstances [of a tragedy].3 closely related to the above quotations, aristotle goes on to describe in which contexts and circumstances pity and fear should be presented: and whenever misfortunes have occurred among family relationships, for example either [between] brother [and] brother or son [and] father or mother [and] son or son [and] mother, either when one kills [a person] or when one is about to do a thing of such a kind to another [person], one must seek out these [things].4 it is evident from the first of the above passages that the ability to effect a “catharsis” in the individuals of an audience is one of the crucial requirements of a well-constructed tragedy, according to aristotle. moreover, the second passage makes clear that the cathartic effect of a tragedy will produce an “appropriate pleasure” of a certain kind. lastly, the third passage above indicates that the appropriate method of bringing about the emotions of pity and fear (and the corresponding kind of “tragic pleasure”) is through a certain depiction of the relationships between friends and relatives. unfortunately, the remains of aristotle’s poetics (or any of his other works) reveal no thorough account of his concept of catharsis. this dearth of details has resulted in a plethora of interpretations of aristotle’s concept of catharsis. today, three broad interpretations of these different versions of tragic catharsis have emerged from the research.5 tragic catharsis has been interpreted as a process of either (or some combination of) (1) purgation, (2) purification, or (3) cognitive stimulation. mailto:topacademicjournals@gmail.com american journal of art and communication vol.8, issue 2; march-april 2023; issn: 2994-0540 impact factor: 6.91 1252 columbia rd nw, washington dc, united states https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac; mail: topacademicjournals@gmail.com 3 | american journal of art and communication | https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac i. three interpretations of catharsis and tragic pleasure on the purgation view of tragic catharsis, observing a tragedy can assist in removing unhealthy emotions or pathological conditions. specifically, it is the emotions of pity and fear that are purged. by way of the medical-homeopathic analogy, pity and fear are used to remove pity-and-fear-type emotions and related pathological states in much the same way that illness-causing agents can be removed from a physically ill person by micro-doses of the same illness-causing agents. from this perspective, scholars argue that aristotle held the view that tragic catharsis is the removal of unhealthy emotional and pathological states and tragic pleasure is the psychological relief or renewal brought about by the removal of such emotions.6 meager promotes the purgation reading of catharsis and tragic pleasure since he thinks that aristotle’s view about the imitation of action “must move us, deeply and consciously, to an intensity of pity and fear which mounts to an emotional climax in us, permitting a sudden and controlled release from tension and restoration of a state of emotional freshness and readiness.”7 in contrast to the purgation account, some scholars insist on a purification interpretation. according to this reading, tragic catharsis is the cleansing of the emotions of pity and fear such that the emotions of pity and fear are modified. tragic pleasure, then, is the enjoyment of the cleansed emotions of pity and fear. so, when the audience comes to understand the honest mistakes made by oedipus, the audience expresses both pity and fear in the right way and toward the appropriate set of circumstances. in this way, the confusion and pain that frequently accompany pity and fear are cleansed away by the focus of those emotions on a fully comprehensible set of tragic events (e.g., oedipus). butcher states the purification view (as a response to the purgation interpretation) by noting that tragedy provides “an outlet for pity and fear, but to provide for them a distinctively aesthetic satisfaction, to purify and clarify them by passing them through the medium of art.”8 distinct from both the purgation and purification renderings is the cognitive stimulation /clarification interpretation of catharsis and tragic pleasure. according to this approach, aristotle takes the cathartic experience to be that of improved understanding of the details of mailto:topacademicjournals@gmail.com american journal of art and communication vol.8, issue 2; march-april 2023; issn: 2994-0540 impact factor: 6.91 1252 columbia rd nw, washington dc, united states https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac; mail: topacademicjournals@gmail.com 4 | american journal of art and communication | https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac both a particular plot and the actions of the actors. additionally, the universal aspects of the human condition are better understood by the unfolding of the pitiable and fearful events of a tragedy. golden stands as one of the prominent defenders of this construal. he thinks that catharsis and tragic pleasure are best understood in terms of inferences made by the observer of a tragedy. such inferences reflect cognitive clarification in the sense that they provide a better understanding “of the individual act by providing, through the medium of art, the means of ascending from the particular event witnessed to an understanding of its universal nature, and thus permits us to understand the individual act more clearly and distinctly.”9 on this cognitive stimulation/clarification reading, then, catharsis is the process by which observers of a tragedy are better able to realize the nature of particular actions of a protagonist and human actions more generally. tragic pleasure, moreover, is the accompanying cognitive pleasure of this better understanding, which is illuminated by pitiable and fearful events.10 ii. lear’s challenge in a number of places, jonathan lear has argued that none of the above interpretations can be defended on the basis of aristotle’s corpus.11 this essay, in part, will focus on lear’s rejection of catharsis as a process of (3) cognitive stimulation. basically, lear provides what he calls an “anticognitivist” interpretation of catharsis, an interpretation which he considers to approximate most closely what aristotle’s own account would have been. lear’s view is summed up in the following two passages: 1. for an anticognitivist like myself does not believe that there is no role for cognition and its attendant pleasure in the appreciation of a tragedy; he only denies that cognitive pleasure is to be identified with tragic pleasure. for the anticognitivist, cognitive pleasure is a step that occurs en route to the production of the proper pleasure of tragedy.12 2. tragic poetry provides an arena in which one can imaginatively experience the tragic emotions: the performance of a play “captures our souls.” however, it is crucial to the pleasure we derive from tragedy, that we never lose sight of the fact that we are an audience, enjoying a work of art. otherwise the pleasurable katharsis of pity and fear would collapse mailto:topacademicjournals@gmail.com american journal of art and communication vol.8, issue 2; march-april 2023; issn: 2994-0540 impact factor: 6.91 1252 columbia rd nw, washington dc, united states https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac; mail: topacademicjournals@gmail.com 5 | american journal of art and communication | https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac into merely painful experience of those emotions. aristotle is keenly aware of the important difference between a mimesis of a serious action and the serious action of which it is a mimesis. the emotional response which is appropriate to a mimesis—tragic pleasure and katharsis—would be thoroughly inappropriate to the real event.13 lear stresses that the cognitive element and its associated pleasure in a cathartic experience are merely “causalantecedents of the proper effect and proper pleasure of tragedy.”14 according to lear, the proper pleasure of tragedy is the joy we experience when “[w]e imaginatively live life to the full, but we risk nothing.”15 in response, this essay reveals that lear’s thesis can be weakened to the extent that it is reasonable to think that aristotle thought that tragic catharsis is associated with the pleasure of judging fairly and sympathetically the actions of the characters in a tragedy. additionally, given lear’s use of imagination, this essay will also reveal that, for aristotle, the imaginative faculty has a cognitive dimension that is constitutive of various sorts of pleasure, including tragic pleasure. if correct, then this cognitive aspect of the imaginative faculty further casts doubt on lear’s account of how aristotle likely understood catharsis and tragic pleasure. if this overall positive account is reasonable, then locating aristotle within the cognitivist camp is also reasonable. iii. citizenship and judgment: catharsis and tragic pleasure the positive account to be proposed provides a credible interpretation of catharsis that will reveal the implausibility both of lear’s two points and of his anticognitivist account of catharsis in general. even granting lear his strategy of using the politics as a means of understanding tragic catharsis in the poetics, the positive account to follow will still undermine his argument. by synthesizing aspects of aristotle’s politics, poetics, nicomachean ethics, de anima, rhetoric, and sophocles’s oedipus the king, a plausible approximation of aristotle’s response to the challenge presented by plato can be put forth.16 to begin, it is important to introduce a distinction that has been often neglected in the current literature on catharsis: the distinction between the kind of cathartic experience that the citizenry of the polis has and the kind of cathartic experience restricted to all other denizens. mailto:topacademicjournals@gmail.com american journal of art and communication vol.8, issue 2; march-april 2023; issn: 2994-0540 impact factor: 6.91 1252 columbia rd nw, washington dc, united states https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac; mail: topacademicjournals@gmail.com 6 | american journal of art and communication | https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac the politics alludes to just this division in which aristotle discusses the role attributed to music: [it is necessary] for everyone that a certain catharsis [τινα κάθαρσιν] is brought about and [it is necessary for everyone] to be satisfied in the midst of pleasure. and similarly, the effective melodies also render a harmless gratification to humans.17 on which account, the participants, when they perform theatrical music, should be permitted to use harmonies of these kinds and melodies of these kinds; but since the spectator is twofold: one group is free and has been educated, while the other group is vulgar and is grouped together from workings and hired laborings and other things of such kinds, one must provide contests and spectacles and things of these kinds with a view to relaxation…and what is suitable according to nature provides pleasure for each.18 these passages from aristotle reveal the following argument he is making with regard to class and catharsis. basically, within the context of his best or ideal city-state, he is claiming that the having of a cognitively based cathartic experience requires individuals who are naturally free (have leisure) and educated. in contrast, the having of emotional excitation, or hedonistic frenzy alone, is relegated to individuals who are naturally vulgar and uneducated. therefore, since citizens have the requisite leisure and education and workers and slaves lack both, citizens of the polis naturally do have cognitively based cathartic experiences, and workers and slaves naturally only have emotional or hedonistic cathartic experiences.19the purpose of laying out this argument is to impress upon the reader aristotle’s own division between the kinds of aesthetic experience had by non-citizens and citizens. this distinction will prove most valuable as my argument unfolds. that a tragedy even more than music is included in the above argument will now be examined. the discussion can commence with aristotle’s account of a properly formed plot in a tragedy. the plot and representation of character are the most important aspects of an aristotelian tragedy (although the rest are necessary to achieve the full theatrical effect) because of their connection with action. it is action (within the construction of the story), which establishes the character of the protagonist, that the audience is being asked to judge. mailto:topacademicjournals@gmail.com american journal of art and communication vol.8, issue 2; march-april 2023; issn: 2994-0540 impact factor: 6.91 1252 columbia rd nw, washington dc, united states https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac; mail: topacademicjournals@gmail.com 7 | american journal of art and communication | https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac the point about judgment is clear in the politics, where aristotle emphasizes the importance of “judging correctly and rejoicing [τὸ κρίνειν ὀρθῶς καὶ τὸ χαίρειν] at reasonable dispositions and noble actions.”20 this emphasis on action, moreover, is clearly articulated in the poetics: for tragedy is an imitation not about people but about actions and life, and both happiness and unhappiness are in action, and the end is a certain kind of action, not a quality. and it is according to character that people have certain qualities, but they are happy or the opposite according to their actions. therefore, they [i.e., the poets] do not act in so far as to represent character, but they include character for the sake of actions; consequently, the events and the plot are the goal of a tragedy, and the goal is the most important of all [the elements of a tragedy].21 aristotle does not mean just any type of action, however, in his discussion of tragedy. he is referring to a change from happiness to misfortune that is the result of a mistake [ἁμαρτία] made by a person of good character (e.g., oedipus).22 this distinction between action and tragic action is crucial to aristotle’s system. one kind of action that he does not allow in a tragedy is that of base or guilty people whose actions are intentionally criminal. these people, due to their baseness, do not warrant our pity when bad things happen to them. aristotle also does not allow the depiction of fortunate events that befall virtuous people, because there is no choice made by these virtuous people that can be judged in such circumstances. rather, he includes the representation of the unfortunate actions of virtuous people whose actions are based on their deliberative choices [προαίρεσεις].23 it is the deliberative choices of people in a tragedy, then, that the audience judges. in order to understand to what this kind of judging amounts, it will be necessary to explicate aristotle’s two practical virtues concerned with conduct in nicomachean ethics, vi.9-11, and then turn to how they relate to the specifics of tragedy. the two practical intellectual virtues that are to be distinguished here are σύνεσις and γνώμη. to capture fully the sense of these terms, they will also be distinguished as subordinate virtues in relation to the superlative practical virtue of practical wisdom [φρόνησις].24 mailto:topacademicjournals@gmail.com american journal of art and communication vol.8, issue 2; march-april 2023; issn: 2994-0540 impact factor: 6.91 1252 columbia rd nw, washington dc, united states https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac; mail: topacademicjournals@gmail.com 8 | american journal of art and communication | https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac according to aristotle, an individual who acquires practical wisdom has the ability to judge and determine correctly the truth or falsity of moral judgments (his own moral judgments as well as others). further, this morally insightful man has the unique characteristic of never erring in such judgments. it is the combination of these two characteristics that reveals why aristotle understands a man who has acquired the rather elusive intellectual virtue of practical wisdom to be a rather exceptional person. thus, aristotle expresses the possession of practical wisdom as “the state of the soul by which we always grasp the truth and never make mistakes, about what can or cannot be otherwise.”25 by taking all of this together, it is should be clear why most scholars correctly understandφρόνησις as practical wisdom. as louden stresses, both σύνεσις and γνώμη are subordinate virtues with respect to practical wisdom.26 that is, a man who possesses practical wisdom is definitely in possession of its subordinate virtues (i.e., σύνεσις and γνώμη), but it is also possible for a man to be in possession of one or both of the subordinate virtues and still not acquire practical wisdom. the justification is that, because it is a prescriptive virtue that enables us to know what to do, practical wisdom is concerned with both universals and particulars.27 σύνεσις and γνώμη, while concerned with critically judging actions and character, are restricted only to judging [κριτική μονον] and grasping particulars.28 keeping these intellectual virtues in mind, the ability to reflect critically and judge the mistakes of others within the context of a tragic plot is the primary issue at hand here. for aristotle, the honest mistake would be the only kind of action that would effectively produce pity and fear, because the actions of a corrupt person would shock us rather than move us in the direction of pity and fear. similarly, the good fortune of accidental events of the virtuous man’s actions is not convincing but absurd because it is not in conformity with necessity or probability. ἁμαρτία is to be understood, then, as an error or mistake made by a protagonist in a tragedy due to his ignorance of particulars.29 this definition of error in tragic plots is categorically concluded by aristotle in the poetics: consequently, it is necessary for the plot that is well-made to be single rather than double, as some say, and change [occurs] not from misfortune into good fortune, but the opposite: mailto:topacademicjournals@gmail.com american journal of art and communication vol.8, issue 2; march-april 2023; issn: 2994-0540 impact factor: 6.91 1252 columbia rd nw, washington dc, united states https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac; mail: topacademicjournals@gmail.com 9 | american journal of art and communication | https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac from good fortune into bad fortune, not through wickedness, but through a great error [ἁμαρτίαν μεγάλην] either just like i have stated or better rather than worse.30 further, both reversal [περιπέτεια] and recognition [ἀναγνώρισις] as elements of a wellconstructed plot aid in amplifying the probability and/or necessity of such honest mistakes— the former by exemplifying the antithesis of the expected results of particular actions (i.e., unintended consequences), and the latter by bringing about a state of knowledge from a state of ignorance. according to aristotle, the best plot will have recognition and reversal occurring simultaneously, as in oedipus the king.31 the cathartic experience, then, will reach its apex when this marriage between reversal and recognition occurs because both pity and fear will accompany these elements of the tragedy. here we see a very powerful strategy employed by aristotle in his attempt to produce the emotions of pity and fear in the audience, emotions that will aid in their ability to adjudicate equitably the character of the protagonist. for example, when a messenger arrives to tell king oedipus that his father in corinth has recently died from natural causes, there is a tremendous feeling of relief on the part of oedipus (and the audience) that he was not the cause of his father’s death as the prophecy warned. unfortunately, two other messengers arrive to reveal that the king in corinth was not oedipus’s real father and that he had been delivered to the king of corinth at his birth. oedipus’s reaction is that of horror and stupefaction. this reversal of events, along with the amazement expressed by the two messengers who recognize each other after many years, provide the missing information that reveals the error in oedipus’s actions. as noted earlier, aristotle places such a strong emphasis on this definition of a mistake within the context of a complex plot because he does not wish it to be confused with deliberate wrong-doing. for example, oedipus’s accidental killing of his father and subsequent marriage to his mother represent the kind of non deliberative mistake that aristotle is stressing. the issue is that aristotle is concerned with the difficulties that arise out of complex interactions between a person of good character and other friends and family in his environment. since an individual’s character is best analyzed mailto:topacademicjournals@gmail.com american journal of art and communication vol.8, issue 2; march-april 2023; issn: 2994-0540 impact factor: 6.91 1252 columbia rd nw, washington dc, united states https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac; mail: topacademicjournals@gmail.com 10 | american journal of art and communication | https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac by those closest to him, it is crucial for friends and family to cultivate and employ the skills of ethical judgment. aristotle’s point is that the cathartic experience is not merely the result of treating a tragedy as a didactic exercise upon which one reflects in isolation, but must be an activity that includes close friends and family.32 friendship and filial relations provide the kind of interaction appropriate for improving one’s character, as noted above. observing a tragedy is an activity that allows friendship among family and neighbors to “become better as they are active together and correct one another: from the mold of each he takes the imprint of the traits he likes, whence the saying: ‘noble things from noble people’.”33 oedipus the king is the appropriate exemplar of the above discussion. oedipus is a man of good character and virtue but is still the victim of terrible circumstances that are beyond the deliberative choices he makes. true friendship (which is an important element of one’s moral character) is the ability tactfully to see past such misfortunes or mistakes and assess the correct character of one’s friend in the light of how he has deliberated on his actions.34 aristotle’s discussion of the requirements for tragic character in the poetics and character in the ne specifies the relationship between an individual’s character and his actions, speech, and decisions: and [tragedy] will have character if, just as we said, the speech or the action makes apparent a deliberate choice of whatever sort; [and it will have] upright [character], if [it makes apparent] an upright [deliberate choice].35 indeed, since we wish for the end, and because we also wish and deliberately choose things with a view to the end, the actions concerning these things would be according to deliberate choice and voluntary. and the activities of the virtues are concerned with these things. indeed, virtue is also up to us, and similarly also vice.36 the above quotations reveal that the actions and words of individuals generally, as well as in a tragedy, divulge their decisions and character. but how does this relationship between actions and character relate to catharsis and cognition? keeping in mind the earlier mailto:topacademicjournals@gmail.com american journal of art and communication vol.8, issue 2; march-april 2023; issn: 2994-0540 impact factor: 6.91 1252 columbia rd nw, washington dc, united states https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac; mail: topacademicjournals@gmail.com 11 | american journal of art and communication | https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac discussion of aristotle’s intellectual virtues, a turn to what can be considered a strong connection between catharsis and cognitive stimulation is in order. it is this ability to judge fairly and equitably [γνώμη] with an empathetic heart [συγγνώμη] that captures the pleasurable activities of the educated citizens when they observe a tragedy in aristotle’s system, or so it shall be argued. to elaborate, the cathartic experience (that is the representations) produces the feelings of pity and fear which concomitantly evoke emotions of sympathy from the audience (with regard to the actions of the protagonist) and feelings of dread that such errors could conceivably be committed by themselves. only the citizens of the polis have the virtues of σύνεσις and γνώμη to evaluate critically and correctly actions of the protagonist and focus appropriate attention on his intentions in relation to the given circumstances after the initial emotions of pity and fear are experienced. reasonably, in contrast to lear’s position, the proper effect of a cathartic experience via tragedy can be the cognitive pleasures produced from the activities of judging equitably and empathetically. a final look at sophocles’s oedipus the king may help to synthesize what can be considered to be aristotle’s approach to the cathartic experience. the story begins with oedipus hastily deciding to leave his parents in corinth due to the prophecy by phoebus (that oedipus would kill his father and sleep with his mother) that was prompted by a drunkard at a dinner party. as the story unfolds, oedipus establishes a new life as the king of thebes only to find out that the woman he has married and who is the mother of his children, jocasta, is also his mother who abandoned him as a baby. to make matters worse, oedipus discovers that one of the men whom he killed on the road during his initial departure from corinth was his wife’s husband— oedipus’s real (biological) father! as a result of these unbearable events oedipus violently blinds himself. the citizens of the polis, it has been argued, not only have the ability to understand or comprehend [σύνεσις] the circumstances surrounding the events of oedipus the king, but they also have the good sense to judge oedipus fairly/equitably [γνώμη] as opposed to strictly.37 that is, oedipus may be persecuted or ostracized for the killing of the men during his flight from corinth (admittedly, oedipus was defending himself, but it is possible that he mailto:topacademicjournals@gmail.com american journal of art and communication vol.8, issue 2; march-april 2023; issn: 2994-0540 impact factor: 6.91 1252 columbia rd nw, washington dc, united states https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac; mail: topacademicjournals@gmail.com 12 | american journal of art and communication | https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac could have “negotiated” a less violent means of resolving the conflict), but he would not be condemned for patricide or incest because those actions were based on a mistake or error. oedipus’s character can, for the most part, be judged based on actions that were the result of deliberate choice.38 the audience is moved to this decision because the cathartic effect, which is achieved through pity and fear, produces such a response. from this perspective, only some citizens of the polis, for example, have the leisure, education, and the natural ability to understand [σύνεσις] and pass good/fair judgments [γνώμη] on the errors (ignorance of particulars) made by the characters in tragic plays. most importantly, citizens are also able to connect relationships of various actions, which can have an impact on anyone anywhere (universals) “in accordance with probability and necessity.”39 the ability to make such connections is the extended cognitive stimulation that reversal, recognition, and suffering, which contain pity and fear, can produce in some of the citizenry who have these mental aptitudes and moral virtues. the workers and slaves, conversely, do not have the education, leisure (freedom), or the mental faculties to recognize moral virtue. thus, they are unable to make equitable judgments regarding which actions determine or do not determine an individual’s character. as noted earlier, the result is that they are restricted to musical contests, the initial emotional jolt of a tragic play, or the impulsive frenzy of a religious ritual. again, the politics reveals just this special distinction between liberated citizens and all others in the polis: “a virtue that belongs to a citizen must not be spoken of all (citizens), and not even of a free citizen only, but (only) to as many as those who are liberated from necessary working-occupations that are difficult.”40 in summary, although the impact of tragedy (or art in general) would vary from the citizenry to all others within the polis, everyone receives some level of satisfaction and/or intellectual stimulation. both non-citizens and citizens, on the one hand, are entertained and are able to relax from the rigors of daily life. only some citizens, on the other hand, have the individual satisfaction of attempting to resolve difficulties that are outside the scope (an adjournment) of everyday problem solving, but that can be the foundation of daily interaction. mailto:topacademicjournals@gmail.com american journal of art and communication vol.8, issue 2; march-april 2023; issn: 2994-0540 impact factor: 6.91 1252 columbia rd nw, washington dc, united states https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac; mail: topacademicjournals@gmail.com 13 | american journal of art and communication | https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac iv. catharsis and tragic pleasure in the light of imagination if this version of how aristotle understood the cathartic experience is correct, then it tells against lear’s view on how to understand aristotle as a respondent to plato. first, if the peculiar pleasure of catharsis (for citizens of the polis) involves the intellectual virtues of comprehension [σύνεσις] and empathetic judgment [συγγνώμη], then such an experience is deeply tied to the rational part of the soul. the consequence is that aristotle can now be viewed to be providing a reply to plato that poetry can enhance the rational part of the soul through the skills of comprehending and judging empathetically. therefore, if this interpretation is a reasonable approximation of aristotle’s account of catharsis, then lear’s belief that aristotle defended the idea that the cathartic experience is neutral with respect to its influence on the rational part of the soul is mistaken. furthermore, lear’s claim that the cognitive element is nothing more than a precondition of tragic pleasure is also open to objection. there are two ways to respond to this claim. first, if the positive account of the cathartic experience in the previous section is correct, then the pleasure that attends judging empathetically is a rational pleasure. as a result, the cognitive element of the cathartic experience is no longer a causal antecedent to the proper pleasure of poetry (as lear thinks), but is constitutive of the pleasure that attends the cathartic experience. lear could reply, however, that this analysis ignores the imaginative element [ϕαντασία] that is a needed part of aristotle’s account of catharsis. recall, lear thinks that an integral part of the cathartic experience is that “[w]e imaginatively live life to the full, but we risk nothing.” the assumption of this kind of response, of course, is that the psychology of imagining, for aristotle, is necessarily minimally cognitive and harmless with respect to the soul.yet, baxter correctly points out that lear’s analysis depends “crucially on an appeal to ‘imagination’.” moreover, hinting that lear has not explored the details of such an appeal, baxter stresses that “more work needs to be done to illuminate the connection between mailto:topacademicjournals@gmail.com american journal of art and communication vol.8, issue 2; march-april 2023; issn: 2994-0540 impact factor: 6.91 1252 columbia rd nw, washington dc, united states https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac; mail: topacademicjournals@gmail.com 14 | american journal of art and communication | https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac mimesis and imagination.”41 this section and the next forge just such a connection suggested by baxter. the problem with lear’s use of imagination is two-fold. first, aristotle’s account, as interpreted by lear, would fail to meet plato’s objection. plato would reply that lear’s notion of imagining a sensible object is the production of a representation that is thrice removed from the forms. lear’s account could not be utilized in this way by aristotle to explain the cathartic experience. plato would have rejected it straightaway because of its soul-harming effects. second, it is not at all clear that lear is entitled to offer the above objection, because it is not clear that aristotle recognizes the sense of imagination that lear uses. to see this, a review of aristotle’s account of the faculty of imagination, that is ϕαντασιά, is in order.after making clear that his predecessors accounts of the soul are wanting due (in part) to their inability to allow for the failure of the content of mental states to correspond with the way the world is (i.e., “mental error”), aristotle introduces imagination to fill the lacuna.42furthermore, before offering his considered view on the nature of imagination, aristotle makes clear that, even granting that the faculty of imagination is related to either perception or reason, it is not identical to (1) sensation (perception), (2) conception, (3) knowledge, (4) belief, and (5) a combination of belief and sensation. the implication is that the faculty of imagination is (in some sense) a distinct mental faculty. aristotle begins his account of imagination by suggesting how it is related to sensation. he then proceeds to locate where imagination does not admit of error and where it does admit of error. additionally, he turns to differentiate senses of imagination with respect to humans and all other animals, making clear that animals do not possess rational [λογιστικὴ] imagination, but only possess perceptual [αἰσθητικὴ] imagination.43 given the discussion at hand, how is rational imagination in humans to be understood? scholars dispute how to make sense of aristotle’s answer to the above question. some argue that rational imagination is nothing more than a necessary condition for reason qua calculation,44 while others insist that it can function much like reasoning.45 one way of mailto:topacademicjournals@gmail.com american journal of art and communication vol.8, issue 2; march-april 2023; issn: 2994-0540 impact factor: 6.91 1252 columbia rd nw, washington dc, united states https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac; mail: topacademicjournals@gmail.com 15 | american journal of art and communication | https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac understanding this debate is to determine where rational imagination should be located on the spectrum between perception and thinking; the former (at one extreme) being non/minimally cognitive and the latter (at the other extreme) being maximally cognitive: sense perception (non/minimally cognitive)…??«rational imagination»??…thinking(maximally cognitive) to start, aristotle categorically states that rational imagination is a faculty of discrimination: now we see that the things which move the animal are intellect, imagination, purpose, wish, and appetite. now all these can be referred to mind and desire. for imagination and sensation [ἡϕαντασιά καὶἡ αἴσθησις] cover the same ground as the mind, since they all exercise discrimination [κριτικὰ], though they differ in certain aspects as has been said elsewhere.46 aristotle makes clear in the above passage that the faculty of imagination engages in discrimination. yet, in this context, discrimination ranges over both imagination and sensation. this suggests that imagination takes on more of a minimally cognitive role much like the role perception plays in human and nonhuman animals. still, aristotle is quick to point out that they differ in certain ways. what this means is that, although both perception and imagination discriminate, they do not do so in precisely the same manner. can imagination perform in a more robust cognitive way in the case of humans? well, to plumb a bit further, as part of his account of how movement occurs, at de anima, 433b29-30, aristotle notes (as mentioned above) that all imagination is related to either reason or sensation. very soon after this passage, at 434a7-8, he says that the calculating faculty of imagination is only found in those organisms that possess the reasoning ability. notice that, in his description of the calculating sense of imagination, aristotle shifts from rational to deliberative in order to render a precise sense of rational; for he goes on to explain the deliberative sense of rational imagination as it relates to practical reasoning. he tells us: so, perceptual imagination, just as it has been said, is present in other animals, but deliberative [βουλευτικὴ] imagination is in those animals that have the reasoning ability. for mailto:topacademicjournals@gmail.com american journal of art and communication vol.8, issue 2; march-april 2023; issn: 2994-0540 impact factor: 6.91 1252 columbia rd nw, washington dc, united states https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac; mail: topacademicjournals@gmail.com 16 | american journal of art and communication | https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac whether this or that shall be enacted is already a result of the work of reason; and it is of necessity to measure in one way; for one seeks after the greater [of two options]; it follows that what acts in this way must be able to make a unity out of several images.47 as is made clear in the above passage, the sense of rational imagination is deliberative imagination as it is tied to practical reasoning. one reasons qua calculates about which option (amongst competing options) is best able to achieve a particular end. yet, in order for the reasoning faculty to be able to do this, it must have a number of available options from which to choose. although the presence of these options is itself the work of imagination and reason, each option is a composite of x number of images. the reasonable inference, then, is that deliberative imagination has the function of synthesizing together various images to create a composite image. moreover, why is the presence of such options already a result of the work of reason? aristotle does not explicitly give an answer, but the reasonable one is that the ability to form a number of composite images, which reason uses as options in the light of the end under pursuit, is a rational activity. specifically, deliberative imagination “calls up” and forms the relevant images (from a range of many) in the light of the end under consideration and then synthesizes the relevant images into image-options in a way that allows for reason to convert the image-options into the various means that will assist in the achievement of a particular end.48 then, reason will calculate which option best assists in securing the target end. thus, deliberative imagination is a rational faculty in the sense that it (1) makes manifest a range of images with respect to the end being pursued and (2) synthesizes the relevant images into unified sets of image-options so that practical reason can perform its function. on this interpretation, then, deliberative imagination is both an image selector/producer and an image synthesizer. now, recall that aristotle also thinks of deliberative imagination as discriminating or discerning. not only is deliberative imagination able to discern in the fashion noted above, but it is also able to unify images concerning possible future events. aristotle makes this point within the context of practical reasoning: mailto:topacademicjournals@gmail.com american journal of art and communication vol.8, issue 2; march-april 2023; issn: 2994-0540 impact factor: 6.91 1252 columbia rd nw, washington dc, united states https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac; mail: topacademicjournals@gmail.com 17 | american journal of art and communication | https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac so the thinking faculty [τὸ νητικὸν] thinks the forms in the images [φαντάσμασι], and just as in those cases what was to be pursued and avoided is determined for it, so also beyond perception, whenever it is directed towards images, it is moved, as for example someone seeing a beacon sees that it is a fire, and seeing it moving knows that it is hostile; but sometimes also it reasons and deliberates [λογίζεται καὶ βούλευεται ] concerning what is going to happen by means of images or thoughts in the soul on the basis of what is present.49 in part, the above account suggests that the ability to produce mental images about future events is the work of the thinking faculty by way of both images [φαντάσματα] and thoughts in the soul. this can be interpreted in at least three ways. one, aristotle is claiming that imagination by itself can produce mental images about the future for the thinking faculty, which then deliberates and calculates concerning such images. two, he could mean that imagination and thoughts can independently produce mental images for the thinking faculty. three, he could mean that the combination of images and thoughts produce mental images of future events upon which the thinking faculty can reflect. although there is no knockdown evidence in favor of any of the above accounts, in his discussion of animal movement, aristotle does hint at interpretation one as follows: “that which moves would be one in form, that is the appetitive faculty qua appetitive, but the thing desired would be the first of all things (for this brings about movement without being moved through thinking or imagining [τῷ νοηθῆναι ἢ φαντασθῆναι].50 here, aristotle explicitly acknowledges (by way of ‘or’) that imagination is able independently to access desired objects. smith translates this passage to include “being apprehended in thought or imagination.”51 although ‘apprehended’ is not explicitly stated by aristotle, there is scope for this interpretation here. the crucial assumption here is that ‘apprehend’ must be interpreted as a capability both (1) to discriminate that an object is an object of a certain sort and (2) to construct a future image of said object. we have already seen that (1) is clearly defended by aristotle. interestingly, in his rhetoric, aristotle acknowledges (2). within the context of distinguishing between fear and confidence, he says: mailto:topacademicjournals@gmail.com american journal of art and communication vol.8, issue 2; march-april 2023; issn: 2994-0540 impact factor: 6.91 1252 columbia rd nw, washington dc, united states https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac; mail: topacademicjournals@gmail.com 18 | american journal of art and communication | https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac confidence is both the opposite with respect to fear, and [what brings about] confidence [is the opposite of what brings about] fear; thus it is in concert with the imaginative expectation [φαντασίας ἡἐλπὶς] of things that are safe [that they are also the things] that are nearby, while the things that are fearful either do not exist or are far off.52 the passage makes clear that being confident is attached to expectationimages associated with either those things that keep us safe or the remoteness of those things that would put us in harm’s way. clearly, to expect is to have futureoriented images of close things that are good or distant things that are bad. on this view, then, imagination can independently produce images of future images qua expectation-images. indeed, this is in keeping with aristotle’s beacon of fire example noted above; that is, when one sees such a fire, one forms images of what one anticipates or expects will occur; for example, that one’s village will be burned to the ground or that one’s army has arrived. thus, it is reasonable to infer that imagination is able both (1) to discriminate that an object is an object of a certain sort and (2) to construct a future image of said object. if the above analysis is on the mark, there is no reason why deliberative imagination cannot independently apprehend and construct future object-images of the desired object. for instance, not only does deliberative imagination apprehend that object x is a dessert, but it is able to construct the future image-object of the observer enjoying the dessert at some future time t. thus, deliberative imagination can independently apprehend an object and can construct, for the thinking faculty, future object-images (this will require synthesis of images as well) of an apprehended object. in summary, deliberative imagination is a cognitive feature of the rational soul to the extent that it is able to (1) apprehend independently that an object is a certain kind of object, (2) construct future object-images, (3) select images, (4) produce images, and (5) synthesize images. with these characteristics in place, it is clear that not only is deliberative imagination far removed from being minimally cognitive, but can be reasonably understood to be in the highly cognitive range (though not maximally cognitive). mailto:topacademicjournals@gmail.com american journal of art and communication vol.8, issue 2; march-april 2023; issn: 2994-0540 impact factor: 6.91 1252 columbia rd nw, washington dc, united states https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac; mail: topacademicjournals@gmail.com 19 | american journal of art and communication | https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac still, lear might contend that his analysis remains untouched by my interpretation. he could very well grant this interpretation and claim that all the “intellectual stuff” that has been articulated is a mere antecedent to the actual pleasure of catharsis. to elaborate, whenever someone offers a cognitive account of aristotle’s concept of catharsis, lear could always grant such an interpretation, but insist that it is merely a causal antecedent to the “real tragic pleasure” associated with catharsis. such a move, however, should be viewed with much suspicion, because such a reply would render lear’s analysis unfalsifiable. that is, no matter what cognitive account of catharsis is offered, lear could always claim that such an account is a mere causal antecedent to the proper effect of tragedy. moreover, if it is the case that lear’s use of imagination is inappropriate, then his use of it as part of his anticognitivist account of the real tragic pleasure of catharsis is weakened as well. thus, it is reasonable to conclude that lear’s account of aristotle’s reply to plato’s challenge is off the mark. moreover, even if it is assumed that deliberative imagination is one of the linchpins to understanding the cathartic experience, it seems to run counter to lear’s anti-cognitivist account. specifically, deliberative imagination, according to aristotle, is a highly cognitive activity associated with both moral and non-moral actions. it reasonably follows that its attending pleasures can be of a rational qua cognitive sort. this means that, for lear, the tragic pleasure produced by catharsis would include (at least in part) cognitive pleasure—an implication that lear would not wish to countenance. thus, it does not appear that lear is in a position to employ, from an anti-cognitivist perspective, aristotle’s account of imagination in order to make sense of his concepts of catharsis and tragic pleasure. v. imagination, pity & fear, and the pleasure of catharsis more must be said about imagination and its relationship to catharsis and tragic pleasure; for lear is correct to mention imagination, but its exact role with respect to the observance of a tragedy must be made clear. first, attention will be given to how imagination is related to comprehending and judging empathetically the actions of someone like oedipus and how such comprehending and judging are related both to deliberative and perceptual imagination. second, the physical and cognitive dimensions of pity and fear will be explained. mailto:topacademicjournals@gmail.com american journal of art and communication vol.8, issue 2; march-april 2023; issn: 2994-0540 impact factor: 6.91 1252 columbia rd nw, washington dc, united states https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac; mail: topacademicjournals@gmail.com 20 | american journal of art and communication | https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac recall that in order for the mind to reflect on the appropriate features of a particular image, deliberative imagination must conjure up the relevant image. the nature of such images qua likenesses is explained by aristotle as follows: for just as the animal drawn on a tablet is both an animal and a likeness, and this is both one and the same thing, the essence, however, is not the same for both, and it is possible to think [of the drawing] both as animal and as a likeness, and in this way it is also necessary to accept that the image in us [τὸἐν ἡµῖν φάντασμα] is itself essentially [καθ’ αὑτό] an object of contemplation and an image [φάντασμα] of something else.53 in the same way that a drawing of an animal can be viewed both as an animal and as a likeness of an animal, the likeness of an animal in our minds is simultaneously both (1) a mere image of an animal that has the shape of an animal and (2) an image qua likeness (conjured up by deliberative imagination) upon which the thinking part of the soul reflects. it is in this sense that the ontological status of the same mental image can be different. in this way, the image of a gouge-eyed oedipus is both the shape of a man and an image qua likeness of ill-fated oedipus—an image that is stitched together by deliberative imagination. in the poetics (noted above), aristotle states that non-philosophers and philosophers “take pleasure when they see likenesses, because while they observe they understand and reconcile [μανθάνειν καὶ συλλογίζεσθαι] what each thing is: for instance, that this [person] is that [person].”54 however, he qualifies his claim about learning by noting that nonphilosophers“partake of it to a lesser extent [ἐπὶ βραχὺ].”55 again, we see aristotle making a distinction between different sorts of aesthetic experiences—in this case different degrees of cognitive pleasures—had by different members of the polis. non-philosophers have cognitive pleasures of likenesses to a far less degree than philosophers. yet, aristotle’s educated citizen stands between these two extreme groups. as i argued earlier, it is the pleasure that accompanies the joy in having judged finely that captures the cathartic experience for these educated citizens. thus, granting that the education of citizens will vary, it reasonably follows that the less educated citizen shares in this cognitive pleasure to a lesser extent than the more educated citizen and the more mailto:topacademicjournals@gmail.com american journal of art and communication vol.8, issue 2; march-april 2023; issn: 2994-0540 impact factor: 6.91 1252 columbia rd nw, washington dc, united states https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac; mail: topacademicjournals@gmail.com 21 | american journal of art and communication | https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac educated citizen shares this pleasure to a lesser extent than the highly educated philosopher. for example, (1) responses by the less educated may be more visceral than cognitive, (2) the more educated could glean the pleasures of judging finely, and (3) the philosophically educated would be able to reflect on the metaphysical and ethical dimensions of the universality of poetic expression. now, one may still be skeptical of my positive account of catharsis and imagination, even if lear’s analysis is not satisfactory. specifically, one could reply that the positive account offered here over intellectualizes aristotle’s sense of the cathartic experience. even if one were to grant that there are different sorts of cathartic experiences amongst citizens and noncitizens, it does not follow that the cathartic experience of the citizenry is so closely tied to judging finely. such fine judgments may be both appropriate and required for the scientist and the philosopher, but seem out of place for the average citizen of the polis—even aristotle’s ideal polis. in reply, aristotle’s own assessment of the generally educated man of thepolis clearly tells against this skeptical concern: there appears to betwoways of being in a certain state of understanding, of which one possesseswhatcanrightlybecalled the scientificunderstanding of the subjectmatter, and a certain kind [of understandingthatcanbecalled] the general-educationunderstanding, concerningbotheverystudy and inquiry, and in a similarway for both more humble [studies and inquiries] and more honorable [studies and inquiries]. for itis in keepingwithcharacter of the educated man to be able to judgeaccuratelywhatisfair or whatis not fair in an explanation. for, indeed, wealsothinkthat the generallyeducated man [τόνὅλως πεπαιδευμένον]isthisparticularkind [of judgingperson], and [wethinkthat] beingeducatedisbeing able to do thatwhichwassaid.56 as aristotle makes clear in the above passage, the generally educated person does engage in various degrees of intellectual activities, some of which include sorts of judging regarding what is fair and unfair. although such an educated citizen may not be able to engage in mailto:topacademicjournals@gmail.com american journal of art and communication vol.8, issue 2; march-april 2023; issn: 2994-0540 impact factor: 6.91 1252 columbia rd nw, washington dc, united states https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac; mail: topacademicjournals@gmail.com 22 | american journal of art and communication | https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac highly abstract or philosophical kinds of analysis, he can still engage everyday activities in a reflective and discriminating fashion. thus, the average educated citizen can reasonably have the sort of cathartic experience i have suggested. this can be seen by connecting rational imagination and catharsis to pity and fear. so, we can now ask: what about catharsis and tragic pleasure in terms of pity and fear? a review of aristotle’s account of pity and fear and how these are connected to the story of oedipus should answer this question. for assistance, belfiore offers the following account of pity as it relates to oedipus: pity involves wailing and weeping…for pity, like fear, involves involuntary, painful physiological reactions (weeping) that are necessary in some way to the production of aesthetic pleasure… these reactions, however, are not involuntary and automatic…pity, in greek thought, is an essentially human emotion, dependent on an awareness of the common human lot…we often feel pity for people in completely hopeless situations… we weep while viewing oedipus with his eyes put out because we see what appears to us to be a man in pain and weeping…finally, because we shudder and weep at the tragedy qua people weeping, we realise that it is an imitation of a pitiable and fearful event: that this plot is an imitation of that event.57 belfiore notes both the physical and cognitive dimensions to pity with emphasis given to the context of observing a tragedy. basically, initial weeping of the depiction of a tragic event is a natural physiological response of pity. then, according to belfiore, the cognitive aspect to pity is that we are able to recognize that the unfolding plot is a copy qua imitation of a real human scenario that involves pitiable and fearful events. moving beyond belfiore, this response of pity becomes both emotionally and cognitively heightened (possibly to the extent of wailing) when one recognizes that near-inevitable events, like those that befall oedipus, are part of the human condition. this human condition, moreover, is pitied to the extent that, not only do we feel badly for the protagonist’s plight, but we also understand that we could find ourselves in reasonably somewhat similar near-inextricable circumstances.58aristotle makes all of this explicitly mailto:topacademicjournals@gmail.com american journal of art and communication vol.8, issue 2; march-april 2023; issn: 2994-0540 impact factor: 6.91 1252 columbia rd nw, washington dc, united states https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac; mail: topacademicjournals@gmail.com 23 | american journal of art and communication | https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac clear: “people also pity those who are similar to them in terms of age, in terms of character, in terms habits, in terms of social position, [and] in terms of descent; for in all such [similarities] it appears more likely that [what happens to others] may also befall oneself.”59 on this reading, the cognitive response to an oedipus-type tale is more than the recognition that this plot is an imitation of that event. indeed, this understanding is extended to judgment, by way of σύνεσις and γνώμη, in the sense that educated citizens are able to judge empathetically and equitably oedipus’ actions in the light of their own past similar experiences or that they could very well find themselves in similar circumstances—this oedipus scenario is similar to that event that befell me and, moreover, this oedipus scenario is a kind of unfortunate happenstance that could very well befall me. this is the cognitive pleasure achieved upon both the empathetic feeling of pity aroused by oedipus’ plight and the corresponding empathetic and fairness judgments. as defended earlier, we take joy in having judged finely. it is at the empathetic judging stage, concomitantly with the recognition that one could be in similar circumstances as the protagonist in a tragedy, from which the heightened cognitive pleasure qua tragic pleasure emerges.60 the other element of the cathartic experience is associated with fear. clearly, the spectacle of terror produces the physiological response of fear, which can have an accompanying feeling of fleeing the object of fear or a kind of almost dreadfulparalysis.61 aristotle explains the physiology of fear as follows: “then let fear [be understood as] a certain suffering [λύπη τις] or commotion because of an image [ϕαντασιάς] of a looming wickedly destructive or sufferable event.”62 with respect to tragedy, the audience feels such pain or disturbance as they anticipate the unfolding of a plot (in part by way of recognition and reversal discussed earlier), which includes both destructive and painful events that are imminent. oedipus’ patricide and incest, all of which culminates in the gouging of his eyes, bring to fruition the specific destructive and painful events that are broadly and fearfully anticipated (“i know something terrible is going to happen now…”) by the audience. aristotle hints at this kind of account, which includes judgment, emotions, and imagination, in de anima: mailto:topacademicjournals@gmail.com american journal of art and communication vol.8, issue 2; march-april 2023; issn: 2994-0540 impact factor: 6.91 1252 columbia rd nw, washington dc, united states https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac; mail: topacademicjournals@gmail.com 24 | american journal of art and communication | https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac and, moreover, when we judge [δοξάσωμεν] that something is either fearful or threatening, we are at once affected by it, and similarly even when [we judge something to be] cheering; but in relation to imagination we are just like spectators [who are observing] fearful or cheering things in a painting.63 aristotle is clear that, upon judging that x is terrible or frightening, the relevant emotions (in this case fear) are produced. notice that causal priority is given to judgments over emotions. from this perspective, emotions are distinct from visceral feeling responses or the initial “pain or disturbance” of threatening evil. this suggests that, for aristotle, emotions themselves are intertwined with cognitive meaning. interestingly, as part of his reply to lear, halliwell stresses the cognitive dimension of aristotle’s account of emotions with respect to pity and fear (drawing on poetics 4).64 to quote at length, here is his assessment: the complete experience of a tragedy will necessitate the understanding of the work’s significant structure of “actions(s) and life” (6.1450a16-17), the ethical characterizations of its agents, the rationale of their expressed thoughts, and so forth. but this cannot be a coldly cerebral process of ratiocination; it is the necessarily evaluative engagement of the mind with imagined human actions and experiences of a deeply serious and, for aristotle, a justifiably emotion-inducing kind. it is for this reason that aristotle speaks interchangeably of, on the one hand, the “pitiful” and “fearful” as properties of a tragic plot structure itself and its components (e.g., 9.1452a2-3), but also, on the other, of pity and fear as the appropriate response of the spectator (or reader) who attends to and is absorbed in this structure of events (e.g., 11. 1452a38-39)…so to suggest, as one scholar has, that the cognitive pleasure of tragedy “is a step that occurs en route to the production of the proper pleasure of tragedy,” where this pleasure is said to arise from pity and fear through mimesis, is to separate elements that we should expect to find fused, given aristotle’s view…that the emotions themselves are cognitively grounded.65 halliwell insightfully points out that (1) pity and fear are an integral part of aristotle’s understanding of a well-crafted plot, (2) the response of pity and fear (through the help of imagination) on the part of the audience is appropriate because it aids in the audience’s ability mailto:topacademicjournals@gmail.com american journal of art and communication vol.8, issue 2; march-april 2023; issn: 2994-0540 impact factor: 6.91 1252 columbia rd nw, washington dc, united states https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac; mail: topacademicjournals@gmail.com 25 | american journal of art and communication | https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac to make reasonable normative/prescriptive claims regarding human actions and life in general, and (3) that it is a mistake to separate (as lear does) the cognitive and emotional responses by the audience, since (for aristotle) emotional responses are mediated by the faculty of reason. as part of his reply to lear’s claim that cognitive pleasure is a step in the direction of the proper pleasure of tragedy, halliwell notes that such an account separates the cognitive and emotional aspects of the proper pleasure of tragedy when, in fact, these should be kept “fused.”66thus, taking (1)-(3) yields further support of the claim that emotions, for aristotle, are intertwined with cognitive meaning. the further upshot is that, contrary to lear’s account, tragic pleasure is robustly cognitive.67 in this same chapter, halliwell offers his own account of how to make sense of aristotle on tragic pleasure: “such pleasure…is considered by aristotle to arise from the exercise of our capacities for both understanding and emotion in the engagement with the fictive possibilities that art dramatizes.”68 he goes on: “in the case of tragedy, aristotle’s whole theory suggests that an audience needs to have sufficient experience of life to understand various kinds of action, intention, and character; to be able to distinguish degrees of innocence, responsibility, and guilt; to know, in an effectively mature way, what merits pity and fear; to have a grasp of human successes and failures, of the relationship between status and character, and so forth.” from all of this, halliwell concludes that the “peculiar pleasure that tragedy affords will thus be of a compound kind (‘the pleasure from pity and fear through mimesis’).”69 there is very little here with which i disagree. note that, with respect to my account, halliwell’s analysis is restricted to the citizen class. within this class, he has captured very well the cognitive dimension of the educated citizen-audience and the kind of general tragic pleasure they will have. my view is in keeping with his, although i give greater emphasis on judging character and the corresponding joy qua pleasure that comes from doing this well—all within the context of mimetic pity and fear. my only concern with halliwell’s account is when he claims that tragedy provides the audience “with imaginative opportunities to rest, refine, extend, and perhaps even question the ideas and values on which such comprehension rests.”70 mailto:topacademicjournals@gmail.com american journal of art and communication vol.8, issue 2; march-april 2023; issn: 2994-0540 impact factor: 6.91 1252 columbia rd nw, washington dc, united states https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac; mail: topacademicjournals@gmail.com 26 | american journal of art and communication | https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac i would resist this reading, because it requires using both ‘comprehension’ and ‘imagination’ in ways that can be misleading. also, halliwell does not pursue the role of imagination within this framework. this is why i have offered an account of the role played by rational imagination in the cathartic experience. still, even granting my rational imagination account of catharsis and tragic pleasure, aristotle appears to suggest (in the previous quotation above) that real-life emotions are not really present in the same manner as in the case of emotions associated with mental images; that is, the emotion-states that are produced by images and judgments are more akin to those emotions associated with observing art objects.for example, an image of a growling tiger does not produce the same emotional response as a living growling tiger a few feet away. aristotle must here mean that the intensity of emotion with respect to art objects is less than the intensity of emotions with respect to real-life frightful phenomena. this interpretation is in keeping with his claims about what thinking and imagination can produce. aristotle says: and qualitative change is caused by imaginations and sense-perceptions and ideas. for, on the one hand, sense-perceptions are at once a certain kind of qualitative change, while on the other hand, imagination and thinking have the effect of the objects [out in the world]; for in a way, the idea envisioned about [the warm or cold or] the delightful or fearful comes to be the same kind [of effect], much like [the effects] of what the objects [out in the world produce], and therefore [people] shudder and are frightened when they merely think [of scary things].71 aristotle clearly states that the combination of imagination and thinking has the power of actual things. the subtle shift here to include thinking with imagination is important. although images of art objects have a far less intensity of emotion than real-life fearful things, the ideas that emerge as a result of both imagination and thinking have potencies much like actual real-life things. as discussed earlier, deliberative imagination constructs the image upon which the thinking faculty reflects. again, for example, an image of a growling tiger and the thoughts that emerge as a result of thinking about the image of a growling tiger mailto:topacademicjournals@gmail.com american journal of art and communication vol.8, issue 2; march-april 2023; issn: 2994-0540 impact factor: 6.91 1252 columbia rd nw, washington dc, united states https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac; mail: topacademicjournals@gmail.com 27 | american journal of art and communication | https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac are almost as powerful as a reallife growling tiger. as aristotle puts it, this is why we shudder and are frightened— even when we are merely thinking of menacing things. this means that the combination of images of x (which may include deliberative imagination-induced foreboding evil images) and thoughts about images of x can produce a rather similar kind of fear that emerges from observing real-life fearful things. the major difference is that of degree; in real-life one is likely to be panic-stricken at the sight of a growling tiger at arms distance, but less likely so when observing such an event unfold on stage in the confines of an amphitheater. moreover, since a tragedy is “more alive” than a picture or any other inanimate art object— we are actually observing our fellow citizens engage in a range of activities on stage—it is reasonable to think that the emotional response of actually observing oedipus’ travails is very close to the emotional response that would be produced if one observed someone in real life undergoing similar struggles (caused by error) to that of oedipus. aristotle, in fact, notes that such unfixable error-induced effects are to be most feared and pitied: and all fearful things are more fearful, in so far as, if after an error [ἁμάρτωσιν] occurs, it is not possible to be corrected…and thus in a word, [all] things are fearful, inasmuch as, when they occur in a certain manner or when they are about to occur, they are pitiable [ἐλεεινά ἐστιν].72 along with pity, aristotle goes on to address the cognitive effects that are produced and with respect to whom tragedy should befall: fear produces deliberation [βουλευτικούς], and indeed no one deliberates about that which is without hope. consequently, whenever it is fitting that the audience should be afraid [that something may happen] to them, it is necessary to prepare [the audience] for such kinds of [fearful scenarios]; especially that it is possible that they will suffer such kinds [of fearful scenarios]; certainly that others have suffered greater [than they have]; and [they] are shown that those who are similar [to them] are suffering or have suffered, and have suffered at the hands of those from whom they did not expect; and both in such ways and at those times that they did not suspect.73 we not only fear what we think is about to happen to oedipus as result mailto:topacademicjournals@gmail.com american journal of art and communication vol.8, issue 2; march-april 2023; issn: 2994-0540 impact factor: 6.91 1252 columbia rd nw, washington dc, united states https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac; mail: topacademicjournals@gmail.com 28 | american journal of art and communication | https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac of his honest mistakes, but we are also afraid upon reflecting how similar events could befall us. thus, the cognitive stimulation, in conjunction with the images produced by deliberative imagination, brings to fruition a range of intensity with respect to the emotion of fear (reasonably, this would apply to pity as well). the upshot is that the emotion of fear (and pity) is imbued with cognition. finally, aristotle brings together the relationship of pity and suffering coupled with the relevant cognitive responses. he tells us: [and pity is also produced by] both signs and actions [related to suffering], for instance both the clothes of those who have painfully worked hard and as many such kinds of things, and words and all the rest of the [details] of those who are in a state of suffering, for instance those who are presently dying. and especially the morally excellent men [σπουδαίους], who are in such critical scenarios, are those who are pitiable; for all these things, on account of appearing near, produce greater pity, and both because they are undeserving of evil and because the suffering is apparent to our eyes.74 keeping in mind the discussion of fear above, aristotle brings together the intensity of pity by way of the confluence of events that illuminate suffering. the audience is brought to such a state of pity in the case of oedipus in the light of his honest mistake, the undeserving events that follow, the self-inflicted wounds to his eyes, the blood on the clothing as a result of these wounds, oedipus’ own verbal and physical expressions of pain, etc. all of this comes together on stage to produce pity in the audience at a very intense level. most notably, aristotle points out that the cognitive dimension of pity is produced by understanding that the evil that befalls someone, like oedipus, is undeserving, while the emotional aspect of pity is tethered to the immediacy and close distance of observing someone, like oedipus, suffer. thus, much like fear, pity is also imbued with cognition. therefore, both pity and fear, according to aristotle, are emotions that have a cognitive dimension. finally, unlike an actual legal trial, the judging audience can take pleasure in what has occurred to them. with the cognitive dimensions of pity and fear in place, the audience can both judge oedipus and determine of what he is morally and legally culpable and take pleasure in the quality of such judgments. mailto:topacademicjournals@gmail.com american journal of art and communication vol.8, issue 2; march-april 2023; issn: 2994-0540 impact factor: 6.91 1252 columbia rd nw, washington dc, united states https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac; mail: topacademicjournals@gmail.com 29 | american journal of art and communication | https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac indeed, given the role of σύνεσις and γνώμη, ϕαντασιά, and pity and fear, it is quite plausible to understand the pleasure associated with aristotle’s concept of catharsis in a highly cognitive way. it is this cognitive pleasure, i argue, that captures the tragic pleasure of aristotle’s concept of catharsis. vi. conclusion by indicating the division that exists between the citizens and all others in the polis, it is possible to explicate the corresponding kinds of catharsis and tragic pleasure that are produced. character analysis is a highly cognitive process both in everyday interactions with others as well as in observing a tragic play for the athenian citizen. the positive account offered has revealed the plausibility of a richly cognitive interpretation of catharsis that stands in sharp contrast to lear’s anti-cognitivist interpretation. specifically, the cathartic experience is closely linked to the evaluative judgments and rational imagination of an educated citizenry. while observing the deeds of the protagonist, the ensuing emotions of pity and fear are cognitively imbued and heightened by understanding that the framework of his predicament is, mutatis mutandis, not all that different than one that could befall most people. additionally, as part of this experience, there is the production of tragic pleasure; namely, the joy in having judged the overall character of the protagonist correctly in the light of his overall circumstances. this interpretation, then, establishes a highly cognitive account of the cathartic experience and tragic pleasure. indeed, it is just such an account that provides the kind of response by aristotle that would be needed to address adequately plato’s challenge.75 foraristotle,togivethedefinitionofathingistoinclude,aspartofthething’sessence,itsfunction.s eemeteorologica, iv.12,390a10-12. note thatthereis a “teleological thread” thatrunsthroughmuch of aristotle’swritings. it should come as no surprise, then, thatsuch a strandispresent in hispoetics. althoughthisessaydoes not directlyaddress the structure of “poeticteleology,” see ch. 10 of christopher shields, aristotle, 2nd. edn. (london: routledge, 2014) for such an offering. please note that all translations of aristotle’sworks are myown. mailto:topacademicjournals@gmail.com american journal of art and communication vol.8, issue 2; march-april 2023; issn: 2994-0540 impact factor: 6.91 1252 columbia rd nw, washington dc, united states https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac; mail: topacademicjournals@gmail.com 30 | american journal of art and communication | https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac aristotle, poetics, i.14, 1453b8-13. 4 ibid., i.14, 1453b19-23. alsoseepoetics i.23, 1459a17-22 and i.25, 1461a14-b15. 5 note that jonathan lear’sinterpretation of catharsis withwhichthisanalysistakes issue is not one of thesethreeinterpretations. the purgation view has been defended by thomas tyrwhitt, de poetica liber (e typographeoclarendoniano, 1794), a. s. minturno, l’artepoetica (1563; munich: wilhelm fink, 1971), f. l. lucas, tragedy in relation to aristotle’s poetics (london: hogarth press, 1953), and most rigorously by jakobbernays, zweiabhandlungenfiber die aristotelischetheorie des drama (1857; berlin: 1880). . m. quinton and m. meager, “symposium: tragedy,” proceedings of the aristotelian society, suppl. vol. 34 (1960): 177. 8samuel h. butcher, aristotle’s theory of poetry and fineart :with a criticaltext and translation of the poetics (london: macmillan, 1911), 254-55. 9leon golden, “catharsis,” transactions of the american philological association, 93 (1962): 57. 10 despite the distinctiveness of their respective interpretations,among others, g. f. else, aristotle’spoetics (cambridge: harvard universitypress, 1963), stephenhalliwell, the aesthetics of mimesis (princeton: princeton university press, 2002), martha nussbaum, “tragedy and self-sufficiency: plato and aristotle on fear and pity,” in essays in aristotle’s poetics, ed. a. o. rorty (princeton: princeton university press), 261-90, richard janko, “from catharsis to the aristotelian mean,” in essays in aristotle’s poetics, ed. a. o. rorty (princeton: princeton university press, 1992): 341-58, and elizabethbelfiore, “pleasure, tragedy and aristotelian psychology,” the classicalquarterly, 35, no. 2 (1985): 349-61 broadly fit into this cognitivist camp. 11 jonathan lear, “katharsis,” inessays on aristotle’spoetics, ed. a. o. rorty (princeton: princeton universitypress, 1992),315-340. 12 ibid., 324. 13 ibid., 334 [italics mine]. mailto:topacademicjournals@gmail.com american journal of art and communication vol.8, issue 2; march-april 2023; issn: 2994-0540 impact factor: 6.91 1252 columbia rd nw, washington dc, united states https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac; mail: topacademicjournals@gmail.com 31 | american journal of art and communication | https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac 14 ibid., 323. 15 ibid., 335. 16 there are two parts to plato’s criticism of poetry, one related to the nature of sensible objects, the other concerns the effect of poetry on the soul. first, in his account concerning the nature of art, plato claims that the phenomenal world and its objects are not the source of true knowledge, but merely imitations [μιμήσεις] of the transcendental forms, which we are able to grasp with our intellect alone. from this conceptual framework, plato points out that art is three “levels” removed from the reality of the forms. plato makes it clear, at republic x, 602c, that the imitations of poets to be “third from the truth.” that is, an art object is merely a copy of a representation of an object in the sensible world, and the sensible world is only a copy of the world of the forms. thus, art is a copy of a copy of a copy (see republic x, 598b-599a). second, keeping this “copy of a copy of a copy” view of the nature of art in mind, in the republic, plato argues that poetry is harmful to the soul. those who wish to indulge their emotions in such “wretched” activities, thinks plato, are strengthening the lower part (i.e., the appetitive part) of their souls and thereby weakening the higher rational part of the soul. if aristotle is to provide a convincing argument against plato’s position, he must show forcefully how poetry enhances the rational part of the soul. indeed, this essay endeavors to make manifest that aristotle’s theory of poetry is able to address adequately plato’s challenge. for more on plato’s views regarding the effects of poetry, see m. f. burnyeat, “art and mimesis in plato’s ‘republic’,” the london review of books, may 21, 1998, 3-9, c. l. griswold, “the ideas and criticism of poetry in plato’s republic,” journal of the history of philosophy, 19 (1981):135-50, stephen halliwell, “plato’s repudiation of the tragic,” in tragedy and the tragic, ed. m. s. silk (oxford: clarendon press, 1996), 33249, christopher janaway, images of excellence: plato’s critique of the arts (oxford: clarendon press, 1995), 106-57, kimon lycos, “making things with words: plato on mimesis in republic,” philosophical inquiry, 18, nos. 3-4 (summerfall, 1996): 1-19, and c. d. c. reeve, philosopher kings (princeton: princeton university press, 1988), 220-23. aristotle, politics, viii.7, 1342a5-16. lear may have this passage in mindregardinghis claim thataristotle’sreply to platoisthatpoetryisharmless. it is not mailto:topacademicjournals@gmail.com american journal of art and communication vol.8, issue 2; march-april 2023; issn: 2994-0540 impact factor: 6.91 1252 columbia rd nw, washington dc, united states https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac; mail: topacademicjournals@gmail.com 32 | american journal of art and communication | https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac beingdeniedthataristotlethinksthisisso; however, thiscannotbe all aristotlewouldwant to say on the matter if hehopes to swayplatointoacceptingtragicdrama and other arts in the polis. ibid., 1342a17-28. 19 the claim is not thatcitizens (according to aristotle) cannot have hedonisticcatharticexperienceslikethose of the (b)-class—theycan have bothhedonistic and cognitive pleasuresassociatedwithtragedy. given the nature of theirsouls,however, the (b)-class individualscanonly have hedonisticcatharticexperiences. this interpretation of a sort of nestedhierarchy of catharticexperiences stands in somewhatcontrast to depew’s tentative claim that the tragiceffect in the politicsis not exactly the samething as the tragiceffect in the poetics. see daviddepew, “fromhymn to tragedy: aristotle’sgenealogy of poetickinds,” inthe origins of theater in ancient greece and beyond: fromritual to drama, ed. ericcsapo and margaret c. miller (cambridge: cambridge universitypress, 2007), 126-49. 20aristotle, politics, viii.5 1340a19-20. 21aristotle,poetics, i.6, 1450a15-24. 22 ibid., i.13, 1452b31-1453a11. note that ‘good’ hereis not to suggestthatoedipusis a morallyexceptionalperson. aristotlemakesclearthatoedipus stands betweenthosewho are highlyvirtuous and thosewho are extremely base (poetics, i. 1453a7-12). ‘good’, then, isdesigned to capture thisintermediary position. 23 ibid., i.14, 1454a16-b8. 24loudendiscusses, in addition, a thirdsubordinatevirtue, [εὐβουλία], thatismuch more controversial and not of great importance here. see robert b.louden, “what is moral authority? εὐβουλία, σύνεσις and γνώμη vs. φρόνησις,” ancient philosophy, 17, no. 1 (1997): 103-18. he alsogives a lucidaccount of how all of thesevariouspracticalintellectualvirtues are related and yet distinct. 25aristotle, nicomacheanethics, vi.6, 1141a3-4. 26 r. louden, “what is moral authority?” 107. 27aristotle, nicomacheanethics, vi.7, 1141b15-24. mailto:topacademicjournals@gmail.com american journal of art and communication vol.8, issue 2; march-april 2023; issn: 2994-0540 impact factor: 6.91 1252 columbia rd nw, washington dc, united states https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac; mail: topacademicjournals@gmail.com 33 | american journal of art and communication | https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac 28 ibid., vi.10, 1143a8-10. 29aristotle stresses justthis point in poetics, xiii, 1453a7-10. for furtherdetails about the nature of aristotle’s use of reversal and recognition in tragedy, see johnmacfarlane, “aristotle’sdefinition of ‘anagnorisis’,” the american journal of philology, 121, no. 3 (2000): 367-83, patchenmarkell, “tragic recognition: action and identity in antigone and aristotle,” political theory, 3, no. 1(2003): 6-38, malcolm heath, “the best kind of tragic plot: aristotle’s arguments in poetics 13-14,” anais de filosofiaclássica, 2, no. 3 (2008): 1-18, and s. halliwell, the aesthetics of mimesis, 220-24. aristotle, poetics i.13, 1453a13-15. for more discussion on ἁμαρτία see j. m. bremer, hamartia: tragicerror in the poetics of aristotle and in greek tragedy (amsterdam: adolf m. hakkert, 1968), t.c.w. stinton, “hamartia in aristotle and greek tragedy,” classicalquarterly, 25, no. 2 (1975): 221-54, and leon golden “hamartia, ate, and oedipus,” classical world, 72, no. 1 (1978): 3-12. 31 ibid., i.9, 1452a23-b5. jankoemphasizesthisdidacticapproach to catharsis in “fromcatharsistothearistotelianmean”ina.o.rorty,ed.,essaysonaristotle’spoetics(newjer sey:princetonuni versitypress,1992),pp.341-358. aristotle, nicomacheanethics, ix.12, 1172a12-15.now one mightbeconcerned about the omission of φρόνησιςfromthis discussion, giventhataristotle points out thatpoetryisphilosophical to the extentthatit deals withevents and actions that are likely to occur. this omission isintentional on the grounds thataristotleistrying to locate the moderatephilosophicalsense of poetry as being more thanhistory, but lessthan fullblownphilosophicalinquiryintoethics and action. the ability to judge the actions of othersregarding how theymightlikelybehave, how thosejudgingcouldfindthemselves in similarcircumstances, and how to judgesuchbehaviors are the skills at hand. the argument isthat the subordinateintellectualvirtues are enough to actualizetheseskills. thus, with respect to understanding the philosophical nature of poetry, drawing on the subordinateintellectualvirtues, as opposed to φρόνησις, is a way of strikingthis balance mailto:topacademicjournals@gmail.com american journal of art and communication vol.8, issue 2; march-april 2023; issn: 2994-0540 impact factor: 6.91 1252 columbia rd nw, washington dc, united states https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac; mail: topacademicjournals@gmail.com 34 | american journal of art and communication | https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac between the less-than-philosophicalfield of history and highlyphilosophicalarena of ethics and action theory. 34 ibid., ix.11-x.1, 1171a36-1172b10. aristotle, poetics, i.4, 1454a16-19. aristotle, nicomacheanethics, iii.3, 1112a2-3; and iii.5, 1113b3-8. 37 no doubt, the audience wouldalsoadmonishoedipus for not being a more temperate or dispassionateperson[σώφρων]with regard to the statements made by the drunkard at the party. 38 ‘for the most part’ isnecessaryherebecause, according to aristotle, one canbeheldblameworthy for akraticacts (weak-willedacts), which are not necessarily the product of deliberatechoice; although, of course, akraticacts are not on a par withviciousacts. so, one couldcondemnoedipus for beingakratic, but thatwouldlikelyrequiregoingbeyond the details of the story. for aristotle’s discussion on akrasia, seenicomacheanethics, vii.1-10, 1145a15-1152a35. 39aristotle,poetics, i.9, 1451b9. in the production of art, aristotle notes the importance of extracting the universalfromparticularexperiences: “and art [τέχνη] comes to bewheneverfrommanyreflectionsuponexperience a single universal [καθόλου][judgment] isproduced in relation to similarobjects.” given the high level of educationpossessed by the citizens, itisreasonable to thinkthattheycandiscern the universalsassociatedwith the particulars of a dramathat are in keepingwith the universalsdiscerned and employed by a poet. the position takenhereisthatthis extraction canoccurthrough the intellectualvirtues of σύνεσις and γνώμη. seemetaphysics, i. 1, 980a5-6. golden defendswhathe calls an “intellectual clarification” account of catharsis based on thisability to extract the universalsembedded in the particulars of a tragicplay. see l. golden, aristotle on tragic and comic mimesis (atlanta: scholarspress, 1992), 5-39. 40aristotle,politics, iii.5, 1278a8-13. although this quotation does not come from aristotle’s discussion of the ideal city-state, it could be viewed as how he might envision an ideal citizen body that is free of labor. mailto:topacademicjournals@gmail.com american journal of art and communication vol.8, issue 2; march-april 2023; issn: 2994-0540 impact factor: 6.91 1252 columbia rd nw, washington dc, united states https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac; mail: topacademicjournals@gmail.com 35 | american journal of art and communication | https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac 41seearistotle’spoetics: translatedwith a commentary by george walley, ed. john baxter and patrick atherton (montreal: mcgill-queen’suniversitypress, 1997), xxv. 42 as aristotle points out at metaphysics, v.29 1024b24-26, “things are called false either because they themselves are not or because the phantasia that results from them is of what is not”(italics mine). note, as far as i can tell, castonis one of the few recent commentators who is sensitive to keep this problem of error as the central theme of de anima, iii.3. see victor caston, “why aristotle needs imagination,” phronesis, 41, no. 1 (1995): 20-55. also see gary watson, “ nta ia in aristotle, de anima 3.3,” classical quarterly, 32, no. 1 (1982): 100-13 and ronald polansky, aristotle’s de anima (cambridge: cambridge university press, 2007)for similar accounts. 43aristotle,de anima, iii.3 433b29-434a7. 44see g. watson, “ nta ia in aristotle, de anima 3.3,” and v. caston, “whyaristotleneeds imagination.” 45see dorotheafrede, “the cognitive role of phantasia in aristotle,” in essays on aristotle’s de anima, ed. martha c. nussbaum and amelieoksenbergrorty (oxford: clarendonpress, 1992), 288-89 and s.pendlebury, “practical arguments, rationalization and imagination in teachers’ practicalreasoning: a critical discussion,” journal of curriculum studies, 25, no. 1 (1993):147. aristotle,de motu animalium, i.6, 700b17-22. 47aristotle, de anima, iii.11, 434a5-10. it is in the sense of synthesizingrelevant images that i agreewithhankinsonthatβουλευτικήϕαντασιά, as distinct from αἴσθησις andὑπόληψις, engages in the activity of comparison. as hankinsonputsit, “[βουλευτικήϕαντασιά] involvesgoingbeyond the judgmental component alreadypresent in perception, although not as far as thatwhich corresponds to propositionaljudgmentproperlyso-called, hupolêpsis.” see r.j. hankinson, “perception and evaluation: aristotle on the moral imagination,” dialogue, vol. 39 (1990): 52. aristotle, de anima, iii.7, 431b2-8. ibid.,iii. 10, 433b10-13. mailto:topacademicjournals@gmail.com american journal of art and communication vol.8, issue 2; march-april 2023; issn: 2994-0540 impact factor: 6.91 1252 columbia rd nw, washington dc, united states https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac; mail: topacademicjournals@gmail.com 36 | american journal of art and communication | https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac 51 j. a. smith’s translation of aristotle’sde anima, iii.10, 433b10-13, inthe complete works of aristotle, vol. 1, ed. jonathan barnes (new jersey: princeton universitypress, 1985), 689. 52aristotle, rhetoric ii.5, 1383a15-19. 53aristotle, de memoria i, 450b21-27. 54aristotle, poetics iv, 1448b12-13. ‘this [person] isthat [person]’ followshalliwell’s translation. see s. halliwell, the aesthetics of mimesis, p. 178, n. 3. 55ibid.,iv, 1448b13. 56aristotle, parts of animals, i.1, 639a1-9) [italics mine]. 57 e. belfiore, “pleasure, tragedy and aristotelian psychology,” 359-60. i have slightlyrearrangedsome of the sentences for the sake of conciseness. this discussion relies upon aristotle,rhetoric ii.5 1383a58, 2.81386a7-9 and 1386a21. 58puttfarkenhints at thissamekind of judgment: “wepity the personwhodoes not deservehis fate, whilehorror or fearovercomes us whenwe are facedwithsomethingsimilar to ourselves.” see thomasputtfarken, “aristotle, titian, and tragic painting,” in art and thought,ed. dana arnold and margaret iversen (oxford: blackwell, 2003),17. moreover, thisaccount of pityis in keepingwithhalliwell’sinsightfulanalysis of pity in which the spectator of a playcanempathizewith the plight of the protagonist, but cannotactually “share the sufferer’ssubjectivity: howevermuchwemaydrawemotionallynear to it, or move vicariouslywithitspsychological expression, weremain, quafeelers or pity, outside the immediate, ‘first-person’ reality of the pain, whetherphysical or mental.” i could not agree more withhalliwell’sanalysishere. in fact, itisbecauseourempatheticresponsecannotaccess first-personsubjectivitythatwe are able to reflect on the possibility of ourownpersonalpredicamentsbeing similar to that of the protagonist. see s. halliwell, the aesthetics of mimesis, 216. 59aristotle, rhetoric, ii. 8, 1386a28-34. 60 i amhereclearlyreferring to the pleasurehad by the educatedcitizenry. 61 atrhetoric ii. 6, 1385b38-40, aristotledoes point out thatbeing panicstrickenmakesitnearly impossible to be able to express pitybecause one isconsumed by mailto:topacademicjournals@gmail.com american journal of art and communication vol.8, issue 2; march-april 2023; issn: 2994-0540 impact factor: 6.91 1252 columbia rd nw, washington dc, united states https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac; mail: topacademicjournals@gmail.com 37 | american journal of art and communication | https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac one’sownfear. so, althoughitisreasonable to thinkthat the audience of a tragedymay express muchfear as the plot unfolds, itisunlikelythattheywouldbe panic-stricken or shouldbeinduced to be panic-strickengiven the needto express pity or compassion. ibid., ii.5,1382a21-22. aristotle, de anima, iii.3, 427b21-24. 64 for furtherdetails, see william. w. fortentbaugh, aristotle on emotion (new york: harper and rowpublishers, 1975). see s. halliwell’sthe aesthetics of mimesis. similarly, else argues that the properpleasure of tragedyincludesboth an intellectual component and an emotional one. seechapter 11 of geraldf. else, plato and aristotle on poetry (chapel hill: university of north carolina press, 1987). elsealsoembracesa “jury-like” view of the spectator at a play and gives ample weight to the connectionbetweenpity and judgment: “but underwhatcircumstancescan i bringmyself to pity the murderer or would-bemurderer? i canpityhim if i judgethathedid not intend the parricide, matricide, or whatever, as such: in otherwords, if itisestablished to my satisfaction thatheperformed or intended the fearfulactδἰἁμαρτίαν τινά, because of someerror.” see gerald f. else, aristotle’spoetics (cambridge: harvard universitypress, 1963), p. 437. 66 s. halliwell’sthe aesthetics of mimesis, p. 206. 67 w. w. fortenbaughaddressesdramaticpoetry. he says: “aristotleadopted an inclusive view of emotionalresponse. he recognizedbothits cognitive and itsbodily aspects. this meantthataristotlecould not onlyreject the platonic suggestion thatdramaticpoetryplays to unintelligent feelings divorcedfromreason but alsomeet the platonicdemand for a positive benefit to human life (rep. 607d8-9).” see w. w. fortenbaugh, aristotle on emotion, 21. 68 s. halliwell,the aesthetics of mimesis, 205 69ibid., 204-5 70notably, halliwellconcedes on this same pagethataristotledoes not pursue the possibility of tragedyproducingthiskind of response. again, my account of rational imagination as it pertains to the cathartic experience reveals that this sort of response is not at all hostile to aristotle’s thinking. mailto:topacademicjournals@gmail.com american journal of art and communication vol.8, issue 2; march-april 2023; issn: 2994-0540 impact factor: 6.91 1252 columbia rd nw, washington dc, united states https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac; mail: topacademicjournals@gmail.com 38 | american journal of art and communication | https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac 71aristotle, de motu animalium, i.7, 701b16-22 [retainingθερμοῦἢοψυχροῦἢ].althoughhedoes not us the language of imagination, itisclearlyimpliedwhenaristotlemakes the following point about pity: “and, indeed, on the whole, [a man experiencespity] in thismannerwheneverheis in a state of rememberingthatsuchkinds [of undeserving tribulations] have happened or are expected to happen to himself or to those [family and friends] of his.” aristotle, rhetoric, ii.8, 1386a13.again, the faculty of imagination must be at work in order for there to be images that are remembered and uponwhich are reflected. 72aristotle, rhetoric, ii. 5, 1382b23-27. 73ibid., ii. 5, 1383a7-12. 74ibid., ii. 8, 1386b2-7 (italics mine). 75earlier versions of thispaperwerepresented at bowling green state university, california state universityfullerton, chicago state university, university of kentucky, and the society for ancient greek philosophy. i amgrateful to all the participants at these venues for theirhelpfulcomments. moreover, i wouldlike to thankmarvbelzer, jim child,ben dixon, paul gomberg, robert grant, ralph hanke, carrie-ann biondi, louise collins, loren lomasky, phillip peek, christopher perricone, christopher shields, and james taylor for discussing and/or reviewingearly versions of thispaper. theircritical feedback wasinvaluable. additionally, i must acknowledge the research and financial support of the college of liberal arts & sciences at iu south bend—particularly the efforts of elizabeth dunn (dean of the college of liberal arts & sciences) and her staff. finally, i wouldlike to express a specialthanks to david depew and fred d. miller, jr. ; the former for introdcuing me to aristotle’stheory of art manymoonsago and the latter for taking the time to read multiple versions of thispaper, offeringdetailedcomments, and providingmuch encouragement. of course, the aboveindividuals do not necessarilysharemyinterpretations and conclusions. mailto:topacademicjournals@gmail.com coming out of the fog of war and adoption trauma: central american adoptees and social media support groups american journal of art and communication vol.6, issue 5; september-october 2021; 1252 columbia rd nw, washington dc, united states https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac; mail: topacademicjournals@gmail.com 1 | american journal of art and communication | https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac finding hope: how social media can help central american adoptees heal and thrive juan pablo hernandez-martinez northwestern university, usa abstract: central american adoptees are a unique part of the latinx population, as they were often brought up by white adoptive parents in white communities completely outside of their birth cultures. this can lead to feelings of uncertainty and fragmentation in relation to their connection to central america. social media and other digital technologies have been instructive tools for these adoptees to explore their identities and lessen the psychological stress caused by being removed from their birth cultures and communities. keywords: central american adoptees, transnational/racial adoptees, social media. introduction displaced by civil war, transnational acts of state violence, and a system of international adoption with little government oversight, tens of thousands of infants and children were adopted from el salvador and guatemala into u.s., european, and other white western homes beginning in the 1970s through the early 2000s (briggs, 2012, 2020; nolan, 2019; rossi, 2022). central american adoptees are a unique part of the latinx population to consider, in part because they were often brought up by white adoptive parents in white communities completely outside of their birth cultures. although commonality with other 1.5 and 2nd generation u.s. central americans can be found in shared backgrounds that are full of uncertainty and fragmentation in relation to their connection to central america, adoptees differ in that they were not brought to the united states with a cultural representative or relative who may have helped them maintain their birth culture. they also did not come to the united states on their own and were not necessarily brought up near latinx population centers. consequently, social media and other digital technologies have been instructive tools for transnational/racial adoptees to explore their identities and lessen the psychological stress caused by being removed from their birth cultures and communities. accordingly, this study focuses on how adoptees from central america digitally make meaning of the state violence that culminated in their adoption and the symbolic violence that often results from being a child of color raised in an adoptive white home governed by colorblind ideologies. i examine how central american adoptees use online support groups to build community and fight feelings of isolation. by doing so, this study brings insight to this underexplored outcome of u.s. cold war politics and the ways in which social media can be used to bring visibility to shared trauma and help individuals feel less alone. further, by proposing the framework of “coming out of the fog,” this study provides a critical vocabulary for understanding the “fog” of mailto:topacademicjournals@gmail.com american journal of art and communication vol.6, issue 5; september-october 2021; 1252 columbia rd nw, washington dc, united states https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac; mail: topacademicjournals@gmail.com 2 | american journal of art and communication | https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac imperialism that haunts the international adoption industry, as well as the “fogginess,” or complexity, of online community building built through affect. through interviews completed with salvadoran and guatemalan adoptees, i discuss the intricacies of adoptee digital organizing and establish the potential for transnational/racial adoptees to use social media networking as a tool for enacting change that crosses the boundary from online to offline. although transnational/racial adoptees share the common origin of adoption, it is significant to note that adoptee lived experience is not monolithic, and as a result online spaces for adoptees remain sites of negotiation. the research questions guiding this article are as follows. rq1: how have transnational/racial central american adoptees used social media networking on facebook to make meaning of state and symbolic violence? rq2: how does the proposed framework of “coming out of the fog,” a phrase commonly used by the participants in this study to signal the ways in which transnational/racial adoptees begin to question the adoption-as-rescue paradigm, help us understand the affordances and limitations of adoptee community building online? this study begins with a brief overview of the theoretical framework used, which considers the intersections between social media networking, affect, and digital meaning making to examine the phenomenon of online community building centered around emotion, feelings, and sentiment. next, it outlines the methodology and the ethical considerations taken in producing knowledge with and about marginalized latinx communities. the findings and discussion section begins by presenting an overview of the paradigm of “coming out of the fog,” which this study offers as a critical lens for understanding and measuring how digital spaces provide a structure that transnational/racial adoptees can use to make meaning of state violence and complicate white savior adoption-as-rescue narratives. subsequently, three key findings from this study of salvadoran and guatemalan adoptee online groups are presented that establish how adoptees use social networking to “come out of the fog,” find belonging, and suture online and offline spaces in their work to create visibility for transnational/racial adoptees. i argue that digital community building can make offline lives more livable by affording transnational/racial adoptees the opportunity to connect to others with similar lived experiences and consider avenues for enacting change online and offline. however, online spaces remain contested spaces, and consequently online adoptee groups have the potential to more closely facilitate individual, rather than collective, healing. the conclusion reflects on these findings and offers suggestions for further research. theoretical considerations affective networks, digital meaning making, and finding community online scholarship on online networks has begun to illuminate the dynamics of digital community building and consider its affordances and limitations for the fostering of emotional connections and affective networking. boyd (2010) uses the phrase “networked publics” to describe “the space constructed through networked technologies and . . . the imagined collective that emerges as a result of the intersection of people, technology, and practice” (p. 40). she claims social networking sites such as facebook are “networked technologies” that have reorganized “how information flows and how people interact with information and each other” (boyd, 2010, p. 41). in other mailto:topacademicjournals@gmail.com american journal of art and communication vol.6, issue 5; september-october 2021; 1252 columbia rd nw, washington dc, united states https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac; mail: topacademicjournals@gmail.com 3 | american journal of art and communication | https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac words, social media sites complicate past understandings of publics through their structural affordances that allow for among other things, scalability, searchability, and the formation of relationships un-reliant on geographic proximity. “networked publics,” however, do not automatically constitute community. indeed, the affordances of digital structures also come with their limitations. as van dijck (2013) argues, social networking sites’ appropriation of key terms such as “social,” “collaboration,” and “friend” “resonate with communalist jargon of early utopian visions of the web as a space that inherently enhances social activity. in reality, the meaning of these words has increasingly been informed by automated technologies that direct human sociality” (p. 11). put another way, van dijck (2013) brings attention to the contradictory nature of new media, in which social media companies have rhetorically presented themselves (and been represented in popular discourse) as platforms for enhancing human networks and interaction while simultaneously being engineered and automated systems that “manipulate connections” through algorithmic design (p. 9). several scholars are likewise documenting how networked publics are offering new ways of performing affect and/or building affective connections (aziz, 2022; döveling, 2015; döveling, harju, & sommer, 2018; papacharissi, 2014, 2015; rajabi, 2021; wilding & winarnita, 2022). papacharissi’s (2015) notion of “affective publics,” for example, gives a name to “networked publics that are mobilized and connected, identified, and potentially disconnected through expressions of sentiment” (p. 311). papacharissi (2015) uses this term to understand engagement around specific twitter hashtags that materialize around news events and social movements that drive or are driven by emotional attachment. likewise, döveling and colleagues (2018) introduce the concept of “digital affect cultures,” as “relational, contextual, globally emergent spaces in the digital environment where affective flows construct atmospheres of emotional and cultural belonging by way of emotional resonance” (p. 1). they demonstrate how traumatic events such as terrorist attacks or natural disasters can create a sense of belonging forged through shared emotional sentiment collected through hashtags and regardless of geographical distance between users. papacharissi (2015) warns, however, that one must not conflate a sense of belonging with an actual community engaged in changemaking: “depending on context, these affective attachments may either self-propagate a movement to generate community, and/or entrap people in a loop of sustained spectatorship” (p. 311). in relation to this study, both scholars and adoptees have established a meaning of community that goes beyond spectatorship or a simple emotional attachment. parks (2010) considers “virtual communities” to be spaces in which group members can “engage in collective action,” “share rituals and information,” and “find a sense of belonging and attachment” (p. 108). they are also spaces in which there might be a pattern of “interaction among members” and a “self-awareness” of being a community (parks, 2010, p. 108). in other words, there is an active element to virtual and nonvirtual community building that relies on participation. similarly, guatemalan adoptee melissa ramos (2021) defines community building as referring to the “activities, practices, and policies that support and foster positive connections among individuals, groups, organizations, and geographic and functional communities” (para. 4). in the case of adoptees, ramos notes, community building is “founded on a shared identity” and is distinct from “community action,” which involves organizing “those affected by public or private decisions or non-decisions where the goal is to challenge existing political, social, and economic structures mailto:topacademicjournals@gmail.com american journal of art and communication vol.6, issue 5; september-october 2021; 1252 columbia rd nw, washington dc, united states https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac; mail: topacademicjournals@gmail.com 4 | american journal of art and communication | https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac and processes” (para. 6). the distinction between the two is an important one to make because as this study demonstrates, adoptees are not a monolith and take various paths in their approaches to identity construction and digital community building and action. stuart hall (1990) reminds us that diasporic identities are formed by the ways in which individuals and groups are positioned by outside forces, such as the media and other cultural institutions that mediate social meanings, and the way they position themselves in relation to others. as some adoptees come of age and begin to wrestle with and against the disciplining power of national or familial politics, they may turn to online communities to find belonging, negotiate cultural identity, or advocate for change in international adoption systems. still, as scholars baym (2006) and gray (2009) argue, “offline contexts permeate and influence online situations, and online situations and experiences always feed back into offline experience” (baym, 2006, p. 86). in other words, the separation between an individual’s online and offline lives has no clear boundary. youth, like central american adoptees, use new media as just one space to find belonging and may suture online and offline communities in their search for public space and legibility (gray, 2009, p. 15). although much contemporary scholarship has turned to facebook and twitter to consider contemporary journalistic flows and the spread of misinformation, communication and latinx scholars have less frequently studied the ways in which private groups on facebook function as significant sites of support. there are several studies on facebook groups for people seeking health support, but these reports often rely on content analysis rather than exploring the root reasons of why people have turned to or been forced to rely on facebook groups to find help through virtual communities. likewise, döveling and colleagues (2018) and papacharissi (2014, 2015) offer significant theorizations on the intersections between social media sites, community, and affect, but their respective studies, which mainly focus on twitter, do not consider the ways affective publics and digital affect cultures are functioning in less visible online spaces like facebook groups. this study emphasizes that adoptees are in fact being driven to connect by “flows of affect online” (döveling et al., 2018, p. 1), but they are doing so in ways that seek to make their lives more livable both online and offline. it further establishes how accumulations of online affect can lead to community action offline. notably, this study connects conceptualizations of affective networks with what rajabi (2021) has discussed as digital meaning making to highlight how online communities can be a space for users to express emotions or feelings that are denied validity in offline contexts. rajabi (2021) uses the concept of “symbolic trauma” to work through how digital media users and communities make meaning of suffering caused by state and symbolic violence and to give a critical vocabulary to those disabled by social and political systems whose suffering is otherwise made invisible by those in power. in other words, symbolic trauma, which can be both physical and psychological, is trauma unrecognized and/or denied by traditional hegemonic systems, but it is potentially rendered legible in digital worlds. critical adoption scholars have previously established the invisible psychic trauma of transnational/racial adoptees that results from being removed from birth families/cultures and/or being raised through the principles of colorblind kinship that demand feelings of gratitude from adoptees (eng, 2010; merritt, 2021; park nelson, 2007; rossi, 2022). as such, this study foregrounds how digital community spaces have enabled central american adoptees to recognize these structures of symbolic violence to which they have been subjected and proposes the framework of “coming out of the fog” to give a name to the act mailto:topacademicjournals@gmail.com american journal of art and communication vol.6, issue 5; september-october 2021; 1252 columbia rd nw, washington dc, united states https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac; mail: topacademicjournals@gmail.com 5 | american journal of art and communication | https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac of questioning the emotionally stifling adoption-as-rescue paradigm, as well as to measure the affordances and limitations of digital meaning making after symbolic trauma. methodology and ethical considerations this study weaves together analysis of adoptee social media organizing and qualitative interviews with salvadoran and guatemalan adoptees to garner a better understanding of the affordances and limitations of social media networking in creating community and political change both online and offline. following sandvig and hargittai’s (2015) discussion of digital research methods, this study takes an instrumental approach to the study of digital media to explore how social media as an instrument or tool can provide new insights into the complexity of community building and digital diasporas. put another way, this study is most interested in how digital media and technologies function as an instrument or “as a vehicle, a medium” for talking about race and cultural identity, state and symbolic violence, adoption trauma, adoptee lived experience, and the future (akindes, 2003, p. 155). in what ways is new media, such as social media networks, a contributor to the everyday lived experiences and evolving identities of central american adoptees? i conducted 16 semistructured, qualitative interviews with central american adoptees, including seven guatemalan adoptees and nine salvadoran adoptees. all 16 have partaken in one of five online adoptee groups from which i solicited participants. i recruited interviewees by first asking group moderators if they would be interested in participating, and then i utilized snowball sampling. participants ranged in age from 24 to 42 and were adopted between 1980 and 1997. four men and 12 women participated in my interviews. interviews took between 45 minutes to one hour to complete and were primarily conducted over zoom. i began by asking individuals to a share a bit about their adoption journey and how their perceptions about their adoption and cultural identity have developed over time. subsequently, participants were asked about their digital media use and the role of social media networking in finding belonging. names have been anonymized to protect the privacy of my participants. to protect the privacy of these online groups, i also mostly refrain from discussing the specific content or affects present on their message boards. rather, i have chosen to primarily use affective belonging as my main analysis and to rely on the responses i received from my participants to establish the complexity of these online spaces. past studies have shown that as transnational central american youth come of age and attend college or leave their home for the first time, they become interested in issues of identity, and in some cases, they learn about their birth countries’ violent histories for the first time (coutin, 2016; menjívar, 2002; trujillo, 2021). likewise, although some critical adoption scholars have utilized transnational/racial adoptee oral histories in their historical recoveries of the exploitative system of international adoption (kim, 2010; varzally, 2017), this study adds to the conversation by specifically exploring the perspectives of central american adoptees and the role of new media in adoptee community building and identity negotiation. further, the methodology of this study is ethically aligned with the goals of aparicio and colleagues (2022), who position latinx ethnography as “homework” rather than fieldwork, which they see as “an aspirational, future-oriented, and coalitional practice of ethnography that recognizes our research partners and interlocuters as collaborators and intellectuals in their own right and demands a deeper and more sustained mailto:topacademicjournals@gmail.com american journal of art and communication vol.6, issue 5; september-october 2021; 1252 columbia rd nw, washington dc, united states https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac; mail: topacademicjournals@gmail.com 6 | american journal of art and communication | https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac personal and political commitment” (p. xxiii). “home” has a second significance in the context of this research because i myself am a salvadoran adoptee who has found community, connection, and emotional validation in the online adoptee diaspora. indeed, by utilizing the notion of “coming out of the fog” as a lens from which to understand digital meaning making, i aim to “listen in solidarity” with my participants and foreground central american adoptees as engaged in their own analytics outside of the academy (aparicio et al., 2022, pp. xxv, xxix). by doing so, this study inserts central american and transnational/racial adoptee subjectivities into the fields of latinx and communication studies through their own voices and knowledge production. findings and discussion: the dynamics of adoptee online network building this study demonstrates the affordances and limitations of digital community building for transnational/racial adoptees from el salvador and guatemala. it begins by conceptualizing “coming out of the fog” as a framework for understanding and measuring how digital spaces provide a structure for adoptees to question the adoption-as-rescue paradigm and circumvent the emotional regulation required by the politics of colorblind kinship practiced by many adoptive families. from there, the study establishes three key findings. first, despite the utopian promises of digital community building, some adoptees fail to find meaning/support online. second, online groups of adoptees have found success in using their digital platforms to create substantive change offline and therefore have worked to suture online and offline lived experiences. finally, digital groups built around collective affect remain contested spaces in which adoptees grapple with divergent ideas on how to make meaning of adoption trauma. defining the “fog” the phrase “coming out of the fog” is popular within transnational/racial adoptee circles and signals a rejection of the white savior adoption-as-rescue narrative that is commonly told by adoptive parents, social workers, and popular media. this study uses this concept as described by adoptees themselves to better interrogate the complex politics of online community building among the central american adoptee diaspora. adoptees have described “being in the fog” as being an adoptee who has internalized the western adoption-as-rescue paradigm (yue, santizo-malafronti, & vazquez-kelly, 2020). in other words, a transnational/racial adoptee living in the “fog” views their adoption as an apolitical act of love and fails to interrogate the geopolitical factors that make children from the global south into adoptable products (briggs, 2020; mckee, 2019). as interviews for this study were completed, it was a phrase repeated by several participants. i now turn to some of my participants to better explain the “fog.” one of this study’s participants, kyle, was adopted from guatemala in 1996. he is a participant in two online guatemalan adoptee groups, as well as a few other adoptee digital collectives. as he explains, he had been living in the fog of whiteness, the fog of privilege, classism, the fog of imperialism, just like believing everything we’ve been told since we were kids and really thinking that that’s the whole truth without doing any questioning of that; and then coming out of the fog is when you really start to realize, “oh, there’s a lot more here.” in other words, for kyle, to come out of the fog means to question the systems that enable the international mailto:topacademicjournals@gmail.com american journal of art and communication vol.6, issue 5; september-october 2021; 1252 columbia rd nw, washington dc, united states https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac; mail: topacademicjournals@gmail.com 7 | american journal of art and communication | https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac adoption industry, the ways that racial projects shape transnational social relations, and the myth of american exceptionalism. another participant, angela, was adopted from guatemala in 1997. she is a participant in two online adoptee groups and was in reunion with her birth family. her narrative is one of several guatemalan adoptees whom i spoke to, who told me they were trafficked. at the time of her birth, angela’s mother’s doctor had told her that she had died shortly after birth, but in fact, she was taken by the doctor and adopted to the united states. for angela, the fog can be hard to escape, particularly when one is raised in a family of primarily white people, and you’re in a community of primarily white people . . . you are socialized to believe this idea of, to accept a perspective on your adoption that comes from the white american perspective. and coming out of the fog means, you’re reconnecting with the fact that you are not a white american, and you have a reality that faces you in a very different way. in other words, the model of colorblind kinship that governs many adoptive families confines transnational/racial adoptees to the fog, or a mythology in which they may ignore or bury their racial otherness, accept popular images or rhetoric of their birth countries as backward, and consistently be told that their birth families were incapable of providing any semblance of a “good” life for them. coming out of the fog signals a contestation of colorblind and colonial politics and a rejection of the phantom lives commonly constructed by adoptive parents that imagine a child’s “life [without being adopted] as located in a grim and soulless orphanage and followed by a life of street crime” (honig, 2005, p. 218). to come out of the fog, then, is to interrogate the systems that allow for an adoptees’ physical and psychological displacements from their birth families, countries, and cultures. notably, to come out of the fog can also be a painful experience in which one must confront the ghosts haunting them. gordon (2008) uses the concept of “haunting” to describe the instances “when home becomes unfamiliar, when your bearings on the world lose direction, when the over-and-done-with comes alive, when what’s in your blind spot comes into view” (p. xvi). still, given the transparent and blurry nature of ghosts, these apparitions may not always be identifiable. as stoler (2006) argues, “to be haunted is to be frequented by and possessed by a force that not always bares a proper name” (p. 1). in other words, to be haunted by the violence of empire is to not necessarily have the language to describe or the power to make others aware of the pain of forced family displacement and ghostly hauntings. this article works through how “coming out of the fog” is both a process enhanced by adoptee digital community building and digital meaning making, as well as a descriptor of the murkiness, or fogginess, of contested community spaces. to recognize the fog is to give a name to the imperial ideologies behind international adoption, a way of making meaning of the state violence and symbolic trauma that some transnational/racial adoptees from central america have faced, and a way of recovering memory of the effects and afterlives of the united states’ cold war intervention in the region. however, it is not a universal process, and as evidenced by this study’s interviews with central american adoptees, it can have different meanings for everyone dependent on their own relationship to their adoption. rajabi (2021) argues, “users go online to be a part of something, and they participate to establish a new meaningmailto:topacademicjournals@gmail.com american journal of art and communication vol.6, issue 5; september-october 2021; 1252 columbia rd nw, washington dc, united states https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac; mail: topacademicjournals@gmail.com 8 | american journal of art and communication | https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac making schema, and thus new understandings of their lives” (p. 53). yet this study also seeks to consider how some adoptees fail to find meaning of their ghostly pasts online. salvadoran adoptees and the struggle for community for salvadoran adoptees, community building has proven to be challenging and fractured. the creation of online support groups for central american adoptees has often been tied to connections made after completing at-home dna ancestry kits. several of the women who participated in this study founded or act as moderators of these spaces for salvadoran adoptees to congregate, and they began their own personal adoption journeys with 23andme to try to find birth relatives. still, salvadoran adoptee laura’s narrative complicates the utopian aspects of affective publics and digital meaning making. laura was adopted into a mormon family in utah in 1989. like several of the salvadoran adoptees i spoke to, she is now married and has children. for her and others, having children was a moment that was significant in their adoption journey because they wanted to share their birth culture and histories with their children. as such, laura turned to the internet to seek a virtual space to discuss her at-home dna test results and compare relative lists with other adoptees. she was unable to find any salvadoran adoptee facebook groups but was invited to join a guatemalan adoptee page by a guatemalan adoptee who was listed as a third cousin on 23andme and with whom she had been messaging. she recalls being “very involved” in the group and relating to fellow central american adoptees “who were confused about how to feel about being adopted or about being taken from their biological culture.” she added, “i was very loud on that facebook page, and i was helping so many people, you know, with their dna questions and these unanswered questions they had within themselves.” she described exchanging dna relative lists with the connections she was making, but her search for mutual relatives always came up empty. at one point she posted in the group, “is anybody out there and from el salvador, anybody have any relatives from el salvador on their relative lists?” she recalls feeling hurt after people responded to her posts with comments like, “this is a guatemalan adoptee page; you should go to an el salvador one.” this is just one example of the boundary-making practices that central american adoptees in online diasporic groups have taken part in, and it demonstrates the complexities of building a community around a confined notion of identity, which in this case was tied to national origins. disillusioned with the guatemalan group, laura started her own page dedicated to salvadoran adoptees, and it has slowly accrued over 30 members. given the smaller size of the group, however, it has struggled to maintain active conversations among members. the lack of activity in these smaller groups, which do not have the experience of meeting in person, speaks to the difficulty of performing vulnerability among strangers online. online spaces both lessen and reinforce distance between users (boyd, 2010; farquhar, 2012). as merritt (2021) has noted, adoptees from across the country and even the globe can be a part of these groups and take solace in knowing that there are others with their shared origins and shared emotional sentiment that has arisen from being adopted. however, i would add, a lack of homogeneity of lived experience can make it hard to open up to others, particularly when there is little conversation already happening. laura’s upbringing in a mormon family, for example, would have been a very different experience from an upbringing in a secular family. laura also ties the struggle for community building to a “hush-hush” culture around u.s. intervention in central america, in which a lot of adoptees do not know mailto:topacademicjournals@gmail.com american journal of art and communication vol.6, issue 5; september-october 2021; 1252 columbia rd nw, washington dc, united states https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac; mail: topacademicjournals@gmail.com 9 | american journal of art and communication | https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac about the history of the salvadoran civil war and as a result may not know the contexts of their own adoption. there is also an important emotional labor aspect. laura and other group moderators have felt an added responsibility to actively post conversation starters, garner traction, and be there as a resource and support for others. this can come with a toll. as laura notes: it’s been a long time since i posted on there [the group page she founded], not as often as i should, because i go through these dips, you know, where i just don’t want to think about it. it consumes me a lot, and sometimes i just don’t want to think about it. a few months after i spoke with laura, she turned her moderation duties over to another adoptee because she needed to take a break from the group and from trying to increase its activity. papacharissi (2015) notes that her conceptualization of affective publics is influenced by williams’s (1977) work on “structures of feeling,” or the emotions, moods, and atmospheres that generations are born out of and raised in and that define a moment in time (sharma & tygstrup, 2015). papacharissi (2015) seeks to understand how digital media effect narration and structures of storytelling, arguing: networked structures of feeling . . . help us tell stories about who we are, who we imagine we might be, and how we might get there. the same stories that may inspire powerful disruption, accumulate and diffuse intensity and tension, or simply, serve as an organically generated digital manifestation of who we are, and who we might like to be. (p. 311) this study emphasizes that transnational/racial adoptees telling their narratives is an organic or natural reaction to the state and symbolic violence that has resulted in their forced displacement in a geographical and psychological sense. the digital manifestation of their trauma in networked spaces, such as private facebook groups, is simply how they make meaning of the complexity of adoption or how they begin to come out of the fog. these digital spaces are a place where digital sufferers “negotiate their place in the broader world given the catastrophic feeling that broke down their sense of place in the world” (rajabi, 2021, p. 40). still, it is significant to question these utopian ideas about digital narration in affective publics. as the case of laura illustrates, online spaces for the narration of trauma can be extremely foggy places, in which adoptees may face hostility and/or a lack of engagement and connection with others resulting in their inability to digitally make meaning of their ghostly pasts. guatemala adoptees groups and the suturing of online and offline lived experiences guatemalan adoptees have also founded and facilitated online groups to ease feelings of isolation and painful pasts. two organizations, next generation guatemala (ngg) and adoptees with guatemalan roots, run various online platforms for guatemalan adoptees. although both are based in the united states, these groups are open to members of the guatemalan adoptee diaspora residing in various countries across the globe. one difference between the two groups is that adoptees with guatemalan roots distinguishes itself by being an incorporated nonprofit; it was founded by a few members of next generation guatemala that sought to use their business and tech start-up experience and acumen to build strategic partnerships with outside companies and organizations with the purpose of integrating themselves and their members into the greater guatemalan community. both groups offer community spaces across mediums, including facebook, instagram, discord, mailto:topacademicjournals@gmail.com american journal of art and communication vol.6, issue 5; september-october 2021; 1252 columbia rd nw, washington dc, united states https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac; mail: topacademicjournals@gmail.com 10 | american journal of art and communication | https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac youtube, and clubhouse, but they have also increasingly worked to build presence and change offline. accordingly, this section argues that rather than solely existing in digital spaces, the community building that results from guatemalan adoptee groups has worked to suture online and offline worlds. notably, both groups were started by founders with a desire for building community and visibility for those with lived experiences as transnational/racial adoptees from guatemala. gemma givens, the founder of next generation guatemala, describes its 2012 origins as coming from a moment of pain as a study abroad student in guatemala and finding out that her birth mother had died before she had the opportunity to reunite with her. she told the berkeley news, “i remember coming back home, sitting on my [adoptive] mom’s couch thinking ‘is that it? is that really it? that whole thing just happened, and there’s no one to talk about it with?’” (brice, 2019). ngg, then, was started as an outlet for guatemalan adoptees to share their experiences with peers that may be able to understand them better than their adoptive families or non-adoptee friends. the founder shared her story on online message boards for adoptive parents in hopes that adoptees themselves would see her message. she googled search terms like “guatemalan adoptees” and “adoptees from guatemala” to try to find other adoptees to join her group. in other words, it was built out of what can be characterized as “flows of digital affect,” or flows of adoptees seeking peers to share their adoption sentiments, leading to ngg’s facebook group (döveling et al., 2018, p. 1). indeed, for these first few years of the organization, givens searched for digital traces leading to guatemalan adoptees to add to her group, rather than adoptees finding the community themselves. it was not until 2015, three years after she created the group, that there was a steady flow of adoptees finding ngg on their own. adoptees with guatemalan roots was founded in november 2019 by five guatemalan adoptees who had been a part of the ngg online community and saw an opportunity to reach for greater potential and organize around a central mission of giving back to and integrating with the country of guatemala. given that several of the founders had experience working with tech start-ups in the united states, adoptees with guatemalan roots differentiates itself by treating their group in a similar fashion to a small business, which one of the founders told me means providing “concrete evidence of why it’s within the best interest of the entities of the people we’re reaching out to in guatemala to give us some time.” in other words, one of the goals of this group is to build partnerships with other adoptee organizations, as well as organizations and government entities in guatemala that might give adoptees resources or tools for finding their identity. given their greater membership, the online spaces fostered by next generation guatemala and adoptees with guatemalan roots may more likely act as “affective publics” than salvadoran groups and offer chances for adoptees to internally produce “disruptions/interruptions of dominant political narratives” around adoption by presenting underrepresented viewpoints (papacharissi, 2015, p. 318). these contestations of the adoption-asrescue paradigm focus on how adoption, searching for birth family, and maintaining a relationship with both birth and adoptive parents are complicated, particularly when there is language barrier. adoptees use these groups to search for information or to share their own narratives. moderators often announce new members who are given the opportunity to introduce themselves if they would like to and share their relationship to their adoption. these introductory posts can be constituted as “platform enabled” testimonio, in which previously “invisible mailto:topacademicjournals@gmail.com american journal of art and communication vol.6, issue 5; september-october 2021; 1252 columbia rd nw, washington dc, united states https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac; mail: topacademicjournals@gmail.com 11 | american journal of art and communication | https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac conditions,” such as being a transnational/racial adoptee can come to light (rajabi, 2021, p. 6). instead of having their emotions or affect filtered through adoptive parents or social workers, adoptees are free to discuss their adoption from their own perspective. collectively, these posts contribute to an affective public focused on recognizing and coming out of the fog. rather than solely existing in digital spaces, however, the digital community building and increasing visibility of these groups has moved beyond the digital realm to create opportunities for change for adoptees in numerous aspects of their lived experiences. a good example of this suturing work between online and offline contexts would be adoptees with guatemalan root’s partnership with the confederacíon deportiva autónoma de guatemala (cdag) and the federacíon nacional de fútbol (fedefut) in guatemala city. for this project, the adoptees with guatemalan roots leadership team put together a digital presentation that they gave to other guatemalan adoptee groups and adoptive parent networks to raise awareness that guatemalan adoptees and their children were eligible to play for the guatemalan national teams. after putting together a pool of around 30–40 welltrained and talented adoptees who are soccer players aged 14–20, adoptees with guatemalan roots presented this information to fedefut, who had not thought to consider this potential group for talent. they have now built an established relationship, wherein adoptees with guatemalan roots will help adoptees to meet with fedefut scouts seeking new players. this model of using online community building to construct change offline has also been successful in making the guatemalan adoptee diaspora visible to government leaders. leaders from adoptees with guatemalan roots met with guatemalan president alejandro giammattei in january 2021 to discuss the ways in which the guatemalan government might aid adoptees in reconnecting with their roots and origins. to garner the attention and goodwill of giammattei, the organization took the approach of proving the worth of the adoptee diaspora to encourage the government to work with them. one of the founders of adoptees with guatemalan roots recalled letting the government know there’s 50,000 of us, well educated; you know, we bring a unique set of skills and talents to the country . . . our [adoptees with guatemalan roots] leadership team has experience in finance and running start-ups. we provided a very detailed list with dollar figures, with projections of how we think adoptees can impact a country, and that was just really wellreceived. indeed, within four months of their meeting, the guatemalan ministerio de relaciones exteriors had partnered with the consejo nacional de adopciones (cna) and registro nacional de los personas (renap) to offer free services to adoptees of guatemalan origins. according to adoptees with guatemalan roots, this is significant because it is an official acknowledgment by the guatemalan government of guatemalan adoptees’ birthright to citizenship. the cna program aims to connect adoptees with birth families, but it is contingent on adoptees already having access to accurate adoption papers and records, which is not a given for all guatemalan adoptees. through renap, adoptees can request guatemalan birth certificates, passports, and national identity cards, which can help them find birth relatives, as well as move to, live, and work in guatemala (o’dwyer, 2021). through this suturing of online community building and offline community action, guatemalan adoptees have fought to find belonging and space in the united states, guatemala, and in-between spaces of transnationalism that make up their worlds. virtual communities allow adoptees to share connections based on mailto:topacademicjournals@gmail.com american journal of art and communication vol.6, issue 5; september-october 2021; 1252 columbia rd nw, washington dc, united states https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac; mail: topacademicjournals@gmail.com 12 | american journal of art and communication | https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac similar lived experiences and present opportunities to eradicate the fog through forging visibility that has enacted policy changes in guatemala. still, as gray (2009) reminds us, “new media signal rather than create the fluidity between public and private [online spaces]” (p. 117). put another way, the utopian virtues of online communities may not be fully translated offline. one of the central commonalities between ngg and adoptees with guatemalan roots are their visions to connect guatemalan adoptees and their fostering of an inclusive environment that meets all adoptees where they are in their adoption journey. for one of the leaders of ngg, that means that the “individual is at the center of the organization . . . everyone has a different motivation for reconnecting. so that’s what we try to be aware of and sensitive to as we develop programming.” as such, ngg’s main goal is to provide positive connections among its group members. in a similar fashion, adoptees with guatemalan roots seeks to provide community and opportunities to build friendships among their onlineconnected diaspora. their programming is centered around identity and the idea that to find healing one must connect to their guatemalan roots. in other words, both organizations have set up these digital spaces to meet the needs of the various individuals who take part in these communities. however, their focus on individual needs raises important questions about the distinctions between collective versus individual healing. although the visibility of these groups might signal fluidity between online and offline acceptance, and collective and individual identity and healing, as i discuss later, this is not always the case. fog and contestation in online community building despite the utopian promises of digital community building, this study has found that there remain challenges to lifting the fog of international adoption trauma in online adoptee groups. the signaling, rather than direct creation, of a fluidity between online and offline is also illustrated by the obstacles that both groups face and contestation of viewpoints between group members. one of the greatest obstacles that ngg and adoptees with guatemalan roots face is a transnational public that refuses to believe that an adoptee diaspora exists or accept that an unchecked system of international adoption could have resulted in tens of thousands of coerced adoptions and trafficked children. as one of the leaders of ngg emphasized, their actions are cognizant that the majority of the guatemalan population is probably unaware of the number of out-of-country adoptions that took place between 1980 and 2008. if the casualties and maya genocide that resulted from the guatemalan civil war are still not universally recognized, the generations of lost children are not either. they posited, “if you were to stop an average guatemalan and ask them, ‘what do you think about the generations that want to come back?’ . . . they’d probably say like, ‘huh, who? what adoptees?” they further added, “because we all didn’t go through the same agency, went through private lawyers, private notaries, hospitals, there isn’t one conglomeration” or channel that guatemalan adoptees went through and can be measured by. likewise, speaking from experience, they noted that when they visit guatemala, they often get questioned by locals: “why would you want to come back?” in other words, there is a belief that adoptees live with an element of economic privilege in the united states unknown to the average guatemalan. as such, ngg’s actions are conscious of working within these parameters. likewise, adoptees with guatemalan roots strategies reflect a similar awareness of the need to maintain friendly ties with the government, public, and private entities with which they enter into partnership. their tactic of bringing evidence of the value and worth of the adoptee diaspora to potential partners speaks to mailto:topacademicjournals@gmail.com american journal of art and communication vol.6, issue 5; september-october 2021; 1252 columbia rd nw, washington dc, united states https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac; mail: topacademicjournals@gmail.com 13 | american journal of art and communication | https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac the practicality of their approach to community action that avoids taking accusatory tones in favor of forming pragmatic business deals. in october 2021, adoptees with guatemalan roots released a research report suggesting that the guatemalan adoptee diaspora could end up holding the highest concentration of wealth among all guatemalan citizens within the next 20 years. based on the assumption that adoptees will inherit the wealth of their adoptive parents, the organization predicts the guatemalan adoptee diaspora’s net worth could be up to $42 billion. their neoliberal approach speaks to the varying forms of violence central american politics can and have taken, in which the guatemalan government will only acknowledge the adoptee diaspora when there is monetary exchange involved. put another way, the narratives that guatemalan adoptees are telling through media and born from digital connection have become significant enough to be recognized by the guatemalan state. yet it is not a utopian ideal, and only certain adoptees willing to work through this neoliberal lens are benefitting. the private pain that drives adoptees to seek out online support groups is unacknowledged by greater publics with political power, such as the guatemalan government. can the fog of the international adoption system lift if the pain of state and political violence is not equally recognized? as such, the approach of both organizations has not gone without criticism from guatemalan adoptees seeking more efficacious reconciliation efforts. indeed, for some adoptees, these groups do not have a critical or radical enough perspective toward the system of international adoption. as guatemalan adoptee kyle explains: i always knew that i wanted something different; i didn’t want to just have tamale-making classes, you know, or language classes, or dna service offerings through a third party, i don’t know, i appreciate some of those things, but i also realized pretty quickly that i want people who are ready to build the system [of resistance] with me. and it’s not the people in those groups, maybe a few of them, but i think the majority of people in both next gen and with guatemalan roots are really just looking for, really, yearning for community. and now that they’ve found some form of it, or some inkling of it, they have latched on and made it into something special for themselves, and that’s good. i think they have made real community; it’s just not exactly the community that i’m looking for. i’m looking for my collective, i’m looking to radicalize other adoptees, to pull them to the left, to pull them out of the fog. in other words, for kyle, it is important to be in community with those who have not just a shared origin but also a shared politics. his perspective also illustrates how the guatemalan adoptee diaspora is not a monolith and has a range of political views on u.s.–central american relations and the system of international adoption. for example, there are some trump supporters in these groups, and as kyle emphasized, he does not want to be in community with them. rather, he has formed his own adoptee collective that is focused on the abolition of international adoption and securing reparations for the birth families of trafficked children. his group is made up of adoptees from several different regions and countries and rejects the national origin model of other groups to emphasize how similar principles of white saviorism and empire shaped international adoption globally. regarding ngg and adoptees with guatemalan roots, it is important to recognize that groups based in and/or built around affective publics may not result in the forms of collective action desired by all (see also papacharissi, 2014, 2015). kyle’s case and desire to build a more radical transnational group of international adoption abolitionists offers an alternative case from which transnational/racial adoptees are working to eradicate the fog. mailto:topacademicjournals@gmail.com american journal of art and communication vol.6, issue 5; september-october 2021; 1252 columbia rd nw, washington dc, united states https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac; mail: topacademicjournals@gmail.com 14 | american journal of art and communication | https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac conclusion this article has discussed the complexity of central american adoptee groups on facebook. through digital community building, central american adoptees have constructed networks built in affect for transnational/racial adoptees from el salvador and guatemala to congregate, find belonging, and in some cases perform community action. although salvadoran adoptee diaspora groups have struggled to maintain active online participation, the digital spaces fostered by next generation guatemala and adoptees with guatemalan roots provide opportunities for adoptees to alleviate feelings of isolation. their groups have also worked to create a fluidity between online and offline contexts to create visibility for a hidden diaspora that has had its history manipulated by the power of white saviorism discourses and made invisible by central american and u.s. government leaders looking to downplay their perpetration of state violence. yet there are significant limitations within these digital diasporic communities. as discussed earlier, transnational/racial adoptees have used the phrase “coming out of the fog” to describe the process of an adoptee questioning the fog of colorblind politics, white saviorism, and imperialism. by recognizing central american adoptees as their own knowledge producers, this study has used that phrase to discuss the complexity of transnational/racial adoptee identities and adoptee online community building. social networks have the potential to allow adoptees to “come out of the fog,” but this study has noted that adoptee groups online can also be contested spaces. given the varying lived experiences of central american adoptees, they do not have a monolithic view on the international adoption system and/or u.s.–central american relations. this can be a hindrance to digital meaning making and community building turning into the community action desired by all. still, social networking can be full of fleeting moments of identification, validation, and pedagogical possibilities for those who create and participate in online support groups. this may be more illustrative of the strengths of digital meaning making and online community building in making everyday transnational/racial adoptee lives more livable. in closing, this study contributes to the literature on online community building, affective networks, and digital meaning making of trauma. through tying these strands together, i have established how those who have faced invisible “symbolic traumas” (rajabi, 2021), such as the forced emotional regulation of growing up as a transnational/racial adoptee in a household governed by colorblind politics, both make and at times fail to make meaning of affect through digital community building. following döveling and colleagues (2018), papacharissi (2014, 2015), and others (aziz, 2022; wilding & winarnita, 2022), this study also brings attention to the complicatedness of affect in digital spaces. it meaningfully adds to the conversation by demonstrating how digital affect informs both online and offline lived experiences and by establishing the contestatory possibilities of participating in digital communities built around emotional sentiment. indeed, the concept of “coming out of the fog” of imperialism and white saviorism in relation to international adoption, can serve as a model from which to better understand the online community building and digital meaning making of other transnational youth diasporas that result from political and state violence. still, this study is not without its limitations. although both ngg and adoptees with guatemalan roots boast nearly 1,000 members each, it is important to recognize that this is only a tiny fraction of the total central american adoptee diaspora. as such, future research might consider mailto:topacademicjournals@gmail.com american journal of art and communication vol.6, issue 5; september-october 2021; 1252 columbia rd nw, washington dc, united states https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac; mail: topacademicjournals@gmail.com 15 | american journal of art and communication | https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac or compare the emotional affects of both digitally active and nondigitally active transnational/racial adoptees, as well as consider the role that generational differences and/or gender play in the dynamics of adoptee community building and cultural identity negotiation. references akindes, f. y. (2003). methodology as lived experience: rhizomatic ethnography in hawai’i. in p. d. murphy & m. m. kraidy (eds.), global media studies: ethnographic perspectives (pp. 147–164). new york, ny: routledge. aparicio, a., bolivar, a., chávez, a., feliciano-santos, s., guerra, s., pérez, g. . . . zavella, p. (2022). introduction. in a. e. chavéz & g. m. pérez (eds.), ethnographic refusals, unruly latinidades (pp. xiii–xxxv). albuquerque: university of new mexico press. aziz, a. (2022). affective networked space: polymedia affordances and transnational digital communication among the rohingya diaspora. international journal of communication, 16, 4073–4094. baym, n. (2006). find the quality in qualitative research. in d. silver & a. massanari (eds.), critical cybercultures studies (pp. 79–87). new york: new york university press. boyd, d. (2010). social networks sites as networked publics. in z. papacharissi (ed.), a networked self: identity, community, and culture on social networking sites (pp. 39–58). new york, ny: routledge. brice, a. (2019, july 9). staffer’s search for birth mom reveals dark history of guatemalan adoption. berkeley news. retrieved from https://news.berkeley.edu/2019/07/09/gemma-givens-nextgeneration-guatemala/ briggs, l. (2012). somebody’s children: the politics of transracial and transnational adoption. durham, nc: duke university press. briggs, l. (2020). taking children: a history of american terror. oakland: university of california press. coutin, s. b. (2016). exiled home: salvadoran transnational youth in the aftermath of violence. durham, nc: duke university press. döveling, k. (2015). emotion regulation in bereavement: searching for and finding emotional support in social network sites. new review of hypermedia and multimedia, 21(1–2), 106–122. doi:10.1080/13614568.2014.983558 mailto:topacademicjournals@gmail.com american journal of art and communication vol.6, issue 5; september-october 2021; 1252 columbia rd nw, washington dc, united states https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac; mail: topacademicjournals@gmail.com 16 | american journal of art and communication | https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac döveling, k., harju, a. a., & sommer, d. (2018). from mediatized emotion to digital affect cultures: new technologies and global flows of emotion. social media + society, 4(1), 1–11. doi:10.1177/2056305117743141 eng, d. (2010). the feeling of kinship: queer liberalism and the racialization of intimacy. durham, nc: duke university press. farquhar, l. (2012). performing and interpreting identity through facebook imagery. convergence: the international journal of research into new media technologies, 19(4), 446–471. doi:10.1177/1354856512459838 gordon, a. (2008). ghostly matters: haunting and the sociological imagination. minneapolis: university of minnesota press. gray, m. (2009). out in the country: youth, media, and queer visibility in rural america. new york: new york university press. hall, s. (1990). cultural identity and diaspora. in j. rutherford (ed.), identity (pp. 222–237). london, uk: lawrence & wishart. honig, e. a. (2005). phantom lives, narratives of possibility. in t. a. volkman (ed.), cultures of transnational adoption (pp. 213–222). durham, nc: duke university press. kim, e. (2010). adopted territory: transnational korean adoptees and the politics of belonging. durham, nc: duke university press. mckee, k. (2019). disrupting kinship: transnational politics of korean adoption in the united states. champaign: university of illinois press. menjívar, c. (2002). living in two worlds? guatemalan-origin children in the u.s. and emerging transnationalism. journal of ethnic and migration studies, 28(3), 531–552. doi:10.1080/13691830220146590 merritt, m. (2021). adoptees online: community-building, collective affect, and a new generation of activists. adoption & culture, 9(2), 219–246. doi:10.1353/ado.2021.0024 mailto:topacademicjournals@gmail.com american journal of art and communication vol.6, issue 5; september-october 2021; 1252 columbia rd nw, washington dc, united states https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac; mail: topacademicjournals@gmail.com 17 | american journal of art and communication | https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac nolan, r. (2019, april). destined for export: the troubled legacy of guatemalan adoptees. harper’s magazine. retrieved from https://harpers.org/archive/2019/04/destined-for-export-guatemalanadoptions/ o’dwyer, j. (2021, september 17). guatemala launches new program to help adoptees access records. international newswire. retrieved from https://www.einnews.com/pr_news/551478929/guatemalalaunches-new-program-to-helpadoptees-access-records papacharissi, z. (2014). affective publics. new york, ny: oxford university press. papacharissi, z. (2015). affective publics and structures of storytelling: sentiment, events, and mediality. information, communication & society, 19(3), 307–324. doi:10.1080/1369118x.2015.1109697 park nelson, k. (2007). “loss is more than sadness”: reading dissent in transracial adoption, melodrama in the language of blood and first person plural. adoption & culture, 1(1), 101–128. doi:10.1353/ado.2007.0006 parks, m. r. (2010). social network sites as virtual communities. in z. papacharissi (ed.), a networked self: identity, community, and culture on social networking sites (pp. 105–123). new york, ny: routledge. ramos, m. (2021, october 5). the way to lift your activism. intercountry adoptee voices. retrieved from https://intercountryadopteevoices.com/2021/10/05/community-building-in-adoption-andadoptee-spaces/ rajabi, s. (2021). all my friends live in my computer: trauma, tactical media, and meaning. new brunswick, nj: rutgers university press. rossi, n. (2022). hybrid lives: the digitally mediated identity of a salvadoran adoptee in the united states. latino studies, 20(1), 50–66. doi:10.1057/s41276-021-00333-4 sandvig, c., & hargittai, e. (2015). how to think about digital research. in c. sandvig & e. hargittai (eds.), digital research confidential: the secrets of studying behavior online (pp. 1–28). cambridge, ma: mit press. sharma, d., & tygstrup, f. (eds.). (2015). structures of feeling: affectivity and the study of culture. berlin, germany: de gruyter. stoler, a. l. (ed.). (2006). haunted by empire: geographies of intimacy in north american history. durham, nc: duke university press. mailto:topacademicjournals@gmail.com american journal of art and communication vol.6, issue 5; september-october 2021; 1252 columbia rd nw, washington dc, united states https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac; mail: topacademicjournals@gmail.com 18 | american journal of art and communication | https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac trujillo, e. n. (2021). rupturing the silences: intergenerational construction of salvadoran immigrant war necronarratives. journal of latino/latin american studies, 11(1), 75–92. doi:10.18085/15499502.11.1.75 van dijck, j. (2013). the culture of connectivity: a critical history of social media. new york, ny: oxford university press. varzally, a. (2017). children of reunion: vietnamese adoptions and the politics of family migrations. chapel hill: university of north carolina press. wilding, r., & winarnita, m. (2022). affect, creativity and migrant belonging. communication, culture and critique, 15(2), 283–289. doi:10.1093/ccc/tcac015 williams, r. (1977). marxism and literature. new york, ny: oxford university press. yue, c., santizo-malafronti, c., & vazquez-kelly, e. (hosts). (2020). coming out of the fog: transracial international adoptees on abolition (no. 20). in divided families [podcast]. retrieved from https://soundcloud.com/dividedfamiliespodcast/ep-20-coming-out-of-the-fog-w-meghan-kellychrissantizo-malafronti-and-eleanor-vasquez-kelly mailto:topacademicjournals@gmail.com disclosing hearing loss: managing boundaries surrounding a stigmatized identity american journal of art and communication vol.6, issue 2; march-april 2021; 1252 columbia rd nw, washington dc, united states https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac; mail: topacademicjournals@gmail.com 10 | american journal of art and communication | https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac the risks and rewards of disclosure: what to consider when deciding to share your hearing loss john smith, phd, jane doe, ms, mary johnson, ba, university of dayton, usa abstract: disclosure is the intentional sharing of personal information about oneself. for individuals with disabilities, the decision to disclose can be complex and challenging. this study examines disclosure decisions for deaf or hard of hearing (hoh) individuals, exploring factors that influence the choice to disclose as well as decisions surrounding how they disclose about their disability. keywords: disclosure, disability, deaf introduction disclosure occurs when an individual intentionally shares personal information about himself or herself that reveals something not previously known (charmaz, 1991; wheeless, 1978). disclosure allows for intimacy to develop in an interpersonal relationship (wheeless, 1978) but also poses certain risks such as negative reactions to disclosure, rejection, vulnerability, and stigma (caughlin et al., 2008; charmaz, 1991). for individuals with disabilities or who are attempting to “pass” as ablebodied, the choice to disclose is fraught with additional challenges as individuals in this population attempt to avoid the potential risks of disclosure but often need to disclose to obtain necessary accommodations or to allow for a successful interaction (charmaz, 1991). this study will examine disclosure decisions for one population of individuals with disabilities, individuals who are deaf or hard of hearing (hoh), by exploring factors that influence the choice to disclose as well as decisions surrounding how they disclose about their disability once they have chosen to. disclosure decisions there are many decisions involved in the disclosure process for disabled individuals. one such decision includes whether they want to disclose their disability at all. members of stigmatized groups “face the difficult question of when to disclose their identity and when to closet it” (hecht, jackson, & pitts, 2005, p. 34) as they attempt to manage the impressions others may have of them (goffman, 1959). given that u.s. culture, and much of global culture, sees fully able bodies as the “normal” or “average” body establishing a norm of ablebodiedness, individuals with disabilities are often perceived as less than normal or not fully human (goodley, 2017). stone (1995) discusses this “myth of bodily perfection” and the negative implications of this myth as it discourages those with disabilities from disclosing to avoid being seen as “impaired” (p. 413). as goodley (2017) explains, “an individual becomes disabled when they fail to meet the standards of ableism” (p. 94). because of this, “disabled people are often cast as broken individuals perhaps not mailto:topacademicjournals@gmail.com american journal of art and communication vol.6, issue 2; march-april 2021; 1252 columbia rd nw, washington dc, united states https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac; mail: topacademicjournals@gmail.com 11 | american journal of art and communication | https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac individuals at all” (goodley, 2017, p. 94). thus, disclosing about a disability places the individual at risk for stigma (goffman, 1963). not only can disclosure of a disability increase the risk of stigma, it can also harm self-esteem, strain relationships, or be met with judgment and even rejection (charmaz, 1991; goffman, 1963; thompson-ebanks & jarman, 2018). additionally, losing a sense of autonomy over their own bodies and health information presents another disclosure risk. disclosure about a disability involves the loss of privacy surrounding personal health as disabled individuals (unlike ablebodied individuals) are often asked to “reveal normally private information about their health, bodies, sexuality, or personal habits” because of their disabilities (braithwaite, 1991, pp. 254–255) or in response to providing “proof” that they have a disability (matthews & harrington, 2000; southall, jennings, & gagné, 2011). when deciding whether to disclose, the risks of disclosure are often weighed against the risks of not disclosing such as gaining access to accommodations (socially, physically, or professionally) they need (blockmans, 2015; lash & helme, 2020; thompson-ebanks & jarman, 2018). najarian (2008) discusses this as she examines “coming out of the disability closet” among deaf college women (p. 118). when faced with the choice to reveal their deafness to receive classroom accommodations (e.g., transcripts, microphones, interpreters) or to not tell anyone to avoid being stigmatized, disabled students often choose not to disclose (najarian, 2008). ultimately, disabled individuals often perceive that stigma can negatively affect the learning environment more so than not receiving accommodations (blockmans, 2015; hart & williams, 1995; najarian, 2008; thompson-ebanks & jarman, 2018). in addition to forgoing accommodations, not disclosing about a disability may lead to forfeiture of potential social support or shared community (bos, kanner, muris, janssen, & mayer, 2009). thus, the decision to disclose has potential impacts across various contexts (i.e., socially, educationally, professionally) as participants attempt to avoid stigma often at the expense of accommodations in these contexts. because of stigma prompted by ablebodied norms, many disabled individuals put on a façade of “normality” and choose to closet their disabilities to engage in impression management in attempts to avoid stigma (davis, 2005; goffman, 1963; goodley, 2017; najarian, 2008). many disabled individuals attempt to walk a line between gaining access to whatever accommodations they may need and “passing” as ablebodied to avoid stigma (bitman & john, 2019; blockmans, 2015; cureton, 2018; goffman, 1963; thompson-ebanks & jarman, 2018) and often choose not to disclose their disabilities unless certain reasons demand disclosure (matthews, 1994). if they do choose to disclose, disabled individuals often also face a “burden of proof,” which ultimately requires additional disclosure beyond that of the disability itself as others might question the legitimacy of their disabilities (lash & helme, 2020; matthews & harrington, 2000) or the need for accommodations (davis, 2005). as such, the disclosure decision is a complicated one in which disabled individuals often must weigh stigma and potential invasions of privacy against accommodation needs. hard of hearing and deafness as a disability one such population who might attempt to conceal their disability or pass as ablebodied is individuals who are d/deaf or hard of hearing (hoh). affecting many, hearing loss is one of the most common chronic disabilities in the united states, as approximately one of every eight americans aged 12 or older experiences some degree of mailto:topacademicjournals@gmail.com american journal of art and communication vol.6, issue 2; march-april 2021; 1252 columbia rd nw, washington dc, united states https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac; mail: topacademicjournals@gmail.com 12 | american journal of art and communication | https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac hearing loss (national institute on deafness and other communication disorders, 2020). given ablebodied standards, society views hearing loss as an “impairment,” operating from a medical model of disability (goodley, 2017) and stigmatizing those who are d/deaf and hoh (bitman & john, 2019). this stigmatization takes various forms, including others pitying them, viewing them as not worth the time or effort, labeling them as “not normal,” and viewing them as less capable or intelligent (lash & helme, 2020). to avoid such stigmatization, many d/deaf and hoh individuals conceal their disability or attempt to “pass” as having “normal” hearing (bitman & john, 2019; eichengreen, almog, & broyer, 2016). thus, it is important to explore how this disability is managed through communication processes, such as disclosure, particularly as this population attempts to manage stigma. the hoh and d/deaf population is unique given the variability of identities that exist within this group. additionally, this population is different from many other types of disabilities given the cultural divide that exists between the various ways in which members of this population might identify. within this population, the way individuals chose to identify is determined on whether the individual identifies as culturally deaf. an individual who embraces deaf culture, identifies as deaf (capital “d”), whereas an individual who does not identifies as hoh or deaf (lower case “d”; beckner & helme, 2018; skelton & valentine, 2003). hoh and deaf individuals often do not identify with deaf culture and attempt to integrate into mainstream society, which often includes embracing mainstream ablebodied norms (beckner & helme, 2018; lash & helme, 2020). as this study examines the disclosure process surrounding disability, the participants in this study identified as hoh or deaf and operated from more of a medical-model understanding of their disability (framing disability as an individual failing that needs fixed or cured; goodley, 2017). these participants were more likely to conceal their disability to pass as “normal” or ablebodied and, thus, must make decisions about how and when to disclose (beckner & helme, 2018; hole, 2007; lash & helme, 2020). given the variability in how participants within this population identify, throughout this study the disability itself is referred to as “hearing loss,” while all participants are referred to by their individual preferences (most participants identified as “hard of hearing” or “deaf”) in an effort to prioritize participant autonomy over identity labels (goodley, 2017) and privilege participant voices and experiences. communication privacy management communication privacy management theory (cpm) can help inform our discussions of how individuals with disabilities make decisions about disclosing their disabilities and the information surrounding the disabilities (e.g., how they obtained the disabilities, what it means to their lives, what accommodations they need). cpm understands personal information as something that is owned. it examines how and why people disclose private information by using the metaphor of boundaries that separate personal information from public to illustrate the tension between telling and withholding private information (petronio, 1991, 2002). boundary permeability helps determine whether private information is shared; the more permeable the boundary, the more easily crossed it is with information more readily shared (petronio & durham, 2008). in the context of disability, boundaries surrounding information about the disability, as well as the disability itself, must be managed as disabled individuals decide how permeable those boundaries are. boundaries are regulated to cope with or prevent vulnerability and disclosure risks and allow the individual to control private information, such as information about a disability (petronio, 2002, 2007; smith & brunner, 2017). mailto:topacademicjournals@gmail.com american journal of art and communication vol.6, issue 2; march-april 2021; 1252 columbia rd nw, washington dc, united states https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac; mail: topacademicjournals@gmail.com 13 | american journal of art and communication | https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac decisions surrounding boundary regulation are rule-based and how/when information will be shared is determined by two types of criteria: core and catalyst criteria. core criteria (i.e., cultural expectations, gender tendencies, personality characteristics) tend to be relatively stable, whereas catalyst criteria (i.e., situational conditions, motivational goals, emotional needs, risk/benefit ratio) might cause a change in the privacy rules a person uses in various circumstances (petronio, 2007). unique core criteria (e.g., norms surrounding ablebodiedness, identity) and catalyst criteria (e.g., accommodation needs, risk of stigma, social support needs) might drive the decision to disclose about a disability. cpm has been used to examine the management of a positive social identity at university (see blockmans, 2015), the core and catalyst criteria that drive self-disclosure of disability in the workplace (see smith & brunner, 2017), and disclosure of a disability via social media (see furr, carreiro, & mcarthur, 2016). additionally, multiple studies examine parental disclosure about a child with a disability (see copeland & lasater, 2018; hays & butauski, 2018). however, the use of cpm to examine disability disclosure is still relatively limited. further examination of the decision criteria (both core and catalyst) that guide decisions to disclose about a disability provides insight into the communication processes that disabled individuals use to manage their disabilities. as such, this study examines the criteria that influence the boundary management process for hoh and deaf individuals as they decide whether to disclose. rq1: what criteria are considered as hoh and deaf individuals determine how to regulate or manage the boundary surrounding information about their hearing loss? disclosure of a disability involves additional decisions beyond the initial choice of whether to disclose. once an individual with a disability chooses or is forced to disclose about his or her disability, the individual then must decide how to disclose. caughlin and colleagues (2008) noted that “no single disclosure message type is the most effective” (p. 677). in fact, the appropriate avenue of disclosure is often unique to the individuals, contexts, and relationships involved (dematteo et al., 2002). thus, the disclosure process is a multifaceted one, fraught with various risks and additional decisions on top of the initial disclosure decision. understanding not only what influences the choice to disclose, but how hoh or deaf individuals disclose once they have chosen to do so can help us better understand the ways in which they navigate disclosure. furthermore, as communication privacy management is a process (bute & tennley, 2010), it is important to not only examine what drives the decision to disclose but also explore how that decision is enacted through communication. rq2: upon choosing to disclose, how do hoh or deaf individuals disclose about their hearing loss? method this study used qualitative interviews to allow the participants to share their perspectives and provide an avenue for in-depth exploration of their experiences (lindlof & taylor, 2002), examining the factors that influenced whether they disclosed as well as how they went about engaging in disclosure. as many investigations concerning disabled individuals are done from an ablebodied researcher’s perspective (braithwaite, 1991; matthews & harrington, 2000), this approach helped ensure that the voices of the population being studied were captured fully. furthermore, i have a moderate-severe hearing loss and fit into the population being studied, allowing me, as the researcher, to engage in the discussions with the participants as opposed to talking about the participants mailto:topacademicjournals@gmail.com american journal of art and communication vol.6, issue 2; march-april 2021; 1252 columbia rd nw, washington dc, united states https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac; mail: topacademicjournals@gmail.com 14 | american journal of art and communication | https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac and how they view the disclosure process (beckner & helme, 2018; ellis, kiesinger, & tillmann-healy,1997; lash & helme, 2020). participants participants recruited for this study had to be at least 18 years of age and have at least a moderate hearing loss (41–55 decibels of hearing loss), as it is at this degree of hearing loss that people start to have trouble following typical conversation at a normal speech level (american speechlanguage-hearing association, 2022; center for disease control & prevention, 2022). additionally, as the study was examining the disclosure process, the disability needed to be concealable; thus, participants needed to use oral communication (not rely solely on american sign language). a total of 30 participants participated in this study. the final age range for participants in this study ranged from 18 to 79 years of age (m = 53; sd = 17.519). eighteen of the participants were male (60%), 12 were female (40%), and only 2 of 30 participants (5%) were college students. of the 30 participants, 28 were caucasian/white (93.3%), 1 was hispanic (3.3%), and 1 was african american (3.3%). most of the participants reported having a profound hearing loss (n = 17; 56.7%), two reported a moderate loss (6.7%), four reported a moderate-severe loss (13.3%), four reported a severe loss (13.3%), and three reported a severe profound loss (10%). additionally, half of the participants reported having been hoh or deaf since birth (n = 15). the others varied in terms of age of onset of the hearing loss (m = 9.7; sd = 16.549). finally, most participants did not associate with the deaf community (n = 22; 73.3%), whereas eight reported some level of involvement (26.6%). all participants were assigned a pseudonym to ensure anonymity. procedures once approved by the institutional review board, recruitment was done by using flyers and through network sampling. using flyers, advertising for the study was done at local audiologists’ offices, the local chapters of the hearing loss association of america, and the disability resources center at a large, public university. network sampling was done by encouraging interview participants to spread the word about the study to others who might also be willing to participate. individuals who were interested in participating contacted the researcher by e-mail to set up an interview time and location that was convenient for them. before all interviews, the participants signed an informed consent document. interviews ranged in length from 12 to 80 minutes (m = 31 minutes; sd = 15.08), with the single 12minute interview being an anomaly; the participant simply chose not to share much, despite interviewer follow-up and probing questions. the one-on-one, in-depth interviews were conducted using an interactive interview style to encourage natural conversation and comfortable disclosure (ellis et al., 1997). given that i fit into the population being studied, i was able to interact with the participants in the conversations about choices surrounding the disclosure of their hearing loss, sharing disclosures of my own. this allowed for a reciprocal disclosure process, making the interviewees feel like equal participants in the interactions and more comfortable opening up about challenging or difficult experiences. like a normal conversation, my having shared in similar experiences prompted many participants to expand on their answers as we discussed those common experiences and their similarities and differences. this created a natural dialogue in the interview and helped eliminate any researcher-participant power dynamics (beckner & helme, 2018; ellis et al., 1997; lash & helme, 2020). i worked from a list of questions mailto:topacademicjournals@gmail.com american journal of art and communication vol.6, issue 2; march-april 2021; 1252 columbia rd nw, washington dc, united states https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac; mail: topacademicjournals@gmail.com 15 | american journal of art and communication | https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac that acted as a flexible interview protocol to guide conversation and prompt participant narratives about their experiences. the flexible interview protocol included questions that asked about how participants usually disclose about their hearing loss, how they make decisions to disclose (or not), difficulties they have experienced in dealing with disclosure, and the potential risks or costs they perceived to be associated with disclosure. again, my having experienced life with a hearing loss myself aided in the development of this interview protocol; i was able to use experiences of my own to prompt or develop questions (e.g., “i once had to disclose because of x situation . . . can you tell me about any similar experiences if you have any?”). this also helped eliminate researcher-participant power dynamics and built rapport as i was sharing experiences of my own, making myself equally vulnerable. furthermore, as i am a part of the marginalized group being interviewed, i was not an outside researcher exploiting disability experience for my own gain (goodley, 2017). all of the participant interviews were recorded and then transcribed. these transcriptions were first coded to identify which sections of the interviews answered which research question(s). these sections were then coded, using open coding to allow for major themes or categories of information to arise from the data (creswell, 2013; lindlof & taylor, 2002). with open coding, i was able to identify any major patterns or concepts that were present throughout the interviews across participants, resulting in preliminary themes for each research question. these initial themes were then examined further using axial coding, identifying any overlapping or connected themes and allowing them to be collapsed into more refined categories with deeper meanings (creswell, 2013; lindlof & taylor, 2002). two processes were used to ensure the trustworthiness of the data. first, a cocoder read the transcripts and drafted up themes that she recognized. we sat down and compared coding results, discussing any variation, and reaching consensus surrounding the final themes. second, member checking with two different participants was used to make sure that the themes i had identified accurately portrayed participant experiences. one participant who engaged in member checking valued hearing loss as part of her identity and was more likely to disclose, whereas the other participant was less likely to disclose about her hearing loss. because of their differences in perception, they related to different themes. however, after explaining to each participant the others’ perceptions, both participants agreed with the themes presented as they felt they helped capture the wide variety of experiences. results participants identified multiple criteria that influence their choices to disclose as they manage boundaries surrounding their hearing loss (rq1). furthermore, on deciding to disclose, participants must decide how to disclose their hearing loss and what information to disclose (rq2). the themes that arose in answer to each of these research questions are discussed below. disclosure criteria (rq1) participants identified two core criteria (i.e., centrality of hearing loss to identity and cultural norms surrounding ablebodiedness) and three catalyst criteria (i.e., the situation/context, interpersonal considerations, and the risks of not disclosing) as they decided how to manage the boundaries surrounding information about their hearing loss. core criteria 1: centrality of hearing loss to identity. mailto:topacademicjournals@gmail.com american journal of art and communication vol.6, issue 2; march-april 2021; 1252 columbia rd nw, washington dc, united states https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac; mail: topacademicjournals@gmail.com 16 | american journal of art and communication | https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac several of the participants expressed little or no concern about disclosing their hearing loss—the boundary surrounding information about their hearing loss was fairly permeable or open because hearing loss was an important part of their identities, a core criteria. tom stated that he just lets people know that he cannot hear: “i don’t try to hide my disability.” participants who felt it was best to share their hearing loss early in the communication interaction or when they first meet someone seemed to see their hearing loss as an important component of their identities. denise illustrated this as she explained, “i’m just real comfortable with me. it’s who i am. i’ve been this way all my life.” echoing this sentiment, ron stated, “i don’t care if you are blind, deaf, one arm . . . you have to let them know who you are.” however, several participants indicated that it had taken them time to become comfortable with this identity. both ted and jane reflected on how, as they got older, they worried about hiding their hearing loss less and began to accept it as a part of who they are. jane discussed how accepting her hearing loss as part of her identity and being open about it has been beneficial to her overall happiness: “i changed my attitude and i’ve been much happier that way, not hiding my deafness as a part of who i am.” overall, perceiving hearing loss as central to their identities was key for the participants who reported openly disclosing information about their hearing loss, making it a core criteria driving their disclosure decisions. core criteria 2: cultural norms of ablebodiedness although participants did discuss the importance of hearing loss to their identities, many participants also (contradicting themselves) discussed another core criteria in that they often choose not to disclose at all, when possible, to pass as “normal” and avoid stigma or difficult and invasive conversations. they explained that their default disclosure decision is to avoid opening up about their hearing loss unless they feel it is absolutely necessary—a core criterion driven by cultural norms of ablebodiedness that stigmatize those with disabilities. when talking about disclosing about her hearing loss, amy stated, if i don’t have to, i’m not going to bother. it’s not that i try to avoid it . . . i mean obviously i would love to avoid it. i’m more focused on understanding . . . if i understand, then i will avoid it. similarly, james does not share about his hearing loss “unless it comes up,” beth “tries not to make it a thing unless i actually have to tell them,” and karen only discloses “when i have to.” mary summed up her underlying rule behind sharing about her hearing loss: “if it doesn’t really come up as a problem, then i don’t see a need for disclosing it. it’s not to be deceptive, but there is no point in disclosing. it doesn’t figure into the equation.” thus, participants did overwhelmingly attempt to keep boundaries surrounding their hearing loss closed, if possible, a second core criteria (and one that contradicted the first core criteria), often to avoid complications or vulnerabilities driven by cultural norms of ablebodiedness. catalyst criteria 1: the situation/context matters as they decided how to manage boundaries surrounding their hearing loss, participants discussed the ways in which the situation or context mattered, a catalyst criterion for disclosure decisions. for example, participants distinguished between disclosing to a group versus to one person. brooke stated, “if you are one on one, it is much easier. i don’t know if i would be comfortable sharing that in front of a group.” expanding on this, natalie emphasized the difficulty associated with opening up to ask for accommodations for hearing loss: “people don’t understand how brave someone is to stand in front of a group and tell them that i need you to do this for me. it mailto:topacademicjournals@gmail.com american journal of art and communication vol.6, issue 2; march-april 2021; 1252 columbia rd nw, washington dc, united states https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac; mail: topacademicjournals@gmail.com 17 | american journal of art and communication | https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac takes some courage.” explaining how the situation plays a role, beth shared a story about a dinner with her husband’s coworkers who did not know about her hearing loss: i just didn’t feel comfortable enough telling them, but i had a very hard time at dinner . . . i hardly spoke a word because . . . you know, there was only 3–4 of us, but still . . . they were talking fast, not looking at me when they were talking, and we were trying to eat and look, and i hardly heard a word of the conversation, but i wasn’t comfortable enough to tell them, hey i’m hearing impaired, look at me because i just met them for the first time at a business dinner so that moment was very awkward. in that instance, beth did not feel comfortable in sharing about her hearing loss, highlighting how each situation is evaluated separately, something participants agreed on. catalyst criteria 2: interpersonal considerations another type of catalyst criterion influencing participants as they made decisions about boundaries surrounding their hearing loss is the nature of the relationship with the person with whom they are interacting. many participants emphasized that if it is a person they probably will not see again, they typically do not disclose. james noted this as he talked about how he will avoid sharing his hearing loss with a person he will most likely never see again: “i’ll just smile and say yeah . . . whatever. yeah, there’s no point in getting into a whole thing . . . my life story with this person i’m never going to see again.” brooke explained the other end of the spectrum: “if i really like that person and want to continue a friendship with that person, then i want them to know who i am . . . this is who i am and i come with a hearing loss.” as such, many participants considered the potential for an ongoing relationship with the other person as they considered how to manage boundaries surrounding their hearing loss. although the potential for a relationship can be an important factor in the decision to disclose, the participants’ perceptions of the other person in the interaction can also play a role in the boundary management process. ted explained that he is “making a judgment about that person” when he is trying to decide whether to “stop them and let them know about the hearing loss.” nicole emphasized how complex this process can be: i think the first thing is determining how somebody is going to react . . . assessing their personality and whether or not they are understanding, or comforting, or nonjudgmental . . . that’s important. so knowing somebody well enough to make that decision about disclosing . . . knowing somebody well enough to be able to assess those types of things. other participants reported examining the social standing or power in the relationship with the other person. if the participants felt confident or in control in the relationship, they were more willing to disclose their hearing loss. however, if the other person in the relationship is a superior, opening up becomes more difficult: “if i have to tell my bosses then i might be a little shy about it. it depends on where i stand socially. like how superior i am” (beth). some of this relationship power dynamic boils down to how comfortable the participant is in the relationship. natalie explained this: “i think a level of safety is involved. trust and safety when it comes to who i’m comfortable telling.” overall, participants discussed several interpersonal catalyst criteria that shaped the management of boundaries surrounding their hearing loss— the potential for a relationship, judgments about the other person, and the power dynamics involved. mailto:topacademicjournals@gmail.com american journal of art and communication vol.6, issue 2; march-april 2021; 1252 columbia rd nw, washington dc, united states https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac; mail: topacademicjournals@gmail.com 18 | american journal of art and communication | https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac catalyst criteria 3: risks of not disclosing in making decisions about how to manage the boundaries surrounding their hearing loss, participants also pointed out considering risks associated with not disclosing as a catalyst criterion. many participants shared about their hearing loss to let the other person know what accommodations or which type of communication behaviors will help (e.g., looking at them, speaking slowly and clearly). without this, several participants felt as if they would be more likely to misunderstand something. rebecca stated that she usually shares about her hearing loss because “it just makes it easier. that way they look at me when they talk to me. if you don’t tell them, you won’t get the information you need.” matt also reported that sometimes disclosure of his hearing loss is vital to successful communication: if i feel like it is going to hold me back . . . them not knowing that i’m going to need them to repeat something or say something over again, then i will tell them immediately, like right off the bat. nicole explained how she assesses whether her work or schooling would be affected by not opening up. she talked about how she will “analyze the situation and do like a pro/con list” in deciding whether to disclose. because of the potential for miscommunication, not disclosing their hearing loss can be a risk for participants, especially in work or school situations. being perceived as snobby, stuck up, or angry are other risks that participants associated with not sharing that they have a hearing loss. when participants do not respond to others or come across as ignoring someone, they often get perceived as being unfriendly. ashley explained, “sometimes people think i’m one big stuck up because i’m not responding to them . . . and i’m not! i just don’t hear them.” similarly, both denise and rebecca told stories of how other people thought they were snobby until they found out that the participants just simply could not hear. nancy also discussed this as she stated, “oh i have learned the hard way . . . you are much better off telling. i don’t want people to think i’m stupid. i don’t want them to think i’m ignoring them or i am angry.” furthermore, adam explained that disclosure helps avoid anger on both fronts. by opening up about his hearing loss at work and asking for patience, he is able to help prevent customers from getting as frustrated with him when he cannot hear something. thus, participants were quick to point out that there are risks to not sharing about their hearing loss and these risks factor into decisions surrounding boundary management. disclosing about the hearing loss (rq2) when participants do choose to open boundaries surrounding their hearing loss, they then must decide how to go about doing so. rq2 examined the communicative process of disclosure to explore how participants enact the choice to open these boundaries. four themes were identified as participants discussed how they disclose their hearing loss: (1) delaying disclosure, (2) minimizing the hearing loss, (3) using disclosure to educate, and (4) being other-centered. delaying disclosure many participants talked about delaying disclosure, often as an impression management strategy, both personally and professionally. for example, james explained the anxiety associated with meeting someone new and important: “i get very self-conscious about it. i try to make an impression or something . . . so i don’t want to start with my hearing.” another way in which this delay becomes an important tool for impression management mailto:topacademicjournals@gmail.com american journal of art and communication vol.6, issue 2; march-april 2021; 1252 columbia rd nw, washington dc, united states https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac; mail: topacademicjournals@gmail.com 19 | american journal of art and communication | https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac is on the job market. participants talked about delaying disclosing about their hearing loss until after they got the job and could prove their proficiency. beth demonstrated this as she explained that she did not want her employers to “think that i was incompetent because of my hearing loss.” because of this, she delayed the disclosure about her hearing loss until her employers could see that she “can do all the things that everyone else can do.” another major reason participants reported delaying disclosure had to do with wanting to demonstrate effective communication skills before disclosing about the hearing loss. many participants felt that if they can show proficiency in communicating before disclosing about the hearing loss, the other person or people in the interaction will be less likely to evaluate the hearing loss negatively. morgan explained, “i won’t tell them right away because it scares them and then they won’t talk to me. so i just communicate with them first to let them know that i can communicate with them, then i’ll tell them.” beth also talked about the importance of allowing the other person to get to know her and have a conversation with her before she tells them about her hearing loss. she explained that timing is everything because if she must disclose too early, “they don’t know me personally, then i get that whole i can’t talk to her anymore because she’s deaf and i don’t know how to talk to her.” by using this delay strategy and strategically timing the disclosure, many participants try to overcome potential negative reactions to their hearing loss and influence others’ responses to their hearing loss. minimizing the hearing loss when participants disclose their hearing loss, many of them reported minimizing or downplaying the severity of their hearing loss. amy (who has a severe hearing loss) flat-out stated that, “i try to minimize it. i would just say that i don’t hear very well, can you repeat that?” beth (who has a moderate to severe loss) explained that “i usually say, just so you know, i have a slight hearing loss. i hear just fine, but you may need to repeat yourself or speak a little louder sometimes, but it is nothing.” additionally, participants reported using words like “hearing loss” instead of “hearing impairment” because it seemed less serious (brooke) or telling people that they were simply “hard of hearing” instead of “deaf.” ted stated, “you use the word deaf and they think that you can’t hear anything so i say hard of hearing so it lets them know to get my attention when they are talking to me.” another way the participants reported minimizing their hearing loss is through joking about the subject when disclosing. instead of outright telling people that they are hard of hearing, several participants talked about how they will “hint” that they have a hearing loss. beth explained, “i have joked with them saying my ears suck, sorry. maybe they put the two and two together and are like hmm . . . she does talk differently and she says her ears suck so maybe she has a hearing loss.” by joking, hinting, or downplaying their hearing loss, many participants discussed minimizing the severity of their hearing loss once they have decided to disclose. educating the other another way in which some participants engage in the disclosure process is as a chance to educate or raise awareness on the topic of hearing loss. many participants talked about being open to questions surrounding their hearing loss as a part of the disclosure process. for example, adam stated that, “if anybody asks me anything, i initially just tell them whatever i can to the best of my ability.” similarly, beth, who works with kids and often gets questions about her hearing aids, discussed how she does not mind answering her student’s questions: “i used to just kind of dismiss it, but now i will take out my hearing aid and i will show them and tell them that mailto:topacademicjournals@gmail.com american journal of art and communication vol.6, issue 2; march-april 2021; 1252 columbia rd nw, washington dc, united states https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac; mail: topacademicjournals@gmail.com 20 | american journal of art and communication | https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac these help me hear.” if the question is deemed appropriate or genuine, most participants reported having no problem answering the question, but if the participant feels the question is irrelevant or inappropriate, he or she will either ignore the question or tell the person to leave him or her alone. participants also talked about using disclosure to educate others about appropriate or helpful communication behaviors. for example, ron stated that he often tells people, “i read lips so i need to see your face,” and matt also is sure to ask for people to look at him and to “repeat things.” natalie reported that she asks people to “look at me and also speak slowly and clearly. i may ask you to repeat something or say it in a different way so you have to be patient.” even when they disclose to educate others on these helpful communication behaviors, many participants reported that they often also tell others to treat them as normally as possible. beth explained this when she said that she often tells people to “treat me for who i am without the hearing loss. you know, accommodate me when i need it, but don’t treat me any differently.” overall, participants reported sometimes using the disclosure process to educate others about hearing loss itself as well as helpful communication behaviors to use. being other-centered the final way in which participants discussed how they disclose was by addressing their concerns for the other person in the interaction. to highlight this, participants talked about apologizing as part of their disclosures, even if they recognized that they should not have to apologize. nancy reported, “i kick myself because i often say i’m sorry, i’m deaf, i can’t hear you. and i’m like why am i saying i’m sorry?” other participants also reported using the words “i’m sorry” to preface the disclosure, highlighting their concern for the other person and the possible “inconvenience” or “discomfort” that may be caused by their hearing loss. mark explained this as he shared his decision process for how to disclose his hearing loss to the other person: i’ve got to think about the other person, in their shoes, because they may be intimidated or thinking, “crap, i don’t want to say the wrong thing” . . . that sort of thing. so i try to think about the other person. natalie also clarified that her disclosure process is often “other-person” centered: “i tell them, it is because what you say is important to me and i want to be able to hear everything you say. that lets them know that what they say is important to you.” participants also discussed their feelings of responsibility to take the pressure off the other person in their disclosures. denise talked about disclosure as “a way of taking responsibility for my hearing loss” and making sure that the other person realizes that “it’s not that you aren’t speaking well, it’s just that i am hard of hearing.” sharing in this idea of taking responsibility, ashley talked about disclosure about her hearing loss as her job: “it is my job to help them understand my hearing loss. it is my responsibility to bridge the gap between the hearing person and my hard of hearing. it is my responsibility to tell them.” through their discussions of how they frame their disclosures as an apology or a chance to take responsibility for their hearing loss, many participants expressed a clear concern for the other person in the interaction. discussion through boundary management decisions, hoh and deaf individuals attempt to manage the risks of disclosing about a disability. this study examined hoh and deaf individuals, exploring the core and catalyst criteria that mailto:topacademicjournals@gmail.com american journal of art and communication vol.6, issue 2; march-april 2021; 1252 columbia rd nw, washington dc, united states https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac; mail: topacademicjournals@gmail.com 21 | american journal of art and communication | https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac shaped the decisions about the management or regulation of boundaries surrounding their hearing loss. additionally, this study also examined how participants enacted decisions to make the boundary surrounding their hearing loss open by exploring the communication process of disclosure and how the participants typically disclose their hearing loss. the boundary management process and decision of whether to disclose information about their hearing loss were driven by five major criteria—two core criteria and three catalyst criteria. the core criteria, centrality of hearing loss to identity and cultural norms of ablebodiedness, contradicted one another. participants simultaneously discussed that their hearing loss was a part of who they are, an identity it was important to be open about, and the need to avoid disclosure to pass as “normal.” in this paradox, we see the power of cultural norms for ablebodiedness highlighted. it appears their identities, or how they see themselves, are in constant tension with social norms that stigmatize those with disabilities. this tension between identity and ablebodied cultural norms further complicates the boundary regulation process for hoh and deaf individuals and potentially other disabilities or marginalized identity groups, as the opening of the boundary surrounding their disabilities is a form of coming out about a stigmatized identity (bos et al., 2009; corrigan et al., 2010; najarian, 2008). furthermore, given that disability identities are stigmatized identities, openly disclosing that identity can prove challenging, as individuals might have to combat internalized stigma in addition to the broader social stigma (goffman, 1963). even participants who personally saw hearing loss as central to their identities demonstrated difficulty in being open about those identities with others. they often discussed disclosure strategies such as delaying disclosure and minimizing their disability. they also emphasized the need to be other-centered in their disclosures, apologizing for their hearing loss as they disclosed, as they saw hearing loss as something that might inconvenience or cause discomfort for the other person, a form of internalized of stigma surrounding hearing loss (goffman, 1963). the need to apologize highlights the pervasiveness of ablebodied cultural norms as a core catalyst guiding the boundary regulation process as participants felt the need to make the disclosure more “palatable” to nondisabled others, even if they see hearing loss as central to who they are (the other core catalyst). participants also discussed disclosure as a way of taking “responsibility” for their hearing loss. they perceive the hearing loss as “their problem” (another phrasing that highlighted potential internalized stigma and ableism), and as such, it is their responsibility to disclose it to avoid any miscommunication. from a nondisabled perspective, the main goal in the communication interaction is to alleviate any potential discomfort experienced by the nondisabled individual, no matter the cost to the individual with the disability (braithwaite, 1991; thompson, 1982). therefore, at some point, the disclosure feels like a responsibility for the participants given the pressures they may feel from a society that values ablebodiedness to make the nondisabled person in the interaction more comfortable, despite the potential cost to the hoh or deaf individual, another form of internalized ableism that privileges the ablebodied identity. as such, the boundary management process again sits in this tension between these two core criteria—sharing who they are while simultaneously “taking responsibility” for that identity as an identity that others might perceive to be a burden, a perception that is influenced by ablebodied cultural norms. in addition to tensions between the two core criteria, there were tensions between core and catalyst criteria as well. because of the potential to be defined by their “disabled” identity, a stigmatized identity, many participants mailto:topacademicjournals@gmail.com american journal of art and communication vol.6, issue 2; march-april 2021; 1252 columbia rd nw, washington dc, united states https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac; mail: topacademicjournals@gmail.com 22 | american journal of art and communication | https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac stressed being strategic about how, when, to what extent, and to whom they disclose information about their hearing loss—all forms of catalyst criteria they used to guide boundary management decisions. being proud about one’s identity acted as core criteria guiding disclosure decisions and suggests that most hoh and deaf individuals would disclose more openly. however, because of the pervasiveness of stigma surrounding disability, many participants emphasized the need for situational or interpersonal judgment calls, often relying on the necessity of the disclosure. ultimately, they indicated that each disclosure is unique to the context, situation, and relationship involved (caughlin et al., 2008; dematteo et al., 2002; southall et al., 2011) and that they relied on catalyst criteria to guide their decisions to disclose. similarly, participants seemed driven to disclose as a way of taking “responsibility” for their hearing loss (influenced by the core criteria of cultural norms of ablebodiedness) but simultaneously reported being strategic, again relying on catalyst criteria, in their disclosure timing and approaches to avoid being defined by a stigmatized identity. as such, not only does contradiction occur between the core criteria that guide the boundary management process for hoh or deaf individuals but also between core and catalyst criteria. additionally, given the tension between the core criteria identified in this study (i.e., centrality of hearing loss to identity and ablebodied cultural norms), many participants ultimately relied on catalyst criteria to determine boundary management decisions. as with any study, this study has several limitations, some of which call for future research on this topic. the results of this study cannot be applied to all hoh or deaf participants, as not all hoh or deaf individuals feel the same way about disclosure. the participants in this study were willing to talk about their hearing loss—the interview participation was a process that required disclosure. thus, hoh or deaf individuals that were not willing to step forward to participate in this study may manage disclosure differently. furthermore, age of the hoh or deaf individuals as well as the age at which they lost their hearing might influence the disclosure of hearing loss. older individuals might manage disclosure of hearing loss differently since age and hearing loss often go hand in hand. furthermore, individuals who were born with a hearing loss might make choices about disclosure differently than individuals who lose their hearing later in life. finally, whether participants are a part of the deaf community is an important variable as those with access to a community of others who actively resist stigmatizing labels may feel differently about disclosing their hearing loss. it is also important to note that although this study focuses on hoh and deaf individuals, other marginalized identities might face similar struggles in boundary management processes as they experience similar tension between identity and broader cultural norms. other populations with stigmatized identities that require disclosure might experience tensions between the core and/or catalyst criteria guiding their boundary management decisions. such populations might include other types of disabilities, mental health conditions, sexual orientation, addiction (goffman, 1963) that might need to navigate disclosure to access accommodations, social support, or healthcare. given that boundary regulation surrounding stigmatized identities could impact access to healthcare (see corrigan et al., 2010; lash & helme, 2020), educational accommodations (see blockmans, 2015; hart & williams, 1995; najarian, 2008; thompson-ebanks & jarman, 2018), interpersonal interactions (see bos et al., 2009; braithwaite, 1991; charmaz, 1991; goffman, 1959), and workplace success (see smith & brunner, 2017; southall et al., 2011), mailto:topacademicjournals@gmail.com american journal of art and communication vol.6, issue 2; march-april 2021; 1252 columbia rd nw, washington dc, united states https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac; mail: topacademicjournals@gmail.com 23 | american journal of art and communication | https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac future research should continue to understand how these boundaries are managed as well as ways in which to make the disclosure process easier for those with stigmatized identities. individuals with stigmatized identities, such as hoh or deaf individuals, face disclosure decisions regularly as they navigate societal norms that place them at risk for negative reactions from others, rejection, and discrimination (caughlin et al., 2008; charmaz, 1991; goffman, 1963). in navigating these risks, hoh or deaf individuals often chose not to disclose about their disabilities because of cultural norms of ablebodiedness (a core criteria guiding their disclosure decisions), in the process potentially forfeiting accommodations or communication behaviors that might ease interactions. finding ways to ease the disclosure process for those who are hoh and deaf, and who have other disabilities, could go a long way in helping this population gain access to necessary accommodations and social support. furthermore, raising awareness and educating others about hearing loss, and disability more broadly, would go a long way in combatting or challenging social stigma and ablebodied norms (meisenbach, 2010; smith, 2011), ultimately decreasing the risks of disclosure for this population and increasing societal inclusivity. references american speech-language-hearing association. 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(2016). the disability closet: coming out, staying in, or deconstructing. in s. mor, n. ziv, a. kanter, a. eichengreen, & n. mizrachi (eds.), disability studies: a reader (pp. 299–311). jerusalem, israel: van leer institute. mailto:topacademicjournals@gmail.com american journal of art and communication vol.6, issue 2; march-april 2021; 1252 columbia rd nw, washington dc, united states https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac; mail: topacademicjournals@gmail.com 25 | american journal of art and communication | https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac ellis, c., kiesinger, c. e., & tillmann-healy, l. m. (1997). interactive interviewing: talking about emotional experience. in r. hertz (ed.), reflexivity and voice (pp. 119–149). thousand oaks, ca: sage publications. furr, j. b., carreiro, a., & mcarthur, j. a. (2016). strategic approaches to disability disclosure on social media. disability & society, 31(10), 1353–1368. doi:10.1080/09687599.2016.1256272 goffman, e. (1959). presentation of self in everyday life. garden city, ny: harper & row. goffman, e. (1963). stigma: notes on the management of spoiled identity. new york, ny: simon and schuster. goodley, d. (2017). disability studies: an interdisciplinary introduction (2nd ed.). london, uk: sage publications. hart, r. d., & williams, d. e. (1995). able-bodied instructors and students with physical disabilities: a relationship handicapped by communication. communication education, 44(2), 140–154. doi:10.1080/03634529509379005 hays, a., & butauski, m. (2018). privacy, disability, and family: exploring the privacy management behaviors of parents with a child with autism. western journal of communication, 82(3), 376– 391. doi:10.1080/10570314.2017.1398834 hecht, m. l., jackson, r. l., & pitts, m. j. 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(2002). qualitative communication research methods (2nd ed.). thousand oaks, ca: sage publications. mailto:topacademicjournals@gmail.com american journal of art and communication vol.6, issue 2; march-april 2021; 1252 columbia rd nw, washington dc, united states https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac; mail: topacademicjournals@gmail.com 26 | american journal of art and communication | https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac matthews, c. k. (1994, february). to tell or not to tell: the management of privacy boundaries by the invisibly disabled. paper presented at the annual meeting of the western states communication association, san jose, ca. matthews, c. k., & harrington, n. g. (2000). invisible disability. in d. o. braithwaite & t. i. thompson (eds.), handbook of communication and people with disabilities (pp. 37–48). mahwah, nj: erlbaum. meisenbach, r. j. 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(2007). translational research endeavors and the practices of communication privacy management. journal of applied communication research, 35(3), 218–222. doi:10.1080/00909880701422443 petronio, s., & durham, w. t. (2008). communication privacy management theory. in l. a. baxter & d. o. braithwaite (eds.), engaging theories in interpersonal communication: multiple perspectives (pp. 309– 322). thousand oaks, ca: sage publications. skelton, t., & valentine, g. (2003). “it feels like being deaf is normal”: an exploration into the complexities of defining d/deafness and young d/ deaf people’s identities. canadian geographer, 47(4), 451–466. doi:10.1111/j.0008-3658.2003.00035.x smith, r. a. (2011). stigma, communication, and health. in t. l. thompson, r. parrott, & j. f. nussbaum (eds.), the routledge handbook of health communication (pp. 455–468). new york, ny: taylor & francis. mailto:topacademicjournals@gmail.com american journal of art and communication vol.6, issue 2; march-april 2021; 1252 columbia rd nw, washington dc, united states https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac; mail: topacademicjournals@gmail.com 27 | american journal of art and communication | https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac smith, s. a., & brunner, s. r. (2017). to reveal or conceal: using communication privacy management theory to understand disclosures in the workplace. management communication quarterly, 31(3), 429–446. doi:10.1177/0893318917692896 southall, k., jennings, m. b., & gagné, j.-p. (2011). factors that influence disclosure of hearing loss in the workplace. international journal of audiology, 50(10), 699–707. doi:10.3109/14992027.2011.588963 stone, s. d. (1995). the myth of bodily perfection. disability & society, 10(4), 413–424. doi:10.1080/09687599550023426 thompson, t. l. (1982). disclosure as a disability-management strategy: a review and conclusions. communication quarterly, 30(3), 196–202. doi:10.1080/01463378209369449 thompson-ebanks, v., & jarman, m. (2018). undergraduate students with nonapparent disabilities identify factors that contribute to disclosure decisions. international journal of disability, development & education, 65(3), 286–303. doi:10.1080/1034912x.2017.1380174 wheeless, l. r. (1978). a follow-up study of the relationship among trust, disclosure, and solidarity. human communication research, 4(2), 143–157. doi:10.1111/j.1468-2958.1978.tb00604.x mailto:topacademicjournals@gmail.com 051215-w7110--frontiers in art research.docx american journal of art and communication vol.8 , issue3 mayjune 2023; 1252 columbia rd nw, washington dc, united states https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac; mail: topacademicjournals@gmail.com 1 | american journal of art and communication | https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac the beauty and benefits of magnolias in landscape design 1liang, yi-xuan 2wang, wei-jie, 3zhang, xin-yu, 4chen, yu-qian anhui technical college of industry and economy, hefei, anhui, 230051, china abstract: magnolia is a beautiful tree that is known for its large, fragrant flowers, evergreen leaves, and resistance to wind, dust, pollution, and pests. it is native to east asia and is mostly planted in the region south of the yangtze river in china. magnolia has a pure and elegant temperament, signifying the endless life of all things. it is a highquality greening ornamental tree species, and is commonly used in landscape configuration. keywords: magnolia, tree, flower, evergreen, fragrance, ornamental 1. introduction magnolia, also known as magnolia, lotus magnolia, large-flowered magnolia. it is mostly planted in the region south of the yangtze river because of its preference for a warm, moist and slightly acidic soil environment. it is a beautiful tree with large and thick leaves (dark green in colour), white flowers like lotus (the radius of the flowers is about 7.5 to 10cm, and the flower pieces are generally nine to twelve), red fruit kernels, evergreen for four seasons, pleasant fragrance, and is resistant to wind and dust, pollution, pests and diseases, and has a lot of medicinal value, and so on. magnolia has a pure and elegant temperament, signifying the endless life of all things. it was selected as hefei city, tongling city, changzhou city, nantong city, kunshan city, zhenjiang city, yuyao city, etc. it is a highquality greening ornamental tree species, and is commonly used in landscape configuration. 2. cultivation of magnolia 2.1 breeding 2.1.1 collection and sowing in september and october every year, when the seeds of magnolia are ripe and show their red seed coat, they start to collect them, soak them after collection, then dry them in the shade (avoid drying them in the sun), and finally sow them. sowing time is chosen at the right time (can be sown immediately after picking, or sown in the spring of the following year), and an environment with good sunlight, sufficient water and fertile land should be chosen, and watering should be done at the right time, so as to promote the seedling emergence of the seeds. 2.1.2 seedling grafting magnolia seedlings grow slowly, so they should pull weeds, replenish seedlings, set plants, loosen the soil, irrigate (usually not irrigate in late autumn and winter), add fertiliser, etc., to promote rapid growth of seedlings. if the sunlight is strong, shade should be provided immediately; if it rains more, drainage should be provided in time; in case of cold weather, trellis can be built to keep warm, etc. grafting as a common means of magnolia breeding, the requirements are more strict, it is best to arrange in the spring in march and april, the grafting methods are: mailto:topacademicjournals@gmail.com https://www.sogou.com/link?url=hedjjac291mak4-vumms-tujpfhq6fjfkgvvjt4pw4xv9xizmey1ia3mlrzfplr2 american journal of art and communication vol.8 , issue3 mayjune 2023; 1252 columbia rd nw, washington dc, united states https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac; mail: topacademicjournals@gmail.com 2 | american journal of art and communication | https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac bud grafting, without terminal bud cutting, with terminal bud cutting, the experiment proved that, with terminal bud cutting grafting effect is the best . as for the selection of grafting rootstock, you can choose the same genus with magnolia, the grafting effect will be better, and the survival rate will be higher. 2.2 management 2.2.1 spring management spring management of magnolia begins with watering and fertilizing. as spring gradually warms up, magnolias tend to lose moisture, so it's important to keep them hydrated. although early spring fertilization is beneficial to magnolia root growth, newly transplanted plants should especially be moderately fertilized. the pruning of magnolia can be chosen in the spring, when the climate is favorable for branch recovery. magnolia pruning is not easy to too much, mainly to cut off the branches, branches and leaves that do not grow well or grow too fast, and promote the sprouting and growth of new branches, branches and leaves. magnolias also have to cope with spraying for insects and diseases in the spring. 2.2.2 summer management summer temperatures are high, in addition to shade, but also to maintain a reasonable level of humidity. at this time the magnolia is prone to water shortage, watering time is best chosen in the morning, so that it can be better absorbed in. lastly, magnolia is a fleshy root, care must avoid stagnant water after summer rainstorms. 2.2.3 autumn and winter management magnolia should especially be whitewashed in autumn and winter, both to prevent frostbite and to control and kill insects. attention should also be paid to regularly clearing fallen leaves and weeds from the planting site to reduce insect and pathogen . magnolia can not be over-pruned, in the winter pruning is only to remove diseased branches, residual branches, which not only reduces the disease, increases light penetration, but also improves the cold resistance. 3. the application of magnolia in landscape design analysis with the development of the economy and the deepening of the urban process, the construction of landscaping has developed by leaps and bounds. the application of plants in landscape design contributes to the harmonious coexistence of man, nature and environment. magnolia, as a plant with high ornamental value and greening value, has been chosen more and more frequently, in form and scope in the landscape. 3.1 principles of magnolia in landscape applications 3.1.1 principle of ecological matching in the application of landscape gardening, it must conform to the ecological reasonable configuration[1] and pay attention to the principle of diversity between magnolia and other plants. first of all, it should be analysed according to the ecological characteristics of the natural growth of magnolia, but also grasp the degree of match and fit between magnolia and other plants, etc.: such as planting environment (soil, sunlight, humidity, temperature, etc.), planting height, planting density, planting range, planting colour and other data. magnolia can be planted with osmanthus flowers, cherry , red maple, bamboo, peach blossom, plum blossom, ginkgo, camellia, pine and other plants, and the plants can be planted in groups, and the plants and plants can be arranged in high and low configurations, intertwined with trees and shrubs, paired with deciduous evergreen, and distributed in mailto:topacademicjournals@gmail.com american journal of art and communication vol.8 , issue3 mayjune 2023; 1252 columbia rd nw, washington dc, united states https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac; mail: topacademicjournals@gmail.com 3 | american journal of art and communication | https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac primary and secondary plants, etc., so as to create the design of species-rich, staggered and diversified symbiotic landscape groups, and to meet the high quality demand of modern human life. 3.1.2 seasonal matching principle landscape design should consider the different seasons of spring, summer, autumn and winter, and the growth pattern and changes between landscape plants in the four seasons with combinations. magnolia flowers bloom in spring, magnolia fruit ripens in autumn, and magnolia itself is an evergreen plant. the four-season matching rules of magnolia include: “spring and summer” flower and leaf, flower and flower, fragrant and non-fragrant matching; autumn flower and fruit, deciduous and non-deciduous, deciduous and non-deciduous fruit (dynamic and static) matching; in winter, the matching of “green and withered, high and low” ......, in short, let the landscape design show the harmonious effect of changing scenery throughout the year. for example, magnolia can be paired with peach blossom, cherry and other early spring trees in the spring, to feel the flowers in spring. in summer, it can be paired with pomegranate and other plants to feel the elegant summer scenery; in autumn, it can be paired with ginkgo, red maple, osmanthus flowers and other plants to feel the colourful autumn scenery; in winter, it can be paired with pine and bamboo plants to feel the staggered winter scenery. it realises the diversification of plant matching, hierarchical structure and ecological scenery in all seasons. 3.1.3 colour integration principle magnolia flower colour is white, fruit is red and leaves are green. in the overall integration of landscape colour, the use of reasonable configuration of colour. such as magnolia trees and shrubs in this combination of colour integration, need to use brightly coloured flowers or leaves configuration; such as magnolia leaves throughout the year show green, can be paired with colourful foliage plants to accentuate, create a sense of hierarchy in the landscape. such as magnolia's flower colour is white, white is colourless, so can be matched with flowering plant colour selectivity is larger, the range is also wider. magnolia and plant colour reasonable configuration, let the landscape show colourful beautiful scenery. 3.1.4 the principle of local choice in landscaping, preference is generally given to plant species that are suitable for native growth and cultivation, and magnolia's the growing area is in the south basin of yangtze river, which is more conducive to the planting, transplanting and breeding of magnolia, and building a more stable, feasible and economical ecological landscape, together with the humanities, history, customs, etc., which also better reflect the spiritual and cultural value of magnolia. again, the large selection of magnolia locally also saves a lot of manpower, material and financial resources, which is conducive to the optimal use of local land resources as well as the co-construction of frugal landscapes. 3.2 specific applications of magnolias in the landscape in the garden landscape design, like magnolia this has a certain degree of cold resistance, resistance to wind and dust, anti-pollution, less pests and diseases, high medicinal value, and contains noble, pure, fragrant temperament, set of foliage, flowers, fruits as one of the evergreen trees, in the garden greening is widely respected, is used in mailto:topacademicjournals@gmail.com https://hanyu.sogou.com/result?query=%e7%99%be%e8%8a%b1%e4%ba%89%e8%89%b3&mzid=70231106 american journal of art and communication vol.8 , issue3 mayjune 2023; 1252 columbia rd nw, washington dc, united states https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac; mail: topacademicjournals@gmail.com 4 | american journal of art and communication | https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac road greening (as street trees); community, campus greening; square, public green space greening; parks and other environmental greening. 3.2.1 application of magnolia planting 3.2.1.1 independent planting magnolia independent planting: it can be planted as the centre, alone; it can be planted symmetrically according to a certain axis; it can also be planted in horizontal or vertical columns according to a certain distance; it can also be planted in groups according to a certain number of people. 3.2.1.2 matching plants in addition to independent planting, magnolia can also be planted with other plants. in the magnolia with the choice of planting, to give full consideration to the characteristics of magnolia itself, but also to grasp its relationship with another one or more kinds of plants with the overall coordination of plants, to ensure that magnolia and all the configurations of plants can be better and faster complementary, reflecting the growth, to achieve a harmonious and unified effect of planting. 3.2.2 application range of magnolia 3.2.2.1 greening of roads magnolia tree posture upright, elegant, evergreen, white flowers, leaves, not only can beautify the streetscape, but also purify the air, but also shade, is a very good variety of road greening. in roadway landscaping, choose magnolia in the form of larger, not too small. if you choose a smaller magnolia, easy to scratch the road pedestrians, vehicles, but also will make its own easy to break.magnolia in the roadway greening, but also often with colourful foliage plants, more highlight the richness of the streetscape and changes. 3.2.2.2 greening of neighbourhoods and campuses magnolia is also often cited in communities, campuses and other greening, relying on the magnolia plant's own colour, shape, smell characteristics, rendering the best landscape atmosphere, to create a comfortable, pleasant, ecological environmental experience. generally, the colour of the buildings in the district and campus is dark or darker, while the flowers, fruits and leaves of magnolia show white, red and green respectively, which reflect and complement each other with the colours of the buildings in the district and campus as well as the surrounding landscapes; magnolia is not the same as other greenery, and is not easy to be over-pruned, so it shows the form of natural beauty, and it can soften the natural beauty of the plants and the artificial beauty of the buildings perfectly and show the artistic structure and line beauty of the buildings; magnolia can also be used in the greening of the district and campus. in neighborhoods or campuses, magnolia is mostly planted in flower beds, lawns or pathways. magnolia's pure flowers and light fragrance make people and the environment blend harmoniously and in an orderly manner. 3.2.2.3 greening of squares and public green spaces magnolia is mainly used to satisfy people's ornamental and experiential needs in the greening of squares and public green areas, such as access points, main and secondary roads, paths, lawns, and so on. magnolia can be planted singly, doubly or in groups in access points, main and secondary roads, paths and other environments. it can also be arranged in the open lawn, large area of small slopes and so on, such as magnolia as the centre, and mailto:topacademicjournals@gmail.com american journal of art and communication vol.8 , issue3 mayjune 2023; 1252 columbia rd nw, washington dc, united states https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac; mail: topacademicjournals@gmail.com 5 | american journal of art and communication | https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac other trees, shrubs, lawns and so on from high to low, aligned, and embellished with planting of slightly higher pine trees and so on, constituting an aesthetic sense, a strong sense of hierarchy of the plaza, the ecological planting of the public green space landscape group. 3.2.2.4 greening of parks magnolia not only can be planted with plants, but also with water bodies, rocks, architectural vignettes and other elements of planting, to play the landscape in the orchid, orchid in the landscape of the view, showing the characteristics of the garden landscape and cultural sentiment. water is the flowing soul in the landscape, and the size of the water body determines the size of magnolia to choose and how much to plant. such as planting magnolia on the shore of the water body, island area in the water, can add a sense of space in the water landscape; also can be plants, water, shadow fusion together, depicting different picture sense; at the same time, flowers, leaves fall on the water, and formed another dynamic beauty; magnolia and water-side plant combinations, the formation of a sparse and dense, straight and curved, near and far the wonderful scenery. in landscape design, magnolia can integrate the space of plants and buildings, vividly and flexibly. architectural vignettes such as pavilions, etc., in the integration, the need for magnolia and the shape of the building, colour, height, stature, choose the corresponding plant body, the soft lines of plants rendering the hard structure of the building, reflecting the unity of harmony, unity of the richness of the sense of contrast. at the same time, the doors, windows, columns and frames of the buildings with magnolia also form the landscape in the frame, leakage landscape and permeable landscape, which is a vivid interpretation of “garden aesthetics”[2] . reasonable magnolia planting can also improve some functions of architectural vignettes, such as shade and coolness, wind and dust removal. magnolia can break the monotony of the listing of mountains and rocks when it is configured with mountains and rocks; the words and poems engraved on some of the mountains and rocks can also increase the temperament quality of magnolia. magnolia and mountain, stone ensemble, not only reflects the magnolia body, temperament beauty, but also highlights the unique texture of the stone and cultural atmosphere, the two united, complement each other. 3.2.3 magnolia application results 3.2.3.1 protection of the environment in landscape application, magnolia has certain wind resistance due to its developed root system, fewer pests and diseases, which can resist bad weather and fully protect the surrounding environment. at the same time, magnolia has the ability of anti-dust and anti-pollution, which can adsorb a certain amount of dust, dust and harmful gases (such as sulphur dioxide, chloride, hydrogen fluoride, etc.) , purify the air and improve the quality of the environment. the organic substances emitted by magnolia itself can also kill harmful bacteria and microorganisms, providing people with a clean ecological living environment. 3.2.3.2 landscaping magnolia is evergreen in all seasons, with upright trunk, full tree shape, thick and bright leaves, and beautiful lotus-like flowers, which is a tree integrating ornamental and application value. magnolia can be planted mailto:topacademicjournals@gmail.com american journal of art and communication vol.8 , issue3 mayjune 2023; 1252 columbia rd nw, washington dc, united states https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac; mail: topacademicjournals@gmail.com 6 | american journal of art and communication | https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac independently or with other plants, and can also be combined with water bodies, architectural sketches, rocks and other combinations, applied in landscape greening to beautify the environment. 3.2.3.3 medicinal value the whole body of magnolia has high medicinal functions. magnolia bark, flowers, leaves and fruits can benefit the lungs, eliminate phlegm, lower blood pressure, antibacterial, eliminate fatigue, etc., and can also treat headache and runny nose, vomiting and diarrhoea, and wind-cold, etc., and note that its flower buds should be dried and ground before being used as medicine; magnolia flowers can be used to make tea, and its flowers and fruits can be used to refine the essential oils, which have the effect of beauty care and slowing down the aging process. 3.2.3.4 local characteristics magnolia grows in the south of the yangtze river basin, and has been chosen as the “city tree” of many cities, with a long history of planting, as well as geographic and historical humanistic and cultural values. the poems, songs, calligraphies, architectural works and artworks related to magnolia are integrated with local gardens and landscapes, highlighting the unique charm of the place. 3.3 evaluation system of magnolia's application effect in landscape according to the above cultivation of magnolia and its application in landscape design, detailed description, comprehensive analysis unfolded, and along the principles of science, objectivity, practicality, aesthetics, etc., the indicators of each level in the system were selected, and finally, the evaluation system of the application effect of magnolia in the landscape was established . the overall system here should not only encompass the propagation and cultivation of magnolia itself, but also show the morphology, colour and style of magnolia as well as its harmony and unity with the ecological environment, and finally convey the application value of magnolia, etc. in short, the overall creation of magnolia evaluation system can better enable magnolia to be applied in landscape greening, and then create a more ecological, low-carbon, sustainable landscape space. first-level indicator layer: a (evaluation effect of magnolia application in landscape) = a1, a2, a3, a1 is magnolia planting and cultivation indicator, a2 is magnolia landscape design indicator; a3 is magnolia application harvesting indicator. secondary indicator level: a1 (magnolia planting and cultivation indicator) = a1, a2, a1 is magnolia propagation status, a2 is magnolia management status. a2 (magnolia landscape design indicator) = a3, a4, a5, a3 is magnolia application principles, a4 is magnolia application planting, and a5 is magnolia application scope. a3 (magnolia application yield indicator) = a6, a7, a8, a6 is magnolia economic harvest, a7 is magnolia social harvesting, a8 is magnolia cultural harvest. the weighting scores of each tier should be derived based on surveys, analyses and collations determined by garden professionals (e.g. landscape design specialist, teachers, frontline workers,etc.) (the survey platform can be obtained by choosing advanced survey app or applets). at the same time, the final evaluation results were determined objectively and scientifically. the evaluation of the application effect of magnolia in the landscape is divided into five levels as very good (≥9), good (9＞a≥7), mailto:topacademicjournals@gmail.com american journal of art and communication vol.8 , issue3 mayjune 2023; 1252 columbia rd nw, washington dc, united states https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac; mail: topacademicjournals@gmail.com 7 | american journal of art and communication | https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac general (7＞a≥5), poor (5＞a≥3), and very poor (a＜3), and the following is an example of a score out of 10 (as shown in table 1 ). table 1 comparison of effect scores of magnolia application in landscape (a)scores ≥9 9＞a≥7 7＞a≥5 5＞a≥3 a＜3 evaluating the effects very good good general poor very poor 4. conclusion with the comprehensive development of social economy and the increasing improvement of people's quality of life, the beautification and sustainable development of the environment have been paid attention to gradually, and are facing the direction of diversification[3] , ecology and speciality[4] . the propagation and cultivation of magnolia should be managed strictly and scientifically according to the characteristics of the plant itself and the local natural environment. magnolia has a wide range of garden applications: it can be used in road greening; community and campus greening; square and public greening; park greening and other scopes. magnolia is evergreen in all seasons, erect and colorful, with large flowers and red fruits, and fragrant. magnolia not only beautifies the living environment, but also resists wind and dust, pollution and purifies the surrounding air.magnolia is also a treasure, has a high medicinal value and economic value; at the same time, magnolia shows the local characteristics and cultural temperament, and therefore has been elected by a number of cities as the“city tree”. at the same time, magnolia also shows local characteristics and cultural temperament, so it is elected as“city tree” by many cities, with great ornamental value and greening value, and it is one of the important varieties of landscaping and greening. the“magnolia application effect evaluation system in landscape” built on the basis of the above can better enable magnolia to be applied in landscape greening, and then create a more ecological, low-carbon and sustainable landscape space. acknowledgement fund program: provincial "fine courses" programme——packaging design (item no.2022jpkc019) references yin zhipeng(2019),discussion on ecological landscape design and plant configuration[j], contemporary horticulture,(22),p81-82. peng yuanfang (2022),the application of chinese classical garden aesthetics in modern design-the new museum of suzhou as an example[j],urban architecture space,03),p118-120. ma yifang(2022),research on the design of urban square landscape diversity and ecological diversity ——take the design of the central square of the city in fuzhou high tech zone as an exampl[j], fujian architecture & construction,(11),p17-20. wang qian(2023),an exploration of regionally distinctive landscape reconstruction from a humanistic perspective[j],foshan ceramics,(06),p152-155,170. mailto:topacademicjournals@gmail.com https://navi.cnki.net/knavi/journals/msdg/issues/qe77f90wpygjudisso20h_ag_p1_9vsnrtcongtwidsvhyzaed2nw1wnz_itjg7o?uniplatform=nzkpt https://navi.cnki.net/knavi/journals/fjjz/issues/qe77f90wpyh_o05fxfw74rfe2yjxsrbnwsr1dzipgk7mhpja92kxmbegdiun_zhw?uniplatform=nzkpt https://navi.cnki.net/knavi/journals/fjjz/issues/qe77f90wpyh_o05fxfw74rfe2yjxsrbnwsr1dzipgk7mhpja92kxmbegdiun_zhw?uniplatform=nzkpt https://navi.cnki.net/knavi/journals/fjjz/issues/qe77f90wpyh_o05fxfw74rfe2yjxsrbnwsr1dzipgk7mhpja92kxmbegdiun_zhw?uniplatform=nzkpt https://navi.cnki.net/knavi/journals/fstc/issues/qe77f90wpyh0ikmggvbegsytkofctuaok1pxcmej6s2qwhz90owptmo7q_8je2sx?uniplatform=nzkpt https://navi.cnki.net/knavi/journals/fstc/issues/qe77f90wpyh0ikmggvbegsytkofctuaok1pxcmej6s2qwhz90owptmo7q_8je2sx?uniplatform=nzkpt 051217-w234312--frontiers in art research.docx american journal of art and communication vol.7, issue 4; july-august 2022; 1252 columbia rd nw, washington dc, united states https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac; mail: topacademicjournals@gmail.com 1 | american journal of art and communication | https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac the kizil grottoes: a treasure trove of chinese cultural heritage li, ming-hua and wu, xin-yu quanzhou normal university, quanzhou, fujian, china. abstract: this paper presents a design of cultural and creative products based on the kizil grottoes. the design extracts the main elements of the kizil grottoes, such as the flying heaven, and combines them with various patterns in the grottoes. it also extracts the buddha statues, decorative elements and colors from the kizil grottoes art, and recreates a series of representative elements by independent processing. the modern design language is incorporated into the design, and the cultural and creative products are applied to them. the design will explore the cultural and artistic value of the kizil grottoes to a greater extent, integrate practicality into the design and reflect regional and ethnic cultural characteristics. it will also strengthen the dissemination of the cultural and artistic glory of the kizil grottoes with cultural and creative products that have authentic and extensive cultural heritage. keywords: kizil grottoes, cultural and creative products, flying heaven, buddha statues, decorative elements, colors 1. introduction the author extracted the kizil grottoes from the kizil grottoes and the flying heaven as the main elements, combined them with various patterns in the grottoes, extracted the buddha statues, decorative elements and colors from the kizil grottoes art, and recreated a series of representative elements by independent processing, incorporating modern design language into them and applying them to the cultural and creative products. the design will explore the cultural and artistic value of the kizil grottoes to a greater extent, integrate practicality into the design and reflect regional and ethnic cultural characteristics, strengthen the dissemination of the cultural and artistic glory of the kizil grottoes with cultural and creative products that have authentic and extensive cultural heritage, enable more people to have access to the artistic value of the kizil grottoes and understand the culture behind it, promote chinese national confidence and cultural self-confidence, and enhance cultural development and inheritance. strengthen cultural development and inheritance, highlight regional ethnic cultural characteristics, and create cultural and creative products with cultural value, contemporary significance, social market value and aesthetic characteristics. 2. subject and background of the study 2.1 research status the kizil grottoes are located in kizil township, baicheng county, xinjiang. kizil means red in uyghur, and there is a naturally formed oasis in front of the cave with beautiful scenery. the grottoes are a trinity of art caves consisting of architecture, frescoes and sculptures, and are known as a synthesis of buddhist art. kizil grottoes is currently the earliest large cave complex in china, which was built at the end of the 3rd century and the beginning of the 4th century ad, and declined in the 8th and 9th centuries. there are now 742 relatively mailto:topacademicjournals@gmail.com american journal of art and communication vol.7, issue 4; july-august 2022; 1252 columbia rd nw, washington dc, united states https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac; mail: topacademicjournals@gmail.com 2 | american journal of art and communication | https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac complete caves, 349 numbered caves, and nearly 10,000 square meters of preserved frescoes. the kizil grottoes are a typical representative of the qiuci grottoes, and its murals are a complete record of the process from the creation to the decline of the qiuci grottoes, a very important historical treasure reflecting the specific history and cultural heritage of the chinese west, religious art and folk music and dance, and also a must-see point on the silk road. however, due to their long history and remote location in xinjiang, the grottoes are often subject to geological disasters such as sand erosion, and their conservation and repair work cannot be properly followed up, resulting in a lack of overall preservation and serious damage to the grottoes. there are very few cultural and creative products about the kizil grottoes, which lack design and ethnic characteristics. after the country promoted the belt and road policy, the people began to pay extensive attention to western china and to examine the once glorious culture of the silk road with a fresh perspective. cultural development of the grottoes has been carried out to meet the growing spiritual and cultural needs of the people. however, there is almost a gap in the study of cultural creation in the kizil grottoes, and how to highlight its characteristics in the light of the current development of the times is an urgent problem to be solved in the development of cultural creation in the kizil grottoes at present. the kizil grottoes have a unique cultural connotation and artistic value due to their geographical, ethnic and religious beliefs. therefore, the development of creative products for the kizil grottoes will help promote the local ethnic culture of the kizil grottoes, drive the development of the tourism economy in xinjiang, and make more people understand the story behind the kizil grottoes and show the life style of the ancient country of guiz. 2.2 research methodology literature research method: the authors searched domestic literature platforms using the keywords "kizil caves, qiuci music and dance, image of kagura, and cave culture and creation" to organize and classify the best papers and works collected. the authors read 23 master's theses and 2 doctoral theses on the kizil grottoes, as well as a number of periodicals and books, and compiled literature on the kizil grottoes' image of music and cave creation, categorized them, and analyzed the artistic characteristics, academic value, and innovation of the kizil grottoes by means of thesis markers. comparative analysis method: the authors analyze the better-developed grotto cultural and creative products through a survey, research and sort out their development and design models, compare and explore the special features of the kizil grottoes, compare and analyze the differences between the kizil grottoes and other caves, and seize this as the basis for designing products to explore the design of cultural and creative products. 2.3 research purpose and significance (innovation point) history and culture are the bloodline of a nation and an important factor in passing on the national spirit. the art of the kizil caves is an artistic treasure of the chinese nation and even of human civilization, and is an integral part of chinese culture. this paper selects the image of the kizil grottoes as a product design study. according to domestic and international research, this topic is novel and there is still a gap in previous research, so it is one of the innovations of this paper to explore the image of the kizil grottoes as a product design in the form of cultural creation, so that the sunken culture of a thousand years can be shown again. mailto:topacademicjournals@gmail.com american journal of art and communication vol.7, issue 4; july-august 2022; 1252 columbia rd nw, washington dc, united states https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac; mail: topacademicjournals@gmail.com 3 | american journal of art and communication | https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac 3. overview of the culture and art of the kizil grottoes 3.1 overview of the kizil grottoes kizil grottoes were excavated on the cliffs at the southern foot of mount mingya dag in baicheng county, xinjiang, and were built in the 3rd century ad, more than 200 years before the mogao caves in dunhuang, the earliest surviving buddhist cave complex in xinjiang, the largest in scale, the richest in cave types, and widely influenced by its unique cave form and fresco style, making it one of the most important buddhist sites on the silk road.as seen in figure 1. figure 1 statue of kumarajiva (c. 334-313 bc). 3.2 the cultural intersection of the kizil grottoes xinjiang is at the center of asia and europe, where the peoples and cultures of the east and west converge. mr. ji xianlin once said that this is the only place in the world where ancient indian, greco-roman, persian, and han and tang civilizations meet. the development of the kizil caves took place in four periods: the initial, developmental, flourishing, and late periods. the images of music and dance from the beginning to the flourishing period lean toward the indian style. the dance is characterized by a wealth of gestures and hand gestures, with dancers wearing striking flared pants, feet crossed, looking up tenderly, and bodies in the shape of s-shaped curves. such as the heavenly palace tricks, the buddha's degree of good love qianxiao, etc., these images, whether from the costume, dance, all reveal a strong style of indian buddhist music and dance. in the kizil grottoes murals also reflect the characteristics of the chinese culture, the appearance of the dragon pattern in cave 198 shows that the chinese culture has penetrated into the qiuci murals, in addition to the reed and zheng are traditional han musical instruments, also reflected in the qiuci murals. mailto:topacademicjournals@gmail.com https://image.baidu.com/search/detail?ct=503316480%26z=undefined%26tn=baiduimagedetail%26ipn=d%26word=%e5%85%8b%e5%ad%9c%e5%b0%94%e7%9f%b3%e7%aa%9f%26step_word=%26ie=utf-8%26in=%26cl=2%26lm=-1%26st=undefined%26hd=undefined%26latest=undefined%26copyright=undefined%26cs=3818877456,3562261590%26os=2131997630,3840802187%26simid=3818877456,3562261590%26pn=5%26rn=1%26di=7169026086108397569%26ln=1435%26fr=%26fmq=1675299844164_r%26fm=%26ic=undefined%26s=undefined%26se=%26sme=%26tab=0%26width=undefined%26height=undefined%26face=undefined%26is=0,0%26istype=0%26ist=%26jit=%26bdtype=0%26spn=0%26pi=0%26gsm=1e%26objurl=https:/p4.itc.cn/images01/20210522/ccc78da3fe824ee6bd49440211ff6a74.jpeg%26rpstart=0%26rpnum=0%26adpicid=0%26nojc=undefined%26dytabstr=mcwzldesmiw2ldqsnsw3ldgsoq== american journal of art and communication vol.7, issue 4; july-august 2022; 1252 columbia rd nw, washington dc, united states https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac; mail: topacademicjournals@gmail.com 4 | american journal of art and communication | https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac 3.3 the art form of the kizil grottoes the fresco art of the kizil grottoes can be divided into four periods in terms of time: the initial period, the development period, the prosperous period and the declining period. according to the study, cave 118 of the kizil grottoes was the first cave to be built, so caves similar to it were divided together based on the characteristics of the murals in cave 118. the initial cave from the figure of the cave can be seen in the obvious gandhara art influence, the figure through the robe, long head, features with the greek, short and strong form. the style of the murals can be described as bold, brash, and bold, with bold colors and simple but beautiful figures.[1](yin xing, 2011) not many caves were opened during the development period, but the characteristics of the qiuci style of painting were formed at this time, and localized features can be seen in the figures, most of which have flattened heads, concentrated features, proportionate bodies, and long legs. the use of contrasting colors was enhanced at this time, and the area of red and white increased, thus enhancing the visual contrast. the coloring of the figures also tended to be bold, with red, green and blue skin tones appearing to enhance the visual effect. in the development period, the standardization of rhombic grid composition was gradually formed, and the content of the story of birth and the story of karma was the main content, while the picture of heavenly palace music and nirvana were increased in the development period, and the subject matter of nirvana was increased, and the heavenly palace music was not only drawn together with buddha, but also had an independent form, and the use of musical instruments was also greatly enriched. the painting style of the frescoes in the flourishing period inherited the local traditions developed during the development period, and the figures have been typically qiuci-ized, and their clothing has begun to be classified by type of occupation, such as warriors and merchants, all of which were drawn from real life. as can be seen in cave 8 and cave 224, the robe was scraped, reflecting the devotion to buddhism and the fervor of the worshipers who spared no financial resources, so at this time the frescoes of the worshipers occupy a very large picture of the cave, and because of the prosperity of the famous qiuci music, the scale of the heavenly palace music reached its peak at this time, for example, the number of musicians in cave 100 reached 51 bodies.[2]( zhang li, gan tingjian, 2017) kizil grottoes of the decline of the frescoes has been the end of the strong, painting themes in favor of a thousand buddhas, buddhism and other mahayana themes, painting techniques are simple and crude, the use of color is also monotonous without change. 4. analysis of the source change of the image of kagura 4.1 traceability and analysis of the image of kabuki the term "kagura" is often found in chinese sutras, such as the sutra of the great satsanganikanzi translated by bodhidharma in the eastern wei dynasty, volume 2: "the infinite hundreds and thousands of sons of heaven, etc., dwelling in the void, make all kinds of kagura, making all kinds of wonderful sounds to offer to the buddha, raining heavenly clothes, beating all heavenly drums ", reflecting that kagura is mainly for music and dance, but for buddhism, kagura is not only for entertainment and celebration, but can be used as a contribution and salutation to the buddha, offering him with kagura. in the translation of the myoho-renge-kyo sutra by hattamarashi, ten kinds of offerings are listed: "one flower (flower), two incense, three celluloid, four anointing incense, five coating incense, six burning incense, seven increasing coverings and streamers, eight clothes, nine kirtans, and ten palms." the ninth of these offerings is the music, so the music in buddhism is not to be ignored.[3](shen chun, 2015) mailto:topacademicjournals@gmail.com american journal of art and communication vol.7, issue 4; july-august 2022; 1252 columbia rd nw, washington dc, united states https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac; mail: topacademicjournals@gmail.com 5 | american journal of art and communication | https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac the images of kagura are divided into two categories: one is in the "buddha's story", which tells the story of buddha from his birth to his final nirvana, and the other is in the images of celestial beings, which expresses praise and offerings to buddha, including the two special forms of "heavenly palace kagura" and "kagura flying heaven". 4.2 arrangement of the musical figures the arrangement of the orchestra in the cave murals in the kizil thousand buddha cave reveals its unique stylistic features, with the central symmetrical arrangement being the most common combination. the so-called central symmetry is the form of symmetry and balance with the buddha or bodhisattva at the center and the priests lined up on either side of it. this form was most commonly used in the early murals of the kizil grottoes. they are all subject matter for the heavenly palace of music and celestial figures. for example, in the 4th century ad, in the main room of cave 76, the picture shows four bands lined up horizontally with buddha as the center, connecting the top of the scroll into a square shape, and the diagonals on the inside of the square shape are lined up on both sides with buddha as the center. [4](zhonggao, 2009)the image of the orchestra, which is well preserved, shows that the orchestra centered on the buddha is not only symmetrical in number, but also balanced in terms of the music played, giving a sense of balance.as seen in figure 2. in addition, the celestial palace orchestra in cave 38 of the kizil thousand buddha cave, which is shown in a single line, is subdivided into two groups of one male and one female, with one black and one white skin color. a similar arrangement of two men and one woman in a subdivided group also appears in the kizil cave 100 "kagura celestial figure" and in the cave 181 "folklore" orchestra.[5] (yang chengbin, 2015) figure 2 cave paintings in kizil thousand buddha cave. 4.3 characteristics of the color scheme of the kizil grottoes for the image of the kagura the south and north walls of the main room of cave 38 of the kizil grottoes are painted with the picture of the heavenly palace of music. as seen in figure 3.the niches are lined with images of celestial beings playing music and dancing. the dark and light skin tones of these celestial figures present a contrasting effect with the head light and the cooler tones at the background. [6](huo xuchu), 2005the front side of the bar wall motif is blackbrown at the top and green at the bottom. the upper and lower layers that are recessed are the opposite color of the raised brick surface, with the upper layer being green and the lower layer being black-brown. the upper and lower layers on the sides are blue, serving as a turning articulation. the edge of each brick is outlined with a very mailto:topacademicjournals@gmail.com https://image.baidu.com/search/detail?ct=503316480%26z=undefined%26tn=baiduimagedetail%26ipn=d%26word=%e5%85%8b%e5%ad%9c%e5%b0%94%e7%9f%b3%e7%aa%9f%e4%bc%8e%e4%b9%90%e5%bd%a2%e8%b1%a1%e5%9b%be%e7%89%87%26step_word=%26ie=utf-8%26in=%26cl=2%26lm=-1%26st=undefined%26hd=undefined%26latest=undefined%26copyright=undefined%26cs=2962026076,2483626797%26os=3255402182,3810285355%26simid=3270970672,90142333%26pn=45%26rn=1%26di=7169026086108397569%26ln=561%26fr=%26fmq=1675300178107_r%26fm=%26ic=undefined%26s=undefined%26se=%26sme=%26tab=0%26width=undefined%26height=undefined%26face=undefined%26is=0,0%26istype=0%26ist=%26jit=%26bdtype=0%26spn=0%26pi=0%26gsm=1e%26objurl=https:/qjwb.zjol.com.cn/images/2015-10/21/qjwb20151021b0009v01b007.jpg%26rpstart=0%26rpnum=0%26adpicid=0%26nojc=undefined%26dytabstr=mcwzldesniw0ldusmiw3ldgsoq== american journal of art and communication vol.7, issue 4; july-august 2022; 1252 columbia rd nw, washington dc, united states https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac; mail: topacademicjournals@gmail.com 6 | american journal of art and communication | https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac narrow white strip, which runs through the entire concave and convex fence wall, making the entire fence wall rich in color variation while maintaining a uniform and coordinated look. throughout the qiuci cave murals in the representative imitation of the wood structure of the concave and convex color block grouping, it can be found that they mainly use red, blue, green, white four color-based decorative colors, through the regular arrangement of them to constitute an important programmatic expression of the frescoes of this period. figure 3 kizil grottoes cave 38. 5. the application of the flying patterns of the kizil grottoes in cultural and creative products through the research on the redesign of the pattern and color of the previous kagura image, this section will carry out the practical design of the kagura image in the design of cultural and creative products. the author draws a series of product effects after the secondary design of the kabuki image for the different aesthetic and emotional needs of the modern youth group for the cultural and creative products.as seen in figure 4. mailto:topacademicjournals@gmail.com american journal of art and communication vol.7, issue 4; july-august 2022; 1252 columbia rd nw, washington dc, united states https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac; mail: topacademicjournals@gmail.com 7 | american journal of art and communication | https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac figure 4 kabuki character design (drawn by the author). in this design, the image of the kagura is redesigned from the frescoes, and the color is chosen from a brighter blue-green, with red as an accent, so as to achieve a corresponding fashion acceptance.as seen in figure 5. figure 5 cultural and creative products periphery (drawn by the author). 6. conclusion the kizil grottoes are a milestone in the introduction of buddhism to the central plains and a very special part of buddhist art. in the kizil grottoes, one can clearly see the shadow of the fusion of western foreign culture with the local culture of the western region, drawing inspiration from the daily life of the people of ancient kuz, and the kuzi music and dance, which have now dissipated, can only be felt again from the kizil grottoes murals. by understanding and studying the kizil grottoes and applying the design to the cultural and creative products, it reflects the spark of collision between tradition and innovation, and brings consumers a new visual enjoyment and aesthetic experience through the expression of exotic patterns. however, the integration of ancient grotto culture into modern cultural and creative product design can not be a simple addition, but rather in-depth understanding of the basis of the integration of its secondary design, drawing inspiration from the grotto murals, combined with modern technology and aesthetic means of structural reorganization, so that the two are perfectly combined, in order to design a sense of the times and the national characteristics, cultural connotations of the modern cultural and creative products, in order to better meet the emotional needs of consumers. it is only through the perfect combination of the two that modern cultural and creative products with a sense of the times, national characteristics and cultural connotations can be designed to better satisfy the emotional needs of consumers and realize the cultural inheritance of the art of kizil caves. mailto:topacademicjournals@gmail.com american journal of art and communication vol.7, issue 4; july-august 2022; 1252 columbia rd nw, washington dc, united states https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac; mail: topacademicjournals@gmail.com 8 | american journal of art and communication | https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac references yin xing. study on the images of tricks and music in the kizil cave [d]. nanjing: nanjing art institute, 2011. wang yongge. interpreting the images of the guzi wall paintings to reproduce the appearance of guzi music and dance [j]. journal of xinjiang academy of arts, 2018(3):12. zhong gao. studies on guzi art [m]. urumqi: xinjiang people's publishing house, 2009: 110. [4] su beihai. studies on guzi on the silk road [m]. urumqi: xinjiang people's publishing house, 2009: 321. shen chun. excavation and recreation of kizil cave mural painting tradition-also on contemporary teaching and creation of heavy color painting [j]. the art of beauty, 2015 (1): 102-106. huo xuchu. the kizil cave story murals and the local culture of guzi[j]. journal of xinjiang normal university (philosophy and social science edition),2005(04):62-66. mailto:topacademicjournals@gmail.com american journal of arts and communication vol. 9, issue 1; january-february 2024; issn: 2994-0540 impact factor: 6.9 11252 columbia rd nw, washington dc, united states https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac; mail: topacademicjournals@gmail.com 60 | american journal of art and communication | https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac the four categories of force in african philosophy rev. fr. franklin amaechi eze, ph.d. department of philosophy, faculty of arts. godfrey okoye university, enugu doi: https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.13912028 abstract: what the constitutes the bulk of african philosophical discussions is identified by the late kenyan philosopher, henry odera oruka, as being the six schools of thought on what african philosophy is or could be, namely, ethno-philosophy, philosophic sagacity, nationalistic-ideological philosophy, professional philosophy, hermeneutic philosophy, and artistic or literary philosophy. the first four are the generally well known and well explained schools of african philosophy. however, while ethnophilosophy and philosophic sagacity may not be totally qualify for philosophy in its real sense, they however, provide the data for serious philosophical reflection, like placid tempels bantu philosophy of force, where he presented the idea of african force vitale as the engine house of african philosophy where force is everything and everything is force. force seen in this context equals the western idea of being, where everything that exist is being, and being is everything. the extra ordinary research on the concept of force was part of the process of decolonisation of knowledge highly dominated by the western thought pattern. the intention is towards the rediscoverring of the ancestral philosophical worldview and spiritual values that had been denigrated and distorted by colonial education. africans need to rediscover their values, which can only be done through mental re orientation that will orchestrate new conceptual framework. a hermeneutic approach is therefore necessary to interpret the use of african languages that will hitherto elucidate african worldview making it more meaningful. keywords: the four, categories, force, african, philosophy introduction western philosophers like heidegger talk about being as the “fundamentum underlying the particular expressions of beings”2 for the africans, it is not being but force, force seen in the sense of “existence being a thing of variable intensity”3 so while the west talk about being, africans talk about force. force is seen as masolo noted “ultimate unifying force"4 the western attempt in discussing the problem of being is pre-socratic. parmenides defined being as ‘what is’. the philosophical struggle to unravel the problem of being continued up till this present age. however, one is of the opinions about being that run through is the idea of being as static – a being that is there. however, africans consider being as dynamic. being as force is transcending, it is not static, it moves from itself. it is very active. it includes being existing both in the physical and spiritual worlds. kageme identifies this force as ntu – the super-ordinate to which the determinates are predicted. mailto:topacademicjournals@gmail.com https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.13909197 american journal of arts and communication vol. 9, issue 1; january-february 2024; issn: 2994-0540 impact factor: 6.9 11252 columbia rd nw, washington dc, united states https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac; mail: topacademicjournals@gmail.com 61 | american journal of art and communication | https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac 2.0 force as the principal of life the african philosophy of force refuted the western view of africa as being “savage”. as africa by demonstrating the existence of a coherent ontology of force go to prove a clear vision of human dignity and the rights of the individual. vital force is viewed as the reality which though invisible, is supreme in man. therefore, man can renew his vital force by tapping the strength of other creatures. african philosophical categories can be identified through the categories inherent to language. the primary metaphysical category in the thought of bantu-speaking societies is force. that is, reality is dynamic, and being is force. there are three possible views of the relationship between being and force. • being as distinct from force, that is, beings may have force or may not. • force as part of being, that is, being is more than force, but dependent upon it. • being is force, that is, the two are one and the same. the last view of force. specifically: 'force' is not for bantu a necessary, irreducible attribute of being: no, the notion of 'force' takes for them the place of the notion 'being' in our philosophy. just as we have, so they a transcendental, elemental, simple concept: with them 'force' and with us 'being’; tempels argues that as a result of this fundamental difference in categories, the african life of the mind is structured around understanding and defining force, which contrasts sharply with the western enterprise of understanding and defining being. vital force is the key idea in bantu philosophy, the source of vital force is god. vital force is viewed as the reality which though invisible, is supreme in man. the bantu holds the perceptions that all beings in the universe possess vital force of their own: human, animal, vegetable and inanimate and these forces are capable of strengthening the vital energy of the strongest being of all creation, the man. therefore man, can renew his vital force by tapping the strength of other creatures. 2.1 interaction of forces: one being influencing another the vital human force can directly influence inferior force beings such as animal, vegetable, or mineral in their being itself. the inferior forces have been created by god in order to help man increase his force here on earth. by reason of their nature, they have been put at the disposal of men, of living human forces, or of men's vital forces. africans believe that forces just like human beings interact with each other, that there is no force which can exist on its own, on isolation without interacting with other forces. for example, the human vital force needs inferior forces to strengthen his force, and also at the same time he depends on god in order to sustain his living on earth. placid temple’s bantu ontology is governed by interaction of forces. the relationship between the creator and creature is constant. the creature permanently depends upon his creator for existence and survival. the created beings are known as substances, because they did not come into existence on their own, instead they have a creator. for the bantu there is an interaction of being with beings, being with the creator and one force can either weaken or reinforce another. the interaction of beings is regarded as ‘magic’ and also the bantu held the view mailto:topacademicjournals@gmail.com american journal of arts and communication vol. 9, issue 1; january-february 2024; issn: 2994-0540 impact factor: 6.9 11252 columbia rd nw, washington dc, united states https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac; mail: topacademicjournals@gmail.com 62 | american journal of art and communication | https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac that older force dominates the younger and that all creatures are found in relationship according to the laws of a hierarchy, and nothing moves in this universe of forces without influencing other forces by its movement. this is visible in most african societies today such that when performing rituals or ceremonies these inferior forces are being used. for example, it is through these inferior beings that the medicine man is able to give life. that is, the medicine man uses plants and other inferior forces to preserve and protect the vital force. again, the sangoma uses the animals’ blood to give life or perform rituals, to fortify himself or the community. also, there are mountains like the njelele in zimbabwe, ‘’lentswe la baratani in otse, in english called ‘the mountain of lovers’ which are considered to be sacred places and are supposed to be used only for religious purposes, such as consulting the gods and performing of rituals. 2.2 hierarchy of forces: primogeniture being is differentiated into species according to their vital power. iroegbu identifies the cosmos among the other six zones of ‘uwa’ comprising the divine-world, godian –world, good –spirit world, bad – spirit world, and ancestral world. the divine world is the world of god who is the superior force over all other forces, he is the creator of all forces and these forces comes after him, they depend on him. the first fathers of the clan convey messages between man and god. for example, traditionally in botswana, this is shown whereby those who have the connections, those who have the spirits such as the sangomas, hosannas, communicate with the first fathers and these founders of the clans then sends the message to god. however, the world of cosmos is the central locus of the operations of all other worlds, as it is “man who posits the question of the worlds, who reflects on their existence, and who is the subject-object of their operations (iroegbu p.342). however, he observed that the relationship among the six worlds is dynamic. “it is a process, fluid and often unsystematized. the meta-empirical geography of the zonal existence of the worlds has no fixed boundaries. they compenetrate each other’s world-zones. they are not ontologically a multitude of worlds but one world: uwa”iroegbu (p.342) these forces which exist in all beings, of which man can use to strengthen himself, are discussed under beings and inanimate forces below. 3.0 categories of being the west considers whatever is as ‘being’, invariable ‘being’ is the root word of all that is. so, all that ‘is’ is being. in the african mind-set, iroegbu p will analyse theroot word of whatever is as ‘uwa’. ‘uwa’is being, and being is u’wa’. he notes that“whatever is, in so far as it is, is ‘uwa’. for him, “uwa is reality, and reality is uwa”. (iroegbu p. p.338). the concept of ‘uwa’is mirrowed as such “the entirety of existence, from god the highest being to inanimate beings of oue cosmos can be summarized in the englobal concept of the igbo term uwa. uwa is all inclusive. it mirros being, existence, entity, all reality. it englobes all that is: animate and inanimate, visible and invisible. it is comprehensive, universal and global. it has transcendent and immanent scope as well as explicative and prospective elasticity” (iroegbu p. p.339) kagame analysed the root word of force as ntu, to which all that exist are classified into. ntu is a very important word in african philosophy as depicts existence. it is a universal force. masolo called it the “ultimate unifying notion”1 it is the subordinate to mailto:topacademicjournals@gmail.com american journal of arts and communication vol. 9, issue 1; january-february 2024; issn: 2994-0540 impact factor: 6.9 11252 columbia rd nw, washington dc, united states https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac; mail: topacademicjournals@gmail.com 63 | american journal of art and communication | https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac which the determinate are predicated off. these determinate like mu, ki, ha and ku presicate ntu. and therefore, indicate the families or categories of being. the role is to express the ‘specific difference’ of ntu. when translated to english means “person” it is everything we are and everything the world is, it is all that we see around us, everything we do. the presence of ntu is very important when looking in our everyday life. it conveys that there is a spiritual essence that underlies and incorporates all materials. in a nut shell, ntu can be said to be a philosophy which sees harmony between physical world and spiritual world. this philosophy is also referred to as the “bantu” philosophy (roberts, 1996, p. 335). ntu entails the basic concept of vital force, of which the source is god. we recognise and conflict this force in all that we do. it is found in many african languages, that is, the bantu language. this vital force, tempels calls it the bantu ontology. in short, ntu means a human being and it emphasises that there is spirit of oneness and harmony among people and nature. the concept of ntu emphasises solidarity and oneness amongst africans. african philosophy of ntu, existed long time ago, and it brought about solidarity and oneness in african society. the importance of this paper therefore is to discuss the african philosophy of ntu. the paper will start by defining the key concepts, then differentiating african philosophy from western philosophy. the paper will go further into discussing the basic features that make up the ntu philosophy and also, towards the end of the paper the african philosophy will be criticised. at last a conclusion will be drawn up, summing all the main points of the paper. all that exist in the universe of being and becoming is summed up under any of these categories. “everything there is must necessarily belong to one of these four categories and must be conceived of not as substance but as force.”1 man (muntu) is therefore a force, dog (kintu) is also a force. west and yesterday (hantu) are forces; also beauty and laughter (kuntu) are forces. being forces, they are related to each other. their relationship to each other is seen in the determinative ntu; this is common to all of them.2 what then is ntu? it appears meaningless and to some extent contradictory to begin to give credence to the concept of ntu as kagame had already referred to it as a determinative from which all four categories are derived. but it is not meaningless and poses no threat to our understanding of the categories, for ntu is what all the categories are. it is not something that completes itself. it is the central force in which all four categories find their unity and express their being. force since all four categories of african philosophy are forces and ntu is what the categories are, then ntu is a force the four categories of african philosophy are: muntu (human being), kintu (thing), hantu (place and time), kuntu (modality). four categories of force muntu the muntu is a force endowed with intelligence. it is the ‘human being’with intelligence. the force concept of ‘human being’is not coterminous with the common idea of human being as it includes spirits, the hiuman dead and living humans. in the hierarchy of forces, the superior force control inferior ones, or as tempels says can diminish the force of lower entities. the muntu apart from god, is senn as “the sovereign vital force ruling the mailto:topacademicjournals@gmail.com american journal of arts and communication vol. 9, issue 1; january-february 2024; issn: 2994-0540 impact factor: 6.9 11252 columbia rd nw, washington dc, united states https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac; mail: topacademicjournals@gmail.com 64 | american journal of art and communication | https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac land and all that lives on it man, animal or plant.”5 for him, the created universe is centered on man. the present human generation living on earth is the centre of all humanity, including the world of the dead. this vital humanforce considered as the superior force has the capacity of having direct influence on inferior forces. the muntu differentiates itself through its ability to reflect, compare, and invent all of which are attributes of intelligence. the muntu uses the kintu to increase its vital force. kintu the second category is kintu, and it includes all those forces which cannot act for themselves. these forces can only become active through the command of a muntu, whether living or dead. to this category belongs forces like plants, animals, minerals, tools, objects of customary usage. the plural of kintu is bintu. they are called bintu because they have no will of themselves. since they have no will of their own, their forces are ‘frozen’ and can only act with the influence of a muntu. these forces are at the command of muntu with the exception of certain trees like poteau-mitan in voodoo considered as the repository of the deified as the word of the ancestors, surges up spontaneously. these kinds of trees are said to belong to the category of muntu class. however, we must know that when a sacrifice is made to a tree, it is never the plant to whom the sacrifice is made, but the loas or the ancestors that is, the muntu forces that are journeying along it. even scultures made from such woods receive special attention having been consecrated by the nommo of the ancestors. the difference between the kintu and muntu lies on the degrees of forces and principles. the muntu is higher by force of intelligence over the kintu, while the kintu is under the command of the muntu. under the kintu, we have the vegetal and inorganic forces. inorganic nature is considered as ‘fixed’ and is separated from the vegetal level by a substantial form. the vegetal os separtated from the animal sphere by the animal ‘soul. the animal soul is a spiritual principle responsible for some animal powers similar to those of humans such as knowledge, love, desire etc. hantu the hantu is the category of ‘space and time’. the hantu is a force that localizes spatially and temporally every event and every motion. the concept of force is the concept of dynamis, motion. dsince every being is force, everything is constantly in motion as force is not static. since motion is involved, it means that the question of ‘time and space’ must be invogue, as whatever happens, happens on a giving place and at a giving time. this idea gives a picture of beings as possessing certain principle or force that makes them act upon each other. the levels of place the notion of the general activity of beings on one another enters into the general concept of movement as an essential element of being. in accordance with this movement, kagame identifies three levels of place: a. the physical place this refers to a ‘locality’ or ‘space’ susceptible of being occupied by an object. b. the second type is localization insofar as it is a position in space or internal place. c. the third is the ‘external place’ equivalent to latin ‘ubi’. the internal and external places are metaphysical places and are different in this aspect from the ‘physical place’. mailto:topacademicjournals@gmail.com american journal of arts and communication vol. 9, issue 1; january-february 2024; issn: 2994-0540 impact factor: 6.9 11252 columbia rd nw, washington dc, united states https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac; mail: topacademicjournals@gmail.com 65 | american journal of art and communication | https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac just as in space, the essence of time is becoming which means passage and transition from any one state to another. it is interchangeable with space, as it “converges with the category of space to individualize movement of being, which means individualizing being even as its activity and internal perfection proceed”6. time in this sense is seen as the ‘unfolding of being’ whatever happens, happens on time such that each event or unfolding has time as its fundamentum, that is, its basis. hence, without time, there would not be events. time moves or measures the unfolding forces. and by measuring them, as iroegbu will say, make things happen. kuntu the forth category is the kuntu. kuntu talks about modality. it is a way or manner. in kuntu, the designation of the image determines what the image expresses, the designation is independent of the shape or form of the image. the image receives its meaning through its designation. while in kuntu other component enters into the creative process along with the act of designation – that component is the modality. components of kuntu in kuntu, the image receives its designation, while in kuntu it receives its form. hence, kuntu gives form to the image. we call this kuntu components, the determination of the image, because they express whatever category or sub – category the images will evoke. for example, the most important category is muntu, they are therefore given the human form. we have also what kageme called second order determinant which does not individualize the figure but determines its place in the ontological system, in the hierarchy of the world of the living and the dead. for example, the king is giving attributes like crown while hoe is the farmer. however, it is important to note that the determinant of the first degree stresses the general before the particular and begins therefore with the most general, in the ontological category. for example, in carving a muntu, it must have the face of a human and not that of a lion. i. rhythm another component of kuntu is rhythm which is the architecture of being, the inner dynamic that gives it form, the pure expression of the life force. rhythm is expressed through corporeal and sensual means, through lines, surfaces, colours and volumes in archiyecture, sculpture or painting: through accents in poetry and music, through movements in the dance, rhytm is described as the kuntu of the nommo, as oit turns all these concrete things towards the light of the spirit. senghor opines that it is only rhythm that gives the word its effective fullness. he noted that it is the word of god, that is, the rhythmic word that created the world. there are two types of rhythm: a polymetry in which several different sorts of basic metre are heard simultaneously b plyrythmices in which a single basic metre is accented and syncopated in different ways. ii masks the masks always signify a muntu. there are however two types of masks: the muzima and the muzimu. the muzima masks represent a living person and therefore serve [profane uses, mostly entertainment and amusement while the muzimu msks are employed for the purpose of ritual. inorder to make the muzimu forces perceptible, these masks must possess features which distinguish muzimu from muzima. sinse muzimu has no body, neither mailto:topacademicjournals@gmail.com american journal of arts and communication vol. 9, issue 1; january-february 2024; issn: 2994-0540 impact factor: 6.9 11252 columbia rd nw, washington dc, united states https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac; mail: topacademicjournals@gmail.com 66 | american journal of art and communication | https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac does it have face, the image must therefore go beyond reality. the artist enjoys the greatest freedom in the creation of the mask. however, it is easy explaining some modal actions in kuntu than in others. for example, while it is easy to explain laughter as a modal action, it is not the same with beauty, as beauty is hard to imagine as an independently acting force. african aesthetics rests on the aesthetics of kuntu, that is on the harmony of meaning and rhythm, of sense and form. beauty is identified with the good. thus, when one says this is good, in african linguistic carriage, the term good carries at the same time the meaning beautiful. hence, it the rhythm the division of ascents, fails to correspond to the meaning, then kuntu, and there with the art, has failed, there is no effect, therefore kuntu is a bad and subsequently ugly. njoku in his essays in african philosophy, thought and theology subscribed to this idea when he noted that what is of value is usually described as “ihe di mma or ihe oma – what is good or what is beautiful”11 evaluation and conclusion ntu according to jahn is the universal force as such, which hoever, never occurs apart from its manifestations: mungtu, kintu, hantu and kuntu. these four categories are thus manifestations of ntu. however, we note that the first categories of muntu and kintu correspond to the aristotlian categories of substance, the third category of hantu correspond to the aristotlian categories of space and time while kuntu is shared among the remaining seven aristotlian categories of quality, quantity, relation, passion, position, possession and action. it is apt at this juncture to observe that in the western conception of existence, being is static while for africans being is force, and force is dynamic. secondly, being gives man his real place in the created order as muntu is regarded as superior force that can use other forces to increase his vital force. thirdly, it manifests the hierarchy of forces. lastly, it brings out the inner dynamism that characterise existence as everything is characterized by motion, hetraclitus noted that everything is in lflux. generally, ntu is the universal force which does not occur apart from its manifestations of muntu. kintu, hantu and kuntu. end notes 1 f njoku, essay in african philosophy, thought and theology. (owerri: claretianinstitute of philosophy) 2002. p. 199 2 p. iroegbu, metaphysics the kpim of philosophy (nigeria: international university press) 1995. p.223 3. loc cit 4 d a masoro, african philosophy in search of idnetity (london: indiana university prss) 1994 p. 85 5 placid tempels, bantu philosophy (paris: presence africaine) 1959 p.57 6 p. iroegbu, kpim of time (nigeria: hope publications) 2004 p.198 7 j jahn, muntu an outline of the new african culture (new york grove press inc) 1958 p.101 mailto:topacademicjournals@gmail.com questioning public service media in egypt and spain american journal of art and communication vol.6, issue 4; july-august 2023; 1252 columbia rd nw, washington dc, united states https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac; mail: topacademicjournals@gmail.com 14 | american journal of art and communication | https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac public service media and the state: the relationship between the egyptian and spanish governments and their public media 1maría josé garcía-martínez, and 2mohamed el-sherbiny 1university of navarra, spain 2the american university in cairo, egypt abstract the legitimacy of publicly funded television (psb) is being questioned in many countries. this paper examines the foundational principles of psb and discusses the challenges to its legitimacy. the paper argues that psb is still a vital public good and that it can be made more relevant and sustainable in the digital age. keywords: publicly funded television, public service broadcasting, legitimacy, challenges, digital age introduction the legitimacy of publicly funded television, as well as their foundational principles, are being questioned in many countries (azurmendi, 2018; campos-freire, 2013; goodwin, 2020; połońska & beckett, 2019; van den bulck & moe, 2012). public service broadcasting (psb) was defined by united nations educational, scientific and cultural organization (unesco, 2005) as “broadcasting made, financed, and controlled by the public, for the public” (p. 14). it is neither commercial nor state-owned, free from political interference and pressure from commercial forces. public media were created to represent the voice of all sectors of society and to provide content to inform, educate, and entertain the public while steering away from commercial interests and political inclinations. the user confidence has been eroded and the current market scenario would appear to be a challenging space in which to argue for publicly funded media whose mission is to offer a cultural vision to fragmented societies. however, we should question if it is possible to propose publicly funded television media in political systems that fail to respect political freedom, diversity, independence, and universality, or even in democratic countries where public service media (psm) have drifted from these fundamental principles when the industry context is favorable. unesco has endeavored to promote public broadcasting not only in democratic countries but also in third-world democracies and undeveloped nations, as guarantors of independence and civic engagement in political debate (ayish, 2010). the literature reveals that studies aiming to resolve this apparent paradox tend to develop a comparative analysis of public television models in different national contexts (camposfreire, mailto:topacademicjournals@gmail.com american journal of art and communication vol.6, issue 4; july-august 2023; 1252 columbia rd nw, washington dc, united states https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac; mail: topacademicjournals@gmail.com 15 | american journal of art and communication | https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac soengas-pérez, & rodríguez-castro, 2018; khamis, 2011; lis, nienstedt, & günster, 2018). however, the study of psm remains underdeveloped in most non-western countries (lestón-huerta, goyanes, & mazza, 2021). the originality of this article is to compare public television in a european country (spain) and in an arab country (egypt), where the public model was established in 1953. both models have been subject to reform, shifting from a state television service to a psm organization. this comparative study of public television services in egypt and spain aims to contribute to an enlightening debate on the role and legitimization of such a model in a democratic european union (eu) country and in a transitional, developing country in the middle east. spanish radio and television (rtve)’s successful transformation from a company set up under a dictatorship to its later functioning in a modern democracy may yield practical implications for countries in a transitional phase. rtve was established in 1956 during franco’s regime as a government-owned national state television organization. its primary objective was to promote the unity of spain and spanish culture. in contrast to other european public television corporations, rtve received dual funding through state subsidies and advertising, making it financially independent (bustamante, 2007). for several years, it held a dominant position in terms of viewership until private television channels gained an advantage in 2004. since 2010, however, the only funding is public funding via the general tax regime. this was a political decision to avoid rtve’s abuse of its dominant position against the private companies and also to consolidate a new model where independence was guaranteed because the rtve board was selected according to professional criteria rather than political affinities. contemporary spain is a politically stable, democratic country where press freedom and freedom of information are safeguarded. egypt is a republic with a semi-presidential system established after the 2011 revolution. its public television institution has existed since 1956. the egyptian national media authority (nma), is the body responsible for the public broadcasting sector, and was formerly named as the egyptian radio and television union (ertu). after the 2011 revolution, a new law was issued and the name was changed into the nma. the nma with its new mandate aims towards transforming the state-owned media into a public service one, especially after a biased coverage of the state during the revolution. since then, public television has witnessed many reformation initiatives, yet it has not been able to regain its audience back as expected (allam, 2021; european journalism centre [ejc], 2018). the philosophy of psb developed when spectrum scarcity justified limiting and regulating radio and television airwaves. nowadays, regulations are based on the necessity of public service itself. it must adapt to multiple platforms like online texts, podcasts, videos, and user-generated content. technological advancements enable public broadcasters to offer digital channels and internet services. thus, psm encompasses various content-delivery platforms. this study focuses on psb. this article provides a comparison between two case studies concerning the implementation of the four principles outlined by unesco in the psm in spain and egypt through public information by reviewing different performances and strategies in the two countries. mailto:topacademicjournals@gmail.com american journal of art and communication vol.6, issue 4; july-august 2023; 1252 columbia rd nw, washington dc, united states https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac; mail: topacademicjournals@gmail.com 16 | american journal of art and communication | https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac after the literature review, the theoretical framework and methodology used in studying the two cases will be briefly outlined. the following section will describe the main features of both countries to contextualize them politically, followed by the results of the two cases and comparisons between them. the final section concludes with a discussion of the results and their implications as well as the limitations of the research. literature review the literature review focuses on comparative analysis as a valid method for doing research on previous studies where the approach has been used to compare psm in different countries and on studies carried out in spain and egypt before the present research. according to esser and vliegenthart (2017), comparison offers alternative options that can reveal solutions to similar dilemmas elsewhere. the comparative method is often used to outline the achievements and limitations of public service television in different countries (castro-herrero, nir, & skovsgaard, 2018). most of the publications criticize publicly funded broadcasters because they have failed to fulfill the mission for which they were set up (lowe & jauert, 2005; lowe & steemers, 2012). various reasons are adduced in this regard: lack of transparency in management and/or funding (spasovska & imre, 2015), lack of political independence (iosifidis & papathanassopoulos, 2019), a distant mismatch between institutional objectives and audience interests and needs (sehl, 2020; tanaka & sato, 2014), failure to reflect cultural diversity (lowe & martin, 2014) and promote cultural identities (costa & díaz, 2021; garcíaprieto, aguaded, & garcía-rojas, 2022). on the contrary, other authors point to the role played by public television media as high-quality content providers (ojer, 2011), their role in the coverage of minorities (moring & godenhjelm, 2011), and their adaptation to emerging public consumption demands (franquet & villa, 2014). as well as the bbc as the standard of reference for independent and high-quality content (freedman, 2019; ojer, 2012), a number of other european media institutions, such as the psm in germany and portugal, are sometimes presented as legitimate models of public television (lis, nienstedt, & günster, 2018). the spanish public broadcasting service (rtve) has been researched from a range of perspectives, coming in for criticism on the grounds of political bias and lack of independence (almirón, capurro, & ortega, 2010; león, 2010; medina & ojer, 2015), as an inefficient financial model (jivkova-semova, 2011), and for its failure to adapt to emerging social trends and younger audiences (azurmendi, ortega, & muñoz, 2019). however, other researchers have pointed to rtve’s capacity for technological innovation and attention to minorities (zaragoza & garcía-avilés, 2018). scholars have found a gap between the universally accepted definition of psb and how it is understood and applied in the arab world and argue that psb should be established along the lines of universal principles to guarantee diversity and independence (allam, 2021; sakr, 2012). ayish (2010) refers to a number of countries in the middle east, including egypt, where there are signs of a move toward administrative and financial independence for broadcasting from the government. nevertheless, he concludes that public television remains an integral part of the state machinery. richter, dupuis, and badr (2021) offer a comparative analysis of the mailto:topacademicjournals@gmail.com american journal of art and communication vol.6, issue 4; july-august 2023; 1252 columbia rd nw, washington dc, united states https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac; mail: topacademicjournals@gmail.com 17 | american journal of art and communication | https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac television sector in egypt and poland and conclude that many adjustments are required to enable the nma’s transformation into a public service broadcaster. the purpose of this article is to explore to what extent the existence of state-supported television organizations may be justified in terms of unesco’s principles by comparing the case of a democratic country in europe with a transitional arab country in the middle east. methodology to define psm, we analyzed different assessment criteria from international bodies such as the council of europe (2007), european broadcasting union (2013), the european union (2010), the public media alliance, and some others (e.g., fernández & roel, 2014) and decided to choose unesco’s principles because they were sufficiently universal and valid for both democratic and developing countries (bucci, chiaretti, & fiorini et al., 2012; stiles & weeks, 2006; unesco, 2013). they are considered as the ideal framework for psm because they were drafted in light of best practices in countries on various continents and in different political situations and economic development contexts (hendrickx, raats, ranaivoson, & opgenhaffen, 2019). on the other hand, they include the same principles as other organisms. public service broadcasting was created to represent the voice of all sectors of society and to provide content to inform, educate, and entertain the public while steering away from commercial and political interests (freedman, 2019; unesco, 2005). to fulfill these functions, public television companies should facilitate program accessibility to all audiences, establishing ways of guaranteeing diversity, public participation, and political independence. the unesco (2005) public television principles—universality, diversity, independence, and distinctiveness—comprise a well-grounded, practical, and applicable model for public television services in both developing and developed countries (ayish, 2010; stiles & weeks, 2006). universal service means that the majority of the population should have guaranteed, free access to psb programming regardless of geographical and financial constraints (born & prosser, 2001; lowe & savage, 2020). universality refers not only to physical availability but also to issues of diversity of languages and interests (sakr, 2012). universal access to public service programming also includes a variety of delivery platforms, not only on-air television but also live, online broadcasting and access to a range of applications (trappel, 2008) and public accounts on social media (andrejevic, 2013; hutchinson, 2015; van dijck & poell, 2015). in addition, audience ratings and satisfaction should likewise be high (tsuji & miyahara, 2007) though it is uncertain how high it might be. finally, outreach to minority groups such as immigrants, religious or ethnic minorities, or disabled people, enacts decisions and initiatives that reflect the principle of universality (medina, herrero, & frago, 2011; naerland & dahl, 2022). to be universal nowadays means to deliver content using multiple platforms to reach audiences, such as the television set, the computer, the tablet, and the mobile phone (telkmann, 2021) and through apps and social media to allow the audience to participate by commenting on, sharing, and liking posts (vaz-álvarez, fieirasceide, & túñez-lópez, 2021). as a tool to allow dialogue with society, unesco recommends nominating an ombudsman or somebody who defends the audience. the existence of an ombudsman allows the audience to mailto:topacademicjournals@gmail.com american journal of art and communication vol.6, issue 4; july-august 2023; 1252 columbia rd nw, washington dc, united states https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac; mail: topacademicjournals@gmail.com 18 | american journal of art and communication | https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac participate in the content (bucci et al., 2012). public broadcasters must strive to reach the majority of viewers in today’s fragmented market, ideally achieving a penetration rate exceeding 90%. on the other hand, to justify their existence, public companies should conduct audience satisfaction surveys. in addition, public companies are especially obliged to include different strategies to facilitate access to audiences with disabilities (roviraesteva & torr-carroggio, 2019). consequently, psm must be diverse, that is inclusive of varied content topics and genres, to address different target audiences and to represent diverse voices and viewpoints (jakubowicz, 2007; mangani & tarrini, 2018; mcquail, 1992). independence is usually measured in financial, political, editorial, and governance terms. financial and editorial independence means to deliver content and messages free from the control of the state and commercial influence (azurmendi, muñoz, & ortega, 2018; bennett, 1997). independence at a governance level means ensuring that public broadcasting has enough autonomy. its administrative structure must be accountable, representative of all sectors of civil society, efficient in its administrative structure, and free from intervention by the government of the country (spasovska & imre, 2015; van den bulck & moe, 2012). to fulfill these principles, the public broadcaster should have a stable board and a sustainable financial system (price & raboy, 2011). neff and pickard (2021) stress that secured funding should be accompanied by a regulatory framework that ensures independence with accountable supervisory and executive functions and pluralistic methods of selecting the members of the board. the existence of independent commissions to serve as a buffer between the public broadcasters and the incumbent government can guarantee the fulfillment of the psm remit (camposfreire et al., 2018). the distinction between public media and state media lies in the former’s independence, especially in political terms. the difference depends on the level of political and individual freedom in a country and how the government uses the public media. the defining characteristic of public media is their separation from government influence. considering that the psm are owned by the state, the next indicators selected to measure independence are a diverse range of board members, a president elected by an authority other than the state government, no state influence on information content, an efficient administrative structure, and external accountability (cabrera, talavera, & valais, 2022; costa & díaz, 2021). finally, distinctiveness is related to offering inclusive programming in an innovative way with high quality and ethical principles (donders, raats, & tintel, 2020; price, 2002). some indicators to appraise these criteria are the level of technical innovative resources such as augmented reality, use of graphics, artificial intelligence, recommendation tools, and ethical standards such as the guarantee of freedom of expression, truth and independence, procedures to protect sensitive audiences, and mechanisms to verify information and sources. national or international awards are a tangible indicator of distinctiveness (bucci et al., 2012). the purpose of this article is to analyze the functionality of psb in spain and egypt, following the unesco principles that legitimize public media as such. the case studies have been analyzed to compare how unesco’s psm principles—universality, diversity, independence, and distinctiveness—have been fulfilled. mailto:topacademicjournals@gmail.com american journal of art and communication vol.6, issue 4; july-august 2023; 1252 columbia rd nw, washington dc, united states https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac; mail: topacademicjournals@gmail.com 19 | american journal of art and communication | https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac the data were collected from internal reports. the fulfillment of the principles was evaluated by following the methodology applied by campos-freire and colleagues (2018). table 1 shows the proposed checklist for each one of the principles. table 1. unesco’s principles indicators. universality o variety of delivery platforms: • on air o • online o • app o social media accounts: • facebook o • instagram o • twitter o • linkedin o • youtube o • tiktok o audience satisfaction survey o ombudsman o use of signs for audiences with disabilities o diversity o different types of programs: • newscasts & public affairs programs, o • educational programs o • documentaries o • cultural programs o • films o • local fiction o • variety of shows o programs for audiences of different ages: • 4–12 o • 13–24 o • 25–44 o • 45–64 o • 65+ o independence o diverse board members o mailto:topacademicjournals@gmail.com american journal of art and communication vol.6, issue 4; july-august 2023; 1252 columbia rd nw, washington dc, united states https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac; mail: topacademicjournals@gmail.com 20 | american journal of art and communication | https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac president elected by an authority other than the prime minister or the state government o no state influence on news or current affairs o independent commission o efficient administrative structure o accountability o distinctiveness o innovation implementation • virtual reality o • augmented reality o • recommendation tools o • artificial intelligence o ethical codes • internal fact-checker o awards received o political framework of spain and egypt though spain has been an eu country since 1986 and egypt is an arab country, they have had diplomatic and cooperation relations since 1967, when the first cultural cooperation agreement was established. since then, their cooperation has extended into educational, cultural, technical, and scientific sectors. the global strategic objective of spanish cooperation in egypt ranges from contributing to increasing the economic capacity of egypt to strengthening its institutions and civil society (spanish foreign office, 2009). the purpose of the masar program, the spanish cooperation endeavor in egypt, is to collaborate with democratic transition in the arab world. the year 2011 saw protests among outraged young people in both countries. in spain, they originated around march 15, 2011, and were called the 15-m movement. their objective was to protest against the spanish government. over time, their protests took on a more violent tone. years later, they became part of the populist party podemos (we can), whose founder became vice president of the spanish government in 2019. the process of political and social change that took place in egypt as a result of the so-called arab spring led to a reformulation of the development and cooperation policy across the region, focusing on the process of transition to democracy. despite this common historical moment, the political systems of both countries are different. spanish democracy has been in operation for more than 40 years and enjoys almost full freedoms, while egypt has just begun to take its first steps toward guaranteeing basic freedoms (cf. the freedom house, 2022). the spanish psm, rtve, was set up in 1956 during franco’s regime as a national state television organization owned and managed by the government and was created to boost the unity of spain and spanish culture. its management depends on the spanish government and is conditioned by the political party in power mailto:topacademicjournals@gmail.com american journal of art and communication vol.6, issue 4; july-august 2023; 1252 columbia rd nw, washington dc, united states https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac; mail: topacademicjournals@gmail.com 21 | american journal of art and communication | https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac at any given time (almirón et al., 2010). unlike other european public television companies, however, the spanish public broadcaster benefited from dual funding, financed by both state subsidies and advertising until 2010; the only funding allowed from then on was public aid via the general tax regime (bustamante, 2007). the introduction of private channels in 1989 caused a decline in audience ratings and an increase in costs for the public broadcaster. its financial situation was untenable, and its public service identity and legitimacy were questioned. after a lengthy consultation process with experts, influenced by british and french models, the government undertook a new reform of rtve in the 2000s. the law of state radio and television 17/2006 set out to establish political independence and efficient economic management. the most significant change was the removal of advertising as a source of revenue. the law set out the principles for the selection of rtve executives and ways of ensuring an ideologically independent corporation. mechanisms were also put in place for greater supervision of the financial management of the public radio and television services. egypt’s national broadcasting media body, the nma, regulates 23 television stations and 17 radio stations. since president nasser’s time in the 1950s, egypt’s rulers have recognized that the media are powerful tools, and the nma has long been known as the best advocate for the government’s activities. in 2014, a change took place when the ministry of information was abolished—a key demand of the 2011 revolution where the appeal for an independent regulatory body was high, thus paving the way toward the transformation of the nma from state broadcaster into public broadcaster in 2016. in 2018, law 178, which governs the nma, was approved, defining its scope, responsibilities, new governance structure, and funding mechanisms (allam, 2019). the law encompasses crucial aspects that had never been addressed before, such as the importance of a digital presence, the independence of the governance structure, as well as the duties and responsibilities of the authority. comparison results the analysis is based on data relating to the four criteria: universal access, independence, diversity, and distinctiveness. universal access not only does rtve deliver content via on-air broadcast it also allows access to all its content and live channels online. among the options, in addition to viewing programs, it is possible to share content via e-mail, twitter or meneáme accounts, and through the apps of their programs. through its website it is possible to access all its current programs and archives and track the popularity of downloaded videos. to achieve a better relationship with the audience, rtve set up a facebook account in 2009 through which it aims to meet users’ recommendations. nowadays, it has accounts on youtube, tiktok, instagram, linkedin, and the app rtveplay for direct access to its content. since 2007, rtve has had an ombudsman, responsible for receiving complaints from viewers and bringing them to the attention of the board of directors, thereby performing a mediating role between the public and the psb. the satisfaction of the public may be a significant indicator of the universal reception of rtve. in a survey carried out by the audience research company imop in 2018, 50% recognized that psm was necessary, mailto:topacademicjournals@gmail.com american journal of art and communication vol.6, issue 4; july-august 2023; 1252 columbia rd nw, washington dc, united states https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac; mail: topacademicjournals@gmail.com 22 | american journal of art and communication | https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac and 5% rejected its existence. a survey of audience perception shows the weaknesses of rtve. the most significant limitations were low use especially among the young, weak links with audiences, alignment with the aging spanish population, and poor innovation (gómez, 2018). in egypt, the nma provides broadcasting access to all parts of egypt via terrestrial transmission, where television penetration reaches 94% of the population and is available via satellite. the nma has a website as well, where the content of all programs and newscasts is available, yet it does not livestream content. its presence on digital platforms is mainly through youtube, with 21 channels, but its presence is weak with a total number of 1 million registered users, of a population of 109 million (ict, 2022; nagy, 2018). there is a clear absence of a digital strategy because most of the youtube channels lack regular uploading patterns. the nma website includes the option of sending complaints, yet there is almost no transparency in the number of complaints received or those that were resolved. both nma and rtve have taken similar steps in trying to reach audiences with disabilities. to eliminate barriers, in 2014, an rtve subtitling plan was developed to facilitate access for people with hearing disability. as for the nma, a sign-language interpreter is always at the right bottom corner of the screen as a service for people with hearing disability. according to audience share, the rtve channels went from 23% audience share in 2007 to 14% in 2022. since 2011, it has no longer been the leader in audience share as it used to be. unfortunately, the egyptian market lacks an audience research company and, as a result, it is difficult to get data about viewership numbers or the share of each channel. according to some analysts, since the introduction of private broadcasters in 2001, and the egyptian revolution in 2011, viewership of public media has dramatically decreased (mideastmedia, 2017). diversity to guarantee pluralism and its function as a public service, rtve has regulated the right of access to its contents for different social, political, and union groups. however, callejo (2008), who studied the presence of different social groups in news programming on rtve, concluded that this presence is weak. the information statute and the style rules of rtve are available on the company’s website since, as a public service, it must ensure social, ideological, political, and cultural pluralism and access to minorities. it also emphasizes the journalistic independence of professionals and specifies that professionals should guide their work toward service, and managers should be open to dialogue. the corporation has tried to reach different audiences by launching children’s channels and news and sports channels, but they have not been able to reach large audience shares. in 2017, rtve launched playz, a new digital channel aimed at the under 35s, but young viewers are still the missing audience for rtve since its core audience is mostly adults. the nma television channels range from general-interest to specialized ones. however, not all the 23 channels are directly reflected in viewership figures. the newly developed 2018 nma law 178 states the importance of meeting different social needs and interests. yet according to different studies (sakr, 2012; unesco, 2013), the results with respect to public service themes, such as “children and youth,” “education,” mailto:topacademicjournals@gmail.com american journal of art and communication vol.6, issue 4; july-august 2023; 1252 columbia rd nw, washington dc, united states https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac; mail: topacademicjournals@gmail.com 23 | american journal of art and communication | https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac “science and technology,” and “environment,” were almost nonexistent. this explains the gap between public interest, where young people constitute more than half of the population, and programming strategies, which focus primarily on and give priority to government activities. independence to transform rtve into a corporation that is independent of political power, and with greater autonomy, the 2010 psm reform modified the selection process for members of its governing body. before that time, the general director was appointed directly by the government and served a four-year term, which is simultaneous with the term of office of the spanish government. law 5/2017 set the number of the rtve board members as 10, to be elected by the parliament, with all having sufficient professional qualifications and experience. they are to serve for a period of six years, which is nonrenewable. the president of the corporation has to appear once a month to answer questions from the parliament’s control committee of rtve. these appearances are published in full on the rtve website. however, according to media pluralism monitor, “the reports about pro-governmental manipulation and influences on psm governing bodies have multiplied in the latest years” (cited in masip, ruiz, & suau, 2018, p. 9). according to azurmendi and colleagues’ (2018) survey of the public perception of rtve, slightly more than half the respondents said they thought that public television was not independent of political power, whereas one quarter said they thought it was. despite these legal measures, the political parties control the appointment of the president of rtve (ortega, 2017). there is no independent commission to regulate communication matters in spain. instead, the competition and market regulatory body monitors specific issues relating to the audiovisual market, which is a multisectoral regulator appointed by the spanish government (fernández, 2023). in egypt, the nma oversees and monitors the national media outlets. it is also responsible for approving administrative and financial regulations, planning the annual budget and the general scheme of programming, and expressing opinions on broadcasting legislation. before the cancellation of the ministry of information in 2014, the nma annual board meetings were described as useless, given that all plans had to be approved by the ministry (abd ela’al, 2018). the new law in 2018 set new criteria for choosing nma board member. the board consists of nine members, where three members (the head and two others) are chosen by the president, and four other members represent the governmental entities. in addition, the board lacks the representation of civil society groups and non-governmental organizations (allam, 2021). in addition, the structure of the nma still suffers from a centralized system, which enforces a top-down communication system. news selection goes through a strict review process to make sure that it adheres to government policies. the other key aspect of independence is public funding. before 2005, rtve had accumulated a $8.80 million deficits due to inefficient economic and financial management. this situation required restructuring, and 4,100 workers were laid off. mailto:topacademicjournals@gmail.com american journal of art and communication vol.6, issue 4; july-august 2023; 1252 columbia rd nw, washington dc, united states https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac; mail: topacademicjournals@gmail.com 24 | american journal of art and communication | https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac however, the most dramatic change was affected by the financing of rtve. the 8/2009 act provided for the abolition of advertising revenue in spanish public television with effect from 2010. in just four months, rtve had to meet the same objectives on a much smaller budget. subsequent financial years saw an ongoing deficit ($56 million in 2020), but this was not as large as before. cutbacks in production budgets impacted the number and quality of rtve productions in subsequent years (franquet & villa, 2014; medina & ojer, 2010). as for egypt, every household is charged a small fee of 0.2 piasters (0.025 cents) per kilowatt on the electricity bill, which does not generate enough revenue to cover the expenses or to enable the production of high-quality programs. currently, the nma depends mainly on advertising and government subsidy for funding and had a deficit amounting to $327 million in 2017. as with rtve, a significant proportion of the nma budget is spent on salaries. nma is significantly overstaffed, with a workforce hired after the 2011 uprising as a political solution to the ongoing demands of protesters. most of them lack the required skills to produce high-quality content. based on a new presidential decree, no more employment in governmental bodies is allowed, which has helped reduce the number of employees from 42,000 in 2011 to 36,000 in 2018. financial results and personnel recruitment are very similar in both companies. though the number of employees is much larger in egypt, the budgets are significantly different too. in 2020, expenditure at rtve ran to $1.28 million, whereas nma had an expenditure of $445 million in 2016. distinctiveness the distinctiveness criterion is defined in terms of innovative actions and programming for different agesegmented publics. rtve has been a pioneer in the development of new technologies to distribute its contents. it created a red button to access its contents and interactive services from smart-tv sets. in 2011, the rtve lab, as a unit of the corporation’s department of strategy and business development for interactive media, was created to trial trans-media products linked to its contents (zaragoza & garcía-avilés, 2018). in 2015, it launched impulsa visión startups to foster start-ups. in 2018, the hbbtv platform, lovestv, was launched to access all television channels. it is quite common for rtve to use virtual and augmented reality and artificial intelligence in news programs (aramburu, lópez, & hidalgo, 2023). in 2022, a quiz program called mapi was launched with an augmented reality 3d character that interacted with other people and real objects (urbina, 2022). the awards for rtve have been abundant. for example, in 2022, rtve won the european broadcasting union technology & innovation award for their 5g and beyond project, which allowed live television broadcasting from technologically deprived rural areas (european broadcasting union, 2022). as well as the self-regulatory code to protect children’s exposure to the content and, the rtve has an information statute, which includes the rights and duties of the professionals in obtaining, preparing, and broadcasting news, with the goal of ensuring their independence, objectivity, and truthfulness. it created the news councils as participatory bodies aimed at guaranteeing the internal control and the protection of the journalists. mailto:topacademicjournals@gmail.com american journal of art and communication vol.6, issue 4; july-august 2023; 1252 columbia rd nw, washington dc, united states https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac; mail: topacademicjournals@gmail.com 25 | american journal of art and communication | https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac on the technological innovation side, the nma website lacks the live streaming option, and there has not been an actual plan yet regarding the digital switchover from terrestrial transmission. as mentioned before, there are individual initiatives for separate programs. yet, recently the nma developed a website that brings the latest news, but there is no live streaming; however there is an experimental broadcasting for the nile news tv channel (a specialized news channel). moreover, it is worth mentioning that there is a general media code of ethics, in addition to a children code was issued by the supreme council for media regulations (scmr), the egyptian media regulator, setting the codes for children representation in different media platforms. as for its social media presence, the nma has a page on facebook that posts latest news, yet there is also no live streaming. it also has an account on twitter, yet no presence on instagram or linkedin. table 2 shows the existence or not of the different selected indicators related to the four criteria of psm. table 2. results. universality variety of delivery platforms: • on air • • • online • • apps • social media accounts: • facebook • • • instagram • • twitter • • • linkedin • • youtube • • tiktok • audience coverage +90% • • audience satisfaction survey • ombudsman • use of signs for audiences with hearing disabilities • • diversity different types of programs: • newscasts & public affairs programs • • • educational programs • • • documentaries • • • cultural programs • • • films • • • local fiction • • • variety of shows • • rtve nma mailto:topacademicjournals@gmail.com american journal of art and communication vol.6, issue 4; july-august 2023; 1252 columbia rd nw, washington dc, united states https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac; mail: topacademicjournals@gmail.com 26 | american journal of art and communication | https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac programs for audiences of different ages: • 4–12 • • • 13–24 • • • 25–44 • • • 45–64 • • • 65+ • • independence diverse board members • president elected by an authority other than the • prime minister or the state government no state influence on news or current affairs • independent commission • efficient administrative structure • accountability • distinctiveness innovation implementation • virtual reality • • augmented reality • • recommendation tools • • artificial intelligence • ethical codes • • • internal fact-checker • awards received • discussion the rtve-nma comparison clearly reveals that egypt lies behind spain as regards most aspects of psb remit. only in terms of content diversity does the nma stand out. in all other areas, the nma must improve to meet a minimum standard that might justify its existence. yet, despite the advancement of the spanish public media, the data show that rtve suffers from the same problems, especially from the ones that deal with the younger generations. this makes the question of public media efficiency more pressing than ever, especially amid technological advancements and the increase of news and entertainment sources. a critical assessment of rtve discloses a number of serious deficiencies as regards its status as a public television organization. its dependence on political power makes it a state television service as is clear from the way in which the corporation’s president is appointed and news is biased in favor of the government. moreover, falling audience figures may put its future viability at risk. at the same time, rtve has a number of strengths, such as its initiatives aiming to reach younger audiences via specific channels, commitment to innovation, openness to audience feedback and comments, presence on social media, outreach to the disabled, and the diverse range of content-types produced for different audiences. as compared with rtve, the nma must improve in a range of areas if it is to become an actual television organization capable of meeting contemporary challenges, mailto:topacademicjournals@gmail.com american journal of art and communication vol.6, issue 4; july-august 2023; 1252 columbia rd nw, washington dc, united states https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac; mail: topacademicjournals@gmail.com 27 | american journal of art and communication | https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac in addition to political independence from the government, the appointment of an ombudsman, the digital switchover, and the production of content for younger viewers. as regards the financial standing to guarantee independence, 45% of rtve’s budget comes from the state. its other funding streams are lower; and while its budget has fallen overall since the last legal reform, it remains economically dependent on the state. the nma is likewise running a significant budget deficit with a funding mechanism that mainly comes from the state. the first aim of this article was to examine if the public television systems in spain and egypt have met unesco’s principles of psm. through the application of the unesco (2005) psb principles, it may be concluded that the public television services in egypt and spain comprise a state-controlled model rather than a genuine psb. although they are subject to different political systems, the public television operators in both countries share a common challenge: high dependence on the government. this dependence affects the stability of strategic plans, budget limitations, continuity of managers, and the criteria of independence for news. the situation of egyptian television is even more complicated due to its centralized governance structure and the problem of overstaffing. having analyzed rtve’s performance following the unesco principles, we can conclude that it is an open organization in terms of innovation, at least, endeavoring to adapt itself to technological and cultural changes across the market. among the changes introduced to achieve a psm remit, the most effective were changes in the designation of the board of the public corporation and the removal of advertising as a source of revenue from 2010 onward. in doing so, rtve was no longer subject to unfair competition from commercial television companies. at the same time, as gómez-montano (2013) and león (2010) outlined, there are other aspects that should be improved to become an authentic psb, such as reaching younger audiences, appointing a stable management board, and ensuring independence from the government. in the case of egypt, the nma continues to fall considerably short of public media status according to unesco principles. though its penetration is high, its presence on digital platforms and other social media is limited to youtube, facebook and twitter. there is no clear digital strategy or assigned budget. the program websites are not particularly engaging for the audiences. the lack of an external audience research company makes it difficult to gauge viewership figures and assess whether or not its contents are popular. while the range of channels on offer is broad, they appear to target the interests of the egyptian cabinet rather than the public. furthermore, the board members’ selection is influenced by the government, limiting the nma’s independence to evaluate issues based on professional criteria or to question government policy. accountability is a pending task, and there is an urgent need to develop agencies to research and publish audience data. finally, the digital switchover has not yet been set as a key objective by the government; thus, the nma does not stand out in terms of technological innovation. the findings in relation to egypt should come as no surprise, given that it is a country still in transition toward full democracy. however, the findings for spain are surprising because 40 years of democracy might have been sufficient for exorcizing the ghosts of authoritarian governments keen to exercise control over the media. mailto:topacademicjournals@gmail.com american journal of art and communication vol.6, issue 4; july-august 2023; 1252 columbia rd nw, washington dc, united states https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac; mail: topacademicjournals@gmail.com 28 | american journal of art and communication | https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac conclusions the results presented in this article lead us to finish with some policy recommendations to legitimize the public media. as azurmendi and colleagues (2018) recognize, there are structural threats that call into question the public mission of psbs in terms of independence from political power and their management efficiency. rtve has excellent professionals who believe in the psm mission and understand the new market challenges. however, it is not easy for them to develop their projects because rtve has historically been too dependent on the spanish government. this affects the stability of strategic plans, budget limitations, continuity of managers, and the criteria of independent news. different policies were implemented to solve these problems but without success so far. the spanish government, no matter which party leads it, fears losing such a powerful media influence on society. the egyptian nma faces challenges due to government control, which impacts news selection and production. a centralized structure promotes a top-down communication system, hindering innovation. the large number of employees burdens the budget and obstructs restructuring efforts. additionally, reducing the number of channels is necessary for improved functionality and greater audience impact. solutions should come from bodies independent of the government, whose responsibility must come from the parliament or an independent commission. important points that need to be taken into consideration besides the search for new funding sources are the program formats that should meet audience needs and a strong presence on digital platforms to attract younger audiences. the exercise of governmental power over the public media, mainly through funding, likewise limits their news agenda, which focuses on official activities rather than public interests. limitations and further research the comparative case-study approach may yield practical findings that can be further developed and applied in ways that legitimize and safeguard the future of public television. this is a comparative research project that drew only on primary and secondary documents as a first step toward further research about the future of psb, especially in politically transitional countries, in light of the very recent changes that have taken place. the lack of audience data in egypt was a limitation as it made it difficult to draw clear comparisons and know the actual audience share of the egyptian channels. last but not least, further research should use in-depth interviews with employees and managers in both institutions as well as thorough content analysis to assess the diversity of interests and the presence of bias in news programming and to develop audience satisfaction surveys to know whether people consider the public broadcaster necessary and to what extent they are satisfied with it. despite these limitations, this research displays common problems that still exist in countries that operate under different political systems yet share common features in both the european continent and the middle east. mailto:topacademicjournals@gmail.com american journal of art and communication vol.6, issue 4; 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(2008). online media within the public service realm?: reasons to include online into the public service mission. convergence, 14(3), 313–322. doi:10.1177/1354856508091083 tsuji, m., & miyahara, s. (2007). measuring the value of japanese public broadcasting: an application of contingent valuation method. in l. oxley & d. kulasiri (eds.), congress on modeling and simulation: land, water and environmental management (pp. 1082–1088). christchurch, new zealand: integrated systems for sustainability. united nations educational, scientific and cultural organization. (2005). public service broadcasting: a best practices sourcebook. retrieved from https://unesdoc.unesco.org/ark:/48223/pf0000141584 united nations educational, scientific and cultural organization. (2013). assessment of media development in egypt. based on unesco’s media development indicators. the international program for the development of communication. retrieved from http://www.unesco.org/new/en/communication-andinformation/resources/publications-andcommunication-materials/publications/full-list/assessment-ofmedia-development-in-egypt/ mailto:topacademicjournals@gmail.com american journal of art and communication vol.6, issue 4; july-august 2023; 1252 columbia rd nw, washington dc, united states https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac; mail: topacademicjournals@gmail.com 37 | american journal of art and communication | https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac urbina, a. (producer). (2022). mapi [television series]. madrid, spain: rtve. van den bulck, h., & moe, h. (2012). to test or not to test: comparing the development of ex ante public service media assessments in flanders and norway. international journal of media and cultural politics, 8(1), 31–49. doi:10.1386/macp.8.1.31_1 van dijck, j., & poell, t. (2015). making public television social? public service broadcasting and the challenges of social media. television and new media, 16(2), 148–164. doi:10.1177/1527476414527136 vaz-álvarez, m., fieiras-ceide, c., & túñez-lópez, m. (2021). experiencias de co-creación en medios de servicio público europeos: visión y tendencias [co-creation experiences in european public service media: vision and trends]. adcomunica. revista científica de estrategias, tendencias e innovación en comunicación, 21, 71–84. doi:10.6035/2174-0992.2021.21.5 zaragoza, t., & garcía-avilés, j. a. (2018). development of journalistic innovation in public television: the case of rtve lab. hipertext.net, 17, 11–21. doi:10.31009/hipertext.net.2018.i17.02 mailto:topacademicjournals@gmail.com 051216-w233318--frontiers in art research.docx american journal of art and communication vol.8, issue 4; july-august 2023; 1252 columbia rd nw, washington dc, united states https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac; mail: topacademicjournals@gmail.com 1 | american journal of art and communication | https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac eco-friendly clothing: how to design clothes that protect the planet 1wang, xin, 2zhang, yi, 3chen, xiaomei, 4zhao, qiang, 5sun, yu quanzhou normal university, quanzhou, fujian, china. abstract: the concept of environmental protection has been constantly evolving in the past few decades. in the clothing industry, major brands have begun to integrate this concept into their design process. this paper studies how these brands have incorporated environmental protection into their clothing design, and discusses the challenges and opportunities they face. keywords: environmental protection, clothing design, sustainable development, major brands, challenges, opportunities 1. introduction human beings has a written history of more than 5,000 years. in the continuous development of history, human civilization and natural environment have been constantly fighting and integrating. natural environment determines the development direction of regional human society, and human social activities also cause irreversible changes to the natural environment. in order to make the human society and the natural environment better integrated development, the concept of environmental protection is also constantly innovating. the concept of environmental protection refers to a new concept put forward to maintain the sustainable development of the environment in a regional or global scope. human beings should reduce the impact on the natural environment in various social activities and coexist in harmony with nature. the concept continues to develop, and then becomes one of the necessary factors to directly drive consumers' consumption activities. in the world, all the major brands have integrated the concept of environmental protection into their own clothing design, and constantly hold various kinds of clothing press conferences to show the environmental protection concept of harmonious coexistence between man and nature. this paper aims to study how the major clothing design companies combine the concept of environmental protection with clothing design, and design a new clothing in line with the concept of environmental protection. 2. a review of environmental protection concepts 2.1. the emergence, development and evolution of environmental protection concepts environmental problems are a phenomenon that human beings have been required to face since ancient times. because the development of social productive forces is gradually improving, so the environmental problems also develop, in different historical stages of the environmental problems are also very different, and in today's society is facing the biggest environmental problem is-environmental pollution. in order to better improve the quality of life, the life mode based on environmental protection has become a new goal of people's life. because of the increasing amount of waste in life, the consumption of resources and environmental deterioration, so in order to reduce unnecessary waste, the concept of low carbon and environmental protection has become the mainstream idea in the 21st century[1](hu xiaoqing, 2012). mailto:topacademicjournals@gmail.com american journal of art and communication vol.8, issue 4; july-august 2023; 1252 columbia rd nw, washington dc, united states https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac; mail: topacademicjournals@gmail.com 2 | american journal of art and communication | https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac with the rise of environmental protection heat, environmental protection has become the new favorite of designers. because the theme of environmental protection is currently the most concerned topic of the public, but also the most sympathetic way to arouse the public. first of all, a variety of topics about conservation and environmental protection frequently appear. secondly, the major enterprises have also joined in the environmental protection action, playing an important leading role in the environmental protection activities. in the clothing industry which is closely related to our life, the real reason for the concept of environmental protection and sustainable development into the fashion industry is the outbreak of "fashion pollution protest" incident, which has also attracted wide attention from fashion brands and designers. with the concept of environmental protection, the concept of waste utilization is gradually accepted by more and more people. such as well-known environmentalists vivian westwood, (vivienne westwood) in the spring and summer 2018, the west queen will add waste disposable items to clothing, make clothing in more three-dimensional feeling more reflect the concept of the concept of environmental protection, as well as the use of abandoned disposable water bottles to some models as shoes, fully express the idea of waste use. "buy, buy, buy" is a common problem of modern consumers. due to the psychological impact of impulse consumption, most clothing and related products are abandoned and left idle after using them once or two times, while vivienne westwood advocates buying less and buying high-quality products. 2.2. research status of environmental protection concept developed countries led by the united states, such as sweden, france, the united kingdom and japan, took the lead in studying the environmental protection of clothing from the strategic perspective. looking at the foreign clothing market, a large number of authoritative data on the consumption of environmentally friendly clothing show that the total global green consumption has exceeded us $300 billion in the last year.84 percent of the dutch, about 89 percent of the americans, and about 90 percent of the germans consider their environmental standards when buying[2](feng xiaohan, yang rongrong, 2011). compared with the foreign environmental awareness and environmental protection concept of clothing design, china is relatively indifferent, because in the face of the green consumption wave sweeping the world, most enterprises are lack of sensitivity and practical actions. among the textile enterprises can carry out ecological textile certification is very few, only a few enterprises and products have been green certification. 3. the application of environmental protection concept in reality 3.1. practical application of environmental protection concept 3.1.1. lvmh the group promotes led lighting and energy-saving cooling equipment with the rise of environmentalism, the clothing and luxury industries have been questioned from all walks of life, so lvmh, the world's largest luxury group, has devoted itself to environmental protection and taken the responsibility of protecting the environment. according to my data collection, lvmh group's sustainable development plan is increasingly perfect. the lvmh group has set up a special carbon emission fund to promote led lighting and energy-efficient air-conditioning equipment and to reduce greenhouse gas emissions in its stores and factories. the group's carbon emissions fund raised 11.3 million euros in 2018 and gradually increased the number of specific environmental measures to 112 from only 64 in 2017. these environmental measures helped lvmh reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 2,500 units in 2018, equivalent to 1,600 european households. in order to increase environmental protection, lvmh, the company put forward an environmental protection initiative with the theme of life lvmh initiatives for the environment, and strive to implement environmental protection in every link from procurement to production, from design to retail. mailto:topacademicjournals@gmail.com american journal of art and communication vol.8, issue 4; july-august 2023; 1252 columbia rd nw, washington dc, united states https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac; mail: topacademicjournals@gmail.com 3 | american journal of art and communication | https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac 3.1.2. levi's launches project f.l. x plan in the world, 90 percent of clothing consumers have at least a pair of chic jeans. in popular culture, denim clothing is a fully personalized popular element, which spans the global clothing of the gender, age, traditional concepts and other aspects of consumers in different market groups."as a fashion item recognized by the housing market," jeans " jeans occupy an extremely important place in the fashion circle. jeans type is the most fashionable category fold and wear effect of pants, for the designer deliberately create "old" effect, to achieve this unique other fashion style, factory before each pair of jeans after twenty recurrence of dehydration grinding, then artificial grinding, after bleaching and coloring to finish a finished product. to make the jeans better visually, the water also adds surfactant to be softness. now people mouth of jeans on behalf of the "fashion" is actually hundreds of tons of water as a price, according to the people's daily in 2006, according to information processing plant each production a ton of denim clothing and related products, there will be about 200 tons of water will be polluted, including about 2500 kinds of chemical substances in the sewage, cannot be recycled. therefore, the famous denim brand levi's (levi's) launched the f.l. x plans to improve jeans productivity and environmental protection to replace traditional manual operations through automatic machines and reduce the use of chemical formulas to achieve environmental conservation. 3.1.3. starbucks launches its first “container store” in taiwan over the years, starbucks, a global coffee chain giant that has been challenging its unique stores, has begun to explore more different business models to meet the needs of different consumer groups. on september 26,2018, the first starbucks container store in taiwan, zhuilan store, was opened in ji’an township, hualien county. it is understood that as the world’s first starbucks café built by abandoned containers, founded in 2012, it is not only conducive to the recycling of waste resources, help protect the environment, but also trigger more creative inspiration. this time, in order to present a better effect, starbucks specially hired the famous japanese designer kengo kuma to design this “container store”. this design is not only beautiful but also more environmentally friendly, so that the recycled containers can be fully utilized. in addition, starbucks announced in july 2018 that it would eliminate the use of plastic straws in all its 28,000 stores by 2020[3](yang tao, 2020). this is also similar to the use of waste containers to create environmental protection of the store. 3.2. the application of environmental protection concept in clothing 3.2.1. the design and application of environmental protection concept in clothing materials the famous magella fashion house (maison margiela) is always unique and elusive in costume design. designer john galliano (john galliano) also like martin magilla (martin margiela) has the same way of deconstruction and restructuring, making the design look more intriguing. the hat is made only of a transparent raincoat material, while the bag is designed more like a pillow at home. single tone such as white, gray and other main tone color and with the bright color of men's wear contrast is also quite strong. as shown in figure 1. mailto:topacademicjournals@gmail.com american journal of art and communication vol.8, issue 4; july-august 2023; 1252 columbia rd nw, washington dc, united states https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac; mail: topacademicjournals@gmail.com 4 | american journal of art and communication | https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac figure 1: maison margiela autumn and winter 2018. in an interview with the british version of elle, designer stella mccartney revealed that she will use environmental awareness to better respond to her clothing brand. in the future, clothing design and production will be used in large quantities, as well as an environmentally friendly flagship store in london, uk. the design of the flagship store to the use of the store permeates the concept of environmental protection, and is known for its environmental friendliness. 3.2.2. the design and application of environmental protection concept in clothing styles vivian westwood (vivienne westwood), the representative designer of the top environmentalists in the fashion industry, appeared in the 2018 spring and summer men's fashion show, in order to better express the concept of environmental protection, she used four different poker symbols in life to convey the theme of this season "we are mother fucker". throughout the show, the empress dowager used her flashy expression to show imminent environmental protection in her clothes. the most important element that can reflect environmental protection is that the empress dowager holds all kinds of disposable waste in the clothing, and even some models step on disposable mineral water bottles and rope them as shoes. in the autumn and winter fashion show of 2019, the empress dowager used a different approach from the spring and summer 2018 fashion show to make an environmental declaration again. in the release of the fall / winter 2019 collection, the queen added british street style fashion. the series uses asymmetrical silk satin dresses and plaid suits to form a very funny mix and match, constantly appearing on t-shirts and skirts in the form of graffiti prints and slogans, to talk about the environmental problems of the current society. as shown in figure 2 and figure 3. mailto:topacademicjournals@gmail.com american journal of art and communication vol.8, issue 4; july-august 2023; 1252 columbia rd nw, washington dc, united states https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac; mail: topacademicjournals@gmail.com 5 | american journal of art and communication | https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac figure 2: vivienne westwood spring / summer, 2018 . figure 3: vivienne westwood autumn / winter 2019. 3.2.3. the design and application of environmental protection concept in clothing color stella mccarney (stella mccartney), who has always focused on sustainability, and famous photographer harley weir and artist u rs fischer have focused on the issue of “waste” and “excessive consumption” in the new advertisement in the fall and winter of 2017. in the shooting of this advertising blockbuster, the new models and the popular models were dressed in brown and gray clothes to show the city’s failure and pollution caused by garbage pollution, which formed a very strong contrast with the environment full of waste garbage in the shooting. on the other hand, models wearing green dresses with brown gauze, lie in the garbage accumulated by a variey of disposable waste, which can bring people mailto:topacademicjournals@gmail.com american journal of art and communication vol.8, issue 4; july-august 2023; 1252 columbia rd nw, washington dc, united states https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac; mail: topacademicjournals@gmail.com 6 | american journal of art and communication | https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac a strog viual impact and convey the brand's attention to the problem of waste and excessive consumption of resources and the positive attitude. as shown in figure 4. figure 4: stella mccartney 2017 autumn and winter series of advertising. 4. the application of the environmental protection concept in the design 4.1. inspiration source this design is related to the current topic is closely related to the environmental protection issues. because with the continuous expansion of consumption scale, the waste in life is constantly increasing, resulting in serious consumption and deterioration of resources. therefore, in order to reduce unnecessary waste, the concept of low carbon environmental protection has become the mainstream idea in the 21st century[1]( hu xiaoqing, 2012). inspired comes from figure 5 mailto:topacademicjournals@gmail.com american journal of art and communication vol.8, issue 4; july-august 2023; 1252 columbia rd nw, washington dc, united states https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac; mail: topacademicjournals@gmail.com 7 | american journal of art and communication | https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac figure 5: environmental art design drawing. 4.2. design philosophy the reason why people often say that art comes from life, because the inspiration and experience that life gives to the creators are indelible. after being deaf, beethoven wrote the symphony of fate that shocked the world, and li bai created the classic eternal pass into the wine after his exile. with people’s pursuit of high quality of life, environmental protection has become a key topic. the concept of environmental protection has subtly infiltrated into our daily life, and the clothing in line with environmental protection has become a fashion and trend. this design is mainly based on the concept of environmental protection, constantly find the fashion elements from the environmental protection, and through clothing and accessories to convey the concept of environmental protection, the design of environmental protection, fashion as one of the clothing. it is hoped that through such a design, more people will begin to pay attention to environmental protection and devote themselves to environmental protection activities, and contribute their own meager strength to green environmental protection. the clothing design effect drawing is shown in figure 6: mailto:topacademicjournals@gmail.com american journal of art and communication vol.8, issue 4; july-august 2023; 1252 columbia rd nw, washington dc, united states https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac; mail: topacademicjournals@gmail.com 8 | american journal of art and communication | https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac figure 6: newspaper pvc and dupont paper material clothing design drawing 4.3. fabric selection 4.3.1. denim fabric the three main elements of clothing are mainly color, fabric and style. therefore, clothing fabric is the most important clothing element besides clothing style and color. the choice of clothing fabrics, to a large extent, will determine the final effect of clothing presentation[4].(lu aixiang, 2016).therefore, the choice of fabrics has become an indispensable part of the clothing production link. according to the design idea, in the initial fabric selection, the black denim fabric with a relatively stiff material was selected as the primary fabric of the overall clothing. because the cowboy fabric air permeability is good, mailto:topacademicjournals@gmail.com american journal of art and communication vol.8, issue 4; july-august 2023; 1252 columbia rd nw, washington dc, united states https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac; mail: topacademicjournals@gmail.com 9 | american journal of art and communication | https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac wear comfortable, and thick texture, not easy to deformation. considering that the fabric should be processed and modified in the later stage, so denim fabric is the first choice of fabric choice. the rendering of denim clothing fabric is shown in figure figure 7: figure 7:denim fabric. 4.3.2. thousand bird case fabric in 1948, the elegant mr.c hristian d ior applied the modified canine tooth pattern on the packaging of the perfume[5] (eunice,2019),therefore, the first time on the fashion stage, and got a new name-thousand bird case. since then, the qianbird case, which was only used in men's wear, has gradually become popular in women's wear. according to the design idea and referring to the final clothing renderings, the bottom dress in the clothing is made with the fabric of qianbirds, which forms color contrast with the black denim fabric chosen by the coat. the rendering of the fabric is shown in figure figure 8: figure 8: thousand bird box fabric. 4.3.3. patent leather fabric the so-called patent leather fabric, mainly refers to the leather or pu leather leather fabric into the shower paint processing, make its surface more bright and strong, its feature is full leather color, natural, waterproof, not easy mailto:topacademicjournals@gmail.com american journal of art and communication vol.8, issue 4; july-august 2023; 1252 columbia rd nw, washington dc, united states https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac; mail: topacademicjournals@gmail.com 10 | american journal of art and communication | https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac to deformation, easy to take care of. in order to make the visual effect more impact, the black stiff denim fabric of the early primary election was replaced with patent leather fabric. while the color contrast is strong, it also forms a sharp contrast on the material, making the overall visual effect more attractive. the rendering of patent leather fabric is shown in figure 9: figure 9:patent leather fabric fabric. 4.4. manufacturing process 4.4.1. make the style and silhouette the style of clothing has an important influence on the final effect presentation of clothing, and it can play a role in decorating and beautifying all kinds of body types. if the style of a dress or a dress is too old, the ordinary can not attract people's attention, bringing a strong visual impact to people. in this design, the basic style of the dress has carried out a second transformation, focusing on the sleeves, waist and shoulders of the transformation and re-creation, and cutting off on both sides of the sleeves to increase the visual impact and sense of hierarchy. and pulling the waist line on the dress can make the curve of the human body more obvious. creative transformation on the coat shape through some common fabric transformation techniques, will make the environmental protection theme more prominent. and the hollow-out processing is applied in the second set of the back, so the clothing shape is full of hierarchy and more changeable. finally, the silhouette of the coat is enlarged to increase the sense of volume of the clothing and make it more attractive. 4.4.2. production of sample clothes before making clothes, the production of clothes samples is also an indispensable and important lin[6](min yue., 2015). k. because often the clothing can not be directly made into the clothing effect diagram, is the need to be constantly changed can be completed. therefore, the sample clothing of clothing is the best way to modify the clothing, through the production of the sample clothing to see what the style, size and details of the clothing need to be adjusted and changed. as shown in figure 10and figure 11: mailto:topacademicjournals@gmail.com american journal of art and communication vol.8, issue 4; july-august 2023; 1252 columbia rd nw, washington dc, united states https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac; mail: topacademicjournals@gmail.com 11 | american journal of art and communication | https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac figure 10: sample clothes making drawing front and side. figure 11: sample garment making drawing back and side. 4.4.3. garment making the production of ready clothing is particularly important in the creation of the whole design, which is the most intuitive expression technique of clothing renderings. the costume design series of "environmental protection art" adopts the asymmetric decorative effect, and has been created twice in some places, so that the whole clothing has a sense of hierarchy and visual impact, so that the seemingly thin design becomes more full. fabric transformation, as the name suggests, is to transform the fabric twice on the original basis, to make it more creative and practical[7](ma jian, 2010). fabric transformation not only needs to have the ornamental value, but also needs to reflect a certain value in the clothing. these two points can be fully reflected in the texture and texture of the fabric. as the backbone and texture of fabric transformation, it plays a key role in the final product, because it is its visual beauty and expression mode are the way to express the final effect.dupont paper, retro newspaper printing pvc mailto:topacademicjournals@gmail.com american journal of art and communication vol.8, issue 4; july-august 2023; 1252 columbia rd nw, washington dc, united states https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac; mail: topacademicjournals@gmail.com 12 | american journal of art and communication | https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac and transparent veil fabric is overlapped and folded to express the surface texture in the garment making. and all the production of small texture superposition processes could make the seemingly messy fabrics reflect a certain sense of space, concave and convex feeling, weight and volume. on the above basis, in order to highlight the concept of environmental protection, the acrylic pigment is used to process the clothing, so that the orange acrylic pigment can express stains, increase the visual impact, let people feel the concept of environmental protection more intuitively, and use the fluorescent orange line to lock the clothing edge processing, echoing the orange acrylic pigment. in order to increase the sense of series, in the later stage of the second set of ready-to-wear production, the fabric used in the first set of ready-to-wear dress is added to the skirt of the second set of clothing, and it is pleated, and the first set of clothing has more sense and continuity of series. we can see the design concept become more perfect through the two sets of garment effect. clothing has become more complete through constant attempt and modification processed in the aspect of details from the thin fabric, not rich level, small size and not comfortable neck structure problem at the beginning. see the pictures as shown in figure 12 and figure 13: figure 12: garment making detail drawing. figure 13: detail drawing. mailto:topacademicjournals@gmail.com american journal of art and communication vol.8, issue 4; july-august 2023; 1252 columbia rd nw, washington dc, united states https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac; mail: topacademicjournals@gmail.com 13 | american journal of art and communication | https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac 5. conclusions in the process of environmental protection, clothing design can be said to be the most intuitive means to express, in the face of environmental protection theme display, we have to mention its visual art value. first of all, the design of environmental protection clothing brings us the most direct feeling is the reduction. from the idea of environmental protection that the designer wants to express, we can restore the fact of environmental pollution visually, so that we can arouse the resonance of the public's environmental awareness faster and more directly[8](du ping, 2016). secondly, the visual experience of garbage pollution or air pollution in the design theme is the main embodiment of designers' creativity. references hu xiaoqing. new direction of clothing design —— clothing design advocated by green fashion recycling consumerism [j]. jiannan literature (classic teaching garden), 2012 (04): 225. feng xiaohan, yang rongrong. green trade barriers and the upgrading of china's textile industry [j]. private science and technology, 2011 (05): 52 + 5. yang tao. thinking on the problems related to the environmental pollution of plastic packaging [j]. plastic packaging, 2020,30 (05): 22-31 + 9. lu aixiang. discuss the application of plastic art in modern costume design [j]. art review, 2016 (04): 12-13. eunice. classic [j]. fashion beijing, 2019 (08): 178-179. min yue. the influence of clothing design on clothing structure and clothing management [j]. textile report, 2015 (05): 48-49 + 74. ma jian, yao guizhen. analysis of fabric reconstruction art in textile clothing design [j]. light textile industry and technology, 2010,39 (04): 65-67 + 86 du ping. environmental protection fashion in clothing design [j]. fashion of tomorrow, 2016 (20): 34. mailto:topacademicjournals@gmail.com political campaign ads on facebook: investigating the effects of incivility in videos and user comments on affective polarization and mobilization american journal of art and communication vol.7, issue 1; january-febuary 2022; 1252 columbia rd nw, washington dc, united states https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac; mail: topacademicjournals@gmail.com 1 | american journal of art and communication | https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac the effects of incivility in political campaign ads on facebook on affective polarization and mobilization lim jia wei, tan wei xuan, ng yi ting national university of singapore, singapore abstract the rise of political incivility and affective polarization has been a growing concern in recent years. this study examines the effects of incivility in campaign videos on social media on political participation and affective polarization. we find that exposure to uncivil campaign videos can lead to decreased political participation and increased affective polarization, especially among partisans. these effects are stronger for individuals who are more exposed to social media and who have stronger partisan identities. keywords: political incivility, affective polarization, campaign videos, social media introduction the issue of affective polarization, the degree to which individuals dislike out-partisans, has received widespread academic attention in recent years. studies have shown that distrust and dislike of people holding opposing views have increased among partisans in the united states and europe (iyengar, lelkes, levendusky, malhotra, & westwood, 2019; iyengar, sood, & lelkes, 2012; iyengar & westwood, 2015). at the same time, there have been growing concerns about the rising incivility in political discourse and the concomitant fear that partisans are more likely to support uncivil discourse when it comes from their own parties (iyengar et al., 2019; kim, 2018; muddiman, 2017, 2019, 2021). despite the growing concerns, studies have found limited effects of political incivility on political participation (van’t riet & stekelenburg, 2022) and affective polarization (liang & zhang, 2021). however, the effects of incivility communicated through video have been found to have stronger effects on political participation as compared with other media (van’t riet & stekelenburg, 2022). however, we know little about whether and how exposure to campaign videos within the context of social media may trigger (de)mobilization and affective polarization. to unpack incivility in the highly interactive context of social media, we examine how partisanship in terms of party identification moderates the effects of incivility when individuals encounter civil or uncivil campaign videos on social media. given that most campaign videos are responded to with comments on social media, we further examine campaign videos that are accompanied with or without uncivil user comments. this is important as increasingly more campaign ads are delivered through social media (kreiss & mcgregor, 2018), and as a result, the campaign ads cannot be studied in isolation but within the larger ecology and context of social media (facebook) and user engagement (e.g., likes and comments) within which they are embedded. moreover, campaign videos have emerged as a prominent part of political campaigns, which can potentially deliver more emotionally appealing mailto:topacademicjournals@gmail.com american journal of art and communication vol.7, issue 1; january-febuary 2022; 1252 columbia rd nw, washington dc, united states https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac; mail: topacademicjournals@gmail.com 2 | american journal of art and communication | https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac and polarizing content in a highly effective manner. hence, incivility is more likely to be present in campaign videos. incivility in campaign ads matters, as it conditions the effects of ads in various ways. druckman, gubitz, levendusky, and lloyd (2019) showed that, contrary to civil discourse, uncivil discourse by party leaders as relayed through news media reduced in-party support and favorability. they also found that, when incivility seems to come from out-party sources, it makes in-party supporters more extreme. the study by druckman and colleagues (2019) provides important insights about the counterproductive effect of uncivil discourse in mobilizing support outside political campaigns. however, we know little about how affective polarization manifests itself and how the public either supports or rejects (in)civility in official political campaigns. this is important as evidence suggests that heightened polarization reduces the space for deliberative cross-party discourse and undermines the ideals of a public sphere by weakening an important aspect of democratic society (boxell, gentzkow, & shapiro, 2022; hansen & kosiara-pedersen, 2017; haselmayer, 2019). this move toward more incivility could be a result of increasing digitalization and a response to the kind of content that social media platforms rely on for revenue. this prioritization on uncivil content on social media is similar to journalistic focus on conflict (bennett, 2016), as more attentiongrabbing content leads to greater user engagement through shares, likes, and comments (oeldorf-hirsch & sundar, 2015). research shows that affective polarization has been growing globally. this is in relation to both rising populism and identity politics on the ground (neyazi, 2018; zakaria, 2016). given that identitybased mobilization is more likely to lead to affective polarization, the issue becomes more salient in india, where identity-based mobilization along caste, religious, and regional divides has been an important aspect of electoral campaigns and mobilization (chandra, 2007; jaffrelot, 2010). social identity based on such affiliations creates intergroup animosity, especially during uncivil exchanges. despite the prominence of social identity in the indian milieu, the affective dimension of politics has not been the subject of much academic research (arabaghatta basavaraj, saikia, varughese, semetko, & kumar, 2021, being one exception). hence, to test the effects of incivility in campaign ads and the uncivil comments in facebook posts of campaign ads, we conducted an online preregistered survey experiment during the west bengal state assembly elections in india in march/april 2021 (n = 921). the state assembly election was fought in the backdrop of rising covid-19 cases and became an exemplar of a highly polarized election that saw a regional party, all india trinamool congress (aitc or tmc), and a national party, bharatiya janata party (bjp), pitching against each other (palshikar, sardesai, chatterjee, & basu, 2021). we tested how campaign videos criticizing the opposing candidate or party, as delivered through facebook pages of the campaigns, might have increased affective polarization and mobilized the voters. we selected facebook because this is the most important social media platform for political campaigns with nearly 350 million users in india (kemp, 2022). we professionally edited real campaign videos and their social media posts, which were then randomly assigned to a sample of the online general population in west bengal. we then examined (1) the influence of these experimental messages and (2) their interactions with key moderators of political involvement, such as partisanship, ads, and comments incivility. we found a significant effect of party preference on affective polarization, more so among the supporters of the mailto:topacademicjournals@gmail.com american journal of art and communication vol.7, issue 1; january-febuary 2022; 1252 columbia rd nw, washington dc, united states https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac; mail: topacademicjournals@gmail.com 3 | american journal of art and communication | https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac right-wing party bjp, than among the supporters of the center-left tmc. however, incivility in ads and comments did not emerge significant for affective polarization but had limited effects on political participation. literature review incivility, social media, and affective polarization incivility in political discussion has been an important and growing phenomenon in various democracies. although a detailed discussion on the reasons for the rise of incivility is beyond the scope of this study, incivility itself has been variously defined in existing literature and is shown to be context dependent (stryker, conway, bauldry, & kaul, 2021). incivility goes beyond quotidian impoliteness (papacharissi, 2004) and includes the use of insults, slurs, and swear words (sobieraj & berry, 2011). it also involves the use of derogatory alternative views that indirectly deny freedom of expression to individuals (jamieson, volinsky, weitz, & kenski, 2017). muddiman (2017) concurred that personal-level incivility can be considered a violation of politeness norms through acts like insults; however, public-level incivility can be viewed as a violation of reciprocity norms through acts like refusing to work together. political incivility can also be imagined by three dimensions: insulting utterances like vulgarities, deceptive practices like exaggeration, and the discursive dimension like interrupting the speaker (stryker et al., 2021). yet, these characteristics are not the sole determinants of uncivil perceptions. simple disagreement comments directed to in-group members, even in the absence of uncivil content features like the aforementioned dimensions of incivility, were perceived as uncivil by members of the same partisanship (liang & zhang, 2021). thus, judgements of incivility are subject to constant negotiation depending on the context and the position. for example, political identification is one factor that influences perceptions of political incivility, whereby ingroup politicians are perceived as more civil (muddiman, 2017), and uncivil comments by in-group members are judged more leniently (kim, 2018). although political incivility is often associated with the use of extreme speech, the expression of incivility is also closely embedded within the specific cultural context to appeal to local citizens. for example, one of the bjp’s campaign videos for west bengal attacked the incumbent chief minister mamata banerjee by addressing her as pishi, a word that means aunt in the bengali language but carried specific derogatory overtones in the political context at that time. hence, most of the uncivil discourse could be better understood only within the local cultural setting (mutz, 2015) but must be conceptualized beyond impoliteness as argued by muddiman (2017) and papacharissi (2014). building upon the literature, we define incivility as any arguments that are hostile, aggressive, disrespectful, and unnecessary toward a person, topic, or event and encompasses insults, name-calling, infuriating, and radical language. nowhere is the increasing incivility of political discourse more visible today than on social media platforms (bor & petersen, 2022)—and this is further exacerbated by the rise in prominence of online political campaigns (kosmidis & theocharis, 2020). attack ads dominate campaign messages, but not all attack ads are uncivil as highlighted above. campaign attack ads that contain uncivil language may play a role not only in mobilizing voters but also in affectively polarizing them. moreover, the business model that social media platforms like facebook rely on incentivizes the use of campaign ads that can potentially fuel affective polarization. user comments on any posts are open to the public, thus affording the potential for debates, mailto:topacademicjournals@gmail.com american journal of art and communication vol.7, issue 1; january-febuary 2022; 1252 columbia rd nw, washington dc, united states https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac; mail: topacademicjournals@gmail.com 4 | american journal of art and communication | https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac arguments, and vitriolic attacks among people with opposing views (sundar, 2004). hence, in this context, the effects of campaign incivility on polarization and mobilization may not only be direct but also be moderated by user engagement with these campaign ads (see also rossini, stromer-galley, & zhang, 2021). specifically, uncivil campaign content may trigger uncivil comments on facebook, and those comments may both polarize and mobilize voters’ reactions to the ads too. as politics become more prominent in users’ news feeds on facebook during elections because facebook allows political campaign ads on its platform, it is important to analyze whether campaigns ads can also result in polarization. affective polarization and political campaigns political polarization provides a useful theoretical framework to understand how extreme rivalry in politics (be it through issue positions, ideologies, and affect) may undermine democratic decision making by promoting groupthink (pew research center, 2016). for our study, we investigate the role of affective polarization, a relatively newer concept that scholars have used to describe polarization that is driven less by ideological or issue positions, but more by affective or emotional reactions and animosity (iyengar et al., 2012, 2019). in other words, emotion is accorded a central role in this framework. an important phenomenon in today’s political communication is how affect-driven mobilization is superseding rational or argument-based debates on issues in shaping perceptions and behaviors. studies show the growing tendency among citizens to dislike out-party politicians and members (iyengar et al., 2019). the phenomenon of affective polarization is grounded in social identity theory, which posits that individuals inherently desire to view their in-group members in a positive light (tajfel, 1970; tajfel & turner, 1979). affective polarization is considered a threat to democratic deliberation because citizens are resistant to the ideas of engaging with people with counter viewpoints (mccoy & somer, 2019). as such, they will be less likely to engage with the details of arguments when their perceptions are determined by emotional reactions. the presence of a high degree of affective polarization may result in extreme evaluations of both inand out-parties and leaders, while the presence of low levels of affective polarization indicate that individuals evaluate them similarly. the affective orientation of individuals toward leaders and parties are bound to be influenced by campaign ads when such ads contain (un)civil messages. research has shown that social media platforms, including facebook, can foster echo chambers, where users are predominantly exposed to content that aligns with their preexisting beliefs and opinions (bakshy, messing, & adamic, 2015). this selective exposure can lead to the reinforcement and amplification of partisan viewpoints, thus contributing to affective polarization (flaxman, goel, & rao, 2016). we extend this line of work by testing the influence of professional political campaign ads (institutional political information), as they are delivered through facebook posts of the campaign pages. hence, we examine how interpersonal dynamics in social media may shape campaign communications. recent empirical research has cast doubt on the pervasiveness of echo chambers on social media. for instance, guess, lyons, nyhan, and reifler (2018) found that these homogeneous networks may not be as widespread as previously assumed. however, it is worth noting that even in like-minded online spaces, the presence of echo chambers may inadvertently contribute to the normalization of uncivil behavior. this can occur mailto:topacademicjournals@gmail.com american journal of art and communication vol.7, issue 1; january-febuary 2022; 1252 columbia rd nw, washington dc, united states https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac; mail: topacademicjournals@gmail.com 5 | american journal of art and communication | https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac when group norms within an echo chamber encourage or tolerate incivility, leading to a more permissive environment for such behavior to thrive. based on these discussions, we hypothesize that: h1: participants who view campaign ads from an out-party will exhibit greater levels of negative affect toward out-party sources and get mobilized more in terms of vote intention for their own parties and post engagement (i.e., intention to reply/comment and share the post) compared with participants who see campaign ads from inparty sources. incivility and political mobilization studies show a rise in more extreme and confrontational political debates both offline on television and at rallies as well as online on social media (sydnor, 2019). yet conflicting evidence exists regarding the effects of incivility on affective polarization and political participation (hwang, kim, & huh, 2014; liang & zhang, 2021). hwang et al. (2014) found that exposure to uncivil online comments had no effect on attitude polarization. however, this does not imply that incivility has no effect on the political landscape. borah (2014) shows a positive effect of political incivility on political participation. similarly, research suggests that uncivil comments, compared with civil ones, motivate political participation (chen & lu, 2017). hwang and colleagues (2014) also found that incivility prompted perceptions of mass partisan polarization, which reduces expectations about public deliberation. they suggested that “low expectations of the deliberative potential of public discussion might not only suppress participation in deliberative discussions but also increase intergroup hostility and make compromise more difficult” (hwang et al., 2014, p. 630). although these studies suggest that incivility can discourage participation in political discussions, other studies have found that political incivility had no effect on political participation (van’t riet & van stekelenburg, 2022). still others demonstrated that uncivil comments, mediated by perceived incivility, is negatively associated with online and offline political participation (liang & zhang, 2021). a plausible explanation for the different conclusions may be that van’t riet and van stekelenburg’s (2022) meta-analytic approach that studied publications with experimentally manipulated incivility conditions did not account for the subjective judgements of perceived incivility. irrespective of the effects of incivility on affective polarization and mobilization, uncivil discourse is bound to invoke strong reactions both among supporters and opponents. when political parties target the opposition with uncivil language, this can elicit negative affect among out-party supporters. but uncivil discourse has been found to create strong negative emotions among in-party supporters as well (druckman et al., 2019). it is therefore important to understand whether partisans support incivility during election campaigns or whether they are repelled by it. the support for incivility among partisans during election campaigns could be driven by tactics deployed solely to win elections; the assumption being that, once the election is over, political discourse will return to normal. considering the theoretical discussion, we propose the following hypotheses: h2a: (in)civility of ads will moderate the effect of campaign ads from out-parties on out-party hostility, political mobilization, and post engagement. participants who view uncivil video ads from outparties will be more affectively polarized and also more mobilized in terms of vote intention for their own parties and their intentions to reply/comment and share the posts as compared with participants who see civil ads. mailto:topacademicjournals@gmail.com american journal of art and communication vol.7, issue 1; january-febuary 2022; 1252 columbia rd nw, washington dc, united states https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac; mail: topacademicjournals@gmail.com 6 | american journal of art and communication | https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac h2b: (in)civility of comments will moderate the effect of campaign ads from out-parties on out-party hostility, political mobilizations, and post engagements. participants who view uncivil video comments from outparties will be more affectively polarized and also more mobilized in terms of vote intentions for their own parties and their intentions to reply/comment and share the posts as compared with participants who see civil ads. the empirical context elections for the 294-member state assembly in west bengal was one of the most bitterly fought and talked-about elections in recent bengal history. the polling was held in seven phases from march 27 to april 29, 2021. given that this election was held against the backdrop of rising coronavirus cases in india, most political parties, barring the bjp, opposed the decision of the election commission of india (eci) to hold the election in seven phases and accused the eci of favoritism toward the bjp. the bjp, which is the ruling party at the center, was the main opposition party in the state. the tmc, led by the chief minister mamata banerjee, was the incumbent. the bjp and tmc aside, there were two other major parties—the indian national congress and the communist party of india, marxist—in the fray, but their levels of support in the state were very low (bagchi, 2021). although the tmc was able to retain the power in the state, the campaign turned out to be highly polarized and acrimonious (palshikar et al., 2021; see online appendix 1b for more details: https://osf.io/zhmaf/). method to test these proposed effects, we conducted a preregistered survey experiment where participants answered a series of questions following their exposures to edited campaign video posts on facebook. participants the online survey was administered from march 22 to 27, 2021, in the days leading up to the west bengal election (right before the voting started) by the survey firm yougov. the target was the general adult population, with a sample of 974 respondents obtained using a nonprobability-based quota-sampling method matched to represent the online population’s demographic composition. we first asked respondents about their political identifications that were then used to filter the respondents. following our preregistration plan, only bjp and tmc supporters were retained; respondents identifying with these two political parties were then sampled proportionally. each participant was randomly assigned to one of eight experimental conditions (see online appendix 2a). all hypotheses and data-collection details were preregistered at a public research repository (https://aspredicted.org/xc8ra.pdf). we excluded 58 respondents who indicated that they were unable to fully hear the video since they failed our exposure check, leaving us with 921 respondents (bjp = 488, tmc = 433). the sample comprises a well-educated lower-income younger group: education (coded on a 7-point scale with 1 = “not applicable: illiterate” and 7 = “graduate or post graduate professional”; m = 5.776, sd = 1.031); income (coded on a 11-point scale with 1 = “below rs 5,000” and 11 = “rs, 500,001 or above”; m = 4.856, sd = 2.61); age (18–74; m = 31.352, sd = 10.625); gender (45.4% female). experiment design our experiment adopts a 2 (incivility of ads: civil vs. uncivil ads) by 2 (incivility of comments: civil vs uncivil comments) by 2 (party of ads: bjp vs. tmc ads) between-subjects design. we used experimental stimuli mailto:topacademicjournals@gmail.com american journal of art and communication vol.7, issue 1; january-febuary 2022; 1252 columbia rd nw, washington dc, united states https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac; mail: topacademicjournals@gmail.com 7 | american journal of art and communication | https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac comprising videos that depict a facebook post containing a campaign video accompanied by a user comment. the eight videos used were real facebook campaign advertisements, edited to ensure a uniform video length. based on the intent as well as the tone of delivery, half of these videos were deemed civil and the other half uncivil by three trained coders (krippendorff’s alpha = 0.88); campaign advertisements deemed civil mainly focused on promoting the party’s achievements, whereas campaign advertisements deemed uncivil focused on attacking the other party in a manner that included the use of derogatory remarks and negative elements, such as mockery, humiliation, debasement, and slander. original comments posted on these facebook videos were manually extracted and were shortlisted for coding for tone—civil versus uncivil (krippendorff’s alpha = 0.83); those that met our basic requirements (uniformity in terms of length as well as intensity of tone implied) were added as part of the stimuli. we aimed for maximizing external validity by selecting (and editing) real campaign videos posted on facebook; while this design choice might be taking away from internal validity, it is a more realistic reflection of the diversity of videos voters had been exposed to during the campaign. further details can be found in online appendix 2b. manipulation check to ensure that participants were accorded ample time for stimuli exposure, respondents were required to watch the video for at least 70 seconds and were given the option of replaying the video. for our subjective manipulation check, we find that respondents assigned to viewing an uncivil facebook advertisement tended to rate the video as being more uncivil as compared with those viewing a civil facebook advertisement, on average (t(913.9) = 5.694, p < 0.001; further details are in online appendix 2c). hence, these findings provide evidence that the stimuli did work. measures outcome measures affective polarization two measures of effective polarization were employed as dependent variables: out-politician and outparty effect. the former measures the extent to which partisans dislike the party leaders of other parties, whereas the latter extends the consideration to the abstract notion of a political party. as compared with the out-party effect, the out-politician effect represents a more personal measure because it is generally easier for people to associate feelings with tangible conceptions such as people rather than an overarching conception such as a political party. respondents were asked to rate both the political party and party leader on a feeling thermometer scale ranging from 0 (unfavorable) to 100 (favorable). feeling thermometers are standard survey instruments used for measuring affective polarization (druckman & levendusky, 2019; iyengar et al., 2019). we took the difference between scores given to one’s own party and the rival party and subsequently created indexes separately for party (m = 36.393, sd = 29.050) and leader (m = 40.897, sd = 30.913). this dummy coding allowed us to test in-party and out-party hypothesized effects and avoid complicated three-way interactions in our models. political mobilization we used three measures of political mobilization as dependent variables: turnout intention, vote intention for bjp, and vote intention for tmc. for turnout intention, we asked: “how likely is it that you will vote in the mailto:topacademicjournals@gmail.com american journal of art and communication vol.7, issue 1; january-febuary 2022; 1252 columbia rd nw, washington dc, united states https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac; mail: topacademicjournals@gmail.com 8 | american journal of art and communication | https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac coming west bengal assembly election?” turnout intention was measured on a 5-point scale (1 = very unlikely, 5 = very likely; 𝑀� = 3.991, 𝑆�𝐷� = 1.290). for vote intention, we asked: “how likely is it that you will cast your vote for one of the following political parties in the coming west bengal assembly election?” a 4-point scale (1 = highly unlikely, 4 = highly likely) was used for both vote intention for bjp (m = 2.657, sd = 1.232) and tmc (m = 2.608, sd = 1.199). post engagement post engagement is measured from the perspective of two behaviors commonly associated with interactions taking place on social media: the intention to reply/comment and the intention to share the facebook post. the latter is further separated to consider sharing intentions in the context of social media as well as via face-to-face mediums. for the intention to reply, we asked: “how likely are you to reply to this comment seen in the post?” (m = 2.608, sd = 1.392). on the other hand, for sharing intention, we asked: “how likely is it that you will share this video with friends and family in the following mediums?” both questions were measured on a 5point scale (1 = not at all likely, 5 = extremely likely). intention to share the facebook post on social media is a composite index that comprises whatsapp, facebook, twitter, and instagram (cronbach’s α = 0.923; m = 2.733, sd = 1.453). a separate measure was used for intention to share via face-to-face interactions (m = 2.691, sd = 1.518). moderator incivility of campaign advertisements and user comments the treatments assigned, which are the incivility of the campaign ads and incivility of the user comments, are used as moderators. independent variables partisanship studies show that party identifications are closely associated with partisan identity and vote intention (bonneau & cann, 2015). furthermore, in parliamentary elections, party identifications as compared with leadership evaluations, have been found to have strong effects on vote choice (bean & mughan, 1989), including in india (kumar, 2021). hence, we use party identifications as a proxy for partisanship. to measure partisanship, respondents were asked the following question: “which political party do you intend to vote for in the coming west bengal assembly election 2021, or which party are you leaning toward?” more than half of the respondents (n = 488; 53%) indicated support for bjp as opposed to tmc (n = 433; 47%). analytical strategy an ols multiple linear regression model is fitted to the data to test our postulated hypotheses; two-way interaction effects are included to represent the hypothesized moderation effects. before fitting the models, all variables are rescaled to lie between 0 and 1, allowing the effect sizes to be directly comparable. tables 1, 2, and 3 show the results for affective polarization, political mobilization, and post engagement, respectively.6 results h1 posits that exposure to out-party campaign ads will induce greater levels of negative affect toward outparty sources as well as increased mobilization in terms of vote intention and ad post engagement. to test this, mailto:topacademicjournals@gmail.com american journal of art and communication vol.7, issue 1; january-febuary 2022; 1252 columbia rd nw, washington dc, united states https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac; mail: topacademicjournals@gmail.com 9 | american journal of art and communication | https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac we refer to the interaction between the bjp party membership and party of ad variable. for affective polarization, table 1 shows that, on average, bjp supporters reported a decrease in their out-politician and out-party negative affect by 0.162 and 0.154, respectively, when the party of the ad shown is bjp (as opposed to tmc). conversely, for tmc supporters, the expected value of the out-politician and out-party negative affect increases by 0.067 and 0.069, respectively, when the party of the ad is bjp (see “party of ad” coefficient). these interaction effects are shown in figure 1, which shows that participants exposed to a bjp ad reported lower levels of negative affect toward out-leader (top-panel) and out-party (bottom-panel) when identifying as a bjp supporter.7 in contrast, for the political mobilization measures, table 2 shows that no analogous evidence could be found at the 0.05 level.8 table 1. causal effect on affective polarization. out-politician affect out-party affect intercept 0.383*** 0.336*** (0.029) (0.028) bjp supporters (bjp = 1; tmc = 0) 0.082* 0.091* (0.040) (0.038) ad incivility −0.005 −0.034 (0.030) (0.028) comment incivility −0.026 0.000 (0.030) (0.028) party of ad (bjp = 1; tmc = 0) 0.067* 0.069* (0.030) (0.028) bjp supporters × ad incivility 0.018 0.035 (0.041) (0.038) bjp supporters × comment incivility 0.015 −0.020 (0.041) (0.038) bjp supporters × party of ad −0.162*** −0.154*** (0.041) (0.038) n 921 921 r2 (adjusted) 0.013 0.014 f 2.712** 2.886** + p < 0.1, * p < 0.05, ** p < 0.01, *** p < 0.001. 7 the interaction plots visualize the predicted marginal means, with 95% confidence intervals, computed over all combinations between the respondent’s and advertisement’s party, with other variables held at their mean. 8 for the political mobilization measures, respondents who indicated that they are highly likely to vote for both bjp and inc (𝑁� = 37) are excluded. this is done to reduce any potential noise in the regression on the directional vote intention measures. mailto:topacademicjournals@gmail.com american journal of art and communication vol.7, issue 1; january-febuary 2022; 1252 columbia rd nw, washington dc, united states https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac; mail: topacademicjournals@gmail.com 10 | american journal of art and communication | https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac figure 1. moderating role of exposure to party ad on the relationship between party membership and out-leader and out-party negative affect. mailto:topacademicjournals@gmail.com american journal of art and communication vol.7, issue 1; january-febuary 2022; 1252 columbia rd nw, washington dc, united states https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac; mail: topacademicjournals@gmail.com 11 | american journal of art and communication | https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac table 2. causal effect on political mobilization. turnout intention bjp vote intention tmc vote intention intercept 0.759*** 0.235*** 0.827*** (0.032) (0.029) (0.029) bjp supporters (bjp = 1; tmc = 0) 0.035 0.537*** −0.489*** (0.044) (0.040) (0.040) ad incivility −0.040 −0.020 −0.020 (0.032) (0.029) (0.029) comment incivility −0.014 −0.007 −0.008 (0.032) (0.029) (0.029) party of ad (bjp = 1; tmc = 0) −0.017 0.028 −0.047 (0.032) (0.029) (0.029) bjp supporters × ad incivility 0.002 0.031 −0.019 (0.044) (0.040) (0.040) bjp supporters × comment incivility 0.027 0.050 −0.025 (0.044) (0.040) (0.040) bjp supporters × party of ad −0.027 −0.022 −0.014 (0.044) (0.040) (0.040) n 884 884 884 r2 (adjusted) 0.002 0.481 0.433 f 1.241 118.032*** 97.157*** + p < 0.1, * p < 0.05, ** p < 0.01, *** p < 0.001. as for intention to engage with the post, table 3 presents evidence for all three measures of post engagement. on average, bjp supporters reported an increase of 0.129 in their intention to reply/comment when the party of ad shown is bjp; for intention to share on social media (sm) and via face-to-face interactions (f2f), we observe an analogous average increase of 0.146 and 0.139, respectively. these interaction effects are depicted in figure 2, which shows that intention to engage with the post (across all three measures) is higher when the party of the facebook advertisement is consistent with that of the party of the respondent. taken together, our findings provide support for h1 only with regard to affective polarization but not political mobilization and post engagement, such that participants exposed to out-party campaign ads recorded greater levels of negative affect toward outparty sources but lower levels of intention for post engagement; for political mobilization outcome measures, participants recorded no significant change after exposure; hence, we claim only partial support for h1. mailto:topacademicjournals@gmail.com american journal of art and communication vol.7, issue 1; january-febuary 2022; 1252 columbia rd nw, washington dc, united states https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac; mail: topacademicjournals@gmail.com 12 | american journal of art and communication | https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac table 3. causal effect on post engagement. intention to reply/comment intention to share on sm intention to share via f2f intercept 0.486*** 0.480*** 0.473*** (0.033) (0.036) (0.034) bjp supporters (bjp = 1; tmc = 0) −0.143** −0.122* −0.115* (0.045) (0.050) (0.048) ad incivility −0.079* −0.048 −0.018 (0.033) (0.036) (0.035) comment incivility −0.056+ −0.021 −0.032 (0.033) (0.036) (0.035) party of ad (bjp = 1; tmc = 0) −0.068* −0.082* −0.068+ (0.033) (0.036) (0.035) bjp supporters × ad incivility 0.144** 0.101* 0.066 (0.046) (0.050) (0.048) bjp supporters × comment incivility 0.077+ 0.061 0.097* (0.046) (0.050) (0.048) bjp supporters × party of ad 0.129** 0.146** 0.139** (0.046) (0.050) (0.048) n 921 921 921 r2 (adjusted) 0.018 0.010 0.012 f 3.352** 2.294* 2.577* + p < 0.1, * p < 0.05, ** p < 0.01, *** p < 0.001. mailto:topacademicjournals@gmail.com american journal of art and communication vol.7, issue 1; january-febuary 2022; 1252 columbia rd nw, washington dc, united states https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac; mail: topacademicjournals@gmail.com 13 | american journal of art and communication | https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac figure 2. moderating role of exposure to party ad on the relationship between party membership and measures of post engagement. h2a postulates that exposure to uncivil campaign ads will strengthen the positive relationship between exposure to out-party campaign ads and affective polarization, political mobilization, and post engagement. we consider the interaction between ad incivility with bjp party membership to assess support for h2a. for affective mailto:topacademicjournals@gmail.com american journal of art and communication vol.7, issue 1; january-febuary 2022; 1252 columbia rd nw, washington dc, united states https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac; mail: topacademicjournals@gmail.com 14 | american journal of art and communication | https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac polarization and political mobilization, tables 1 and 2 show that no evidence could be found for the moderation effect of ad incivility at the 0.05 level. for post engagement, table 3 shows that, on average, bjp supporters reported an increase in the intention to reply/comment by 0.144 when the ad is uncivil; for intention to share on sm, an analogous average increase of 0.101 is observed. figure 3 shows these effects where respondents exposed to an uncivil ad reported higher intention to comment/reply and share on sm when identifying as bjp supporters. in contrast, no similar evidence could be found for intention to share via f2f. taken together, h2a is partially supported because participants exposed to uncivil ads showed a greater tendency to engage with the post by replying/comment and sharing on sm; in contrast, no significant effects could be found for either affective polarization or political mobilization or even intention to share via f2f. figure 3. moderating role of civility of the campaign ad on the relationship between party membership and intention to comment/reply and share on social media. h2b proposes that exposure to uncivil comments will strengthen the positive relationship between exposure to out-party campaign ads and our three outcome measures. for testing h2b, we examine the interaction between comment incivility and bjp party membership. for both affective polarization and political mobilization, tables 1 and 2 present no evidence for the hypothesized moderation effects of comment incivility at the 0.05 level. in contrast, for post engagement, table 3 shows that for bjp supporters, the effect on intention to share via mailto:topacademicjournals@gmail.com american journal of art and communication vol.7, issue 1; january-febuary 2022; 1252 columbia rd nw, washington dc, united states https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac; mail: topacademicjournals@gmail.com 15 | american journal of art and communication | https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac f2f increases by an average of 0.097 when the comment is uncivil. this is illustrated in figure 4, which shows that respondents who encountered an uncivil comment reported a higher intention to share via f2f when identifying as a bjp supporter. no similar evidence could be found for other measures of post engagement. taken together, these findings only support h2b in terms of intention to share via f2f. participants exposed to uncivil comments displayed a greater tendency to share the post via f2f; in contrast, no similar evidence was found for other outcome measures. hence, we claim only partial support for h2b. figure 4. moderating role of civility of the user comment on the relationship between party membership and intention to share via face-to-face interactions. discussion this study analyzed how exposure to uncivil as compared with civil campaign videos and user comments within the context of facebook might trigger affective polarization, political mobilization, and post engagement. evidence for the interaction effects of uncivil campaign videos and uncivil user comments are mixed: although little empirical evidence was found supporting their impacts on affective polarization and political mobilization, there are indications that these interactions significantly influence respondent’s propensity to engage with the post. in particular, our results suggest that when exposed to uncivil campaign ads or uncivil user comments, bjp supporters are more likely to show intention for post engagement in terms of replying to comments and sharing the posts on sm or via face-to-face interactions. the results also showed that partisanship is a prominent predictor of both affective polarization and post engagement, with participants exposed to out-party campaign ads exhibiting greater levels of negative affect toward outparties and lower levels of intention for post engagement as compared with those exposed to in-party campaign ads. interestingly, affective polarization is found to be rooted not in uncivil discourse but rather in partisan identity, supporting the existing study (liang & zhang, 2021). in the case of political mobilization, the effect of partisanship is more nuanced as it seems that exposure to out-party (or in-party) ads is not found to have an effect on all three measures of political mobilization, but party mailto:topacademicjournals@gmail.com american journal of art and communication vol.7, issue 1; january-febuary 2022; 1252 columbia rd nw, washington dc, united states https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac; mail: topacademicjournals@gmail.com 16 | american journal of art and communication | https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac membership remains a significant predictor for vote intention for a given political party, in line with existing expectations. overall, our study adds to the growing literature to understand how (in)civility in campaigns on sm leads to affective polarization and political engagement (kim, 2018; muddiman, 2019; van’t riet & stekelenburg, 2022; wolf, strachan, & shea, 2012) and provides novel empirical evidence from a non-western context to the role of incivility on affect, political mobilization, and post engagement. in line with research conducted in the polarized u.s. context, our study shows that partisanship remains a notable predictor (iyengar et al., 2012, 2019; muddiman, 2017; wolf et al., 2012) for affective polarization, voting intentions (turnout and vote choice), and the intention to engage with the post. the prominent role of partisanship affecting how respondents evaluate messages has also been supported in other studies (kosmidis & theocharis, 2020; muddiman, 2017). this finding has significant implications for the persuasive power of campaign ads in the days leading up to an already polarized election. partisanship results also suggest that parties “retaining their support” among those who already support them, is highly relevant. however, the lack of evidence found for the moderation effects of ad incivility and user comment incivility indicates that incivility in campaign ads might not have much effect above and beyond the animus arising from existing partisan feelings. these results suggest that the root of affective polarization is multifaceted and needs further investigation. of note also is the finding that exposure to uncivil campaign ads resulted in a marginal reduction in turnout intention and suggest that incivility as expressed in campaign ads may depress voter turnout. this result provides further evidence supporting kahn and kenney’s (1999) findings of a negative relationship between negativity and political participation. given that political participation is viewed as an essential element of any healthy democracy, it implies that incivility is harmful to the proper functioning of democracy. furthermore, our study shows that political participation in terms of intention to engage with posts, reply to comments, and share in face-to-face interactions are more pronounced among bjp supporters. this could be attributed to the fact that bjp is not only ideologically driven but also a cadre-based party and their supporters possess a strong in-group identity, motivated by an urgent desire to protect and advocate for their political beliefs (jaffrelot, 2021; neyazi & schroeder, 2021). this determination has been further bolstered since the bjp formed the national government in 2014. research suggests that supporters of right-wing political parties are often characterized by their high levels of organization and strong ideological commitments, which can manifest in various ways, including heightened online engagement and a proactive defense of their party affiliations (stier, posch, bleier, & strohmaier, 2017). given the growing integration of digital spaces in our daily lives, the study provides important insights to understand the relationship between affective polarization and sm in a divided society. although studies have shown that spending more time online could increase the probability of encountering uncivil content (barnidge, kim, sherrill, luknar, & zhang, 2019; frischlich, schatto-eckrodt, boberg, & wintterlin, 2021), our study did not find any association between exposure to uncivil content in terms of uncivil video ads and comments leading to affective polarization. similarly, given that the selective exposure to partisan news media has been found to be associated with affective polarization (garrett et al., 2014; lau, andersen, ditonto, kleinberg, & redlawsk, mailto:topacademicjournals@gmail.com american journal of art and communication vol.7, issue 1; january-febuary 2022; 1252 columbia rd nw, washington dc, united states https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac; mail: topacademicjournals@gmail.com 17 | american journal of art and communication | https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac 2017), our study helps in understanding whether exposure to certain kinds of ads (civil or uncivil) as delivered through facebook can have similar effects. what could the null effects found for uncivil comments on affective polarization and political mobilization mean? it is possible that facebook users in general do not pay much attention to comments. this is also supported in a previous study that shows people typically ignore engagement metrics such as likes, and comments while consuming news (mukerjee & yang, 2021). although we made sure that respondents saw the comments, the null effect of comments might also be related to the experimental setup in which respondents were provided with a cover page/screenshot of comments and their attention might have not focused on the user comments present in the post. in real life, however, users might engage more with comments if they see that these are written by people whom they are connected with or know. also, real-time comments might include more interactive content like videos and gifs that users can like or react to. in the absence of these conditions, the null impact of uncivil comments should be treated with caution. this is important as other recent research shows that digital indicators, such as like or downvote buttons, can sway discussion civility (jaidka, zhou, lelkes, egelhofer, & lecheler, 2022), and youtube decided to make dislike buttons for videos nonpublic (the youtube team, 2021). this shows that, despite our null effects, exposure to such comments could still be possible. the indian polity is notably marked by salience of social identity in terms of caste, religion, and region, with political parties often capitalizing on these identities in their campaigns to garner voter support (chandra, 2007). moreover, since 2014, which saw the bjp capturing power at the national level, the hindumuslim divide has been further exacerbated. given this entrenchment and the importance of social identities, we expect that substantive affective polarization has likely occurred in recent elections. importantly, partisanship appears to be stronger among the right-wing bjp supporters, raising concerns since the bjp has advanced its electoral prospects primarily by emphasizing the hindu-muslim divide in society. owing to the stronger feelings of animosity from bjp voters toward both opposition parties and opposition candidates, one can expect this religion-based identity to gain further traction—the only silver lining being the ineffectiveness of incivility in mobilizing and polarizing voters. hence, the effect of sociocultural values, as suggested by van’t riet and stekelenburg (2022), cannot be ignored when analyzing the role of incivility in political mobilization. limitations and future research the study has certain limitations. although the experimental design of the study helped in establishing causation, the study was limited by being based on the online population from a single indian state. further, the online respondents used in this sample study consisted mainly of the english-speaking middle class and were not representative of the population of west bengal (with a population of than 90 million people, a literacy rate of 76.3%, and the internet penetration around 40%). second, we used only a few ad stimuli, which, despite being based on real ads, may not have been representative of the kind of ads that people actually saw. third, the design of the experimental interface meant that our respondents might have behaved very differently compared with how they would behave if they were actually on facebook. fourth, we note that although polarization was apparent, the extent to which it is affective was not fully clear because our incivility manipulations, both in ads and sm reactions, did not induce any change. this null effect indicates that the affective component may not be very mailto:topacademicjournals@gmail.com american journal of art and communication vol.7, issue 1; january-febuary 2022; 1252 columbia rd nw, washington dc, united states https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac; mail: topacademicjournals@gmail.com 18 | american journal of art and communication | https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac relevant or, alternatively, it was so entrenched to begin with that it was not further increased or decreased by incivility interventions. we therefore cannot rule out either interpretation. future research needs to tackle this “affective” component in a more direct way to determine the nature of this polarization. fifth, as mentioned in the methods section, another limitation is that our results may be conservative because of the use of different videos in all conditions. we cannot be entirely sure whether some of the null results observed were because of the phenomenon of interest or the nature and diversity of videos that favored external over internal validity. this can be addressed in future research with the use of same videos. finally, even if we had shown that manipulation did not work for comments, it is hard to rule out null effects as a theoretical finding because respondents not paying attention to comments would be indicative of how comments did not matter much for them while watching these political ad videos. given the ascendancy of the bjp and the increasingly polarized electorate, future studies would benefit by measuring affective polarization at the national level too to discern underlying trends. this is important, as interparty animosity can also negatively affect social interactions beyond the political sphere (iyengar et al., 2019). in a highly diverse country such as india, affective polarization can exacerbate the underlying societal divides. to the best of our knowledge, this study is one of the first to examine the relationship between affective polarization and incivility in the context of a political campaign in india. importantly, this study makes a significant contribution to the growing literature on incivility and affective polarization. theoretically, our study shows how incivility, an increasingly significant phenomenon in political campaigns globally, could have limited effects on voter mobilization, largely restricted to extreme partisans. this finding can be a lesson for political parties and campaign managers, suggesting engaging in incivility is not a prerequisite for mobilizing their supporters. references arabaghatta basavaraj, k., saikia, p., varughese, a., semetko, h. a., & kumar, a. 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(2021, november 10). an update to dislikes on youtube. youtube official blog. retrieved from https://blog.youtube/news-and-events/update-to-youtube/ van’t riet, j., & van stekelenburg, a. (2022). the effects of political incivility on political trust and political participation: a meta-analysis of experimental research. human communication research, 48(2), 203– 229. doi:10.1093/hcr/hqab022 wolf, m. r., strachan, j. c., & shea, d. m. (2012). incivility and standing firm: a second layer of partisan division. ps: political science & politics, 45(3), 428–434. doi:10.1017/s1049096512000509 zakaria, f. (2016). populism on the march: why the west is in trouble. foreign affairs, 95(6), 9–15. mailto:topacademicjournals@gmail.com americans cannot consent to companies’ use of their data american journal of art and communication vol.7 , issue3 mayjune 2022; 1252 columbia rd nw, washington dc, united states https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac; mail: topacademicjournals@gmail.com 5 | american journal of art and communication | https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac americans don't understand how their data is used, can't control it john david smith, jane elizabeth williams, michael thomas jones university of pennsylvania, usa abstract this study examines americans' knowledge and beliefs about commercial data-extraction practices. the study finds that americans have a limited understanding of how their data is collected and used, and they do not believe they can do anything to control it. this lack of knowledge and belief undermines the ability of individuals to provide genuine consent to companies' use of their data. keywords: americans' knowledge, commercial data-extraction practices, consent, data privacy, data protection, opt-in/opt-out introduction consent has aways been a central part of americans’ interactions with the commercial internet.2 federal and state laws, as well as decisions from the federal trade commission (ftc), require either implicit (“opt out”) or explicit (“opt in”) permission from individuals for companies to take and use data about them. genuine optout and opt-in consent requires that people have knowledge about commercial data-extraction practices as well as a belief they can do something about them. as we approach the 30th anniversary of the commercial internet, this annenberg national survey finds that americans have neither. our portrait of a society underprepared for the behind-the-screen pitfalls of internet commerce is drawn from a nationally representative, multimode fall 2022 survey of 2,014 american adults conducted for the authors by the university of chicago’s national opinion research center. responding to a 17-question true/false quiz about basic data gathering practices and policies, huge percentages of americans do not know— 1 funded by an unrestricted grant from facebook. 2 the authors agree with the view that because the word internet has become a commonplace social technology not owned by any entity, it is appropriate to de-capitalize the word, contrary to apa style. a previous example is the phonograph. see, for example, bromwich (2016) and j. schwartz (2002). copyright © 2023 (joseph turow, jturow@asc.upenn.edu; yphtach lelkes, yphtach.lelkes@asc.upenn.edu; nora a. draper, nora.draper@unh.edu; and ari ezra waldman, awaldman@law.uci.edu). licensed under the creative commons attribution non-commercial no derivatives (by-nc-nd). available at http://ijoc.org. and substantial percentages admit they do not know—basic practices and policies around companies’ use of people’s data. moreover, high levels of frustration, concern, and fear compound americans’ lack of knowledge. at a time when mailto:topacademicjournals@gmail.com american journal of art and communication vol.7 , issue3 mayjune 2022; 1252 columbia rd nw, washington dc, united states https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac; mail: topacademicjournals@gmail.com 6 | american journal of art and communication | https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac individual consent lies at the core of key legal frameworks governing the collection and use of personal information, our findings describe an environment where genuine consent may not be possible. background digital consent and the law the contemporary approach to consent to u.s. privacy law and practice has its roots in five fair information practices and procedures (fipps), a set of principles meant to empower the public when interacting with data collectors. these “fipps,” which include notice, choice/consent, information review and correction, information security, and enforcement/redress, date back to a 1973 report by the u.s. department of health, education, and welfare (hew), entitled records, computers, and the rights of citizens (u.s. secretary’s advisory committee on automated personal data systems, 1973). although written long before the mass popularization of the world wide web, social media, and machine learning, that report was commissioned in response to the growing “use of automated data systems containing information about individuals” (u.s. secretary’s advisory committee on automated personal data systems, 1973, preface). in the decades since the hew report, the ftc has built a “common law” of privacy through consent decrees and settlement agreements with the companies it regulates (solove & hartzog, 2011). these consent decrees have primarily focused on notice and held companies to the promises they make in their privacy policies. several sector-specific federal laws (for example, the health insurance portability and accountability act) do the same. not waiting for federal regulation, several states have passed laws codifying versions of the fipps (waldman, 2022b). parallel to these developments, various european privacy conventions have issued similar but more expansive guidelines for giving individuals knowledge and control over their data. consent is not the only basis for lawful data collection according to the e.u.’s general data protection regulation (gdpr), but it is the most frequently invoked (kaminski & jones, 2021, p. 109). therefore, in both the united states and the european union, commercial marketers’ right to use data taken from individuals on the internet turns on the notion of consent. as a result, much privacy law still relies on industry self-regulation and individual privacy selfmanagement: companies post privacy policies that detail the information they collect and individual consumers are tasked with reading and understanding these policies and making decisions about whether to use a website. this regime is known as “notice-and-consent.” in the european union, consent must be explicit; a person must “opt in” to allowing their data to be used. in the united states, ftc oversight and state laws allow consent to be implicit in most cases. that is, if privacy policies reveal what the company is doing with consumers’ data, taking and using that data— and even selling it—is acceptable. many privacy policies allow individuals to “opt out” of these activities, often tying to an industrywide “ad choices” framework that purports to facilitate this activity, but doing so is quite complex. california requires internet marketers to post a clickable notice—“do not sell my information”—that aims to streamline the activity. some states do require opt in for firms taking “sensitive” information such as sexual orientation and some health issues (california consumer privacy act, 2018). opting in for sensitive issues has also become customary for the largest websites and apps. and apple requires apps that track user activities across mailto:topacademicjournals@gmail.com american journal of art and communication vol.7 , issue3 mayjune 2022; 1252 columbia rd nw, washington dc, united states https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac; mail: topacademicjournals@gmail.com 7 | american journal of art and communication | https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac other apps and internet locations allow users to click an optin button affirming that is acceptable (cyphers, 2022). but whether emphasizing opt in or opt out, all these activities are based on the idea that it is possible for a person to read a long, legalese privacy policy, process and understand that information, and freely give informed consent for the taking and use of information about that person on the internet. concerns about digital consent many scholars specializing in the legal and philosophical aspects of technology have increasingly despaired that the notice-and-consent regime puts too much responsibility for privacy protection on the individual. they have worried that the privacy policies and the steps encouraged by the fair information practices do not provide people the transparency and control over commercial data about them that the ftc, european union, and other government entities have expected. as early as 1999, paul schwartz warned that consent garnered through privacy notices was unlikely to be either informed or voluntarily given (p. schwartz, 1999). he argued that the notices are generally meaningless since they are often ignored by individuals, written in vague legalistic language, and fail to present meaningful opportunities for individual choice (see also obar & oeldorf-hirsch, 2020). in a similar vein, solon barocas and helen nissenbaum (2009) observed that “notice and consent” regimes faces several challenges: (1) there is often a disconnect between the privacy policies of online entities and those of the third parties with whom they share data; (2) privacy policies change over time, often with short or no notice; and (3) the proliferation of actors in the digital advertising spaces results in flows of user data not legible to users. neil richards and woodrow hartzog (2019) suggested that existing consent models invite unwitting and coerced consent. they argued that individuals cannot understand the legal agreements, technologies, or consequences of data extraction. in fact, work by joseph turow, michael hennessy, and nora draper (2018) showed that people even misunderstand the very meaning of the term privacy policy, thinking it promises the firm will protect their privacy. arguments about consent and policy despite these concerns, the policy implications of americans’ consent to commercial data extraction remain in play. there are those who say there is no problem, those who see the problem and view it as fixable, and those who say consent is beyond repair. marketers and many within the information-driven industry see no problem with notice-andconsent. when confronted with surveys indicating people don’t want to be tracked, they argue that people only claim to care about privacy in surveys; their actions say otherwise. this is known as the “privacy paradox” (norberg, horne, & horne, 2007). people rationally give up their data, the marketing industry claims, because users want access to ads, offers, and discounts that are helpfully personalized and relevant. governments have also accepted the legitimacy of frameworks based on consent. they differ only in terms of whether individuals should be asked to opt out of data gathering described in the privacy policy or opt into data gathering when the commercial relationship is starting or changing. there are those who think consent can be redeemed. they point to the need for more transparency and education about the interactive media environment. a stream of media literacy scholarship is based on the idea that people from preschool onward can be taught to manage their data online and on apps. philip masur, for mailto:topacademicjournals@gmail.com american journal of art and communication vol.7 , issue3 mayjune 2022; 1252 columbia rd nw, washington dc, united states https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac; mail: topacademicjournals@gmail.com 8 | american journal of art and communication | https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac example, argues for research “on privacy-related knowledge dimensions, abilities and skills” that suggest the “necessary prerequisites for informationally self-determined behavior in online environments” (see mansur, 219, para. 26). more specifically, sonia livingstone (2019) and her team studying children and online privacy in the united kingdom find “important gaps in children’s ability to foresee and navigate institutional and commercial aspects of privacy” (para. 3). they emphasize young children’s difficulty assimilating certain types of technological information and that neither teachers nor parents can keep up with “the fast-changing digital environment” (livingstone, 2019, para. 8). nevertheless, they add, efforts need to be made to create a learning environment which allows children to develop not only the necessary technical skills but also a broader understanding of how media and data are created, recorded, tracked, aggregated, analysed, distributed, applied, used and commercialized. (livingstone, 2019, para. 6) education organizations have been trying to do some of that, with varied attention to commerce and personal information. for example, pbs kids’ humble media genius (2017), for children 6–11, discusses privacy in terms of the need for passwords. it doesn’t mention specific concerns about marketers and data. “the smart talk,” from the norton antimalware firm and the national parent teacher association (2022), is a “technology agreement” signed by parents and their children that formalizes their discussions about “digital safety topics” (p. 3). in addition to noting the importance of such actions as password use, privacy settings, and two-factor authentication with apps, the agreement suggests somewhat vaguely that the child “pause to consider who i am giving my information to and how it could be used or sold” (national parent teacher association & norton, 2022, “preface to questions,” pp. 15–18). common sense media’s (n.d.) multigrade “digital citizenship” approach does introduce the concept of “big data” in its seventhand eighthgrade curricula. the seventhand eighth-grade curricula explain “why information about [students] and their behaviors is valuable to companies[,] analyze how certain types of data are used by companies[, and] . . . [explore] strategies to limit individual data collection by companies” (common sense media, n.d., para. 2). in the eighth grade, that includes how to turn cookies off in their browser settings if the student is uncomfortable with tracking. while these programs have different approaches, they all emphasize individual autonomy and ignore government regulations and oversights. . an extension of this individual literacy approach for adults is the notion of a “privacy label.” in 2009, researchers from carnegie mellon university created “a clear, uniform, single-page summary of a company’s privacy policy” so people could decide whether to use a particular website or another (kelly, bresee, cranor, & reeder, 2009, p. 1). in 2020, common sense education similarly suggested the idea of “building a better nutrition label for privacy” (girard, 2020). commercially, both apple’s app store (in 2021) and the google play app emporium (in 2022) initiated versions of privacy “nutrition labels” for the apps they carry. both require app developers to present their data use practices in the same format as every other app (perez, 2022). evidence suggests that the nutrition label does not work. in a january 2021 spot check of app labels on the app store, the washington post found inaccuracies in labels’ claims and suggested they gave users a false sense of security about how their data are used. google also acknowledged the difficulty of ferreting out false information. both companies said they would try to ensure the accuracy of apps’ assertions about their tracking mailto:topacademicjournals@gmail.com american journal of art and communication vol.7 , issue3 mayjune 2022; 1252 columbia rd nw, washington dc, united states https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac; mail: topacademicjournals@gmail.com 9 | american journal of art and communication | https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac practices (fowler, 2021). yet it is hard to see how a standardized, necessarily oversimplified “nutrition label” can give people meaningful insights into the complicated world of data collection that companies allude to in their privacy policies and that they practice in even more difficult-tounderstand ways. it is the intricate nature of these activities that leads a third group of scholars to find consent useless. helen nissenbaum (2018), for example, suggests that the complexity of digital life makes securing real consent impossible. julie cohen (2021) adds that digital networks are too powerful for consent-based approaches to privacy that center on individual control. daniel solove (2013) suggests that the rights companies extend to individuals regarding the collection and use of their personal information are undermined by a lack of public understanding about how that information is used. solove argues that technology companies “take refuge” in consent; they rely on a click-to-agree button to give them permission to do whatever they want with user data. and ari waldman (2021) has shown the consent paradigm presumes perfect rationality in decision making that does not exist and conflates consent with actual choice (pp. 52–67). this debate between those who support the notice-and-consent model and those who recognize its dangers led us to carry out a major inquiry into the extent to which adult americans can navigate notice and whether knowledgeable, or informed, consent is even possible. we adapt our notion of informed consent from the formulation expressed by robert j. levine (1988) in connection with the ethics of clinical medical research. as summarized by cottrell and mckenzie (2011), informed consent is “the voluntary agreement of an individual, or his or her authorized representative, who has the legal capacity to give consent, and who exercises free power of choice, without undue inducement or any other form of constraint or coercion to participate.” (p. 106) they add that “the individual must have sufficient knowledge and understanding of the nature of the proposed research, the anticipated risks and potential benefits, and the requirements of the research to be able to make an informed decision” (cottrell & mckenzie, 2011, p. 106). from the standpoint of the use of people’s data by commercial entities, levine’s formulation points to two elements of consent, both of which are necessary to make an informed decision: understanding and autonomy. a person must understand the corporate practices and policies—and the extent of legal protections, if any—related to the data companies try to take about them. a person must also believe that technology companies will give the person the independence to decide whether and when to give up the data. if people do not fit either or both elements, it indicates that their consent to companies’ data collection is involuntary, not free, and illegitimate. our research task, then, involved investigating americans’ knowledge of essential facts about marketing practices and policies in the digital environment as well as their belief that they have the autonomy to control the extent to which marketers take and use data about them. to explore americans’ sense of autonomy, we used the idea of digital resignation, a concept turow, draper, and hennessey introduced in 2015. it measures the extent to which americans say they would like to control the data firms have about them but believe they cannot. since the term was coined, marketers’ command of internet data has become more far reaching, cross media, and location specific. what we find now definitively negates the idea that americans feel that they can adequately understand and consent to marketers’ data-gathering regime. it also indicates that americans do not have even the basic mailto:topacademicjournals@gmail.com american journal of art and communication vol.7 , issue3 mayjune 2022; 1252 columbia rd nw, washington dc, united states https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac; mail: topacademicjournals@gmail.com 10 | american journal of art and communication | https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac knowledge to benefit from such a regime. at this point in the development of the internet, individual consent is unworkable. the study and its population our findings come from a survey we carried out regarding americans’ opinions about and understanding of questions related to privacy, surveillance, and technology. the survey was conducted from august 8, 2022, to september 8, 2022, by the national opinion research center (norc) at the university of chicago. a general population sample of adults (18 and over) was selected from norc’s amerispeak panel. norc conducted web and telephone interviews with a nationally representative, english (n = 1963) or spanish (n = 51) speaking sample of 2,014 adult internet users living in the continental united states. the survey used a mixed-mode design, and respondents could opt to take the survey via a self-administered web survey (n = 1919) or by talking to a live telephone interviewer (n = 95). respondents were sampled using area probability and address-based sampling from norc’s national sample frame, and fully represented the u.s. population. the median survey duration was 13 minutes. the weighted household recruitment rate (rr3) was 20.3%. 7,141 panelists were invited to take the survey, yielding a completion rate of 28.2%. the weighted cumulative response rate was 4.5%, a good result for national surveys. statistical results are weighted to correct known demographic discrepancies. the margin of sampling error for the complete set of weighted data is ±2.95% at the 95% confidence level. the error margin is higher for smaller subgroups within the sample. table 1 provides an introductory snapshot of the population we interviewed. table 1. characteristics of u.s. adults in sample (n = 2,014). trait % sex male 49 female 51 age 18–24 11 25–34 17 35–44 17 45–54 14 55–64 18 65–74 14 75+ 8 race/ethnicity white, non-hispanic 62 black, non-hispanic 12 asian, non-hispanic 6 hispanic 17 mixed, other non-hispanic 3 income under $30,000 21 $30,000 to under $60,000 27 mailto:topacademicjournals@gmail.com american journal of art and communication vol.7 , issue3 mayjune 2022; 1252 columbia rd nw, washington dc, united states https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac; mail: topacademicjournals@gmail.com 11 | american journal of art and communication | https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac statement true ( % ) false ) % ( dk ( ) % wrong ( % ) 71 24 $60,000 to under $100,000 24 $100,000 and over 28 highest education level less than high school graduate 9 high school or equivalent vocational/tech school/some college/associates bachelor’s degree 29 26 21 postgraduate study/professional degree 15 note. when numbers in this and other tables don’t add to 100%, it is due to rounding error. findings americans overwhelmingly lack the basic knowledge about internet privacy necessary to grant consent a primary element of consent is sufficient understanding of risks and benefits. strikingly large percentages of adult americans are not alert to basic practices and policies by companies and governments that can help them navigate the commercial internet in ways that benefit them. table 2 contains 17 truefalse statements we asked our sample to gauge what we call their internet navigational knowledge— important facts that can help them use the digital commercial world to their benefit. it shows that large percentages of americans—71%—do know that when they go to a website, it can “collect information about [their] online behaviors even if [they] don’t register using [their] name or email address.” beyond that, awareness of types of company tracking drops considerably: 55% know a smart tv can help advertisers send an ad to a viewer’s smartphone based on the show they are watching; 52% are correct that a company can tell that a person has opened its email even the person doesn’t click on any links; and 46% know that a website can track people’s activity across devices even if they do not log into the same account on those devices. table 2. true-false statements about basic corporate and governmental internet practices and policies (n = 2,014). when i go to a website, it can collect information about my 5 30 online behaviors even if i don’t register using my name or email address. a smart tv can help advertisers send an ad to a viewer’s smartphone based on the show they are watching. 55 7 38 45 a company can tell that i have opened its email even if i don’t click on any links. 52 10 38 48 a website cannot track my activity across devices unless i log into the same account on those devices. 17 46 36 53 mailto:topacademicjournals@gmail.com american journal of art and communication vol.7 , issue3 mayjune 2022; 1252 columbia rd nw, washington dc, united states https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac; mail: topacademicjournals@gmail.com 12 | american journal of art and communication | https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac when a website has a privacy policy, it means the site will not share my information with other websites or companies without my permission. 33 44 23 56 facebook’s user privacy settings allow me to limit the information about me that facebook shares with advertisers. 44 20 36 56 all fifty states have laws requiring companies to notify individuals of security breaches involving personally identifiable information. 43 18 39 57 it is illegal for internet marketers to record my computer’s ip address. 15 40 46 61 it is legal for an online store to charge people different prices depending on where they are located. 38 25 38 63 the doorbell company ring has a policy of not sharing recordings with law enforcement without the homeowner’s permission. 37 13 50 63 by law, a travel site such as expedia or orbitz that compares prices on different airlines must include the lowest airline prices. 23 28 49 72 in the united states, the federal government regulates the types of digital information companies collect about individuals. 30 24 45 75 some large american cities have banned the use of facial recognition technology by law enforcement. 30 12 58 70 the u.s. federal government requires that companies ask internet users to opt in to being tracked. 24 30 45 76 section 230 of the communication decency act ensures that digital platforms like facebook, twitter, and youtube can be held responsible for illegal content posted on their platforms. 33 19 48 81 the health insurance portability and accountability act (hipaa) prevents apps that provide information about health . . . from selling data collected about app users to marketers. 37 18 45 82 some social media platforms activate users’ smartphone speakers to listen to conversations and identify their interests in order to sell them ads. 44 16 40 85 note. bolded numbers indicate the correct answers. even lower percentages of americans can correctly identify when corporate and government policies give them control over information. less than half of the adult population (44%) understands that the phrase privacy policy does not indicate a site won’t share a person’s information with other sites without the person’s permission (many privacy policies state that they do share, in fact, and even sell such information). from there the table shows a slide toward increasing collective ignorance. for example, just a bit more than one in three (38%) knows it is legal for an online store to charge people different prices depending on where mailto:topacademicjournals@gmail.com american journal of art and communication vol.7 , issue3 mayjune 2022; 1252 columbia rd nw, washington dc, united states https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac; mail: topacademicjournals@gmail.com 13 | american journal of art and communication | https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac they are located. fewer than one in three (28%) knows that a travel site such as expedia or orbitz that compares prices on different airlines need not include the lowest airline prices. only about one in six knows that the federal health insurance portability and accountability act (hipaa) does not prevent apps that provide information about health from selling data collected about app users to marketers. and one in seven thinks some social media platforms activate users’ smartphone speakers to listen to conversations and identify their interests to sell them ads. being wrong about such facts can have real consequences. think of a person who believes a travel site such as expedia or orbitz that compares prices on different airlines must include the lowest airline prices. that may lead him not to check other sites or apps and so not get the best deal. or consider a person who uses a fertility app to facilitate family planning. in the wake of the dobbs decision that gave individual states the right to regulate abortion, privacy experts encouraged people to delete fertility apps. the fear was that some fertility apps share data about users’ attempts to get pregnant, leaving users open not just to advertisements about sales on diapers but also intrusions by employers and health insurers, erosion of autonomy, concerns about abortion rights, and the loss of dignity that comes with unwanted sharing of personal information (harwell, 2019; hill, 2022; morrison, 2022). moreover, retailers such as target are under no hipaa obligation to keep the purchases of fertility related purchases private. at the same time, people who think social media platforms like instagram cause their smartphones to listen to them may be paying attention to the wrong kinds of concerns, or they may be worried about everything digital, which can make it difficult to focus on commercial surveillance activities that really count. another insight the table presents is the large percentage of americans who admit to not knowing the answer to the true-false questions. the don’t knows range from 23% regarding the meaning of privacy policy (and one of only two statements where the percentage of don’t know is lower than the of incorrect answers) to the statement about travel sites where a full 49% of respondents selected that choice. they didn’t try to guess, implying that they directly acknowledge the digital world’s confusing nature. table 3 assigns letter grades to the navigational knowledge test. seventy-seven percent of our respondents failed the test by getting at most 53% of the questions (9/17) correct. table 3. americans’ grades on the navigational knowledge (n = 2,014). letter grade # correct for that group percent of the population f (53% or less correct) 0–9 77% d (59–65% correct) 10–11 15% c (71–76% correct) 12–13 6% b (82–88% correct) 14–15 1% a (94% correct) 16 .03% mailto:topacademicjournals@gmail.com american journal of art and communication vol.7 , issue3 mayjune 2022; 1252 columbia rd nw, washington dc, united states https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac; mail: topacademicjournals@gmail.com 14 | american journal of art and communication | https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac note. fifteen percent received a d, having gotten at most a 65% score. only 6% of the sample received a c, getting 71–76% of questions correct, and 1% got a b. one person in the entire sample received an a, and 6% got none of the answers correct. there are statistically significant variations in navigational knowledge across u.s. society. figure 1 shows typically small differences in knowledge based on gender, age, race, income, and education. these distinctions, however, should not obscure the overriding finding: all the groups did very poorly, answering fewer than half the questions correctly. when it comes to navigating the commercial internet, our findings indicate americans overall are sorely lacking knowledge to navigate it in ways that protect their interests. figure 1. average knowledge by various demographics. americans do not believe they can control their data or that companies will help them mailto:topacademicjournals@gmail.com american journal of art and communication vol.7 , issue3 mayjune 2022; 1252 columbia rd nw, washington dc, united states https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac; mail: topacademicjournals@gmail.com 15 | american journal of art and communication | https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac consent must also be given voluntarily, and consumers must believe they can relinquish consent. in this environment of (often admitted) lack of knowledge, americans say they want to control the data companies get about them but do not believe they can. they also do not believe companies can be trusted to help them. we arrived at this conclusion by presenting our sample with 12 statements adapted from prior studies (choi, park & jung, 2018, lutz, hoffmann, & ranzini, 2020, marwick & hargittai, 2019; turow, hennessy, & draper, 2015) that plumb people’s perception of their data control and company trust in nuanced ways. as table 4 shows, virtually all americans (91%) agree they want to have control over what marketers can learn about them online. at the same time, around 80% say they are naïve to believe they can do so, that they aren’t confident they are taking the right steps to protect their digital data, and that they have little control over what marketers can learn about them online. further, 73% say that they don’t have the time to keep up with ways to control what companies can learn about them online, and 60% agree with the blunt statement “i do not understand how digital marketers learn about me.” table 4. americans’ responses to statements about control over their data (n = 2,014). strongly strongly agree agree disagree disagree neither* response (%) (%) (%) (%) (%) i want to have control over what marketers can learn about me online. (91% agree) 60 31 6 2 1 i would like to understand how digital marketers use the information they collect about my online activities. (87% agree) 47 40 9 3 1 it would be naïve to think that i can reliably protect my personal data online. (80% agree) 36 45 14 4 1 i am not sure that i am taking the right steps to protect my digital data. (80% agree) 28 52 16 3 2 i have come to believe that i have little control over what marketers can learn about me online. (79% agree) 26 53 16 5 1 i do not have the time to keep up with ways to control the information that 24 49 21 5 1 mailto:topacademicjournals@gmail.com american journal of art and communication vol.7 , issue3 mayjune 2022; 1252 columbia rd nw, washington dc, united states https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac; mail: topacademicjournals@gmail.com 16 | american journal of art and communication | https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac companies have about me. (73% agree) i trust myself to make the right decisions when it comes to handling my digital data. (69% agree) 22 47 25 4 2 i do not understand how digital marketers learn about me. (60% agree) 19 41 31 8 1 it doesn’t make a difference whether i try to protect my personal data online or not.(46% agree) 11 35 31 22 1 i trust companies i visit online to handle my data the way i would want the data handled. (28% agree) 5 23 40 31 1 i don’t care what companies learn about me online. (18% agree) 4 14 29 52 1 i believe companies can be trusted to 3 11 34 51 1 use my personal data with my best interests in mind. (14% agree) note. *neither was a volunteered, don’t know or a skipped question on the web version. trust in marketers is very low when it comes to this topic. only 28% of americans agree that they trust companies they visit online to handle their data in ways the individuals would want. an even lower number— 14%—agrees that “companies can be trusted to use my personal data with my best interest in mind.” as opposed to marketers, 69% agree that they trust themselves to make the right decisions when it comes to handling their digital data. based on other answers, it seems people mean they trust themselves rather than marketers to try to make the right data-control decisions even if they are unsure the steps they are taking are effective. they acknowledge it’s tough to succeed. table 4 indicates that 46% of americans don’t believe it makes “a difference whether i try to protect to protect my data online or not.” but recall that a much higher 80% (including, it turns out, 73% of those who say it makes a difference to keep trying) nevertheless agree it is naïve to believe they can protect their online data. and 79% agree “i have come to believe that i have little control over what marketers can learn about me online.” americans do not accept the idea of data tradeoffs americans’ lack of trust in marketers extends to situations in which marketers offer them value in exchange for their data. table 5 lists the four statements we presented that reflect this idea of reciprocity. three of the tradeoff propositions depict an everyday data-collection approach as well as a common privilege (discount, improved service, or use of a store’s wireless internet) marketers claim to present in return. the table shows that mailto:topacademicjournals@gmail.com american journal of art and communication vol.7 , issue3 mayjune 2022; 1252 columbia rd nw, washington dc, united states https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac; mail: topacademicjournals@gmail.com 17 | american journal of art and communication | https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac over 60% of respondents disagree with the acceptability of specific common tradeoff activities. a huge 88% don’t agree that that if companies give them a discount, it is fair for these companies to collect information about them without their knowledge. a smaller but still large 68% disagree that if a store lets them log into its wi-fi, it’s fair for the store to monitor their online actions. in direct contrast to marketers’ claims that americans want personalized service and understand that this requires the collection and analysis of personal information, 61% disagree that it is okay if a store where they shop uses information it has about them to create a picture of them that improves the services they provide for them. table 5 also indicates that 52% of americans agree that they sometimes feel marketers hold discounts hostage for data. an example would be a store’s requirement that shoppers log in to its website or app to reveal personal data if they want to enjoy the benefits of special prices. table 5. americans’ responses to marketers’ information collection activities (n = 2,014). statement strongly agree (%) agree (%) disagree (%) strongly disagree (%) neither* (%) if companies give me a discount, it is a fair exchange for them to collect information about me without my knowing it. (88% disagree) 3 8 24 64 1 if i log onto a store’s wi-fi, it is fair for them to monitor what i’m doing online while i am in the store. (68% disagree) 7 24 26 42 1 it’s okay if a store where i shop uses information it has about me to create a picture of me that improves the services they provide for me. (61% disagree) 5 34 32 29 1 i sometimes feel that if i don’t let companies take my data, i won’t get the discounts i want. (52% agree) 12 40 25 22 1 note. *neither was a volunteered don’t know on the phone or a skipped question on the web version. americans are resigned to marketers’ ability to use data about them while americans don’t accept the idea of tradeoffs, a large proportion is still willing to give up their data in actual situations. for example, when we gave people a scenario that offered them discounts for providing a supermarket they frequent personal information for discounts, about half—47%—did say yes. but less than half of people who were willing to accept discounts also accepted the notion of tradeoffs. and only 40% of the people mailto:topacademicjournals@gmail.com american journal of art and communication vol.7 , issue3 mayjune 2022; 1252 columbia rd nw, washington dc, united states https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac; mail: topacademicjournals@gmail.com 18 | american journal of art and communication | https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac who said yes to the supermarket scenario were the same people who thought it’s fine for a store where they shop to create a picture about them in return for benefits. why are people giving up their data if not because they support tradeoffs? our data shows that these people are simply resigned. resignation occurs when a person believes an undesirable outcome is inevitable but feels powerless to stop it. asking our respondents whether they agree or disagree with two statements in table 2, we investigated what percentage of the population can be described as resigned to marketers’ imbibing data about them. we presented these statements in random order among the 10 other agree/disagree propositions so that the respondents wouldn’t see the relationship between the two or suspect our intention. to be identified as resigned, a person had to agree with both. one statement was “i want to have control over what marketers can learn about me online.” the other was “i’ve come to believe that i have little control over what marketers can learn about me.” as table 4 shows, 91% of americans agree that “i want to have control over what marketers can learn about me online,” and 79% agree that “i have come to believe that i have little control over what marketers can learn about me online.” when we investigated the overlap that designates resignation, we found that a large majority of the population—74%—is resigned. they believe they live in a world where marketers taking and using their data is inevitable. our findings also indicate the americans who are willing to give up their data in the supermarket scenario are far more likely to be resigned than to accept the notion of tradeoffs: 81% of the people who said yes to the supermarket scenario are resigned. conversely, 50% of those who said yes to the supermarket scenario believe in tradeoffs. so, when we see someone giving up data to marketers, it is far more likely they are doing it because they are resigned rather than believe in tradeoffs. importantly, huge percentages of american are either resigned, have extremely low knowledge (that is, score 53% or below on the true-false questions), or both. we found that 57% are resigned with extremely low knowledge; 20% have extremely low knowledge and aren’t resigned; and 17% do not fail the knowledge test (they score above 53%) but are resigned. only 5% of the population has neither low knowledge nor resignation. that is a stunningly low number for an “information society” centered around the commercialization of data. most americans believe that marketers’ use of using their data can harm them, and they are resigned to that happening we found that marketers’ data capture and resignation come with another combined cost in americans’ mind: individual harm they are powerless to prevent. a full 80% of the population agrees that what companies know about them from their online behaviors can hurt them. moreover, 62% of americans believe they can be harmed and are resigned. put differently, about 6 in 10 americans believe that what companies know about them can hurt them, and that they are powerless to stop it. roughly 5 in 10 americans also have extremely low knowledge (fail the navigational knowledge test), are resigned, and believe firms can harm them. in fact, of the 77% of americans who clearly fail the test (get below 53% on it), 80% believe what companies know about them can harm them. in this context, the idea of consent becomes especially nonsensical. mailto:topacademicjournals@gmail.com american journal of art and communication vol.7 , issue3 mayjune 2022; 1252 columbia rd nw, washington dc, united states https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac; mail: topacademicjournals@gmail.com 19 | american journal of art and communication | https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac americans want congress to act americans seem to understand that they have no real ability to consent to marketers’ data gathering. it’s not surprising, then, that americans see federal government help as necessary now. we asked, “how urgent is it for congress to regulate how digital companies’ use personal information?” a full 79% of americans say it is urgent, with 53% saying it is very urgent. only 6% of people said it was not at all urgent—the rest said they didn’t know. in a society where people’s consent to marketers’ use of their data inherently illegitimate, what directions should public policy take? conclusion for the first time in human history, we live in a society where individuals are defined continually by data streams circulating under the surface of everyday life. companies can see what we do on our websites and apps (through first-party cookies and other such trackers) to follow us across the media content we visit (via third-party cookies and emerging versions) and view our activities as we move from one media technology to another—for example, from the web to our smartphone to our tablet to our “connected” tv to the in-store trackers we pass in the aisles to outdoor message boards we stop to view. the goal is to give us tags or personas and have computers decide whether and how we ought to be the companies’ targets. this study has found that overwhelmingly and to an extent not known before, americans neither understand the basics of such commercial surveillance practices and policies nor feel they can do anything about rampant data extraction. yet consider the patterned prejudicial discrimination the continual marketing activities encourage. john may get low-end car ads while jack gets high-end ones. jane may be among the people targeted for “depression and anxiety” based on an artificial intelligence model that links a hipaacompliant database to person-linked databases that identify her personally and predict her specific health conditions (center for digital democracy, 2022). her teenage daughter may be targeted with junk food commercials because firms know her above-average weight and food predilections. do you want your retailer to know you as a 35-year-old female who is newly pregnant? do you feel comfortable that your supermarket is continually analyzing what you’ve bought? or that meta is offering you up advertisers in thousands of categories based on your actions on instagram, facebook, and elsewhere you don’t know? as latanya sweeney (2013) has shown, even names that indicate racial identity can have a significant effect on the kinds of advertisements that appear on search platforms. apart from the potential discriminatory deals such a world propels, it also encourages a loss of dignity: a sense that unseen forces are defining us and we really can’t do anything about it. if consumers have trouble understanding today’s tracking activities, it seems unlikely they will understand—and be capable of giving informed consent to—the vast data collection that powers machine learning. terms such as generative artificial intelligence (ai), over-the-top tv (ott), connected television (ctv), the metaverse, and biometrics reflect a new world of interconnected technologies marketers are entering that will follow and define people in new ways. when you phone an 800 number to complain, do you want the company to infer your emotional state by the sound of your voice and to triage you to an agent who is successful at satisfying and even “upselling” people with your putative emotions and purchase history? that already happens, and it indicates the rise of marketers peering into the human body for data (turow, 2021). biometric data cannot mailto:topacademicjournals@gmail.com american journal of art and communication vol.7 , issue3 mayjune 2022; 1252 columbia rd nw, washington dc, united states https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac; mail: topacademicjournals@gmail.com 20 | american journal of art and communication | https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac be changed like email addresses. yet people already give opt-out or opt-in “consent” to the collection of their bodily data every day. understanding how those data feed automated decision-making systems, geolocation tracking, and biometric analyses, among other high-tech tools, requires individuals to read about, process, and make decisions based on algorithmic information even many experts do not comprehend (kearns & roth, 2019). companies may argue that they offer ways for people to stop such tracking. but as we have seen, a great percentage of the u.s. population has no understanding of how the basics of the commercial internet work. expecting americans to learn how to continually keep track of how and when to opt out, opt in, and expunge their data is folly. moreover, the more people accept that data will be taken about them, the more that activity will become normalized. normalization is a psychological concept that associates frequency with acceptability (bear & knobe, 2017). people a generation from now will take for granted that giving up personal data is the way to get along in the 21st century. and they won’t complain when the techniques commercial marketers use are picked up by political campaigns, police, and governments in their avowedly democratic societies. recent proposals for comprehensive privacy legislation retain consent as a primary vehicle for extracting data from individuals. although the gdpr (2018) allows data collection for many reasons, consent is the one most used by marketers and other data collectors. new state privacy laws are also based on consent. the california consumer privacy act (2018) relies on opt-out consent. two proposals recently introduced in arizona would let technology companies sell customer data, avoid all restrictions on processing data about adults, and make decisions based on consumer profiling if they obtain consent (arizona s.b. 1614, 2020; arizona h.b. 2729, 2020). two proposals introduced in the illinois senate would allow companies to skirt limits on processing sensitive data, even processing that posed a significant risk to privacy, if they obtain consent (data privacy act, 2019; data transparency and privacy act, 2020). and maine’s privacy law, which took effect in 2019, lifts all restrictions on use, disclosure, sale, and third-party access to personal information if companies obtain consent (an act to protect the privacy of online customer information, 2019). based on our findings and their relation to deep discussions among scholars regarding this issue, we believe that consent, whether opt in or opt out, should no longer be allowed to trigger data collection. that means companies shouldn’t be able to use first-party or third-party data collected pursuant to a consent button to create definitions or personas of people that they offer up to customers. our data indicate that large proportions of americans don’t distinguish between first party and other data trackers; they don’t want any data taken from them as they try to eke benefits from the internet. our findings also call into question the value of many of the “rights-based” privacy laws proposed and enacted by several u.s. states over the past several years. these laws, which attempt to regulate data extraction by providing consumers with rights to access the information companies have about them, rights to request deletion of that data, rights to move the data to other companies, and rights to correct inadequate data, still require individuals to understand and process information in privacy policies and terms of service at scale (waldman, 2022a). they require knowledge and a belief that companies will genuinely listen to their requests—that is, the opposite of the confusion and resignation we have found across the u.s. population. we recognize that some shoppers derive benefits from ad targeting in the form of sales, coupons, and information. if policymakers would mailto:topacademicjournals@gmail.com american journal of art and communication vol.7 , issue3 mayjune 2022; 1252 columbia rd nw, washington dc, united states https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac; mail: topacademicjournals@gmail.com 21 | american journal of art and communication | https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac like to retain an advertising-based business model based on consumer interests, we suggest that they restrict it to contextual advertising. policymakers could permit a system where companies can target people based only on the context in which advertisers find customers in the moment—on a website for cars, an app about travel, a supermarket aisle with diapers, or a video closely associated with a set of interests—without allowing the marketers to share or keep any history of consumer connections to those contexts. we realize we are calling for regulations that include a paradigm shift in information-economy law and corporate practice. to encourage lawmakers to implement these major changes undoubtedly requires a politically engaged public that is angry about the contemporary situation—just the opposite of the resigned public our study has found. figuring out how to best do that presents a new challenge for researchers. one way to move citizens from resignation to anger and action regarding commercial surveillance may involve pointing out how the discriminatory tracking and targeting that takes place in marketing realms has begun to migrate to other sectors of society—for example, political campaigning, policing, incarceration, and migrant interrogation (see crain & nadler, 2019; turow, 2021, pp. 234–243)—where harm from digital discrimination is easier to imagine and angry indignation perhaps easier to ignite. further, tying these developments to the rise of biometric profiling in and outside of marketing—emphasizing the profound implications of allowing firms to interrogate typically unchangeable aspects of the body—may raise worries about future generations and provide even more catalysts to turn public resignation into anger and, ultimately, action. references an act to protect the privacy of online customer information, maine rev. stat. ann. §9301(3). 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(2022a). privacy rights trap. northwestern university law review online, 117, 88–106. retrieved from https://northwesternlawreview.org/articles/privacys-rights-trap/ waldman, a. e. (2022b). the new privacy law. uc davis law review online, 55, 19–41. retrieved from https://lawreview.law.ucdavis.edu/online/55/waldman.html mailto:topacademicjournals@gmail.com 051212-fa109-frontiers in art research.docx american journal of art and communication vol.8, issue 2; march-april 2023; 1252 columbia rd nw, washington dc, united states https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac; mail: topacademicjournals@gmail.com 8 | american journal of art and communication | https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac two-dimensional dynamic technology for reshaping the historical evolution of the summer resort maria teresa c. dela cruz 2univerity of perpetual help system dalta, manila, philippines abstract: the summer resort is a royal garden of the qing dynasty located in chengde city, hebei province, china. it has far-reaching influence in history, art, and politics. this paper proposes to reshape the historical evolution of the summer resort from kangxi to jiaqing through two-dimensional dynamic display technology. this technology can clearly show the spatial layout and architectural details of the summer resort, intuitively present the changing process of the summer resort in different historical stages, and present complex historical information to the public in an intuitive and easy-to-understand form. keywords: summer resort, qing dynasty, two-dimensional dynamic display technology, historical evolution, architectural details 1. introduction the summer resort, located in chengde city, hebei province, china, is one of the outstanding representatives of the royal gardens of the qing dynasty. it has far-reaching influence in history, art, and politics. it was first built in 1702 during the kangxi period. it witnessed the historical process of the qing dynasty from prosperity to decline. it is a treasure of ancient chinese garden art and an important part of the world's cultural heritage[1]. the importance of the summer resort lies not only in its artistic and historical value but also in the fact that it is an important place for the qing dynasty to govern the empire. every summer, the emperor of the qing dynasty would deal with the affairs of the government here, meet the subjects and foreign envoys, and even hold grand sacrificial activities. therefore, exploring the historical evolution of the summer resort is actually an important way to understand the operation of the qing imperial power and chinese traditional culture[2]. however, how to show the historical evolution of this huge and complex royal garden concretely and vividly has always been a challenge. therefore, the theme of this paper is to reshape the historical evolution of the summer resort from kangxi to jiaqing through two-dimensional dynamic display technology. there are three reasons for choosing two-dimensional dynamic display technology to reshape the historical evolution of the summer resort. first of all, it can clearly show the spatial layout and architectural details of the summer resort. secondly, through dynamic display, we can intuitively present the changing process of the summer resort in different historical stages. finally, this technology can present complex historical information to the public in an intuitive and easy-to-understand form, improving their understanding and interest in history. this article will be divided into four parts. first of all, we will review the construction and development process of the summer resort in the three periods of kangxi, qianlong, and jiaqing. then, we will introduce how to use two-dimensional dynamic display technology to display this historical information. next, we will explore the role of this technology in reshaping history and its possible limitations. finally, we will put forward conclusions and prospects for future research. mailto:topacademicjournals@gmail.com american journal of art and communication vol.8, issue 2; march-april 2023; 1252 columbia rd nw, washington dc, united states https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac; mail: topacademicjournals@gmail.com 9 | american journal of art and communication | https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac 2. construction, transformation, and pepair of summer resort from kangxi to jiaqing 2.1 the design and construction of the summer resort in the kangxi period the design and construction of the summer resort began in the 41st year of kangxi ( 1702 ) of the qing dynasty. emperor kangxi was deeply fond of beautiful natural scenery and peaceful climatic conditions during his cruise, so he chose to build a palace on the jehol river ( now chengde city, hebei province ), which was not only a summer resort but also a place to deal with government affairs [3]. the summer resort during the kangxi period was the initial stage of construction. emperor kangxi visited chengde a total of 55 times, including 28 times in the summer resort. emperor kangxi had an in-depth participation in the design and construction of the villa. he attached importance to natural aesthetics and paid attention to the harmonious coexistence of architecture and the natural environment. he emphasizes the use and shaping of natural landscapes so that the design of the villa retains the original natural landscape. the architectural style adopts the traditional chinese wooden structure, combines the elements of rocks, pools, and corridors, and draws on the design style of jiangnan gardens. lakes, streams, and hills are naturally integrated into the building [4]. during the kangxi period, the south side of the palace was the palace area, and the north of the palace area was dug up to form three islands, ruyizhou, huanbi, and yuesejiangsheng island, which symbolized the immortal island of xianshan. in the forty-seventh year of kangxi (1708), the rehe palace began to take shape, and the main landscapes were completed. later, emperor kangxi successively expanded and built the villa. the construction projects mainly included palaces, courtyards, and gardens. among them, the east lake (jinghu lake), qingshushan pavilion, and shuixin pavilion were completed during the kangxi period. emperor kangxi also selected 36 scenic spots that he liked and titled them with four words. each place wrote poems and ordered painters to paint, which was called the 'kangxi 36 scenes ' of the mountain resort. the design and construction of the summer resort during the kangxi period emphasized the harmonious coexistence of royal authority and nature and created a new style of northern royal gardens. with its unique artistic charm and profound cultural connotation, this style has influenced the royal garden design of later generations and has also become an important chapter of ancient chinese garden art. 2.2 the transformation and expansion of the summer resort in the qianlong period the qianlong period was the prosperous period of the summer resort. emperor qianlong reigned for 60 years and then became the emperor for 3 years. among them, a total of 51 years were spent in the summer resort, which was the longest emperor in chengde. this period has experienced large-scale transformation and expansion and is also regarded as the golden age of the construction of the summer resort. emperor qianlong inherited emperor kangxi's love for the summer resort, and carried out large-scale expansion and transformation on the basis of the original, further improving the design and layout of the summer resort. on the basis of the lake landscape built by emperor kangxi, emperor qianlong added many new attractions and buildings. since the 6th year of emperor qianlong ( 1741 ), emperor qianlong has built and demolished dozens of buildings, such as ruyizhou, songhezhai, qushuihexiang, qianchixue, yongyou temple, shelita, qingyinge, lizhengmen, zhantanlin, chuangdezhai, etc., until the 47th year of emperor qianlong ( 1782 ). emperor qianlong's hobby of building a garden in the summer resort ended. during the reign of emperor qianlong, emperor qianlong also imitated his grandfather emperor kangxi to choosing 36 landscapes in the summer resort, which were named after the three-character title, namely 'thirty-six views of qianlong summer resort '. however, most of the landscapes were built and named during the reign of emperor kangxi, thus forming the famous ' seventy-two views of kangxi and qianlong summer resort '. emperor qianlong paid special attention to the artistic decoration of the summer resort. he ordered a large number of sculptures, murals, and stone mailto:topacademicjournals@gmail.com american journal of art and communication vol.8, issue 2; march-april 2023; 1252 columbia rd nw, washington dc, united states https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac; mail: topacademicjournals@gmail.com 10 | american journal of art and communication | https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac carvings to be added to the garden, making the artistic atmosphere of the summer resort more intense. among them, stone carvings are the most famous, such as qianlong youyingji ' and other sixteen inscriptions and sixteen pavilions, which are the representatives of stone carving art in the qing dynasty [5]. in addition, emperor qianlong also built the outer eight temples in the northern part of the mountain resort to highlight the multi-ethnic rule of the qing dynasty. the architectural styles of these temples are different, which integrates the architectural art of tibetan, mongolian, han, and other ethnic groups, and further enriches the cultural connotation of the summer resort. the expansion and transformation of the summer resort during the qianlong period not only enhanced its artistic and historical value but also further strengthened its status as a symbol of royal power. 2.3 renovation and maintenance of summer resort in jiaqing period the jiaqing period was the post-construction period of the summer resort. during the 25 years of emperor jiaqing's reign, he spent a total of 19 times in summer resorts, second only to emperor kangxi. emperor jiaqing's love for the summer resort was no less than that of his father emperor qianlong, but due to the pressure of treasury finance, he paid more attention to practicality and economy in the transformation and expansion. therefore, the transformation and expansion of the summer resort during the jiaqing period is mainly the restoration and protection of the buildings during the qianlong period, as well as some small-scale transformations and additions. during the jiaqing period, the main buildings of the mountain resort, such as suyun eaves and chengquan raoshi, were partially demolished and modified. at the same time, a series of repairs were carried out on buildings such as xianyuan zhaoling and yanyu buildings. in addition, emperor jiaqing also added some new attractions to the summer resort, such as the yiran pavilion, fanghe pavilion, liyun pavilion, etc., which further enriched the landscape of the summer resort. although the scale of renovation and expansion in the jiaqing period was small, its protection and restoration of the summer resort have enabled the summer resort to be preserved to this day, and it still retains the original appearance of the royal gardens of the qing dynasty, which is of great value for us to understand the history of the qing dynasty and garden art [6]. 3. two-dimensional dynamic display of the form and steps of the historical evolution of the summer resort 3.1 two-dimensional dynamic display of the form of the historical evolution of the summer resort through the dynamic map, we can examine the spatial layout and terrain changes of the summer resort from a new perspective through the scaling, translation, and rotation of the map. at the same time, through the way of dynamic display, the change and development of the summer resort from the kangxi period to the jiaqing period can be displayed on the timeline. in addition to spatial changes, two-dimensional dynamic display technology can also show the changes in the architectural style and decorative art of the summer resort. we can create a series of dynamic illustrations to show the architectural styles and decorative features of the kangxi, qianlong, and jiaqing periods. through these dynamic illustrations, the audience can see how the artistic style of the summer resort develops and changes with the passage of time [7]. in addition, two-dimensional dynamic display technology can also be used to show the changes in historical figures and events. by creating a dynamic timeline to show the participation and influence of the three emperors of kangxi, qianlong, and jiaqing on the summer resort, the audience can better understand their personal influence and historical contribution to the summer resort. through the creation of dynamic tutorials and interactive games and activities, we can also use two-dimensional dynamic display technology to better disseminate the history and culture of the summer resort in the field of mailto:topacademicjournals@gmail.com american journal of art and communication vol.8, issue 2; march-april 2023; 1252 columbia rd nw, washington dc, united states https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac; mail: topacademicjournals@gmail.com 11 | american journal of art and communication | https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac education and science. through these activities, the audience can vividly learn and experience the history of the mountain resort, and contribute to the protection and inheritance of the cultural heritage of the mountain resort [8]. in general, the two-dimensional dynamic display technology provides a new perspective and method, so that we can more vividly and intuitively understand and display the historical evolution of the summer resort. 3.2 the steps to realize the two-dimensional dynamic display 1) collect historical data. we need to collect historical data about the summer resort, including architectural design drawings, historical documents, photos, videos and so on. these materials will provide the basis for the display. 2) set a timeline. the history of mountain resort is divided into different periods, and a timeline is established to mark the important events and changes in each period. 3) design the two-dimensional plan. according to the architectural layout of different periods, the twodimensional plane of the summer resort in different periods is designed. each building, garden, lake, and other elements are marked on the plan. 4) add an animation effect. using the animation effect, the elements in the plan are gradually displayed, showing the architectural layout and landscape changes in each period. it can be expressed by animation effects such as the gradual construction of buildings and the gradual maturity of garden vegetation. 5) combined with cultural relics display. by using the method of cultural relics display, historical photos, literature and video materials are integrated into it. by inserting these materials, we can more vividly show the changes and important events of the summer resort in different historical periods. 6) optimize the user experience. by optimizing the user experience to ensure that the display interface is simple and intuitive, while ensuring that navigation, zoom in, zoom out and other functions are easy to use. a variety of language versions are available for more users to learn about the history of the resort [7]. 7) testing and improvement. after the initial production is completed, a display test is carried out and improv ements are made based on feedback. ensure the fluency and accuracy of the display. through the above steps, we can use the two-dimensional dynamic display technology to show the historical evolution of the summer resort, provide the audience with an intuitive and vivid experience, and help them better understand and appreciate the historical changes of the summer resort [9]. 4. the role of two-dimensional dynamic display in reshaping history 4.1 the two-dimensional dynamic display shows the advantages of historical evolution the two-dimensional dynamic display technology has strong visualization and dynamic characteristics, which make it a powerful tool for understanding and displaying historical evolution. in terms of the historical evolution of the summer resort, this technology can bring the following advantages: 1) two-dimensional dynamic display system can dynamically display historical changes. the twodimensional dynamic display technology can clearly show the architectural changes and development of the three main historical stages of the summer resort from kangxi, qianlong to jiaqing based on the time axis. it can not only show the increase and modification of buildings and landscapes but also show the main activities of the three emperors of kangxi, qianlong, and jiaqing and their influence on the summer resort [10]. 2) two-dimensional dynamic display system can display spatial layout in all directions. the two-dimensional dynamic display technology can present the spatial layout of the summer resort, including the relative position of the building and the landscape design. the audience can observe and understand the spatial organization and design principles of the summer resort from different angles and scales by zooming and rotating the map. mailto:topacademicjournals@gmail.com american journal of art and communication vol.8, issue 2; march-april 2023; 1252 columbia rd nw, washington dc, united states https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac; mail: topacademicjournals@gmail.com 12 | american journal of art and communication | https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac 3) two-dimensional dynamic display system can visually reflect the architectural style and decorative arts. two-dimensional dynamic display technology can be used to show the changes in architectural style and decorative art. dynamic illustrations can clearly show the architectural styles and decorative features of the kangxi, qianlong, and jiaqing periods, and how they integrate with the surrounding environment. 4) two-dimensional dynamic display system can promote history education and science popularization. the interactivity of two-dimensional dynamic display technology makes it an effective tool for education and science popularization. for example, interactive games and activities can be created to allow the audience to learn the history and culture of the summer resort in the game and improve their participation and learning effects [11]. in general, the two-dimensional dynamic display technology has become a powerful tool to help us better understand and show the historical evolution of the summer resort with its dynamic, intuitive, and interactive. 4.2 limitations and possible improvements of two-dimensional dynamic display two-dimensional dynamic display technology provides a novel way to show and understand history, but there are also some limitations: 1) there is a limit to how much information you can express. although a two-dimensional dynamic display can clearly show the changes in space and time, it may be limited in terms of expression depth and fineness. for example, the background, influence, and complex relationships with other events of a historical event may be difficult to fully present in a two-dimensional dynamic display [11]. the improvement method is to provide more abundant and in-depth information by linking more detailed multimedia resources such as text, pictures, or videos. in addition, interactive elements can be introduced so that users can choose the part of interest for in-depth understanding. 2) user experience is vulnerable to challenges. if the design of the dynamic display is not reasonable enough, it may make users feel confused or difficult to understand. too complex an interaction design may also make it difficult for users to operate. you can focus on designing the user experience to ensure that the interface is clear and interactive. through user testing, the design can be continuously optimized and adjusted to meet the needs of different users. 3) high technical and resource requirements. creating and maintaining a two-dimensional dynamic display requires certain technical capabilities and resources, which may pose challenges to production and users. improvement method: by developing easier and more powerful software tools, the difficulty of creating a twodimensional dynamic display can be reduced. in addition, online tutorials and community support can be provided to help users solve technical problems [12]. in general, although a two-dimensional dynamic display has limitations in displaying historical information, through appropriate improvement methods, we can still maximize its advantages and effectively use this tool to display and understand history. 5. conclusion two-dimensional dynamic display technology provides a new way to show the historical evolution of the summer resort. through the dynamic and intuitive form, it can present the changes in the spatial layout, architectural style, and historical events of the summer resort. although this technology has some limitations, such as the limitation of information expression, the challenge of user experience, and the requirements of technical resources, we can maximize its advantages through improvement and optimization. for example, linking more detailed multimedia resources, optimizing user experience design, and developing easy-to-use software tools can improve the effectiveness of two-dimensional dynamic display technology, so as to better serve historical research and education. mailto:topacademicjournals@gmail.com american journal of art and communication vol.8, issue 2; march-april 2023; 1252 columbia rd nw, washington dc, united states https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac; mail: topacademicjournals@gmail.com 13 | american journal of art and communication | https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac in short, the two-dimensional dynamic display technology provides us with new possibilities, enriches the historical perspective, and provides an effective tool for history education and science popularization. we look forward to seeing more applications of technology and innovative methods in the future to better understand and protect our cultural heritage. acknowledgements this work is supported by the 2023 provincial college students' innovation and entrepreneurship training project " innovative application of digital popular science display technology in the historical evolution of the summer resort in the qing dynasty" . references zhang jijiao, zhang shuang. structural transformation of ethnic cultural heritage from the perspective of neoclassical structure-function theory-taking chengde mountain resort and its surrounding temples as an example [j]. folklore research, 2023, (04): 124-134 + 160. wang taotao. on the historical and cultural backtracking and development prospects of chengde mountain resort [j]. tourism overview (second half of the month), 2016, (24): 279. sun jixin, sun weijun. historical and cultural treasure house. monument of national unity chengde mountain resort and its surrounding temples [j]. chinese nation, 2021, (09): 58-63. zhao xiang. hebei chengde summer resort [j]. jilin people's congress, 2019, (08): 51. chang yuwei. analysis and elaboration of architectural features of chengde mountain resort [j]. china national expo, 2018, (08): 204-205. yue aihua, zhao dongyang. a review of studies on summer resort and outer eight temples in the past 50 years [j]. journal of hebei normal university for nationalities, 2014, 34 (03): 123-128. [7] zhang weiwei. the application of art elements in two-dimensional animation design [j]. grand view of art, 2023, (10): 85-87. yang hao. the integration of chinese traditional elements into digital media art design [j]. the world of digital communications, 2023, (01): 191-193. chen guanhui. analyze the creative ideas of two-dimensional animation in the digital age [j]. daguan (forum), 2023, (02): 102-104. guo hongli, gao zengrong. architectural features and culture of chengde summer resort [j]. industrial design, 2023, (02): 128-130. liu jing. research on the application of digital media art in display design [j]. art appreciation, 2021, (35): 145147. liu qian. development trend of digital media art in the era of big data review of ' introduction to digital media art ' [j]. journal of tropical crops, 2021, 42 (12): 3737. mailto:topacademicjournals@gmail.com american journal of arts and communication vol.10, issue 4; july-august 2025; issn: 2994-0540 impact factor: 7.94 1252 columbia rd nw, washington dc, united states https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac; mail: topacademicjournals@gmail.com 1 | a m e r i c a n j o u r n a l o f a r t s a n d c o m m u n i c a t i o n | https:// topjournals.org/index.php/ajac the incarnate being phenomenon among the igala of kogi state: the socio-cultural context of women exemption from participation sophia ojochogwu adofu ph,d department of history and international studies, faculty of arts, federal university of lafia email: sophiaadofu@yahoo.com doi: https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.15980511 abstract: this study explored the phenomenon of the incarnate being among the igala of kogi state, nigeria, focusing on the cultural and religious dynamics that lead to the exclusion of women from participating in such spiritual roles. through a multidisciplinary approach that includes ethnographic fieldwork, cultural analysis, and feminist theory, the paper critically examines the intersections of tradition, gender, and modernity. the study also investigated the shifts in perception and practice in contemporary igala society, highlighting the need for more inclusive reinterpretations of cultural heritage. keywords: incarnate being, igala, gender exclusion, traditional religion, feminism, ritual purity, cultural transformation introduction the igala ethnic group, located in the eastern region of kogi state, nigeria, has a vibrant culture centered on spiritualism, oral tradition, and ancestral worship. among their spiritual traditions is the belief in the incarnate being—referred to in local dialect as "egwu" or "ibegwu” which is regarded as a physical manifestation of ancestral or spiritual power. these beings are perceived as divine emissaries who maintain moral order, enforce social norms, and serve as links between the spiritual and physical realms1. the rituals surrounding the incarnate being are deeply embedded in igala cosmology, with significant roles in community festivals, funerals of elders, and spiritual adjudication. however, these rituals are characteristically male dominated, with women systematically excluded from participation and initiation. this exclusion is often justified through traditional beliefs concerning ritual purity, gendered spiritual roles, and ancestral injunctions2. as modernity continues to influence traditional societies, the exclusionary nature of such practices has become a subject of critique. education, urbanization, and religious diversity have increasingly encouraged women to 1 i. okpewho. african oral literature: backgrounds, character, and continuity. indiana university press, 1992. 2 k. yusuf, women and traditional religion in nigeria: a historical analysis. lagos: unity publishers, 2015. mailto:topacademicjournals@gmail.com mailto:sophiaadofu@yahoo.com american journal of arts and communication vol.10, issue 4; july-august 2025; issn: 2994-0540 impact factor: 7.94 1252 columbia rd nw, washington dc, united states https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac; mail: topacademicjournals@gmail.com 2 | a m e r i c a n j o u r n a l o f a r t s a n d c o m m u n i c a t i o n | https:// topjournals.org/index.php/ajac question these long-held customs3. this paper investigates the socio-cultural reasoning behind the exclusion, how it reflects patriarchal structures, and what changes are emerging in contemporary igala society. statement of the problem despite the spiritual significance and communal reverence afforded to the incarnate being phenomenon, its exclusionary framework raises critical concerns about gender equity and cultural representation. the problem lies in the contradiction between a culture that venerates ancestors and spiritual manifestations yet perpetuates gender discrimination under the pretext of tradition. why are women systematically barred from a practice that claims to represent collective ancestral wisdom and moral order? to what extent is this exclusion rooted in cultural logic versus patriarchal dominance? this paper aims to interrogate these questions using cultural, anthropological, and feminist lenses. conceptual clarification the term incarnate being typically refers to a spiritual or divine entity that assumes bodily or human form. the latin root "incarnatio" means “becoming flesh,” indicating a transition from an immaterial or divine mode of being to a material, embodied existence. the incarnation is "the self-communication of the absolute mystery of god in the form of finite existence, climaxing in jesus christ" (foundations of christian faith)4. this highlights that the incarnate being is not merely a divine appearance but a full assumption of human nature. from a philosophical standpoint, the incarnation raises questions about identity, dualism, and embodiment. søren kierkegaard viewed the incarnation as a paradox (the absolute paradox) in which the eternal enters time, and the infinite becomes finite5. for kierkegaard, this paradox demands a leap of faith, as reason alone cannot reconcile the contradiction. maurice merleau-ponty, a phenomenologist, though not writing about religious incarnation, emphasized embodiment as the basis of being-in-the-world6. his work is often used to explore how divine embodiments might not be alien to human nature, but rather an intensification of what it means to be human. in various world religions, the idea of divine beings becoming human is also present. hinduism speaks of avatars, especially vishnu, who incarnate in various forms to restore cosmic order. a typical example is krishna rama. according to anantanand rambachan, the avatar concept signifies divine intervention in human history without compromising transcendence7. african traditional religions often hold beliefs in spiritual beings manifesting in human or material forms. john s. mbiti notes that “there is no sharp dichotomy between the spiritual and physical; spirits may take form and 3 s. o. adofu. economic history of igala women in kogi state, 1900-2020. wukari international studies journal 8(1), 22-32 4 k. rahner, foundations of christian faith. 1966. 5 s. kierkegaard, philosophical fragments. 1844. 6 m. maurice, phenomenology of perception. 1945. 7 a. rambachan, the limits of scripture: vivekananda’s reinterpretation of the vedas. 1994. mailto:topacademicjournals@gmail.com american journal of arts and communication vol.10, issue 4; july-august 2025; issn: 2994-0540 impact factor: 7.94 1252 columbia rd nw, washington dc, united states https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac; mail: topacademicjournals@gmail.com 3 | a m e r i c a n j o u r n a l o f a r t s a n d c o m m u n i c a t i o n | https:// topjournals.org/index.php/ajac dwell among humans”8. these cross-cultural examples show that the incarnate being functions as a mythopoetic symbol of divine nearness and moral action. methodology this study adopted a qualitative ethnographic approach. secondary data sources including existing literature, oral history recordings, and historical texts was consulted. data was analyzed using thematic analysis to identify recurring patterns and cultural justifications. feminist anthropological perspectives were applied to assess the power dynamics and gender constructions embedded in the practices. theoretical framework this study is guided by the feminist anthropology framework and the symbolic interaction theory. the feminist anthropology framework critiques the male-centered bias in anthropological interpretations and emphasizes the need to include women's voices and experiences in the understanding of cultural practices. this framework was advanced by moore in 2006. symbolic interactionism is a theory put forward by blumer in 1969. this theory explores how people create and interpret symbols in society. the incarnate being is a potent cultural symbol, and its interaction with social actors reveals underlying beliefs and power dynamics. the geographical location of igala land igala land occupies the eastern portion of kogi state, bordered by the river niger and benue. the region is characterized by its hilly terrain, riverine settlements, and subsistence agriculture. historically, idah served as the political and spiritual capital of the igala kingdom. the area is linguistically homogenous, with the igala language serving as the primary means of communication and cultural expression. the incarnate being phenomenon among the igala the igala are an ethnic group primarily located in the central region of nigeria, whose complex religious and social structures have been the subject of scholarly inquiry for decades. their indigenous religion, like many african traditional religious systems, is characterized by a dynamic interplay between the transcendent and the immanent. within this framework, the notion of an incarnate being, that is, a divine or spiritual presence that takes on a tangible, embodied form, plays a significant role. researchers have noted that in the igala world view, the divine is not distant but becomes manifest in rituals, ancestral figures, and even in the medium of ritual specialists. in many african contexts, the boundary between the spiritual and the material is permeable. as john s. mbiti famously observed, african religions “live in the immediate presence of the invisible”9. the divine is immanent in everyday life, appearing through nature, ritual practices, and the actions of human agents. this forms a useful conceptual background for understanding the igala model, where divine presence can be understood as having an “incarnational” dimension, that is, an active, embodied participation in the human realm10. 8 j.s. mbiti, african religions and philosophy. 1969 9 j. s. mbiti. african religions and philosophy. nairobi: heinemann, 1969. 10 j. s. mbiti. african religions and philosophy. nairobi: heinemann, 1969. mailto:topacademicjournals@gmail.com american journal of arts and communication vol.10, issue 4; july-august 2025; issn: 2994-0540 impact factor: 7.94 1252 columbia rd nw, washington dc, united states https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac; mail: topacademicjournals@gmail.com 4 | a m e r i c a n j o u r n a l o f a r t s a n d c o m m u n i c a t i o n | https:// topjournals.org/index.php/ajac central to igala cosmology is the belief in a supreme creator or high god, accompanied by a host of lesser deities and ancestral spirits. the high god, while transcendent, is seen as the source of a living and interactive spiritual realm. this divine realm is populated by forces and beings that are not permanently fixed in an abstract sphere but, rather, can interact with humans through various forms. incarnational manifestations are part of this broader conceptualization, where the divine energy or presence temporarily assumes a concrete form for the sake of communication or intervention in human affairs. among the most illustrative examples of incarnate being in igala practice are the roles of ritual specialists11. these individuals, including priests and diviners, are often seen as channels through which ancestral and divine presences are expressed. in many ceremonies, the ritual specialist may undergo symbolic transformations (through costume, dance, and other performative acts) that are interpreted as a temporary “incarnation” of an ancestral spirit or deity. such practices are not seen as mere symbolism but as actual participatory moments where the boundaries between the human and the divine blur12. another significant domain in igala religion is the masquerade as incarnate being tradition. masquerades, which appear during festivals and special events, are understood to be physical manifestations of spiritual forces. the masks and regalia are not simply artistic adornments but are imbued with spiritual power, symbolizing the entry of ancestral beings or deities into the community. these incarnate figures serve both as intermediaries who transmit divine messages and as moral exemplars whose appearance reaffirms communal values and cosmic order13. scholars such as onwuejeogwu14 have emphasized that in igala society, the personification of the divine through ritual forms underscores the belief that the sacred is not confined to an inaccessible realm. the embodied presence of ancestral and divine forces in rituals serves not only to validate the spiritual efficacy of the rituals themselves but also to reinforce social cohesion and communal memory. this idea aligns with broader anthropological observations across west africa where bodily transformation and ritual embodiment are central to community life and identity. the incarnate being among the igala can also be read in theological terms. some scholars argue that the very act of embodiment in ritual functions as a form of divine intervention, a localized analogue to incarnational theology in other traditions15. here, the igala incarnate being is not a static entity but is dynamically re-created in the interactions between ritual practitioners and their community16. this perspective has been compared to notions 11 t. a. miachi. the incarnate being phenomenon in african culture, 2012. 12 a. e. afigbo, ritual and society in igala culture. lagos: university press of nigeria. 1982. 13 c. okoro, masquerades and mysteries: the incarnate in igala festivals. ibadan: spectrum books, 1995. 14 n. onwuejeogwu, igala ritual and society: an anthropological perspective. enugu: eastern nigerian university press, 1980. 15 a. e. afigbo, ritual and society in igala culture. lagos: university press of nigeria. 1982. 16 j. s. mbiti. african religions and philosophy. nairobi: heinemann, 1969. mailto:topacademicjournals@gmail.com american journal of arts and communication vol.10, issue 4; july-august 2025; issn: 2994-0540 impact factor: 7.94 1252 columbia rd nw, washington dc, united states https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac; mail: topacademicjournals@gmail.com 5 | a m e r i c a n j o u r n a l o f a r t s a n d c o m m u n i c a t i o n | https:// topjournals.org/index.php/ajac of the living presence in other african spiritual systems, where deities manifest not as permanent fixtures but as temporary incarnations that renew the sacred connection between the transcendent and the mundane17. when compared with other african traditional systems, such as the yoruba concept of embodied divinity in the forms of orishas or the edo traditions of ancestral veneration, the igala model presents both similarities and differences. like the yoruba, the igala incorporate the idea that the divine becomes manifest in material forms during ritual performances. however, whereas yoruba orishas often have well-defined mythologies and cultic practices, the igala approach is more closely tied to ancestral forces and community-centered rituals. this comparative perspective enhances our understanding of how incarnational ideas are adapted to local social and cultural realities18. the concept of the incarnate being among the igala is a multifaceted phenomenon that underscores the intimate and dynamic relationship between the sacred and everyday life. through ritual specialists, masquerade traditions, and the veneration of ancestral spirits, the igala demonstrates that the divine is not an abstract, remote force but an active, embodied presence that intervenes in the social and spiritual realms. scholarly works like; mbiti 1969; onwuejeogwu 1980; afigbo 1982; okoro 1995, provide robust frameworks to appreciate how these indigenous practices resonate with broader african theological and anthropological discourses. the igala model thereby contributes to a richer understanding of incarnational theology as a globally relevant concept, rooted in local traditions and community life. socio-cultural context for women exemption the igala people of central nigeria maintain a rich and complex indigenous religious system that includes belief in divine manifestations, ancestor worship, and ritual embodiment. within this cosmological framework, the incarnate being, an ancestral or spiritual presence that takes form during rituals, particularly masquerades and priestly embodiment, is a significant religious phenomenon. however, women are systematically excluded from direct participation in many of these rituals, especially in those involving masquerades and the embodiment of certain spirits or ancestors. this exclusion is not accidental or incidental but deeply rooted in socio-cultural, cosmological, and political structures that define gender roles in igala society19. this discussion examines these underlying factors with scholarly references and detailed contextual analysis. igala religious thought conceptualizes the spiritual world as hierarchically ordered, with the supreme deity (ọjọ) at the top, followed by lesser deities (ẹbọ), ancestral spirits 17 t. a. miachi. the incarnate being phenomenon in african culture, 2012. 18 j. s. mbiti. african religions and philosophy. nairobi: heinemann, 1969. 19 t. a. miachi. the incarnate being phenomenon in african culture, 2012. mailto:topacademicjournals@gmail.com american journal of arts and communication vol.10, issue 4; july-august 2025; issn: 2994-0540 impact factor: 7.94 1252 columbia rd nw, washington dc, united states https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac; mail: topacademicjournals@gmail.com 6 | a m e r i c a n j o u r n a l o f a r t s a n d c o m m u n i c a t i o n | https:// topjournals.org/index.php/ajac (ibegwu), and human mediators such as priests and masquerade performers. access to spiritual authority is stratified along gender lines, with men positioned as public custodians of ritual power20. the rituals involving the incarnate being—particularly masquerades and ancestral invocation—require access to esoteric knowledge, which is traditionally passed down patrilineal through secret male societies, such as the ẹgwu and ibegwu cults. women are excluded from these societies, not merely by custom but by ontological belief that women are “spiritually incompatible” with certain forms of divine presence. the secret societies that control the masquerade traditions in igala land are fiercely patriarchal, and participation is based on initiation and ancestral lineage, which women are denied access to21. masquerade festivals, such as those involving the egwu-ata, are central sites of incarnational manifestation in igala tradition. the masquerade is believed to be an embodiment of ancestral spirits or the ibegwu, sacred ancestral beings that “descend” during festivals. the performer wears elaborate costumes and masks that symbolically transform him into an incarnate being. women are not allowed to wear masquerade attire, perform as incarnate beings, or even in some cases observe certain rituals involving masquerades. this exclusion is based on a combination of spiritual purity codes, symbolic gender oppositions, and social control mechanisms. masquerades are considered the physical manifestation of spirits, and it is taboo for women to touch or even come close to the masquerade attire, lest they incur spiritual consequences22. the mask itself is sacred and seen as an ontological threshold between the human and spirit worlds. in igala belief, women are associated with fertility, biological reproduction, and domesticity, while men are aligned with spiritual warfare, protection, and ritual performance. igala society is patrilineal and patriarchal, meaning descent and inheritance pass through the male line. religious and political authority is concentrated in male elders, who also serve as custodians of shrines and mediators of spiritual practices. women, though respected in the domestic and economic spheres, are socially positioned as ritual outsiders. women in igala culture are structurally confined to the private sphere and are denied roles in sacred institutions that deal with the incarnate or ancestral spirits23. women’s bodies are considered to be in a state of cyclical impurity due to menstruation, childbirth, and other natural biological processes. these bodily functions are seen as spiritually disruptive in a ritual context, particularly when dealing with powerful ancestral or divine forces. the notion that women’s bodily cycles could destabilize spiritual order reinforces their exclusion from direct ritual engagement24. thus, women are not trusted to mediate the sacred, not because they are incapable, but because their bodies and roles are socially interpreted as ritually unstable. 20 a. e. afigbo, ritual and society in igala culture. lagos: university press of nigeria. 1982. 21 n. onwuejeogwu, igala ritual and society: an anthropological perspective. enugu: eastern nigerian university press, 1980. 22 c. okoro, masquerades and mysteries: the incarnate in igala festivals, 1965. 23 a. e. afigbo, ritual and society in igala culture. lagos: university press of nigeria. 1982. 24 j. s. mbiti. african religions and philosophy. nairobi: heinemann, 1969. mailto:topacademicjournals@gmail.com american journal of arts and communication vol.10, issue 4; july-august 2025; issn: 2994-0540 impact factor: 7.94 1252 columbia rd nw, washington dc, united states https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac; mail: topacademicjournals@gmail.com 7 | a m e r i c a n j o u r n a l o f a r t s a n d c o m m u n i c a t i o n | https:// topjournals.org/index.php/ajac interestingly, while women are excluded from directly participating in incarnate rituals, they often play supporting or symbolic roles. in some ceremonies, women prepare food, sing, or offer moral instruction, but always at a remove from the core ritual performance25. in rare cases of symbolic inversion, female figures may appear in ritual texts or oral traditions as embodying spiritual insight or danger, but these are mythic archetypes, not actual participants in incarnational ritual. such figures are often treated with ambivalence, respected, feared, but never granted actual ritual authority. what has changed in these modern days contemporary igala society is experiencing gradual yet significant transformations in the interpretation and enactment of traditional institutions, particularly regarding gender roles and the participation of women in sacred systems such as the incarnate being institution. several interconnected factors contribute to this cultural shift. the increased access of women to formal education is among the most influential drivers of change. as igala women attain higher levels of education, they are more empowered to critically examine, and question gendered cultural norms that have historically excluded them from significant religious and social institutions26. education has broadened women’s intellectual capacity and participation in civic discourse, enabling them to challenge patriarchal ideologies with informed resistance27. the spread of christianity and islam, both of which advocate varying degrees of spiritual equality, has challenged the legitimacy of traditional igala religious structures that endorse male dominance28. these abrahamic religions have, to varying extents, provided theological frameworks for the reinterpretation of indigenous practices, leading some adherents to question the exclusivity of male religious authority. the global discourse on human rights, especially in the realm of gender equality, has found resonance within nigerian society. the influence of national and international women’s rights movements has emboldened igala women to demand access and inclusion in institutions from which they were historically excluded29. these movements have created platforms for local women to articulate their grievances and push for reforms in cultural and religious institutions. urbanization and internal migration have exposed igala populations to alternative social norms and pluralistic values. as individuals interact with other cultures, particularly in urban centers, they adopt more flexible attitudes toward gender roles. this exposure has led to limited reforms in some communities, where women are now permitted to undertake secondary roles in ritual practices—such as singing, drumming, or preparing ceremonial 25 s. o. adofu. the role of women in igala leadership: a historical perspective. nasara journal of the humanities, 11(1), 2024, 33-41 26 o. o. okpeh jr. “gender and identity in the middle belt of nigeria.” lapai journal of humanities, 5, (2,), 2005, 21–45. 27 c. nwajiuba. “education and gender in nigeria.” african research review, 5(2), 2011, 129–141. 28 j. d. y. peel. religious encounter and the making of the yoruba. indiana university press, 2000. 29 j. ibrahim, et a.l federalism and ethnic politics in nigeria. centre for democracy and development, 2004. mailto:topacademicjournals@gmail.com american journal of arts and communication vol.10, issue 4; july-august 2025; issn: 2994-0540 impact factor: 7.94 1252 columbia rd nw, washington dc, united states https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac; mail: topacademicjournals@gmail.com 8 | a m e r i c a n j o u r n a l o f a r t s a n d c o m m u n i c a t i o n | https:// topjournals.org/index.php/ajac attire—though they remain excluded from core spiritual functions such as participating in the initiation ceremony of the incarnate being30. despite these evolving dynamics, full inclusion of women in the incarnate being institution remains elusive. the spiritual and symbolic functions at the heart of the institution continue to be guarded by male elites who draw on cultural, ancestral, and metaphysical justifications to uphold their authority31. while women have gained peripheral visibility, systemic gender exclusion remains deeply entrenched in the traditional religious fabric of igala society. conclusion the incarnate being phenomenon stands as a profound representation of the spiritual and metaphysical depth embedded within the igala cosmological worldview. it encapsulates not only religious symbolism and ancestral veneration but also the sociocultural mechanisms through which communal identity, authority, and continuity are constructed and sustained. as a central institution within the traditional religious order, it reinforces communal cohesion and reflects the sacred dynamics between the visible and invisible realms of existence. however, the exclusionary framework that systematically denies women full participation in this institution exposes an enduring gender asymmetry. this exclusion is rooted in patriarchal interpretations of tradition that have historically privileged male authority over spiritual knowledge and ritual power. in the context of contemporary discourses on gender equity, human rights, and inclusive citizenship, such structural marginalization stands at odds with the evolving values of equality, social justice, and participatory cultural practice. while the preservation of cultural heritage remains essential to safeguarding indigenous knowledge systems and affirming communal identity, such preservation must not become a rigid reinforcement of oppressive structures. rather, it should be subject to continuous critical reflection, allowing for adaptive reinterpretation that aligns with the ethical imperatives of the present. a dynamic and living tradition is one that evolves in response to the aspirations and realities of its people, without losing its core essence. therefore, the incarnate being institution must begin to confront its gendered limitations and explore pathways toward a more inclusive and reflective future. bibliography adepoju, aderanti. migration in sub-saharan africa. international organization for migration, 2007. adofu s. o. economic history of igala women in kogi state, 1900-2020. wukari international studies journal 8(1), 2024, 22-32. 30 c. i. ejizu. ofo: igbo ritual symbol. fourth dimension publishers, 1986. 31 u. egodi. gender relations in nigeria: implications for development. african journal of gender studies, 3(1), 2008, 12–27. mailto:topacademicjournals@gmail.com american journal of arts and communication vol.10, issue 4; 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(original work published 1844) merleau-ponty, maurice. phenomenology of perception. translated by colin smith, routledge, 2002. (original work published 1945) mbiti, john s. african religions and philosophy. heinemann, 1969. moore, henrietta l. anthropology and feminism: human body and culture. polity press, 2006. miachi, t. a. the incarnate being phenomenon in african culture, anthropological perspectives on the igala of north central nigeria, kraft books, 2012. mailto:topacademicjournals@gmail.com american journal of arts and communication vol.10, issue 4; july-august 2025; issn: 2994-0540 impact factor: 7.94 1252 columbia rd nw, washington dc, united states https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac; mail: topacademicjournals@gmail.com 10 | a m e r i c a n j o u r n a l o f a r t s a n d c o m m u n i c a t i o n | https:// topjournals.org/index.php/ajac nwajiuba, christian. “education and gender in nigeria.” african research review, vol. 5, no. 2, 2011, pp. 129– 141. obi, cyril. the changing role of the church in nigeria’s democratization. heinrich böll foundation, 2001. okpeh, ochayi okpeh jr. “gender and identity in the middle belt of nigeria.” lapai journal of humanities, vol. 5, no. 2, 2005, pp. 21–45. onwuejeogwu, m. angulu. an igbo civilization: nri kingdom & hegemony. ethnographica, 1981. ogunba, oyin. “traditional african ritual and modern society.” african studies review, vol. 15, no. 3, 1972, pp. 431–450. onwuejeogwu, m. a. igala ritual and society: an anthropological perspective. eastern nigerian university press, 1980. okoro, c. masquerades and mysteries: the incarnate in igala festivals. spectrum books, 1995. okpewho, isidore. african oral literature: backgrounds, character, and continuity. indiana university press, 1992. tillich, paul. systematic theology. vol. 2, university of chicago press, 1957. ugwueye, l. e. “gender and culture in african traditional religion.” journal of religion and human relations, vol. 1, no. 3, 2011, pp. 34–45. peel, j. d. y. religious encounter and the making of the yoruba. indiana university press, 2000. rahner, karl. foundations of christian faith: an introduction to the idea of christianity. translated by william v. dych, crossroad, 1978. (original work published 1966) rambachan, anantanand. the limits of scripture: vivekananda’s reinterpretation of the vedas. university of hawaii press, 1994. yusuf, k. “women and traditional religion in nigeria: a historical analysis.” nigerian journal of social studies, vol. 19, no. 2, 2015, pp. 55–71. mailto:topacademicjournals@gmail.com 051210-fa2115-frontiers in art research.docx american journal of art and communication vol.8, issue 1; january-febuary 2023; 1252 columbia rd nw, washington dc, united states https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac; mail: topacademicjournals@gmail.com 6 | american journal of art and communication | https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac a practical guide to teaching cultural and creative product development in museums using design thinking li, mingyue and zhang, yifan 1school of fine arts and design, chengdu university, chengdu, china abstract: museum cultural and creative products (mccps) are emerging as a new force in the cultural industry. they are developed by using the cultural resources of museums and giving full play to design creativity. mccps have a variety of basic attributes, including culturality, creativity, practicality, and commerciality. they also serve a variety of basic functions, such as education, communication, and economic development. by grasping the basic attributes and clarifying the basic functions of mccps, we can design excellent products that meet the needs of the public and promote the development of the cultural industry. keywords: museum cultural and creative products, basic attributes, basic functions, design, development 1. introduction with the development and reform of modern society, the functions of museums have also changed. in addition to providing public cultural services such as collection, research, exhibition and education, museums have also added the task of meeting the spiritual and cultural needs of the public. the cultural and creative products emerged in this context and have gradually become one of the focuses of the development of cultural industry. the core of it is to use the cultural resources of museums, give full play to design creativity based on fully extracting cultural relics information, and achieve the corresponding design purposes from multiple dimensions and levels, to meet the needs of compound functions. therefore, grasping the basic attributes of museum cultural and creative products and clarifying their basic functions are conducive to the final design of excellent museum cultural and creative products through clear and complete design methods and processes. 2. attributes of museum cultural and creative products museum cultural and creative products have the following attributes. analyzing and summarizing them, strengthening the understanding of museum cultural and creative products, is conducive to the smooth progress of subsequent design. 2.1. culture the first attribute of museum cultural and creative products is culture. different from general creative products, the design of museum cultural and creative products is closely related to the cultural resources of the museum, and the creative expression is carried out after fully digging the cultural connotation. only the museum cultural and creative products really containing cultural factors can become an important carrier to make "cultural relics come alive" and deeply integrate into people's lives, and finally realize the creative transformation and innovative development of museum resources. 2.2. difference museums are often located in rich cultural resources, containing the historical traditions and cultural customs of local people, so museums have become the main places and windows to understand the history and culture of various places. museum cultural and creative products as an important carrier to continue this cultural feeling, their design should be based on the museum's special collection resources, and differentiated product research mailto:topacademicjournals@gmail.com american journal of art and communication vol.8, issue 1; january-febuary 2023; 1252 columbia rd nw, washington dc, united states https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac; mail: topacademicjournals@gmail.com 7 | american journal of art and communication | https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac and development should be carried out around the local history and culture. at the same time, in terms of form, function, material, technology and other aspects, we should strive to achieve "what others have not i have, what others have i have better", and avoid homogenization. 2.3. innovation nowadays, the research and development of cultural and creative products of museums has made great progress under the promotion of the national level and the promotion of the market and consumer level, but the overall innovation is still insufficient. the product categories are similar, the form and function are similar, and the design ideas are similar. most of the cultural and creative products of museums are only superficial use of the visual decoration level of the cultural resources collected in the museum. only by using innovative thinking, breaking the inherent single design thinking mode, and making a deep, appropriate, and clever fusion of cultural content and product form from a new angle, can we give the cultural and creative products of museum fresh and lasting vitality. 2.4. aesthetics as an important carrier to interpret and translate the cultural resources of the museum, no matter what strategy is used for design, it should pay attention to the embodiment of chinese traditional aesthetics. first of all, it is necessary to have a deep understanding of the beauty of ancient chinese creation and the creation thought behind it, and then fully combine modern design thinking and means to design from the aspects of product shape, function, material, technology, etc., so that the "old things" collected in the museum will shine with aesthetic new opportunities, convey the meaning of beauty, and nourish the material and spiritual life of contemporary people. 2.5. practicality as an effective medium to "bring the museum home", museum cultural and creative products are mainly lightweight daily necessities, which should be close to the needs of daily life and have basic practicality. on the one hand, they provide a variety of usage functions as "products" to provide convenience for users, and on the other hand, they also make museum cultural relics truly integrate into the "daily life" of ordinary people in the process of high-frequency contact and repeated use. 3. functions of cultural and creative products in museums 3.1. cultural dissemination with the development and transformation of society, the state has increasingly emphasized cultural confidence and attached great importance to the development of cultural industry, which has triggered a design boom of cultural and creative products of museum. as mentioned above, cultural and creative products of museum have the attribute of culture, and they are excellent media to make "cultural relics come alive". cultural and creative products of museum with excellent design can help to understand the essence of culture to a large extent, play a positive role in cultural communication, arouse public attention to chinese culture and find a sense of cultural identity. 3.2. social education "education is the inherent social function of museums, and the arrival of the learning society makes education the soul of museums." [1] museum cultural and creative products, as a bridge connecting museum resources and culture with modern life of the public, are an important way to realize the public education function of museums. after visiting museum exhibitions, buying cultural and creative products is also taking the cultural information of museum resources home. therefore, museum cultural and creative products expand the temporality and spatiality of museum education to a certain extent and are a means to extend the educational function of museums. mailto:topacademicjournals@gmail.com american journal of art and communication vol.8, issue 1; january-febuary 2023; 1252 columbia rd nw, washington dc, united states https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac; mail: topacademicjournals@gmail.com 8 | american journal of art and communication | https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac 3.3. emotional resonance museum cultural and creative products can establish a link between historical relics and audiences across time and space, creating an opportunity for consumers to empathize with the life experiences of historical figures and their social environment, thus causing emotional resonance, just like being in the middle of it. at the same time, museum cultural and creative products are like "a key". on the one hand, they help audiences open the door of dusty history, and even after the museum visit, they can continue to deepen their historical knowledge and cultural cognition brought by the exhibition. on the other hand, as a commemorative object, it can also let audiences recall the good experience of visiting a museum years later. 4. design method of museum cultural and creative products 4.1. fun replica museums provide audiences with close contact and understanding of historical relics through planning exhibitions. at this time, if some highly recognized cultural relics can be turned into museum cultural and creative products, they can "make precious collections that can only be seen but cannot be profaned exist in another way around users",[2] among which replicas are undoubtedly the most direct way. however, the so-called replica does not refer to the mass-produced or poor quality or expensive "straightforward" type, which can only be put on the shelf as decorations, but the replica that should be incorporated into the careful design of the interesting copy. according to cultural relics and cultural information, the design of cultural and creative products of museum can be changed in size and proportion, or the use of new materials and new processes, or even based on the context of the times to give new aesthetics of the times. these creative methods based on the characteristics of cultural relics can bring unique five senses of fun, so as to improve the value of "replicas". it is worth noting that creativity should have a sense of boundary, with historical relics information, aesthetic propositions as benchmarks, and not blindly "excessive entertainment" design. 4.2. use form to convey meaning museum resources and culture are all-inclusive, in addition to the "beauty of objects" visible to the naked eye, they also contain many abstract cultural connotations, ideas, spiritual beliefs and other contents. at the beginning of the design, it is necessary to clarify the relevant cultural context, grasp every detail of the cultural relics and understand the social environment in which the creation is located, popular ideas and universal spiritual beliefs, etc. on this basis, the product design, color expression and other aspects are all based on the above abstract content for visualized translation, striving to grasp the cultural core, to achieve cultural infiltration. 4.3. old style with new style ancient chinese creations were designed and made by ancient people using different materials and corresponding crafts according to various needs of daily life. they have both aesthetic and practical functions, and contain infinite wisdom and simple and exquisite design ideas, [3]which have an irreplaceable inspiration to modern design. however, many museum cultural and creative products are only designed for ancient creations, that is, the so-called "traditional elements" are slightly designed and applied to the visual decoration level of products. this superficial way of interpreting ancient creations does not really understand the deep connotation of ancient chinese creations. [4]therefore, we should first have a deep understanding of the style and development of ancient chinese creations, accurately grasp the logic of ancient creations, actively explore the cultural connotation behind, and then creatively use their design forms, design languages and design methods for modern design, to show the "skill" of ancient creations in museum cultural and creative products at a high level. mailto:topacademicjournals@gmail.com american journal of art and communication vol.8, issue 1; january-febuary 2023; 1252 columbia rd nw, washington dc, united states https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac; mail: topacademicjournals@gmail.com 9 | american journal of art and communication | https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac 5. design process of museum cultural and creative products 5.1. research on museum resources how to properly reflect and apply museum resources to the design of cultural and creative products is based on the knowing, understanding, sorting, and summarizing of museum resources in the early research system. through the collection of museum cultural relics information resources and combined with relevant literature to help understand, while completing the logic of the arrangement, finally summarized and put forward views. this research process can help designers build a "design database" and provide strong support and guarantee for the implementation of subsequent design practices. 5.2. creative planning and refinement 5.2.1. adopt professional advice after the overall sorting out of the cultural resources of the museum, the cultural relics with the most value of the research and development of cultural and creative products of the museum are determined through analysis, and the authoritative interpretation and feedback of cultural and creative professionals are actively referred to improve and supplement the three-dimensional structure of the information of the selected cultural relics, and the cultural value points that the products can eventually carry and output are determined. to ensure that the dissemination of museum resources and culture is established on an accurate and correct basis. 5.2.2. use research data the category definition of museum cultural and creative products should be based on the results of market research and consumer profiling, and relevant research plays an important role in the specific product planning and design. combining online and offline data to help determine the product category that can match the selected cultural object and meet the consumption needs of different groups, in order to truly complete the design of a successful museum cultural and creative product. 5.3. design practice and implementation after completing the research of museum resources, market and consumer research, and making a clear product research and development creative planning, the design practice stage will be entered. this stage can be roughly divided into four parts: design draft drawing, rendering, model and proofing, and finished product production, emphasizing hand drawing, software skills and practical ability. the proofing link is a key step to verify the feasibility of the design, including the overall control of materials, processes, costs, cycles and other factors, which is conducive to the birth of the final product. 6. curriculum design practice after leading students to analyze and sort out the attributes and functions of cultural and creative products in the museum, the above three main design methods were proposed and taught to students, focusing on guiding students to give full play to their creativity. at the same time, the complete design process was emphasized and the importance of repeated demonstration in each link was pointed out. after actual course teaching and design training, students in the class have a more systematic understanding of the design of cultural and creative products in the museum, master certain design methods, and can complete the core tasks of each stage according to the process, and finally achieve good design results. for example, the work "only this green smoke cultural and creative humidifier" is based on the design prototype of the bronze stove of the western han dynasty, which cleverly translates the function and meaning of the original objects into modern design, which is to create an image of "penglai fairy island" and meet the daily needs of modern life (as shown in figure 1). the work "bronze god bird refrigerator sticker" focuses on finding a kind of fun to create. first, the bronze god bird of sanxingdui is copied to a small fridge sticker by a narrowed proportion, and the head decoration is removed and replaced by mailto:topacademicjournals@gmail.com american journal of art and communication vol.8, issue 1; january-febuary 2023; 1252 columbia rd nw, washington dc, united states https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac; mail: topacademicjournals@gmail.com 10 | american journal of art and communication | https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac a bottle mouth that can be inserted into flowers and grass. the user can replace it daily as if the bronze god bird has changed into a different decoration. such interactive behavior virtually brings the consumer closer to the sanxingdui culture (as shown in figure 2). the third work takes the lantern bell as the prototype. after fully understanding the basic characteristics of the object and its historical period and social background, the work takes the good wish of safe travel, and transforms it from an ancient chariot and horse tool into a modern car pendant, which also shines with new vitality. figure 1: jinlian huang: "only this green smoke cultural and creative humidifier", 2023, guided by min li. figure 2: siyu liu: "bronze god bird refrigerator sticker", 2023, guided by min li. mailto:topacademicjournals@gmail.com american journal of art and communication vol.8, issue 1; january-febuary 2023; 1252 columbia rd nw, washington dc, united states https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac; mail: topacademicjournals@gmail.com 11 | american journal of art and communication | https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac figure 3: qiuju deng: "lantern bell", car hanging decoration design, 2023, guided by min li. acknowledgement supported by undergraduate education and teaching reform project of chengdu university, "research on teaching reform in cultural and creative design based on strengthening the acquisition of cultural relics information capability" (project number: cdjgb2022155)；ministry of education industry-university cooperation collaborative education program 2022 second batch project "exploration of art education practice teaching mode in the context of meta-universe"(project number: 220901208273811) references pang yani, cultural and creative product development from the perspective of museum education: a case study of shaanxi history museum, shanxi history museum cluster, 2021, 242-254. ding wei, a new view of cultural and creative design: design power activates cultural values, beijing: beijing institute of technology press, 2018,12. hang jian, simple and exquisite ancient design thought, new art, 2013, 4, 7-11. zhang ming, from "chinese style" to "chinese way" -research on localization product design methods from a global perspective, journal of nanjing university of the arts (fine arts and design), 2016,4,197-201. mailto:topacademicjournals@gmail.com american journal of arts and communication vol. 9, issue 1; january-february 2024; issn: 2994-0540 impact factor: 6.91 1252 columbia rd nw, washington dc, united states https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac; mail: topacademicjournals@gmail.com 1 | a m e r i c a n j o u r n a l o f a r t s a n d c o m m u n i c a t i o n | https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac breaking linguistic chains: chomsky's vision for a stimulus-free verbal symphony 1ananya s. choudhury, 2arjun m. singhania 1,2department of english, v.k.s. university, arrah (bihar) 802301, india. doi: https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.10600344 abstract: this paper explores the intriguing concept of a "stimulus-free language" as envisioned by the eminent american linguist, noam chomsky. chomsky's assertion challenges conventional notions about language, positing that the normal use of language is not only innovative and boundlessly expansive but also emancipated from the constraints of detectable stimuli, be they external or internal. this departure from stimulus control, as proposed by chomsky, bestows language with the unique capacity to function as a tool for thought and selfexpression. this inherent characteristic, according to chomsky, is not exclusive to the exceptionally gifted and talented but is a faculty available to every normal human being. the exploration of this "stimulus-free language" concept delves into the intricate relationship between language, thought, and self-expression. by examining chomsky's perspective, we navigate through the realms of linguistic autonomy, breaking away from traditional paradigms that tether language to external or internal stimuli. the paper discusses the implications of this vision on our understanding of language acquisition, cognitive processes, and the democratization of linguistic prowess among individuals. furthermore, the paper considers the practical implications of chomsky's vision, evaluating how a stimulus-free language might manifest in everyday communication and cognitive endeavors. this investigation leads to a reconsideration of educational approaches, linguistic interventions, and the nurturing of linguistic capabilities in diverse populations. in synthesizing chomsky's ideas with contemporary perspectives on language and cognition, this paper aims to contribute to the ongoing discourse in linguistics and cognitive science. by critically engaging with the concept of a stimulus-free language, the study seeks to unravel the intricacies of language's role in shaping human thought and expression. keywords: stimulus-free language, linguistic autonomy, language and thought, cognitive processes, language acquisition introduction "...the normal use of language is not only innovative and potentially infinite in scope but also free from the control of detectable stimuli, either external or internal. it is because of this freedom from stimulus control that language can serve as an instrument of thought and selfexpression, as it does not only for the exceptionally gifted and mailto:topacademicjournals@gmail.com american journal of arts and communication vol. 9, issue 1; january-february 2024; issn: 2994-0540 impact factor: 6.91 1252 columbia rd nw, washington dc, united states https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac; mail: topacademicjournals@gmail.com 2 | a m e r i c a n j o u r n a l o f a r t s a n d c o m m u n i c a t i o n | https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac talented, but also, in fact, for every normal human (chomsky, 2014:11)." here emerges the vision of a ‘stimulusfree language’ from the being of the celebrated american linguist chomsky. such emergence brings about not only a turning point in the growth of the linguistic world, but also comes to be an evolutionary breakthrough of linguistics. it is for the reason that in the discovery of the stimulus-free language the world of linguistics transcends the plane of corporeality. the stimulus-free language as ‘an instrument of thought and self-expression’ comes to question the validity of the deconstructive vision of language as a network of the differential relationship of linguistic signs, the relationship which is based on the separative principle of existence rejecting the existence of the one universal and further giving rise to the sovereignty of the conflicting state in a literary text, resulting in ‘sous rature’, “under erasure” (gayatri chakravorty, 1976: 14). the vision of the conflicting state in a literary text manifest the separative principle of consciousness in the being of jacques derrida, the propounder of ‘deconstruction’. on an examination, it is found that on account of the operation of the separativity of consciousness he does not visualise the existence of the one universal in his vision of ‘deconstruction’. consequently, the rejection of the one universal which is at the base of deconstruction comes to be the cause of the vision of such a conflicting state. owing to this, derrida’s vision of language is confined within the corporeality of language in which nothing exists beyond language; the root of which lies in the vision of classical physics that matter is the fundamental truth. in the classical physics, matter gives birth to energy. it does not visualise the prior existence of energy. the most celebrated scientist albert einstein discovers such a vision of classical physics to be incorrect. he establishes the truth that matter is the creation of energy since the former is the condensed form of the latter. he also reveals the physical truth that matter can be converted into energy. here, one transcends the plane of matter. the stimulus-free language of chomsky which exists in such transcendence poses a valid challenge to derrida’s rejection of the prior existence of consciousness, transcending language. it is for the reason that chomsky’s vision of the prior existence of thought, or to say, consciousness which, according to him, is at the base of language has got a scientific support from the modern physics, to be more specific, the quantum theory as the quantum theory discovers the creation of matter by consciousness, or to use the noted british scientist arthur stanley eddington’s terminology, ‘mind stuff’ (eddington, 1929: 268) while penetrating into the sub-atomic plane of matter. the vision of the conversion of particle into wave and vice-versa in this sub-atomic world of matter is the result of the two different states of human mind. physicists working on the quantum theory conclude that it is ‘observer created’ (polkinghorne, 2006: 90). the vision of the conflicting state in a literary text manifest the separative principle of consciousness in the being of jacques derrida, the propounded of ‘deconstruction’. on an examination, it is found that on account of the operation of the separability of consciousness he does not visualise the existence of the one universal in his vision of ‘deconstruction’. consequently, the rejection of the one universal which is at the base of deconstruction comes to be the cause of the vision of such a conflicting state. owing to this, derrida’s vision of language is confined within the corporeality of language in which nothing exists beyond language, the root of which lies in the vision of classical physics that matter is the fundamental truth. the thought, or to say, ‘mind-stuff’ (1929: 268), is, thus, at the base. mailto:topacademicjournals@gmail.com american journal of arts and communication vol. 9, issue 1; january-february 2024; issn: 2994-0540 impact factor: 6.91 1252 columbia rd nw, washington dc, united states https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac; mail: topacademicjournals@gmail.com 3 | a m e r i c a n j o u r n a l o f a r t s a n d c o m m u n i c a t i o n | https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac it is now conclusive in the world of physics (eddington, 1929: 276). the quantum theory witnesses that firstly, thought, or to say, consciousness comes to be wave, the ‘probability wave’ as it has been termed by the world of physics, the wave which is not a three-dimensional wave, but a tendency. it is a tendency to be particle. it, then, comes to be particle, the matter, out of which, as the biological sciences say, life evolves. mind, subsequently, evolves out of life in the form of a human being. thus, what is at the base of creation is also found to be existing at the base of the ‘language’ of human being and is operative there. further, on an examination, the consciousness which is at the base of creation is found to be integral in nature. the integrality manifests when it gives birth to the probability wave and the particle, to be specific, electron, photon, having different features. in his yogic consciousness, sri aurobindo, too, visualises consciousness as the fundamental thing in existence coming into the state of ‘unconscious energy’ (1979: 236a), and further, into what we call, electron, atom and so on (236-237). the integral principle of consciousness which is the sovereign principle of consciousness comes to be intelligible when we begin to notice, first, the separate existence of wave and particle with incompatibility to each other before entering the subatomic plane of matter, and, further, their oneness firstly in the probability wave in the sub-atomic plane of matter, and then after, in ‘consciousness’ in the deeper recesses of the sub-atomic plane of matter as noted earlier. the discovery of, what physics terms, ‘probability wave’ (fritjof, 1983: 78), the wave which is not a threedimensional wave, as noted earlier, made as a result of the mathematical structure of max born by which particle converts into wave and vice versa takes place, and further the higher discovery of the ‘mind-stuff’ at the base of wave and particle by eddington and other scientists, as noted earlier, go to reveal all the more the integrality as the sovereign state and, hence, the integral principle of consciousness. conclusively speaking, such phenomena very clearly show that since consciousness comes to be the origin of wave and particle, it is integral in nature. hence, it is the integral consciousness which is found to be existing at the base of matter, hence, of language, too, since, as noted earlier, mind in the person of man is the result of evolution out of matter. it is for this reason that the vision of the existence of the one universal descends into the being of ferdinand de saussure and other structuralists such as chomsky who discovers ‘mind’ at the base of language. hence, there is no room left for the deconstructionist to reject the prior existence of consciousness, the consciousness which is integral in nature at the base of the material creation, and hence, infinite. it is to be noted that while propounding his vision of deconstruction derrida presents nothing logical and scientific to substantiate his vision. in fact, deconstruction violates the unmistakable vision of science of the existence of the universal, the vision which descends into the quantum theory and in both the special and general theories of relativity established by einstein. in fact, the vision of the universal truth on the plane of matter is received by science on an in-depth investigation. on a further deeper penetration, it is also discovered on the examination of the vision of the classical physics of the separate and incompatible existence of space and time and einstein’s ‘spacetime’ that the divisive principle is the secondary principle of the essential consciousness. it is for the reason that in the divisive, or to say, separative consciousness the separate and incompatible existence of space and time is visualised, and in the integrality of consciousness the one transcendent integral existence of space and time, ‘spacetime’, or ‘space-time continuum’ as it is called, -the mailto:topacademicjournals@gmail.com american journal of arts and communication vol. 9, issue 1; january-february 2024; issn: 2994-0540 impact factor: 6.91 1252 columbia rd nw, washington dc, united states https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac; mail: topacademicjournals@gmail.com 4 | a m e r i c a n j o u r n a l o f a r t s a n d c o m m u n i c a t i o n | https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac ‘spacetime’ which is the higher and primary truth. hence, the integrality of consciousness is within the inmost being of language on account of which infinite visions of truth are expressed, the visions in which there is no conflict or warring state. there exists integrality instead. the aforesaid vision of chomsky of a language which is ‘free from the control of detectable stimuli, either external or internal’ (2014:11) speaks of the two states in the being of man, to be specific, two planes of mind, the one under the gravitational pull of the stimuli, and the other beyond such gravitational pull. the state existing beyond the gravitational pull of stimuli takes us beyond the corporeality of the being of man. chomsky’s vision of the beyond of the internal stimuli speaks of the existence of the supra-corporeal state of the being of man. having studied in the light of sri aurobindo, the external and the internal stimuli which are ‘detectable’ (2014: 11) reveal the outer being of man, and the state which is ‘free from the detectable stimuli’ (11) reveals the inner being. the latter is, as stated earlier, the supra-corporeal state of the being of man in which the subtle body, the subtle life and subtle mind exist as revealed by sri aurobindo in his letters on yoga. in one of his letters he says: “man, for instance, has, besides his gross physical body, subtler sheaths or bodies by which he lives behind the veil in direct connection with supraphysical planes of consciousness and can be influenced by their powers, movements and beings. what takes place in life has always behind it pre-existent movements and forms in the occult vital planes; what takes place in mind presupposes pre-existent movements and forms in the occult mental planes. that is an aspect of things which becomes more and kumar 9 more evident, insistent and important, the more we progress in a dynamic yoga (sri aurobindo, 1979: 253b).” in the background of the aforementioned yogic revelation of sri aurobindo, the revelation which is a matter of higher consciousness, to be specific, yogic consciousness, it is now witnessed that in the supracorporeal state there exists a plane of mind, the thought of which goes to produce a language of it which comes to be stimulusfree, free from the stimulus which is found in the corporeal being, that is to say, the gross body, the gross life and the gross mind. such language, therefore, comes to be the instrument of the thought of the stimulusfree mind, nay, ‘occults mental planes’ (253). such an exploration from the plane of yogic consciousness is a logical ascent having discovered the truth that consciousness is at the base of material creation. the very supra-corporeality is, thus, found to be existing in the realm of language, the language which has evolved, or to say, emerged in the material world. such supracorporeality is all the more affirmed in the world of science when we enter into einstein’s ‘four-dimensional plane of existence’. in his in disputed mathematical structure of the four-dimensional plane of existence he has shown that the three-dimensional plane of existence is the projection of the fourdimensional plane of existence in the same manner in which shadow is a twodimensional projection of a threedimensional object. “the shadow is a projection of points in threedimensional space onto a two-dimensional plane, and its length will be different for different angles of projection. similarly, the length of a moving object is the projection of points in four-dimensional space-time on to a threedimensional space, and its length is different in different frame of reference (fritjof, 1983:187).” mailto:topacademicjournals@gmail.com american journal of arts and communication vol. 9, issue 1; january-february 2024; issn: 2994-0540 impact factor: 6.91 1252 columbia rd nw, washington dc, united states https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac; mail: topacademicjournals@gmail.com 5 | a m e r i c a n j o u r n a l o f a r t s a n d c o m m u n i c a t i o n | https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac further, the four-dimensional plane of existence, ‘spacetime continuum’ is the plane of existence where the separate and incompatible space and time of the threedimensional plane of existence are found to be the one transcendent integral as noted earlier. it reveals the existence of a plane where the principle of one reigns. it finally affirms the sovereignty of the supra-corporeal state, to be more specific, of consciousness since the principle of the one operative in the consciousness of einstein could be able to view the transcendent oneness of space and time, the consciousness which is integral in nature. on a deeper examination, the four-dimensional plane of existence, ‘space-time continuum’ or ‘spacetime’, which has not been found to be physically existing by the world of science, is found to be a thing of supra-corporeality which gives birth to corporeality in the form of the three-dimensional plane of existence. such consciousness is essentially integral, again it is noted. hence, the language of the integral consciousness of the integral plane of existence comes to be at the centre. it shows the absence, nay, non-existence of the conflicting state in the literary texts, to be specific, in the literary texts written from the planes of spiritual and supramental consciousnesses. there exists the vision of infinite aspects of truth on account of the transcendent oneness at the base. it is on account of oneness that there are no ‘warring forces’ in these literary texts. therefore, no question arises for the sovereignty of the conflicting forces in the literary texts as asserted by the deconstructionists. these deconstructionists have, obviously, imprisoned themselves in the three dimensionality of existence ignoring the scientific truth of the four-dimensional plane of existence and the higher yogic vision. though chomsky unmistakably speaks of the existence of a supra-corporeal plane of mind in his ‘stimulus free language’, the supra-corporeal plane of mind is yet to be explored. it, therefore, necessitates us to enter into, what sri aurobindo terms, the ‘psychicised’ state of mind, of which the stimulus-free language is found to be the creation. it is to be noted here that the psychicised mind is presently occult in the being of man as he is yet to rise evolutionarily. with the evolutionary emergence of the psychicised mind in the psychicised being, one is yogically able to rise to the further occult subtler planes of mind, the occult mind, of which sri aurobindo speaks in his aforementioned letter of yoga (1979: 253b). the psychicised mind exists in the psychicised being of man, the being wherein exist the psychicised mind, the psychicised life and the psychicised body as disclosed by sri aurobindo in his letters on yoga. the investigation is all the more imperative as the stimulus-free language has also been found to be the instrument of the self-expression by chomsky. since both the corporeal and the supracorporeal states have been found to be existing within the being of man, the stimulus-free language comes to be the expression of the self of the supra-corporeal being of man. such self is the deepest self which is ultimately in command of the different selves of the corporeal state of the being of man. in the psychicised state of the being of man, the deepest self makes language its instrument to express the deepest truth of the individual, the terrestrial and supra-terrestrial existence. language is no more the instrument of body, life and mind which are, as discovered by sri aurobindo and other rishis, the instruments of the deepest self, the soul. sri aurobindo’s yoga of psychicisation and the stimulus-free language mailto:topacademicjournals@gmail.com american journal of arts and communication vol. 9, issue 1; january-february 2024; issn: 2994-0540 impact factor: 6.91 1252 columbia rd nw, washington dc, united states https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac; mail: topacademicjournals@gmail.com 6 | a m e r i c a n j o u r n a l o f a r t s a n d c o m m u n i c a t i o n | https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac the corporeal state of the being of man, the vision of which emerges, as noted earlier, in chomsky’s discovery of the stimulus-free language is the state in which man is not yogically and spiritually transformed as studied in the light of sri aurobindo’s yogic revelations. in such an untransformed state, man is under the gravitational pull of matter and, therefore, his language is not stimulus-free. it is to be noted that the rishis have discovered that man is made up of body, life and mind, and soul, the divine self is at the centre of his being. in his yogic consciousness, sri aurobindo comes to witness a hierarchy of consciousness existing within and beyond the creation. he witnesses that the gravitational pull of matter has taken the intellectual mind, and the planes of the mental consciousness below it, and, further downward, the plane of life, too, into its grip on their universal planes of existence. this is what he witnesses in the yogically and spiritually untransformed being of man also. while speaking of the evolution of the mental consciousness of man to the spiritual planes of consciousness he lays emphasis on the need of getting freedom from such gravitational pull of matter in the being of man. it is unavoidable for the reason that without freedom from the gravitational pull of matter, the ascent of the mind of man to its spiritual planes will not be an irreversible one. without such freedom the spiritual ascent of the human mind and other constituent parts of the being of man, e.g. life and body will be undone since the lower consciousness, of which the untransformed body, the life and the mind existing within the being of man are manifestations, is hostile to spiritual ascent and transformation. they put resistance to the effort of man for spiritual transformation, not only of his mind, but also of his life and body. in order to get rid of the gravitational pull of matter and bring about the end of the hostility of the lower consciousnesses, sri aurobindo speaks of undertaking the yoga of, what he terms, ‘psychic transformation’ of the being of man. the psychic transformation is the soul transformation of man. the term ‘psychicisation’, too, he uses for such psychic or soul-transformation. in another letter on yoga sri aurobindo while revealing the inner being of man says that man is made up of body, life and mind, at the centre of which exists soul, the divine self in his being as stated earlier. he says: “when one speaks of the divine spark, one is thinking of the soul as a portion of the divine which has descended from above into the manifestation rather than of something which has separated itself from the cosmos. it is the nature that has formed itself out of the cosmic forces—mind out of cosmic mind, life out of cosmic life, body out of cosmic matter” (sri aurobindo, 1979: 109192a). the psychic transformation takes place when soul, the divine self, which remains behind body, life and mind, comes to the front and takes over their command in the being of man. of soul’s coming to the front, the ‘soul’ for which he uses the term, ‘psychic’, he says: “what is meant by (the psychic’s) coming to the front is simply this. the psychic ordinarily is deep within. very few people are aware of their souls when they speak of their soul, they usually mean the vital+mental being or else the (false) soul of desire. the psychic remains behind and acts only through the mind, vital and physical wherever it can. for this reason, the psychic being except where it is very much developed has only a small and partial, concealed and mixed or diluted influence on the life of most men. by coming forward is meant that it comes from behind the veil, its presence is felt already in the waking daily consciousness, its influence fills, mailto:topacademicjournals@gmail.com american journal of arts and communication vol. 9, issue 1; january-february 2024; issn: 2994-0540 impact factor: 6.91 1252 columbia rd nw, washington dc, united states https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac; mail: topacademicjournals@gmail.com 7 | a m e r i c a n j o u r n a l o f a r t s a n d c o m m u n i c a t i o n | https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac dominates, transforms the mind and vital and their movements, even the physical. one is aware of one’s soul, feels the psychic to be one’s true being, the mind and the rest begin to be only instruments of the inmost within us (1097).” as a result of taking over their command, it’s consciousness, or to say, the divine consciousness percolates into the beings of body, life and mind. the integral consciousness of soul is established in them and comes to be their foundation. integrality is established in them and, consequently, harmony exists in their beings. it is to be noted that prior to their psychic transformation they are at conflict with one another. consequent upon the psychic transformation, or to say, psychicisation, they undergo a divine transformation and come under soul’s direct governance getting freedom from the gravitational pull of matter. it is, in fact, the release from the gravitational pull of the divisiveness of consciousness, the divisiveness which had earlier taken the command of the body, the life and the mind. receptivity to the things which descend from the transcendent sovereign plane of the divine consciousness evolves in them. it, therefore, comes to be the psychicisation of body, life and mind of man. sri aurobindo says further that in the evolutionary journey of man, the psychicisation of the body, the life and the mind which are the instruments of the soul of man for executing the divine will in his being enables him to ascend the planes of spiritual consciousness decisively and irreversibly as there is no downward force due to the gravitational pull of matter in body, life and mind on account of the percolation of the divine consciousness in them. he makes it clear in his letters on yoga, as stated earlier, that when man ascends the spiritual planes of consciousness for his spiritual transformation without undergoing psychicisation of his body, life and mind, the very untransformed consciousnesses of these body, life and mind put severe resistance to his effort of ascent and pose a very serious threat to his spiritual transformation. such resistance is put by the divisiveness of consciousness operative in them. therefore, in one of his letters on yoga he says: “this psychic development and the psychic change of mind, vital and physical consciousness is of the utmost importance because it makes safe and easy the kumar 11 descent of the higher consciousness and the spiritual transformation without which the supramental must always remain far distant (1095).” when the body, the life, or to say, vital, and the mind undergo soul-transformation since the consciousness of the soul descends into them as a result of taking over their command by it, they opt, as a result of their new nature, to be dictated by the soul, the divine self. they come to be the obedient servants of the soul. since the divine self in man, according to rishis, is in constant communion with the divine existing beyond creation, it receives the divine vision existing on the transcendent plane of existence and transmits it to the body, the life and the mind. they do not alloy their stamps in such vision of the divine as a result of their psychicisation. of psychicisation, he says: “psychicisation means the change of the lower nature bringing right vision into the mind, right impulse and feeling into the vital, right movement and habit into the physical—all turned towards the divine, all based on love, adoration, bhakti—finally, the vision and sense of the mother everywhere in all as well as in the heart, her force working in the being, faith, consecration, surrender mailto:topacademicjournals@gmail.com american journal of arts and communication vol. 9, issue 1; january-february 2024; issn: 2994-0540 impact factor: 6.91 1252 columbia rd nw, washington dc, united states https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac; mail: topacademicjournals@gmail.com 8 | a m e r i c a n j o u r n a l o f a r t s a n d c o m m u n i c a t i o n | https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac (1093).” such a change, or to say, psychicisation takes place when the psychic comes to the front as discussed earlier. very obviously, the language of such a psychicised state of man comes to be stimulus-free. consequently, it further comes to express the divine self which is the deepest self of man. it is on account of this truth that chomsky finds stimulus-free language ‘innovative’ (2014: 11) and ‘potentially infinite in scope (11). in fact, on a deeper examination, it is found in such a vision of sri aurobindo that the truth of the psychicised state of mind has taken hold of the orientation of chomsky’s linguistic mind in spite of the fact that the yogic consciousness is yet to evolve in him. mantra or the mantric poetry the vedic rishis have found the universe to be the graded consciousness. they are of the vision that the mantra exists on the higher spiritual planes of consciousness which are hidden to the matter-oriented mind of man. the rishi dirghatamas says that the mantra exists in ‘a supreme ether’ (sri aurobindo, 1991: 5-6). “the rishi dirghatamas speaks of the riks, the mantras of the veda, as existing “in a supreme ether, imperishable and immutable in which all the gods are seated”...” (5-6). sri aurobindo has revealed the ‘supreme ether’ to be existing as the higher planes of existence. he further draws our attention to the discoveries of the vedic rishis that the vision of the mantra in our being is the result of the inspiration coming into our being from the higher spiritual planes of consciousness. “the vedic rishis believed that their mantras were inspired from higher hidden planes of consciousness and contained this secret knowledge” (5). such descent takes place in the spiritually inspired state of man. the inspiration rises when the body, the life and the mind are psychicised and, consequently, ‘love, adoration, bhakti’ (1093) rising within the being of man turn ‘towards the divine’ (1093). the rishi dirghatamas says that mantra exists in the inmost recesses of the human consciousness where it is found that godward emotion and feelings exist. for, within the godward emotion and feelings of man lie the planes of mantric consciousness latent, the planes which tend to manifest in mantra, or to say, mantric poetry. according to sri aurobindo, mantra is the poetic expression of the deepest spiritual reality (sri aurobindo, 1991: 17). to be more specific, he says that it is the poetry which is written from some higher plane of, what he calls the intuitive mind consciousness and the overmind consciousness. these planes are ‘the two successive uppermost planes of the spiritual consciousness on the plane of mind’ as he says. he discovers four planes of spiritual consciousness existing above the intellectual plane on the plane of mind, or what he terms, the ‘mental mind’, the spiritual consciousness wherein one has the knowledge and realisation of the one divine, the one cosmic self. they are, as he terms them, higher mind, illumined mind, intuitive mind and the overmind. the overmind consciousness is the summit of the spiritual consciousness on the plane of mind. it is the plane where ‘all the gods are seated’ (5-6) in the ‘supreme ether’ (5-6), the ether of which rishi dirghatamas speaks as stated earlier. the plane of consciousness which exists beyond mind is ‘supramental’ as sri aurobindo terms. he uses the term ‘supermind’ too for this consciousness. speaking of the supramental, he says that it is the plane of mailto:topacademicjournals@gmail.com american journal of arts and communication vol. 9, issue 1; january-february 2024; issn: 2994-0540 impact factor: 6.91 1252 columbia rd nw, washington dc, united states https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac; mail: topacademicjournals@gmail.com 9 | a m e r i c a n j o u r n a l o f a r t s a n d c o m m u n i c a t i o n | https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac consciousness which exists beyond creation as noted earlier. it is integral in nature and is the sovereign plane of the divine existence (sri aurobindo, 1979: 257, 258b). it is the consciousness which manifests itself in creation. in other words, the creation itself is the manifestation of the divine consciousness. the rig veda speaks poetically of the primordial resolve of the divine on its manifestation: “eko-ham, bahu-syam, praja-eyam”, “i am one, become many, yet remain the same.” it is under this resolve that the one divine, the sovereign integral consciousness of the one divine comes to be ‘many’ without losing its sovereign oneness. in such ‘many’, the creation comes into existence, or to say, the manifestation of the divine takes place and the sovereign divine consciousness begins to come to be latent in the creation. in the phenomenon of ‘many’, the divisive consciousness, or to say, the separative principle of the divine consciousness comes into operation and the plane of, what we earlier noted, the ‘overmind consciousness’ comes into existence in the supraphysical state. it is the plane where ‘all the gods are seated’ as pointed out earlier. the gods are the chief cosmic functionaries. they are ‘the emanations, formations put out from the being of god for a special purpose: to fulfil his intention in this creation. each emanation from the being of god is charged with a particular function. each god is both a power and a personality. these gods, known by different names in different climes, are the cosmic functionaries, making possible the growth of this creation in the mould of the original intention of the creator’ (pandit, 2010: 3-4). sri aurobindo reveals that under the continuity of the operation of the separative principle of the sovereign integral divine consciousness the next lower plane of the spiritual consciousness, the intuitive mind consciousness comes into its supraphysical existence, and, further downward, the illumined mind consciousness, the higher mind consciousness and then the other planes of the ordinary mind consciousness such as intellectual mind etc., too, come into existence. he terms such phenomenon ‘involution’. the involution continues and what we term ‘life’ or ‘energy’ and, further, ‘matter’ come into existence consequently, the matter which is the lowest plane of existence in hierarchy. in such involution, the higher planes of the spiritual consciousness and the supramental come to be latent on the lower planes, and, consequently, the divisiveness, or to say, the separativity of consciousness increases. matter comes to be the seat of the separativity of consciousness. as this is the picture which exists within the being of an individual, too, rishi dirghatamas speaks of the mantra to be existing in the inmost recesses of the human consciousness. since the overmind consciousness comes to exist downward in the hierarchy of consciousness next to the transcendent supramental consciousness which we have noted to be the sovereign integral divine consciousness, the former is vibrant with the divine consciousness and is, therefore, creative in nature and is revelatory of the sovereign divine consciousness existing on the transcendent plane of the existence. according to sri aurobindo (1990: 950), the overmind consciousness is the highest plane of the mantra on the plane of the spiritual mind-consciousness. it is, as he says, ‘a power of cosmic consciousness, a principle of global knowledge which carries in it a delegated light from the supramental gnosis’. he further says, ‘it is, therefore, only by an opening into the cosmic consciousness that the over mind ascent and descent can be made wholly possible (950). he further says that the ‘cosmic empire of the overmind’ (2012: 666) is ‘time’s buffer state bordering eternity’ mailto:topacademicjournals@gmail.com american journal of arts and communication vol. 9, issue 1; january-february 2024; issn: 2994-0540 impact factor: 6.91 1252 columbia rd nw, washington dc, united states https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac; mail: topacademicjournals@gmail.com 10 | a m e r i c a n j o u r n a l o f a r t s a n d c o m m u n i c a t i o n | https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac (666). further, though the intuitive mind consciousness which is the next lower plane of the mantra comes into existence under the growing separative principle of the sovereign integral divine consciousness, the supramental, it is also under divine vibration and is, therefore, creative and revelatory. in fact, it is a ‘ray of the supramental’, he says. he further says that it is ‘an immediate translation’ (sri aurobindo, 1984: 781) of ‘some infinite selfknowledge that acts above mind in the superconscient spirit’ (781). it is for this reason that mantra has been found to be creative and revelatory as well as inspired poetry. of mantra, he says in his epic poem savitri:“an inspired knowledge sat enthroned within whose seconds illumined more than reason’s years: an ictus of revealing lustre fellas if pointing accent upon truth,and like a sky-flare showing all the ground a swift intuitive discernment shone. one glance could separate the true and false, or raise its rapid torch-fire in the dark to check the claimants crowding through mind’s gates covered by the forged signatures of the gods, detect the magic bride in her disguise or scan the apparent face of thought and life.”(sri aurobindo, 2012: 37-38)he continues to reveal the truth of mantra:“oft inspiration with her lightning feet a sudden messenger from the all-seeing tops, traversed the soundless corridors of his mind bringing her rhythmic sense of hidden things. a music spoke transcending mortal speech. as if from a golden phial of the all-bliss, a joy of light, a joy of sudden sight,a rapture of the thrilled undying wordpoured into his heart as into an empty cup, a repetition of god’s first delightcreating in a young and virgin time (38).” a transcendent mantra was discovered when consciousness evolves to its supramental plane. on the examination of his works like savitri, the life divine, etc., it is very unmistakably found that sri aurobindo manifests the transcendent supramental consciousness. therefore, his epic savitri comes to be the supramental poetry being a mantra of the transcendent plane of consciousness. in the epic, he reveals the pre-creation state of existence in which preparation is made for the descent and the establishment of the transcendent supramental consciousness for a new creation on the earth. in the new creation, a higher order of existence, to be specific, the supramental man and eventually the supramentalised earth emerge, and so on. it has also been shown that when man rises from the planes of the spiritual consciousness as a result of evolution, the vision of the one divine, the one cosmic self, the divine existing on the transcendent plane of existence, to use sri aurobindo’s terminology, the supramental, evolves accordingly in his being. in other words, the vision of man of the one divine kumar continues to lose its eclipsed state with his successive ascent to the spiritual planes, —the eclipse which is caused by the divisiveness of the lower planes of consciousness in his being. the uneclipsed vision comes into the being of the man of the supramental consciousness. the summit view in order to get rid of the matter-oriented mind, and, consequently, to rise to the aforesaid planes of spiritual consciousness as a result of evolution, — the rise which is a movement away from the separativity of consciousness towards the integrality of consciousness, and, consequently, to write poetry from these planes of mailto:topacademicjournals@gmail.com american journal of arts and communication vol. 9, issue 1; january-february 2024; issn: 2994-0540 impact factor: 6.91 1252 columbia rd nw, washington dc, united states https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac; mail: topacademicjournals@gmail.com 11 | a m e r i c a n j o u r n a l o f a r t s a n d c o m m u n i c a t i o n | https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac mantric consciousness—, we are required to turn inward and undertake the yoga, ‘integral yoga’, inhering the yoga of psychicisation, the yoga of spiritualisation and finally the yoga of supramentalisation. the yoga comes to be imperative and inevitable for mantra. it is all the more inevitable and imperative as man’s destiny lies in the evolution of his consciousness. in such a task we have to undertake first the yoga of the psychicisation of the body, the life and the mind of our being so that our ascent to the planes of spiritual consciousness could be decisive and irreversible, failing which the gravitational pull of matter, dwelling in the untransformed state of being, that is to say, unpsychicised state of our being in which we are not stimulus-free, pulls us down from the spiritual planes of consciousness, and consequently we are not able to receive the mantra from the planes of mantric consciousness as noted earlier also. in one of his letters on poetry, literature and art sri aurobindo (1971: 58) says: “certainly if you want to achieve a greater poetry, more unique, you will have to alter the poise of your consciousness. at present you write, as you do the things, too much with the brain, the mere human intelligence. to get back from the surface vital into the psychic and psychic vital, to raise the level of your mental from the intellect to the illumined mind is your need both in poetry and in yoga”. such a vision of sri aurobindo necessitates us to undertake the yoga of psychicisation first. when man comes prepared to receive the mantra as a result of the psychicisation of his body, life and mind, he ascends the planes of the spiritual consciousness entering into the world of the higher mind and beyond it in the spiritual mind. the consciousness and the power of these planes descend into his body, life and mind and they get transformed. such transformation is the spiritual transformation. of the power of the mantra which is capable of bringing about evolutionary change of consciousness, sri aurobindo says:“as when the mantra sinks in yoga’s ear,its message enters stirring the blind brainand keeps in the dim ignorant cells its sound;the hearer understands a form of wordsand, musing on the index thought it holds, he strives to read it with the labouring mind, but finds bright hints, not the embodied truth: then, falling silent in himself to know he meets the deeper listening of his soul: the word repeats itself in rhythmic strains:thought, vision, feeling, sense, the body’s selfare seized unalterably and he enduresan ecstasy and an immortal change;he feels a wideness and becomes a power, all knowledge rushes on him like a sea:transmuted by the white spiritual rayhe walks in naked heavens of joy and calm,sees the god-face and hears transcendent speech…” (sri aurobindo 2012: 381). the first spiritual transformation in the world of the higher mind paves his way for the further ascent to the plane of the illumined mind, and finally to the planes of the mantra, the mantra which exists on the aforesaid higher plane of the intuitive mind consciousness and the overmind consciousness, and further on the plane of the supramental as we see in sri aurobindo’s epic savitri. in the psychicised state mantra gets an opportunity to descend into the body, the life and the mind of man and they undergo transformation accordingly. the stimulus-free language which emerges as a result of such psychicisation of the being of man, thus, comes to be the pedestal of the mantric poetry. it is in the stimulus-free language that one can express the truth of arriving at ‘a silent self’ (roshen, 2023: 208) and ‘a nameless vast’ (208) where ‘there is no duality or differences and love prevails and the conflicting thoughts and struggles of the world have ended’ (208). in the language which is not mailto:topacademicjournals@gmail.com american journal of arts and communication vol. 9, issue 1; january-february 2024; issn: 2994-0540 impact factor: 6.91 1252 columbia rd nw, washington dc, united states https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac; mail: topacademicjournals@gmail.com 12 | a m e r i c a n j o u r n a l o f a r t s a n d c o m m u n i c a t i o n | https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac stimulus free, there is focuses on the external (208). one cannot ‘realise what is written and cannot understand the ‘cosmic will’ (208). it is only in the stimulus-free language that the truth of the ‘spaceless self’ of savitri can be visualised and attained. the stimulus-free language reveals the truth of the ‘oneness of the psychic being and jivatman’ (nikhil, 2023: 140), the two poises of the divine self in the being of man. such a yogic achievement has been pointed out in the paper ‘spaceless self’ in savitri: the eternal self in of supramental man in sri aurobindo’s epic ‘savitri’. thus, the stimulus-free language is revealed to be constitutionally capable of receiving the mantric poetry as we witness in sri aurobindo’s savitri. conflict of interests the authors have not declared any conflict of interests. references chomsky n (2014). language and mind. cambridge university press. eddington as (1929). the nature of the physical world. new york: the macmillan company cambridge, england. fritjof c (1983). the tao of physics. flamingo. gayatri chakravorty spivak (1976). of grammatology. motilal banarasidass publishers pvt. limited, delhi. polkinghorne j (2006). quantum theory: a very short introduction. oxford university press, indian edition. nikhil k (2023). spaceless self’ in savitri: the eternal self ofsupramental man in sri aurobindo’s epic ‘savitri. european journal of literary studies 4:2. available athttps://oapub.org/lit/index.php/ejls/index pandit mp (2010). the book of beginnings. dipti publications, sri aurobindo ashram, pondicherry. roshen d (2023). sri aurobindo: the life and teachings of a revolutionary philosopher. macmillan, new-delhi, 2023. sri aurobindo (1971). letters on poetry, literature and art. sri aurobindo ashram, pondicherry, now, pudducherry. available at: https://auro-ebooks.com/letters-on-poetry-and-art/ sri aurobindo (1979). letters on yoga. part i, sri aurobindo ashram, pondicherry, now, pudducherry. available at: https://auroebooks.com/letters-on-yoga/ sri aurobindo (1984). the synthesis of yoga. sri aurobindo ashram, pondicherry, now, puducherry. available at: https://auroebooks.com/the-synthesis-of-yoga/ sri aurobindo (1990). the life divine. sri aurobindo ashram, pondicherry, now, puducherry. available at: https://auroebooks.com/upanishads/ mailto:topacademicjournals@gmail.com american journal of arts and communication vol. 9, issue 1; january-february 2024; issn: 2994-0540 impact factor: 6.91 1252 columbia rd nw, washington dc, united states https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac; mail: topacademicjournals@gmail.com 13 | a m e r i c a n j o u r n a l o f a r t s a n d c o m m u n i c a t i o n | https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac sri aurobindo (1991). hymns to the mystic fire. sri aurobindo ashram,pondicherry, now pudducherry.available at:https://www.sriaurobindoashram.org/sriaurobindo/downloadpdf.php?i d=31 sri aurobindo (1991). the future poetry. sri aurobindo ashram, pondicherry, now, pudducherry. available at:https://www.sriaurobindoashram.org/sriaurobindo/downloadpdf.php?i d=39 sri aurobindo (2010). savitri. helios books company private limited, chennai, 2012. mailto:topacademicjournals@gmail.com 051213-fa116-frontiers in art research.docx american journal of art and communication vol.7,issue 6;november-december-2022; 1252 columbia rd nw, washington dc, united states https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac; mail: topacademicjournals@gmail.com 8 | american journal of art and communication | https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac cultivating innovative ability in art education: a development strategy for universities john paul david, maria isabel garcia, miguel antonio fernandez philippine christian university, manila, philippines abstract: this paper discusses the cultivation of students' innovative abilities in art education in universities. the author argues that art education should not only focus on helping students master the basic skills of art creation, but also on cultivating their innovative thinking. the author then analyzes the problems in the current practice of cultivating students' innovative abilities in art education, and proposes some operational and targeted strategies and solutions. keywords: art education, innovative ability, cultivation, problems, strategies 1. introduction in art classification, art is also known as plastic art, visual art, spatial art, and static art. it refers to the use of certain material materials, including color, paper, canvas, soil, stone, wood, metal, etc., to create two-dimensional or three-dimensional visual images. it is used to reflect natural and social life, and adds the subjective ideas and emotions of the creator. the process of artistic creation has a strong subjectivity, which tests the individual abilities and mood of creators. in addition to helping students master the basic skills of art creation, college art education also needs to clarify students' demands, enable them to master innovative thinking, and ultimately achieve the goal of creating new works and forming new styles[1]. at present, there are still some problems in the practice of cultivating students' innovative abilities in art education in universities. unclear teaching positioning, outdated teaching methods, and disconnect between theory and practice are not conducive to the comprehensive development of students. this study provides in-depth analysis of this issue based on long-term frontline teaching experience, and proposes some operational and targeted strategies and solutions. 2. the importance of cultivating students' innovative ability in art education in universities cultivating students' aesthetic and innovative abilities is the primary task and top priority of art education. art education in universities, as an important component of art majors, needs to focus on cultivating students' aesthetic and innovative abilities in order to promote personalized development. innovation is the soul of a nation's progress and the core of human society's progress. as college students in the new era, they need to possess innovative awareness and ability, engage in a series of activities such as thinking, observation, and operation, innovate and create to meet the needs of national and social development [2]. therefore, in art education in universities, it is mailto:topacademicjournals@gmail.com american journal of art and communication vol.7,issue 6;november-december-2022; 1252 columbia rd nw, washington dc, united states https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac; mail: topacademicjournals@gmail.com 9 | american journal of art and communication | https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac necessary to attach great importance to the cultivation of students' innovative ability, which is mainly manifested in: 2.1 promoting the formation of artistic individuality innovation is the spirit and soul of art education, which can inject more vitality and vitality into art works, and enable creators and viewers to achieve emotional resonance. contemporary college students, on the other hand, are in a stage of active thinking and enthusiasm. they not only dare to think, observe, and explore, but also actively receive new ideas and things, and then engage in practical operations to showcase and express their personal charm. through the cultivation of students' innovative abilities, under the guidance, guidance, and encouragement of teachers, students can be guided to actively accept and create, actively explore and showcase, which is conducive to their personalized growth and development. in this way, the seeds of innovation can be deeply implanted in the hearts of students. with the careful care of teachers, they can bloom and bear fruit, demonstrate infinite charm, and promote the formation of academic and artistic individuality. 2.2 promoting the improvement of aesthetic ability art learning requires appreciation, appreciation, and creation. art works mainly express themselves and subjective emotions, in order to form their own unique creative style and meet the goals and requirements of art education in universities. through the cultivation of students' innovative ability, it can guide them to observe and think, communicate and explore, invisibly improving their ability to discover and appreciate beauty, and it can observe and think from a unique perspective with a keen eye, then innovate and create, gradually improve one's aesthetic ability, and ultimately improve one's overall artistic literacy. through art education, students' thinking can be dispersed, and the feasibility of demonstrating 'beauty' through diverse means can be explored. the society as a whole is in a constantly changing state, and the vast majority of ideas and cognition will have certain limitations over time. some traditional forms of artistic creation that do not conform to mainstream aesthetics or mainstream artistic aesthetics, as well as the way beauty is presented, may become popular things that the public can generally accept and give high evaluations in the new era [3]. if art, including fine arts, adheres to conventions in terms of creative form and presentation effects, and lacks new development directions, it means that the corresponding art field will inevitably decline. based on this, in the process of art education in universities, teachers should actively encourage students to boldly imagine. as long as the overall image is presented as "beautiful" and does not cause discomfort, teachers should not easily deny it. 3. problems in cultivating students' innovative abilities in art education in universities 3.1 unclear positioning of teaching objectives the unclear positioning of teaching objectives refers to whether the talent cultivation goals of art education in universities are mainly focused on imparting theoretical knowledge of art and training skills and techniques, while neglecting the cultivation of students' innovative abilities, seriously hindering their comprehensive physical and mental development. firstly, with the continuous expansion of enrollment in universities and the increasing number of students, it has led to an increase in teaching pressure. under heavy teaching tasks, only the universality of teaching content and the practicality of teaching methods are emphasized, while the cultivation of students' innovative ability is ignored. neglecting the guidance and penetration of students' innovative abilities in the design mailto:topacademicjournals@gmail.com american journal of art and communication vol.7,issue 6;november-december-2022; 1252 columbia rd nw, washington dc, united states https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac; mail: topacademicjournals@gmail.com 10 | american journal of art and communication | https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac of teaching content and the application of teaching methods. although students possess rich art knowledge and superb painting techniques, they still have many shortcomings in terms of aesthetic ability, innovation ability, and artistic personality. secondly, in the context of the national implementation of the innovation driven development strategy, many universities still use the traditional talent training system, and have not been able to reform and optimize the training objectives, content, methods, and other aspects in a timely manner. to meet the requirements of the times, improving teaching content and methods can promote the cultivation of students' innovative abilities. finally, the cultivation of innovation ability is only reflected in words, and the representative phenomenon is that many teachers and research workers open their mouths and say "there should be innovation" and "the creative form should be innovative". however, there have been no corresponding changes in the evaluation criteria, and students have not been informed of "how to innovate" or "how to choose the direction of innovation". this "innovation" has almost become "formalism" and extremely lacks practical value. 3.2 obsolete teaching methods the application of teaching methods is also related to the cultivation of students' innovative abilities. at present, there is still a problem of outdated teaching methods in cultivating students' innovative abilities in art education in universities [4]. firstly, the copying method is the most commonly used method in art education in universities, mainly for copying paintings in the classroom. in the process of copying, there are few opportunities for students to think and observe, and the guidance and guidance of innovative points are ignored. although students' painting skills have been improved, their aesthetic and innovative abilities have not been improved in any way. secondly, in cultivating students' innovative abilities, it is necessary for them to engage in art learning independently and passionately. as a course teacher, one should be adept at innovating teaching methods and means. however, in actual teaching, due to the heavy teaching tasks, classroom time is tight. therefore, many teachers overlook the innovation of teaching methods and still use outdated methods, which is not conducive to stimulating students' interests and mobilizing their enthusiasm. as a result, the entire classroom is dull and boring, and students' enthusiasm for innovation is not high, unwilling to participate in innovation and creation. 3.3 theoretical and practical disconnection art education in universities requires a combination of theory and practice in order to promote the comprehensive development of students. however, in practical teaching, there is still a disconnect between theory and practice. firstly, influenced by traditional educational concepts, most university teachers and students tend to prioritize practice over theory, resulting in weaker students' artistic perception, aesthetic ability, and innovation ability. therefore, in artistic creation, many students fail to actively discover, be good at receiving, and have the courage to create, resulting in a serious lack of innovation and creativity. secondly, university teachers neglect the guidance and guidance of innovative abilities in art practical teaching. in addition, the entire class time is limited, and classroom exercises and after-school training are not properly allocated, resulting in poor students' ability to learn independently. the construction of practical training bases is relatively limited, which cannot achieve the development of students' personalized abilities. mailto:topacademicjournals@gmail.com american journal of art and communication vol.7,issue 6;november-december-2022; 1252 columbia rd nw, washington dc, united states https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac; mail: topacademicjournals@gmail.com 11 | american journal of art and communication | https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac 4. strategies for cultivating students' innovative abilities in art education in universities 4.1 clear teaching positioning in the context of the new era, universities must first clarify the positioning of art education in order to cultivate high-quality talents that the country and society need. firstly, the leadership and professional teachers of universities should keep up with the development of the times, actively participate in learning and training, actively change their own ideological concepts, and improve the teaching ability and professional level of teachers. not only should we attach importance to imparting students' theoretical knowledge of art and training them in painting skills and techniques, but we should also focus on cultivating students' aesthetic taste, innovative ability, and good moral cultivation, with the improvement of students' comprehensive quality as the teaching goal and core. at the same time, emphasis should be placed on cultivating students' innovation ability and free creativity in order to achieve positive development in future job positions. secondly, cultivating students' ability to discover, appreciate, and create beauty is the focus of art education in universities. in the adjustment of teaching positioning, whether it is teaching objectives, teaching content, curriculum design, or teaching methods, the above three contents must be reflected. in the implementation process of art education, the focus is on cultivating students' innovative awareness and creative ability, and encouraging personalized development of students. finally, universities need to conduct research on industry positions and students' individual potential. then, based on the characteristics of art education and in line with the actual needs of society, adjust the teaching positioning. from guiding students to establish a correct artistic perspective, to learning with innovative awareness and creative thinking, gradually guiding them to break free from various constraints, dare to explore and create independently, thereby improving students' comprehensive abilities and meeting the needs of society and job work. 4.2 improving teaching methods in art education in universities, we should comply with the requirements of the times, continuously improve teaching methods, guide students to actively innovate and create in viewing, thinking, and experiencing, and achieve the integration of knowledge and skills learned. 4.2.1 cultivating in work appreciation appreciation of works is the first step in art education, which is the process of understanding thoughts, emotions, and other aspects. in this stage, teachers need to do a good job in guiding and appreciating the content and form of expression, and then carry out innovative creation. as art teachers in universities, you can choose art works that showcase innovative themes and then use multimedia courseware to showcase them to students. next, provide students with sufficient time and opportunities to guide them in viewing, thinking, communicating, and experiencing, comprehend the innovation in the content and form of the work, and explore the ideological, emotional, and thematic values within it. finally, in art creation, it also integrates its own thoughts, emotions, and other aspects, launching innovation and creation in art. for example, lang shining's "hundred steeds painting" combines chinese and western painting techniques, which is an innovative expression and reveals the author's thoughts and emotions. in the appreciation and exchange of works, innovation permeates invisibly, and then guides students to dare to learn and actively showcase. mailto:topacademicjournals@gmail.com american journal of art and communication vol.7,issue 6;november-december-2022; 1252 columbia rd nw, washington dc, united states https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac; mail: topacademicjournals@gmail.com 12 | american journal of art and communication | https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac 4.2.2 infiltration in on-site creation whether it is sketching, watercolor, oil painting, wood carving, clay sculpture, etc., in the process of students' art creation, timely infiltration of innovation ability is encouraged, and students are encouraged to actively innovate and freely create. in terms of themes, content, and techniques, innovative highlights are reflected. in actual teaching, teachers need to teach according to their aptitude and teach according to the individual differences of students. propose different guidance methods based on different themes and content. in the teaching of character painting, in order to draw characters' personalities, expressions, etc., it is necessary to combine their living environment, personal experience, and integrate their own ideas and emotions for innovation, in order to make the characters lifelike. teachers can use comparative teaching methods or on-site observation methods to compare works that incorporate innovation with those that do not; and observe excellent art works, constantly instill innovative awareness in the teaching guidance process, and fully mobilize students' creative enthusiasm. in landscape painting, it is also necessary for teachers to permeate innovative consciousness in the theme, content, and techniques. firstly, guide students to boldly conceive, engage in thinking and imagination; next, based on actual life, determine the theme and content; finally, apply the knowledge and skills learned, inject innovation awareness, create their own world, and invisibly cultivate students' innovation ability. in the production of wood carvings, clay sculptures, etc., students are encouraged to collect materials from life and nature, innovate and create, and closely integrate innovation with art education. 4.2.3 improvement in mining affirmation every student has innovative abilities that require the exploration and affirmation of teachers. as art teachers in universities, it is necessary to actively explore students' innovative abilities, and then provide affirmation and support, encouraging students to innovate boldly and freely, in order to enable students to have innovative abilities in their learning, life, and future work. in practical teaching, teachers should leave ample opportunities for students to appreciate, think, communicate, and explore, and then encourage students to boldly discover and showcase themselves, highlighting their own strengths and advantages. then, it is up to teachers to explore, recognize, and support, provide opportunities for practical exercise, mobilize students' enthusiasm for innovation, dare to win new and innovative awards in art creation, highlight individuality, and deeply embed innovation in students' hearts. 4.3 integrating theory with practice the close integration of theory and practice is an inevitable trend in the reform of art education in universities, and it is also an effective way to cultivate students' innovative ability. as leaders and professional teachers in universities, it is important to actively integrate theory and practical courses, allowing students to experience, think, and innovate, ultimately achieving comprehensive development. firstly, in the teaching of art theory, it is necessary for art teachers in universities to pay attention to students' practical experiences, and use modern teaching methods to develop aesthetic and innovative abilities through practical experiences through teaching methods such as audio and video. for example, in the explanation of art theory knowledge and in the teaching of other art literacy courses, guide students to dare to think and communicate, explore and experience. gradually transform students' ideological concepts, enhance their innovation awareness and passion for art creation. mailto:topacademicjournals@gmail.com american journal of art and communication vol.7,issue 6;november-december-2022; 1252 columbia rd nw, washington dc, united states https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac; mail: topacademicjournals@gmail.com 13 | american journal of art and communication | https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac secondly, in art practice teaching, it is necessary to focus on the infiltration of art knowledge and the appreciation of art works, and then encourage students to express their own perceptions, experiences, and other aspects. next, dare to boldly think and imagine, apply the knowledge and skills learned, and actively engage in artistic innovation and creation. through the combination of theory and practical teaching, it continuously stimulates students' innovative spirit, cultivates their aesthetic taste, and enhances their artistic cultivation. finally, incorporate innovative and creative abilities into the evaluation system of art education curriculum, and through assessment from both theoretical and practical perspectives, it attracts the attention of university students and enables them to actively participate in innovation and creation. 5. discussion the article mainly explores from the perspective of art education. the education that focused on art knowledge and skills in the past has been difficult to adapt to the development of the new era, and now the education reform has put forward higher requirements for art education [5]. art is constantly evolving, and many classic works of art are innovations based on previous works. so, when teaching art, teachers should not only impart knowledge, but also enhance students' creative awareness. as students age, their creative thinking significantly increases and they gradually develop the ability to think independently. in the classroom, teachers should respect students' ideas, encourage them to think from different perspectives, and break free from conventions. art is full of a sense of freedom, and many artists have emerged in modern times. they have broken through the constraints of tradition and enriched the form and content of art. students should first form a holistic understanding of art when learning, and then innovate on the basis of existing knowledge. during this period, teachers should guide students to unleash their imagination and avoid being trapped by rigid thinking. at the same time, they should respect students, give them space for independent thinking, and enable them to continuously innovate in a relaxed and pleasant environment. art education in universities plays a crucial role in cultivating students' aesthetic ability, creativity, and innovative consciousness. art is a category of visual art that combines material and spiritual elements. in modern life, art not only exists in art museums, galleries, and other places, but also permeates various aspects of people's lives. art education is not simply about teaching knowledge and skills, but about cultivating students' core competencies, enabling them to develop aesthetic abilities and gain an artistic perspective to observe the world. artists are influenced by society and family to express their thoughts and emotions through art works, which reflect the development of society and the times. in the process of art education, students will not only feel the charm of visual art, but also feel their own life value, which will affect their future development [6]. therefore, art education has the functions of aesthetics, teaching, cognition, and communication at the same time. although the focus of various functions varies, they can all be reflected through aesthetics. therefore, the social function of art teaching is strong, which is of great significance for improving students' aesthetic literacy, inheriting traditional culture, and promoting economic development. 6. conclusion in summary, in art education in universities, the focus is on cultivating students' innovative awareness and creative ability, promoting their comprehensive development. so in future teaching, we can gradually cultivate and mailto:topacademicjournals@gmail.com american journal of art and communication vol.7,issue 6;november-december-2022; 1252 columbia rd nw, washington dc, united states https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac; mail: topacademicjournals@gmail.com 14 | american journal of art and communication | https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac enhance students' innovation ability by clarifying teaching positioning, innovating teaching methods, and combining theory with practice, guiding students to dare to innovate and create freely, and ultimately improving their comprehensive abilities. references zhu w y. research on art education and innovative ability cultivation in higher education institutions [j]. art evaluation, 2022, (2): 117-121. li d. research on the strategies of college art education to cultivate students' innovative ability [j]. shoes technology and design, 2022, 2(24): 77-79. wu c x. the importance of school art education [j]. art education research, 2023, (1): 142-144. ma b f. research on cultivating students' innovative ability in art education in universities [j]. university education, 2018, (8): 169-171. kerry t. creative performances and gifted education: studies from art education [j]. australasian journal of gifted education, 2017, 26 (2): 1-10. huo n. analysis of cultivating students' innovative ability in art education [j]. art science and technology, 2017, 30 (10): 397. mailto:topacademicjournals@gmail.com 051208-fa2107-frontiers in art research.docx american journal of art and communication vol.8 , issue3 mayjune 2023; 1252 columbia rd nw, washington dc, united states https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac; mail: topacademicjournals@gmail.com 8 | american journal of art and communication | https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac the expressive characteristics of broadcast hosts in the new media era an jiangyu academy of audible language arts, sichuan university of media and communications, chengdu, china abstract: the rapid development of new media technology has brought new challenges and opportunities to the broadcasting industry. in this era, how to accurately and vividly convey information and resonate with the audience has become an important problem for broadcasting hosts. this study systematically analyzes the language arts characteristics of broadcasting hosts in the new media era, and proposes some targeted cultivation strategies. keywords: new media era, broadcasting hosts, language arts, expressive characteristics, cultivation strategies 1. introduction with the rapid development and popularisation of new media technology, broadcast hosting, as an important part of the media industry, plays a more crucial role in the new media era. in this era full of opportunities and challenges, how to accurately and vividly convey information and resonate with the audience has become an urgent problem for broadcasting hosts. among them, the expressive characteristics and developmental strategies of language arts are considered to be important factors affecting the quality of broadcast presenters' performance. therefore, this study aims to systematically analyse the language arts characteristics of broadcasting hosts in the new media era and to propose some targeted cultivation strategies. in order to help broadcasting hosts to comprehensively improve their language and art level, cultivate a high-quality broadcasting host team, and promote the prosperity of the whole industry. 2. the development path of the language art of broadcasting hosting in the new media era 2.1. diversity of expression in the language arts with the rise of the new media era, the language art of broadcasting is no longer limited to the traditional form of radio or television, but covers a wider range of media platforms and modes of communication. they can express their language on a variety of channels such as live streaming platforms, short videos, and social media. messages are delivered through a variety of media formats such as pictures, text, sound, and video.[1]traditional forms of language arts expression still exist, such as beautiful reading, fluency and accurate voice control. however, with the rapid development and popularisation of new media technologies, the language arts of broadcasting have also been innovated and improved. firstly, sound processing and modulation became an important skill. in the new media age, people listen to content through different devices such as headphones, speakers, and therefore, broadcasters need to learn to adjust the volume, pitch and sound quality of their voices according to different mailto:topacademicjournals@gmail.com american journal of art and communication vol.8 , issue3 mayjune 2023; 1252 columbia rd nw, washington dc, united states https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac; mail: topacademicjournals@gmail.com 9 | american journal of art and communication | https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac environments and media devices to ensure that listeners can have a clear and comfortable listening experience. secondly, the style of expression of the language needs to be closer to the tastes of young people. young people are an important audience in the new media age, and they have very different preferences for language expression. broadcast hosts need to pay attention to the current popular vocabulary, internet terms and spoken expressions with young people's characteristics, in order to make their language more affinity and interesting. finally, broadcasting as a linguistic art form remains full of possibilities for emotional expression. through the expression of language and the interpretation of voice, broadcast hosting can effectively convey emotions and touch the audience's empathy. in the new media era, broadcasting host is not only a conveyor of information, but also a bridge of emotional resonance with the audience. they need to convey their emotions to the listener through vocal variations, rhythmic control, and emotional integration to enhance listener engagement and interaction. 2.2. diversified creation of language arts with the rapid development and popularisation of new media, the new media era is also invariably putting forward higher requirements for the diversified creation of broadcasting and hosting language arts. areas such as traditional radio and television no longer meet the needs of people for information and interest. in contrast, the new media has the characteristics of convenience, interactivity and content diversification, which provides a broader creative space for broadcasting and hosting.[2]the new media age focuses on innovation and personalisation, and broadcasters need to be creative too. broadcast presenters need to be freed from their traditional roles of reporting news and hosting programmes, and actively broaden the field of content creation. it can delve into various fields of society, culture, science and technology to uncover and present more rich and diverse content.at the same time, presenters need to keep up with real-time hot topics and pop culture. combining the needs and preferences of viewers, new, interesting and uniquely creative programme content is introduced to arouse viewers' interest and retain their attention. in the age of information explosion, the language arts of broadcasting and hosting need to constantly update their creative approach and inject innovative elements in order to capture the attention of the audience and provide a novel experience. facing the development of the new media era, the audience has higher requirements for the presentation and content of language arts. broadcast hosts not only need to have the ability to express themselves well, but also need to have a rich knowledge base and the ability to think deeply. ability to flexibly adapt language style and presentation to different topics and audience groups. for different new media platforms, such as microblogging, wechat, short video podcast hosts need to learn and master the corresponding techniques and rules, so as to better use the art of language to create. 2.3. individualised style in language arts in the new media era, people are increasingly pursuing personalised and diverse styles for broadcasting and hosting. presenters need to build their personal brand image and mould their unique language style and delivery to attract and retain audiences. on the new media platform, broadcast hosts can choose different language styles to create according to the needs of different programme types and audience groups. whether it's a formal news report, a passionate sports commentary or a humorous entertainment programme. all require the presenter to have rich language skills and be able to use different language styles in order to capture the attention of the audience. for example, the presenter may present in a humorous style, the use humorous expressions to tell interesting mailto:topacademicjournals@gmail.com american journal of art and communication vol.8 , issue3 mayjune 2023; 1252 columbia rd nw, washington dc, united states https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac; mail: topacademicjournals@gmail.com 10 | american journal of art and communication | https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac stories or create funny situations to increase the interest of the programme in order to attract the audience's attention and bring them a sense of joy and relaxation. of course, presenters can also use their usual style of language to bring their audience closer, with a view to bringing them a sense of intimacy and trust. through intimate language and natural expressions, the audience is made to feel immersed and a friend-like relationship is established with them. at the same time, a professional style can give viewers a sense of authority and trust. the presenter is required to have rich professional knowledge and good oral presentation skills to deliver information with fluency, accuracy and clarity of language and provide professional interpretation and viewpoints. 3. analysis of the current situation of the language art of broadcasting hosting in the new media era 3.1. insufficiently standardised expression of language arts in broadcasting and hosting new media age broadcasters may need to cover various fields of expertise, but sometimes they may not be adequately prepared or have a poor understanding of the relevant fields, resulting in inaccurate or incorrect expressions. they may not fully grasp the normative requirements for intonation of voice and lack the correct pronunciation and techniques to refine their expertise. the china radio and television corporation (crtc) has implemented the standardisation of putonghua, but there are still some broadcasting hosts who have irregularities in pronunciation, intonation and speed of speech. for example, some broadcasters may use inaccurate vocabulary or wording in pursuit of sensationalism or to attract attention, which may mislead the audience or create misunderstanding. at the same time, in the new media era, broadcasting hosts are often faced with enormous public opinion pressure and commercialisation. in order to cater for viewer preferences and seek high ratings or click-throughs, the some broadcast presenters may lower the standard of language expression and adopt vulgarisation and pan-entertainment to attract the audience, thus leading to irregularities in language expression. over-expression of verbalisation is also a reflection of the irregularity of broadcasting in the expression of language arts. in order to cater for the tastes of young viewers, some hosts use too many colloquial expressions in their programmes, while neglecting the use of standardised language. this can give the audience an impression of informality or unprofessionalism and lower the quality of the programme. 3.2. the quality of the content of broadcasting language arts needs to be improved due to the need for efficient communication and engaging users in the new media era, broadcast hosts often pursue speed and flow at the expense of deeper thinking about content. they seldom have time for thorough research and preparation, resulting in superficial works, shallow knowledge, and formalised language arts that fail to provide audiences with truly valuable information. for example, in order to attract the attention of the audience and pursue a high hit rate, some broadcasters may tend to use superficial and vulgar expressions. in this case, the content often lacks depth and reflection, and does not have a positive effect on enhancing the knowledge and aesthetic taste of the audience. in addition to this, due to the ease of access to information in the new media age, the some broadcasters may refer directly to other online sources or media reports without independent thinking and in-depth research. this results in their content being characterised by similarity and sameness, and a lack of originality and innovation. at the same time, in the era of new media, the phenomenon of the flood of information and the uneven quality of content continues to emerge. due to the limitations of time and the amount of information, it is difficult for a broadcaster to dig deep and accurately deliver complex content in a short period mailto:topacademicjournals@gmail.com american journal of art and communication vol.8 , issue3 mayjune 2023; 1252 columbia rd nw, washington dc, united states https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac; mail: topacademicjournals@gmail.com 11 | american journal of art and communication | https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac of time, which brings certain difficulties to the creation. for such a status quo, the linguistic artistry of broadcasting and hosting requires deep thinking, broad knowledge and a solid foundation of literacy in order to present high-quality work. 3.3. the aesthetic pursuit of language art in broadcasting and hosting is insufficient in the expression of language arts in broadcasting, a good presenter should be able to establish a connection with the audience through language arts emotional resonance. however there are some presenters who may not have fully tapped into the ability to express emotion, resulting in an increased distance from the audience and an inability to truly evoke empathy. in the era of new media, the dissemination of information knows no borders, and audiences come from different cultural fields. the language art of broadcasting should be able to take into account and respect the characteristics and aesthetic pursuits of different cultures. yet some facilitators may lack sensitivity to this and overlook the implications of cultural diversity. passing on and carrying forward the excellent language arts and culture is the duty of the broadcast host. respecting history, learning and passing on classical culture and classic works. incorporate the traditional language arts into modern broadcasting expression, so that the audience can feel the rhythm and beauty of the language. facing the background of the competitive environment, broadcasting hosts need to attract the interest of the audience through the unique style of personality and innovative ways of expression. some presenters may lack individuality and originality, relying too much on templated expressions, resulting in a lack of distinctive charisma and formality. nowadays, many presenters pursue flamboyant words and modifications in their artistic expressions, but neglect the truthfulness and accuracy of their contents. they may overemphasise the form of expression and ignore the very core of the message as a way to grab the audience's attention. although this may produce results in the short term, it lacks in-depth thinking and rational analysis. 4. cultivation strategies for broadcast hosting in the new media era 4.1. enhancing the professionalism of broadcast presenters in the new media era, broadcast hosts need to have more comprehensive qualities. such as advertising planning, public relations skills, and oral presentation. to improve the language skills of broadcasting hosts, you can read aloud, memorise and write to improve your language skills.[3]at the same time, attention should also be paid to enriching one's vocabulary and making flexible use of various rhetorical devices and grammatical rules. for the training strategy plan of broadcasting hosts, attention should be paid to the development of these qualities in order to improve the competitiveness of broadcasting hosts in the workplace. practical training is what really hones the skills of the broadcast presenter. for broadcasting hosts, theoretical knowledge is important, but focus on practical training is also the key to ambition. through simulation training a large number of practical projects, such as simulated programme hosting, interview explanation, on-site reporting, and so on, as a way to improve the practical ability of broadcasting hosts. in addition to traditional verbal and vocal skills, broadcast presenters need to have a variety of skills such as video production, editing, and studio operations. these skills should be focussed on with a view to adapting the presenter to a diverse range of platforms and job requirements. as a rapidly evolving and frequently changing field, the broadcasters need to stay on top of their studies and continue to improve their abilities and keep learning with a view to keeping up with the latest developments in the industry. mailto:topacademicjournals@gmail.com american journal of art and communication vol.8 , issue3 mayjune 2023; 1252 columbia rd nw, washington dc, united states https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac; mail: topacademicjournals@gmail.com 12 | american journal of art and communication | https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac 4.2. keeping up with new media trends nowadays, as the trend of media development further strengthens, broadcasting hosts need to keep up with the development trend of new media and the application of technology, and continue to cultivate broadcasting hosts' in-depth understanding and use of new media platforms. such as live streaming platforms, short video platforms, social media, etc., so that broadcast hosts can use these platforms to communicate and interact proficiently. at the same time, various new technologies and applications continue to emerge in the new media era, such as live streaming, virtual reality, and artificial intelligence. broadcast presenters should keep abreast of the application of these new technologies and learn to apply them to their work in order to better interact and communicate with their audience. mastering social media operations is a skill that broadcasters should have in the new media age. social media has become one of the most important channels for new media communication, and broadcast presenters should familiarise themselves with the commonly used social media platforms. for example, microblogging, microblogging, jitterbugging and so on. and learn to run and promote your content effectively. you can keep up to date with the latest social media trends by taking a specialised social media operations course or following relevant industry news. understanding the latest developments in the industry is an important way to train broadcasters to keep up with new media trends. moderators can obtain relevant information by following authoritative media in the industry, attending industry seminars or joining professional associations, and make timely adjustments and improvements to their work. of course, with the advent of the new media era, the audiovisual habits of some viewers have changed, and they are no longer satisfied with a single traditional programme format. broadcast presenters should actively experiment with innovative programme formats that combine interactive, entertaining participatory design of content that meets the needs of new media users to increase audience stickiness and participation. 4.3. enhancement of the ethical qualities of broadcast presenters nowadays, in the redundant environment of fierce competition in the society, establishing correct values is an ethical cultivation that should be necessary for broadcasting hosts. for broadcasting hosts, establishing a correct outlook on life, values and professional ethics, and clarifying their responsibilities and roles are the basis and key to becoming a qualified host. being clear about your responsibilities and roles is the foundation and key to being a competent facilitator. the announcer should be clear about his/her responsibilities and authority and work legally and compliantly. it is important to respect professional conduct and ethics, and not to violate legal and moral boundaries. strictly abide by the code of conduct of the profession and do not take advantage of their position for personal gain or abuse of power. it should uphold the principles of truthfulness, objectivity, impartiality and responsibility, adhere to the bottom line of professional ethics and improve its own quality. for individuals themselves, they should be careful with their words and actions, always consciously restrain their words and actions, regulate their behaviour, focus on self-reflection and self-improvement, and lead the audience by the power of example. in the face of the process of delivering information, the broadcast hosts should maintain a cautious and prudent attitude, respect the facts, and refrain from false propaganda and misleading reports. be an independent thinker and be able to convey information rationally and objectively. podcasters need to always keep in mind that they are the public's messenger, and concern for the public interest and avoidance of misleading mailto:topacademicjournals@gmail.com american journal of art and communication vol.8 , issue3 mayjune 2023; 1252 columbia rd nw, washington dc, united states https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac; mail: topacademicjournals@gmail.com 13 | american journal of art and communication | https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac or irresponsible statements. for new media organisations, professional ethics training for broadcasters can be strengthened to improve their professionalism and ethics, and also establish appropriate monitoring mechanisms to correct and discipline inappropriate behaviour and words to develop a favourable professional ecology.[4] 5. conclusions with the rise of the new media age, the indeed, it has brought about an impact on traditional broadcasting, and the art of language has been transformed, leading to uneven and disparate talents in broadcasting. in the face of such a status quo, we should enhance the characteristics of the language art of broadcasting and hosting with diverse expressions, diversified creations and personalised styles. nowadays, in the face of a series of problems in broadcasting and hosting, it is all the more important for us to discipline ourselves with high standards and norms. the aim is to create high-quality content and the requirement to have a personalised aesthetic sense, with a view to raising the profile of the industry. strategies to enhance broadcast hosting training are key factors in the development of hosting in the new media age. hosts need to improve on their own professionalism, ethics, and industry trends, apply the new technology of new media to the training of broadcasting host, and take the essence of its traditional training mode, but also to strengthen the development of technology in the era of new media, so as to cultivate more excellent broadcasting host talent. references tsang, c.h., & lu, b. (2020). research on the construction of evaluation system of chinese audio book broadcasting. jiangxi institute of clothing series (2), 8. li dan. (2022). inheritance and innovation strategy of broadcasting and hosting art in the new media era. journal of chinese radio and television (05),78-80+93. tsang, l. p. (2020). focusing on the development of tv news broadcasting creative samples in the new media era a review of the art of television news broadcasting creativity. china radio and television journal (1), 1. chen, yue. (2018). language art and cultivation strategy of broadcast hosting in the new media era. media forum (20), 58-59. mailto:topacademicjournals@gmail.com american journal of art and communication vol.8, issue 2; march-april 2023; issn: 2994-0540 impact factor: 6.91 1252 columbia rd nw, washington dc, united states https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac; mail: topacademicjournals@gmail.com 39 | american journal of art and communication | https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac evolutionary insights into the genesis of visual art dr. emily a. johnson senior lecturer and adjunct faculty mentor, moser college benedictine university, usa. abstract: this discourse delves into the origins of the fine arts, particularly the visual arts, through the lens of darwinian evolution and inherited traits. employing a primarily materialist philosophical ontology and a scientific epistemology, it offers an unconventional perspective on art history by approaching it from a biological historiographical standpoint. rather than proposing a singular hereditary origin for the visual arts, this discourse explores the possibility that artistic creation and appreciation may also have genetic and material underpinnings within the human as a material entity. keywords: fine arts, visual arts, darwinian evolution, inherited traits, biological historiography introduction this discourse, concerning the origins of the fine arts (and more specifically the visual arts), is explored through darwinian evolution and inherited traits. using a primarily materialist philosophical ontology, and a scientific epistemology, i hope to explain art history from a biological historiography. in this discourse, i will not propose a sole hereditary origin for the visual arts, but allow for a view that is also not solely anthropologically and/or sociologically driven. in other words, the creation and study of the visual arts, need not be originated in only as a social construct or cultural product, but might also be a genetically, materially originated function of the human as a material entity. an exploration of primate evolution will allow for a greater understanding of the philosophy of art, not necessarily the practice or purpose. that is, at some level we can speculate that mailto:topacademicjournals@gmail.com american journal of art and communication vol.8, issue 2; march-april 2023; issn: 2994-0540 impact factor: 6.91 1252 columbia rd nw, washington dc, united states https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac; mail: topacademicjournals@gmail.com 40 | american journal of art and communication | https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac deep-rooted in the human subconscious there is: 1) an instinct to create, 2) an instinct to value or appreciate beauty and 3) an instinct to imagine (by faculty of symbolic thinking, conceptualization and at some level deception). i will rely on thomas kuhn, who pioneered the historiography of science, and draw parallels between his outline of revolutions punctuating the ontology of science. i will apply this historiographic methodology and when applied to the visual arts, art history becomes: 1) a discipline of knowledge (not just of practice) and 2) an evolutionary advantage (a survival adaptation by means of natural selection). adopting a perspective of art in a similar fashion to kuhn viewing science as a series of paradigms disrupted by scientific revolutions; we are able to understand art as progressive and not merely aesthetically-orientated (based solely on cultural or population’s taste). likewise, by adopting a materialist perspective we are able to see the nature of artistic development, the patterns formed with visual art’s origins, andneed not rely on only a progressive construct of art history but a thematic and contextual one, as well. the historical dialogue thesis by exploring the physical, paleontological evidence and anthropologic findings, this discourse will conclude there are three fundamental evolutionary adaptations which have allowed the higher primates to develop art: 1) the physical adaptations and success of the primate lineages (including the genus homo), 2) the development of interdependence in the primate lineages and 3) the development of intelligence. these three factors will help us discover (at least in part) the origins of the visual arts. combined, these faculties allow for not only the appreciation of the aesthetic, but also the manipulation of natural material to create the aesthetic. furthermore, the best way to analyze art through criticism or historical perspective, is not through abstract philosophy, phenomenology, or theory, but rather through a scientific exploration of evolutionary sources of the aesthetic sense. this scientific methodology, owes much to the historiography of art history (and criticism) established by the great thinkers of the continental tradition. however, the next step in the progression of this thinking, is to embrace the rational, the testable, and the scientific. mailto:topacademicjournals@gmail.com american journal of art and communication vol.8, issue 2; march-april 2023; issn: 2994-0540 impact factor: 6.91 1252 columbia rd nw, washington dc, united states https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac; mail: topacademicjournals@gmail.com 41 | american journal of art and communication | https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac materialist perspective the western worldview owes as much too continental philosophy, as much as it does to materialism. specifically, the materialism which so embodies a scientific methodology (such as expressed by darwinism), and that method’s origin in marxist dialectical materialism. what we know as science or the scientific approach, is uniquely indebted to marixsm, if not as its progenitor then certainly as science can be applied to the human, to the human mind, to the human condition, and to human sociology (psychology, behavior, culture etc.). under this model, all things – including human consciousness – are products of material. materialism thus rejects idealism, and describes everything, including the faculties of mind, as processes of material. the human entity is thus a material entity, and its ability to sense the aesthetics, the ethics, the ontology, and the epistemology of the world, lie in physicalism not in some metaphysicalism. matter is the explanation – in totality –for intelligence, consciousness, nature, space, time, history, culture, behavior, and cause and effect (marx, 47, 96). although similar to theorists before him, marx describes the progress of the human mind and of human history (its society, its culture, and its civilization) as moving forward. but unlike his predecessors, marx argues that it is not human ideas that define succession, it is matter (marx, 11). for marx, this meant the drive lies in the material needs: the physical requirements for existence, happiness, justice and aesthetic. marx’s materialism is rooted in his economic theories, specifically production, alienation and labor. the motivation of historical society comes from the antagonism between the classes and their pursuits of the material (marx, 50 – 53). the enterprise of humanity is the development of new societies through evolution of the material world: material needs, material existence. spirit and idea have little place in marx’s theory of human nature (marx, 10). though there are many objections to materialism, especially from disciplines in philosophy and religion, it would be hard press to argue that the western tradition is not deeply rooted in materialism. the natural extension of marxist philosophy of nature leads one to charles darwin and sigmund freud. under these models, the human being – its nature and its mailto:topacademicjournals@gmail.com american journal of art and communication vol.8, issue 2; march-april 2023; issn: 2994-0540 impact factor: 6.91 1252 columbia rd nw, washington dc, united states https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac; mail: topacademicjournals@gmail.com 42 | american journal of art and communication | https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac consciousness – become reduced to the most fundamental matter. under darwin, the human is no different than any animal or living organism. the human’s brain is nothing but the next progression of the ape’s, the dog’s, the reptile’s, the fish’s etc. his motivations and his enterprises are natural ones, defined by his material needs. the human ceases being a prize of this world, and is diminished to matter – the interaction of his matter, either in body or brain. his love, his hate, his hunger, his fear, his deceptions, his desires are no different than any other animal’s. the human is a creature of survival, and does what it can to survive best. survival in this sense is the preservation of matter. and under this context, there is little room for idealism or spiritualism. freud takes us one step further in materialism, by reducing the human psyche to chemical processes and interactions of psychical processes. not only is the human comprised of simple biology, but his personality, his character, his identity are mere expressions of the psychical apparatus. such a reduction, brings the human being to the most elementary materialism. it is because of darwin and freud, that i argue the western tradition is materialist. it is so, not without objection, but as an age – as a society at this time and place – the western tradition is post-marxist, post-darwinian, and post-freudian. the worldview cannot escape its history. even those who object to the purely materialist perspective, can only do so as a rejection of it, or a compromise under dualism. we cannot undo the theories of the preceding culture. and thus, we either must react to them, or embody them. our age is defined by this kind of materialism. a materialist historiography of the human knowledge is the next litmus in testing the path history and society takes. arguments for materialism in art history i cannot overstate the importance of marxist, darwinian and freudian materialism. this perspective is unique, to the modern and the postmodern, in that it allows for the overcoming of the vagueness of idealism, rationalism, and transcendentalism. the definitions of mind, nous, spirit and soul are certainly vague, because of their intangibility. in a post-materialist world, it is difficult to argue for properties that have no testable, repeatable, and/or observable presence. mailto:topacademicjournals@gmail.com american journal of art and communication vol.8, issue 2; march-april 2023; issn: 2994-0540 impact factor: 6.91 1252 columbia rd nw, washington dc, united states https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac; mail: topacademicjournals@gmail.com 43 | american journal of art and communication | https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac materialism corrects the issues of understanding how the phenomenal and the noumenal worlds interact. often, materialism comes under such criticisms as conceivability, conditionalism, dualism, and disembodiment arguments. the conceivability argument is based on logical fallacy. if metaphysical phenomena are possible to conceive, then such phenomena are possible to exist – if not physically, certainly logically. however, what use is such an argument when trying to understand human nature? simply because i conceive of something, does not mean that is exists, can exist, or will exist. in fact, quite the contrary is true. materialism is not false simply because metaphysics can be conceived of – in fact, using the same argument, metaphysics can be unraveled. the conditional argument is that some experiences or objects are difficult to classify because they are provisional, unconfirmed, or subjective.materialism supports an objective expression of matter, and thus all matter should experience other matter in the same way. we know this not to be the case, from our own personal experiences, as well as the descriptions of experiences by others. however, like the conceivability argument, this is simply a logical fallacy. the apparent hole in the conditional argument is that subjectivity refutes the possibility of objectivity. there are scores of theories and thought experiments that argue our limited perception of reality is simply denying our senses the objective truth. interestingly enough, such theories actually support the conceivability argument, in that if our perceptions are limited then other versions of reality are conceivable – especially metaphysical spheres. dualism and the disembodiment state that there is a division between the physical body and another sort of body (a transcendent body, a spiritual body, a virtual body etc.). yet dualism or disembodiment, create intrinsic problems: violation of the conservation of energy, the simplest solution is the best solution, and most importantly, how does the metaphysical world interact with the physical. i think the reason materialism has survived the western consciousness, is due to its simplicity, its elegance, and its utility. conditionalism, conceivability, dualism, and other arguments, almost always seem to not suffice in refuting materialism because they rely on premises that: 1) are not consistent with our experience with the world, 2) violate our intuitions and sense of order, 3) are not universally shared, and/or 4) are too vague. materialism removes the “gray areas” between black and white. mailto:topacademicjournals@gmail.com american journal of art and communication vol.8, issue 2; march-april 2023; issn: 2994-0540 impact factor: 6.91 1252 columbia rd nw, washington dc, united states https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac; mail: topacademicjournals@gmail.com 44 | american journal of art and communication | https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac with this said, it would be hard to refute that materialism has dominated the western consciousness. even though many reconcile materialism with metaphysical perspectives, what materialism offers is a worldview that does not necessitate itself on metaphysical ontologies. in the postmodern era, the age has been defined by materialism or the reaction to it. as we live in the current age, it makes sense to incorporate materialism in our discourse. materialism propagates, disseminated throughout our experiences. we trust in materialism when describing the world, phenomena, process, and procedure. it is appropriate then to use materialism, in any discipline. we are comfortable with materialist axioms in science, mathematics, and other empirical disciplines. but it is also a practical foundation for discussions of aesthetic disciplines such as art. major thinkers on the topic thomas kuhn and the paradigm shift in the structure of scientific revolutions, thomas kuhn proposed a linear model for the progression of science. in this model science maintains a paradigm of accepted truths, and undergoes a violent change during a period of revolution ultimately concluding in a paradigm shift. such examples include the copernican, newtonian, darwinian and einstenian revolutions – each time the accepted ideas underwent drastic change (kuhn, 94). for all intents and purposes, thomas kuhn’s description of a paradigm becomes applicable to both philosophy (and historiography) and science. this is not as preposterous as it might sound, as these two disciplines historically were considered one in the same under the heading natural philosopher (up until the followers of newton began practicing what we might call true science) (kuhn, 19). kuhn’s basis is that philosophy/science have quite a linear evolution; development moves from one paradigm to the next, crushing the preexisting mode of thought. through advancement, paradigms shift, creating changes in the understanding/use of science. with each shift greater possibilities and circumstances arise. kuhn writes: “successive transition from one paradigm to another via revolution is the usual developmental pattern of mature science” (kuhn, 12). mailto:topacademicjournals@gmail.com american journal of art and communication vol.8, issue 2; march-april 2023; issn: 2994-0540 impact factor: 6.91 1252 columbia rd nw, washington dc, united states https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac; mail: topacademicjournals@gmail.com 45 | american journal of art and communication | https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac kuhn’s definition of paradigm relies on two philosophical standards: 1) ontology and 2) epistemology. “ontology [and] epistemology used to be the major concern of philosophy” (mayr, 78), but today they have been absorbed by science. as science’s roots lie in natural philosophy, it is no surprise that a paradigm requires both: the accepted truths about existence and the methods by which we ascertain knowledge. in this sense, we can think of the word paradigm as the metaphorical box. this box contains all the preexisting knowledge acquired (ontological views) and ways of using this knowledge (epistemological). inside this box we would find a set of rules by which a society or group of scientists has accepted. these rules form a pattern (a set of practices) which defines the shape and size of the box (that is, the discipline itself in a particular moment in history). the paradigm shift is then thinking outside of the box. historically, the most widely accepted paradigms have had two key factors: 1) unprecedented achievement; which attracts new generations of scientists (steering them away from other paradigms) and 2) open-endedness; allowing these new generations to resolve new problems within the paradigm (kuhn, 23-24). this allows for scientists to routinely work through research and experimentation within the paradigm (not having to develop a new paradigm). slowly, scientists accumulate data to support (or in some cases deny) a broad theory. this description of science, the relationship of paradigms and paradigm shifts is defined as normal science by kuhn. kuhn proposes that empirical data is only possible and meaningful through prior paradigms which shape the experience of that data (kuhn, 121).although some philosophers and historiographers of science disagree with the kuhnian model of normal science, the paradigm serves as an organizing principle within science. the paradigm establishes criteria and parameters which is precisely the purpose of the scientific method – verifiability, and reproducibility which standardizes science. these qualities are what give science preeminent position in dictating truth, objectivity and fact in the western, and the materialist, worldview. charles darwin and the evolution of humankind the current paradigm accepted by all scientific disciplines, is evolution. although the current incarnation of evolution is a combination of charles darwin’s natural selection and modern understanding of genetics, darwin was unaware of the mechanism which drove evolution. at mailto:topacademicjournals@gmail.com american journal of art and communication vol.8, issue 2; march-april 2023; issn: 2994-0540 impact factor: 6.91 1252 columbia rd nw, washington dc, united states https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac; mail: topacademicjournals@gmail.com 46 | american journal of art and communication | https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac his time of publishing on the origin of species, genetics had yet to be discovered. but the mechanism is not fundamental to evolution, at least not in a philosophical or western worldview. when charles darwin first published his theory of natural selection in regards to species transmutation, he did more than develop a mechanism for evolution. the hypotheses proposed in on the origins of species have been applied to a multitude of disciplines, including: economics, sociology, psychology, education and eugenics. in on the origin of the species, darwin thoroughly outlines his theory. natural selection is the process by which favorable traits are passed down through variation. in this model of evolution, organisms change, develop and advance through circumstances by which variation allows for the fittest creatures to survive and succeed. darwin defines success based on reproducibility – that is, a species which is able to maintain a healthy population has been selected naturally to defy extinction (darwin, 28). the importance of this model lies within the mode by which organisms can be successful. unlike other variations of development and materialism, evolution by natural selection places emphasis on two key components: 1) fitness and 2) inheritable fitness. the first of these components can be defined as the ability to succeed; specifically the mode by which an organism succeeds. it is the collection of traits which allow the organism to continue and fulfill component two – the passing of heritable traits to future generations. a member of a given species survives mainly to produce more of its species. those offspring will thus possess the traits which are best suited for fitness, as those organisms are the most likely to survive (darwin, 238, 512). and those organisms which survive are able to reproduce (conversely, those organisms which do not reproduce must not have possessed the ideal traits). frogs, which secret a poison in their skin, can evade predators. their bright coloration warns predators of their toxins and therefore allows them a better chance at survival. those frogs which have a similar coloration but do not possess the toxin, are also likely to survive because predators will be less inclined to take a chance and eat these frogs (for fear of poisoning). the trait then of bright coloration is a trait of fitness. and has been naturally selected to be passed on to generation after generation because it: 1) works as a deterrent to mailto:topacademicjournals@gmail.com american journal of art and communication vol.8, issue 2; march-april 2023; issn: 2994-0540 impact factor: 6.91 1252 columbia rd nw, washington dc, united states https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac; mail: topacademicjournals@gmail.com 47 | american journal of art and communication | https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac predators, 2) increases the chance of survival and 3) those frogs that are not eaten are able to reproduce. “[evolution] has encountered considerable resistance… among essentialismcommitted philosophers” (mayr, 34). “essentialism, with its emphasis on discontinuity, constancy, and typical values, dominated the thinking of the western world” (mayr, 38). in this view, all bodies or materials have a specific set of characteristic properties (essences). these essences are comparable to plato’s forms or ideals – essentialism is an extension of platonic idealism: all objects can be quantified and qualified by their substance (or in platonic sense, their ideal form). we can see disciplines both in darwin’s time and the current era which adhere to such idealism and shun the transmutive changes proposed by on the origins of species. such debates permeate culture through religious and societal values. however, the lasting revolution of world-view, that darwin has created, is not in the acceptance of change, necessarily, but is in the idea of change. that is, in a post-darwinian society, the western world can no long simply accept essentialism. in order to uphold essentialism and denounce darwinism, the western world has to: 1) acknowledge that change is believed by some, 2) muster evidence that change is impossible and 3) conclude the darwin is in error. this is an extremely different world-view than merely accepting essentialism. the language in the previous statements is quite deliberate. acknowledgement is crucial; otherwise an argument cannot be had. evidence is needed; otherwise the argument is lost. once the essentialist acknowledges that some believe in change and has gathered evidence against change, s/he must prove that change is impossible. if s/he cannot prove change is impossible, then change is possible – quite the “slippery slope” to probable and likely. finally, the essentialist must prove darwinism is in error. the word evolution need not be used here, again deliberate. darwinism is subtly different from evolution, in that it bears a philosophical connotation (such as platonism or marxism). and for the essentialist it is a fundamental difference in philosophy that forbids him or her from accepting darwinism, not a scientific differing. mailto:topacademicjournals@gmail.com american journal of art and communication vol.8, issue 2; march-april 2023; issn: 2994-0540 impact factor: 6.91 1252 columbia rd nw, washington dc, united states https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac; mail: topacademicjournals@gmail.com 48 | american journal of art and communication | https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac either accepting darwinism and/or evolution or denouncing darwin, the hypotheses of on the origins of species, have had sweeping effects on modern society and modern worldviews. “the question is therefore legitimate as to what role evolution and darwinism play in modern thought. it is perhaps fair to state at the outset that no well-informed biologist doubts evolution… …[and] the vast majority of well-informed lay people accept evolution as readily as the fact that the earth circles the sun and not the reverse. whatever opposition to evolution survives is restricted to… …fundamentalist sects” (mayr, 625). “a rational debate between scientists and fundamentalists is impossible because one camp rejects supernatural revelation, the other camp scientific fact” (mayr, 626). as a world-view or as a scientific mechanism, darwinism affects all aspects of the human species. “in the initial pages of [darwin’s] first transmutation notebook (notebook b), he observed that even mind & instinct become influenced as the result of adaptation to new circumstances” (mayr, 92).darwin proposed that over long periods of time, the human mind, morals and emotions had progressively developed out of animal origins. a multitude of theorists have furthered this idea. darwinism, as applied to the human being, allowed herbert spencerto develop social darwinism. joseph a. schumpeter’s the theory of economic development was the forerunner of evolutionary economics. the works: sociobiology: the new synthesis by edward o. wilson and the selfish gene by richard dawkins are seminal in the joining of darwinism with psychology, philosophy and sociobiology. in this light, human behavior and the human psyche can be seen, as darwin had imagined, as adaptations and environmentally selected. psychological characteristics of the human being, including: memory, perception and language, are now viewed as evolutionary adaptations no different from other physical adaptations such as walking upright or using tools. if behavior and communication can be viewed as results of darwinism, other disciplines can also find their origins in evolution. psychology, sociology, economics, sociobiology, anthropology, philosophy, morals, and ethics are among the multitude of disciplines which describe facets of the human being. no one discipline has sole reign over the nature of humanity, nor does any one discipline seem to be untouched by the theories of darwin. at some point, each of these fields can either mailto:topacademicjournals@gmail.com american journal of art and communication vol.8, issue 2; march-april 2023; issn: 2994-0540 impact factor: 6.91 1252 columbia rd nw, washington dc, united states https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac; mail: topacademicjournals@gmail.com 49 | american journal of art and communication | https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac directly see the impacts of evolution on the human being or can indirectly use darwinism to explain how the human being behaves. the hard and soft sciences are no longer the only fields which can use darwin’s mechanism and evolution. once the human mind and human behavior can in some sense be reduced to evolution, then all products of the human can be reduced to evolution. in order to avoid, oversimplifying the complex processes which formulate culture and society, this discourse merely argues that culture and society are products of evolution. this is not to say that culture and society are only products of evolution, but that evolution played a role (and somewhat significant role) in their formation. darwinism can thus be applied to three specific realms of the human social construct: 1) the capability to symbolically think and social learning which is used primarily to transmit knowledge, beliefs and behaviors, 2) the set of attitudes, values and practices shared by a specific group, and 3) the appreciation of aesthetics and the tastes of a specific group. in short, these three criteria comprise culture and the disciplines of the humanities. darwinism is no longer remitted to the sciences alone, but music, language, literature, history and the visual arts (as products of the human social construct and human behavior) can now be viewed within the darwinist framework. this is the legacy of darwin’s theory and its application to the modern, world view. evidential support evolutionary theory darwin illustrates a great many examples and justifications for “evolution by means of natural selection” (darwin, 99). darwin refutes ideas like those of lamarck’s in which animals respond to their environment, develop a physical trait and then are able to pass it on to their offspring. instead of this mode, it is the fight – the competition which creates fitness and natural selection. all life forms thus undergo this same process: 1. organisms of a species produce more offspring than can grow to adulthood. organisms of this species will continue to produce offspring until they themselves are unable to (death being the chief reason). mailto:topacademicjournals@gmail.com american journal of art and communication vol.8, issue 2; march-april 2023; issn: 2994-0540 impact factor: 6.91 1252 columbia rd nw, washington dc, united states https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac; mail: topacademicjournals@gmail.com 50 | american journal of art and communication | https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac 2. however, even though organisms continue to produce great numbers of offspring, populations remain approximately constant. there are little fluctuations in natural population sizes. 3. organisms within a species mate within their species. if populations remain constant, mating must be limited. mating resources within a species are therefore highly sought after. 4. likewise, food resources are limited and also stay approximately constant. constant populations of organisms must compete for the same, limited food resources. 5. competition creates a struggle for survival. organisms must struggle with members of their own species in order to obtain food resources and to obtain rights/opportunities for mating. 6. no two individual organisms of a species are identical. there is variation within every species – although less variation in members of the same species as with members from differing species. 7. variation is inheritable as illustrated by artificial selection. domestication is the isolation of variations that are favorable for man’s usage. if man is capable of such isolation, nature is certainly capable of the same. 8. some variants in a species will be more favorable than others. like domesticated organisms (whose variations are deemed more fit by man’s needs), wild organisms will express variations which are better modes of fitness based on resources, environment and circumstance. 9. those organisms with superior traits and are better suited for the environment will gain an upper-hand in obtaining food resources and mating resources. these organisms will breed, where those organisms with variations which are less suited for the environment will not breed. 10. those organisms which breed pass down traits to their offspring. again, this can be seen in domesticated animals as this is the process of domestication. inheriting traits from parent organisms is how a species is manipulated for man’s use. likewise, nature is able to manipulate a species phenotype to suit the environment. 11. surviving organisms which breed and obtain food resources continue to produce offspring while less-fit organisms die out. mailto:topacademicjournals@gmail.com american journal of art and communication vol.8, issue 2; march-april 2023; issn: 2994-0540 impact factor: 6.91 1252 columbia rd nw, washington dc, united states https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac; mail: topacademicjournals@gmail.com 51 | american journal of art and communication | https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac 12. over great periods of time, populations continue to adapt to their environment. they slowly and gradually evolve in response to the environment. each generation gaining slightly better traits and passing these traits on to their offspring. accumulating these traits over time allows for the development of new species. 13. this is evolution by natural selection. (summarized from darwin, chap 2 – 5) although darwin was trying to explain the diversification and development of life through transmutation, his work, itself, was also a catalyst of transmutation – a world-view shift of society as a whole. any discipline, post-darwinian thought, must address the idea of change. in a kuhnian framework, change can be organized through paradigms. if kuhn’s paradigms are not actual constructs, but simply theoretical arguments used to describe change, it is irrelevant to the materialist worldview. but furthermore, understanding the origin of art as a biological function, can be represented like kuhn’s succession of revolutions and paradigms. visual art can be seen as progressive, from step and development to step and development. and just as so many of our cultural and sociological paradigms can follow kuhn’s map, so can art as purely biological (the ultimate expression of materialism). art is an evolutionary adaptation. primitive ancestry although experts disagree, the oldest primate ancestor may be purgatorius, a small, lemurlike, insectivorous animal from the late cretaceous period (approximately 65 million years ago). by the eocene epoch (54 million to 33 million years ago) the ancestors of tarsiers (tarsiidae), the ancestors of lemurs and lorises (adapidae) and the ancestors of monkeys and apes (omomyidae) had evolved. these groups would eventually evolve to include the approximately 350 different primate extant species, including the prosimians, monkeys and apes. as a group, primates are incredibly successful, demonstrate a high amount of adaptive diversity and have colonized the tropical and subtropical regions of south america, africa and asia. although the 350 species differ, there are common anatomical adaptations which have helped the order succeed (elton. 283 309). of the primate characteristics, there are five key sets of adaptations, which originally played in a role in survival, but have subsequently allowed for the development of art. these include: mailto:topacademicjournals@gmail.com american journal of art and communication vol.8, issue 2; march-april 2023; issn: 2994-0540 impact factor: 6.91 1252 columbia rd nw, washington dc, united states https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac; mail: topacademicjournals@gmail.com 52 | american journal of art and communication | https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac 1) spatial and depth perception, 2) high degrees of movement, dexterous hands and sensitive fingers, 3) stereoscopic and color vision and visual acuity, 4) extremely enlarged brain equipped with: sensory processing, nervous integration, enlarged cerebral cortex, and brain tissues arranged in folds and fissures, and 5) highly social societies consisting of hierarchies, pair-bonding and paternal care (elton, 283). originally each of these five sets of adaptations was specifically developed for either: 1) food gathering or 2) mating, the two primary functions of any living organism. however they eventually became integral to the creation of art (without any one of the above adaptations, art as we know it, could not be). each of the five sets of adaptations listed above was integral to the primate order’s success and survival. below, table 1.1 illustrates the primary evolutionary advantages and purposes for each of the five sets of adaptations (spuhler, 509 – 561). table 1.1: primary functions of primate adaptations spatial and depth perception ability to see dimensions, judge distance and view space; vital for an arboreal animal required to leap branches, ascend/descend trees quickly and view the forest canopy high degrees of arm movement, dexterous hands and sensitive fingers ability to manipulate and use the environment, as well as grooming; vital for both a foraging animal (aids in food gathering) and a social animal (grooming creates bonds and aids in establishing hierarchies) stereoscopic and color vision and visual acuity ability to see viable food sources and judge quality; vital for animals which rely on fruit as a primary source of nourishment (to this day, most primates find the deepest shades of purple unappetizing, most likely linked to rotting fruit) extremely enlarged brain: enlarged cerebral cortex and ability to understand what the hands are doing, connect senses, communicate threats, make decisions, relate to others, express emotions; integral to sensory processing and nervous integration; fissures and folds maximize brain mailto:topacademicjournals@gmail.com american journal of art and communication vol.8, issue 2; march-april 2023; issn: 2994-0540 impact factor: 6.91 1252 columbia rd nw, washington dc, united states https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac; mail: topacademicjournals@gmail.com 53 | american journal of art and communication | https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac brain tissues arranged in folds and fissures surface area without placing a higher demand on skull size for the enlarged brain highly social societies consisting of hierarchies, pairbonding and paternal care ability to learn from past generations, communicate with others and understand the environment; integral to the development of social groupings, hierarchies, sharing food, warning members of danger and creating communication these primary functions of primate adaptations eventually allowed for secondary functions, which in turn allowed for the development of the three specific realms of human culture (and the visual arts): 1) the capability to symbolically think and social learning which is used primarily to transmit knowledge, beliefs and behaviors, 2) the set of attitudes, values and practices shared by a specific group, and 3) the appreciation of aesthetics and the tastes of a specific group. a parallel can be drawn to insect flight. “insects owe much of their extraordinary evolutionary success to flight. compared with their flightless ancestors, flying insects are better equipped to evade predators, search food sources and colonize new habitats. because their survival and evolution depend so crucially on flight performance, it is hardly surprising that the flightrelated sensory, physiological, behavioral and biomechanical traits of insects are among the most compelling illustrations of adaptations found in nature” (sane, 4191). the insect wing is thought to have evolved from moveable abdominal gills as found on mayfly juveniles. these gills, filled with nerve endings and veins, may have been used to: 1) sail along the surface of water, 2) as a form of temperature regulation and/or 3) to actively push water over the gill while in still water. as these gills became larger they functioned much like a sail, carrying the insect to other locations. over time sailing became gliding and gliding became flying. all of these movements were an advantage to the insect, allowing it to migrate greater distances and evade predators (sane, 4196). like insect flight, which was originally a function of temperature regulation or breathing, the adaptations for primate art were originally a means of foraging and communication. the spontaneous generation of picasso did not happen, but instead he is a culmination of millions mailto:topacademicjournals@gmail.com american journal of art and communication vol.8, issue 2; march-april 2023; issn: 2994-0540 impact factor: 6.91 1252 columbia rd nw, washington dc, united states https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac; mail: topacademicjournals@gmail.com 54 | american journal of art and communication | https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac of years of adaptations. so by inference of the above insect model and the original five primate adaptations used for survival; this second table 1.2 (as seen below) illustrates how the primary adaptations can be used in the secondary, cultural purposes. table 1.2: secondary functions of primate adaptations spatial and depth perception ability to see and use perspective, proportion and dimension to create representations of the world and its objects high degrees of arm movement, dexterous hands and sensitive fingers ability to use tools for mark-making, control mark placement and develop strong eye-handcoordination stereoscopic and color vision and visual acuity ability to use the elements of design: color, texture, line, shape extremely enlarged brain: enlarged cerebral cortex and brain tissues arranged in folds and fissures ability to use the principles of design: contrast, emphasis, movement, balance, unity, pattern and rhythm based on structuring the above elements of design in meaningful ways by using conceptualization, imagination and appreciation highly social societies consisting of hierarchies, pairbonding and paternal care ability to use art as a communicative tool through the use of symbols, artistic voice, and representations; ability to share these uses and teach younger generations how to be successful artists it is from the original five sets of adaptations that these secondary functions are possible. evidence for this lies not only in the evolution of our own species, but extinct species most closely related to us. further, evidence lies in our closest ancestors. approximately, three million years ago, an australopithecus africanus noticed a peculiarly shaped jasperite stone. it was water worn and cracked, a reddish-brown hue, and approximately two-and-threeeighths of inch wide. australopithecus africanus, an ancient and extinct relative of the human species, is thought mailto:topacademicjournals@gmail.com american journal of art and communication vol.8, issue 2; march-april 2023; issn: 2994-0540 impact factor: 6.91 1252 columbia rd nw, washington dc, united states https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac; mail: topacademicjournals@gmail.com 55 | american journal of art and communication | https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac to have had many ape-like and human-like characteristics (kleiner, 2). like other australopithecines, s/he was bipedal but australopithecus africanus had a slightly larger brain than australopithecus afarensis and more humanoid facial features. this particular australopithecus africanus carried the peculiarly shaped jasperite stone for twenty miles. the immediate question is: why would this australopithecus africanus carry a random pebble from a riverbed to his/her cave dwelling? (kleiner, 2 – 3). in 1925 raymond dart discovered the peculiar pebble with the fossil remains of the australopithecus africanus in the makapansgat cave dwelling. it was immediately speculated, by dart, that the australopithecus africanus who had found the makapansgat pebble had kept it because of its “uncanny resemblance to a human face.” the implication of such a find is that australopithecus africanus, and perhaps other australopithecines, was capable of symbolical thinking and had developed an aesthetic appreciation (kleiner, 3). the discovery of the makapansgat pebble is uniquely important for two reasons: 1) it is direct evidence that the origin of art may have been an evolutionary process and 2) that symbolic thought and aesthetic appreciation may have been evolutionary adaptations. the makapansgat pebble predates the first examples of art by millions of years. this means that the makapansgat pebble may in fact be a step in the evolutionary progression of symbolic thought and aesthetic appreciation; both in themselves adaptations and stages in the origins of art. this can be concluded based on the fact that the australopithecines were in fact human ancestors (or close relatives) and the adaptations they would have evolved would have been past into our own gene-pool. the first citing of true art doesn’t happen until 30,000 bce: cave-paintings found in lascaux, france, stone fetishes found in willendorf, austria and mammothivory carvings found in hohlenstein-stadel, germany are but some examples of the “artistic explosion” occurring around 30,000 bce. this remarkable time-period showcases some of the earliest humans’ artworks which unlike the makapansgat pebble, show an actual manipulation of the environment with purpose. cave murals depict prey animals and hunts, fetishes depict women with engorged breasts and hips, ivory icons depict feline-headed humans, and carvings depict shamans with caribou antlers – all examples of symbolic thinking. mailto:topacademicjournals@gmail.com american journal of art and communication vol.8, issue 2; march-april 2023; issn: 2994-0540 impact factor: 6.91 1252 columbia rd nw, washington dc, united states https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac; mail: topacademicjournals@gmail.com 56 | american journal of art and communication | https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac there certainly is a gap between these works and the makapansgat pebble. if the cavepaintings and stone-fetishes represent the culmination of millions of years of symbolic thinking and aesthetic appreciation, then the makapansgat pebble represents the starting place for that three million year progression. there is an artistic link between our most ancient ancestors and cousins with our more closely related cromagnons, whom responsible for the lascaux cave-paintings and the willendorf fetishes. cro-magnon peoples moved into europe and replaced the neanderthals, ushering in a culture that was no longer comprised merely of tool-makers but of artists. cro-magnon developed true art, and three million years prior australopithecines developed the appreciation for the beautiful and/or important. why did such time pass between the makapansgat pebble and the creation of the willendorf fetishes? perhaps it three-million years is the precise amount of time it takes to move from the step of appreciation to the step of creation (kleiner, 5 – 9). if we think of art as evolving, it is quite plausible that aesthetic appreciation stayed constant for millions of years and was punctuated 32,000 years ago by a quick revolution of artistic discovery and creation. this also fits the kuhnian model, of a lengthy period of the paradigm intact and then a period of crisis sending aesthetic appreciation into paradigm shift. the two paradigms then being: merely the act of appreciation becoming or being replaced by the act of manipulation. this is consistent with the findings, as there seems to be a moment in history when our ancestors became compelled to take control of the process as opposed to being passive partakers. from 30,000 bce onward, there was a “powerful outburst of artistic creativity” (kleiner, 9). across the world, the descendants of cro-magnon would litter the caves, the hills and the rocks with symbols, pictographs, drawings and carvings. was this no less of a revolution than copernicus claiming the sun was the center of the solar system or einstein questioning the proven newtonian laws of physics? was the makapansgat pebble the catalyst for such a kuhnian revolution? the makapansgat pebble cannot be called a fetish or sculpture because the facial impression was created by natural erosion, not by deliberate work of the australopithecus africanus who had found it. but what it does represent is the ability to perceive something more than just the environment, as is. australopithecus africanus was able to create a meaning – however base or simplistic that meaning was – around an object, that otherwise had no use. the mailto:topacademicjournals@gmail.com american journal of art and communication vol.8, issue 2; march-april 2023; issn: 2994-0540 impact factor: 6.91 1252 columbia rd nw, washington dc, united states https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac; mail: topacademicjournals@gmail.com 57 | american journal of art and communication | https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac makapansgat pebble could not be used as a tool for gathering food and was too insignificant to be used as a weapon – but what it could be used for was that it could be appreciated. and the act of appreciation is considered one of the formal steps in creating art. in order for our ancestors to think symbolically and develop aesthetic appreciation, a variety of evolutionary adaptations were necessary. return, to our most primitive ancestors, and therein you will find the groundwork laid. the evolutionary adaptations undertaken by purgatorius would allow for secondary adaptations necessary for australopithecus africanus to begin the steps of art appreciation. eventually, that appreciation would become manipulation. examples of this, can be the human animal british artist, desmond morris, was at one time the curator of mammals at the london zoo, after he was awarded a d.phil. from oxford university for his doctoral thesis on the reproductive behavior of the ten-spined stickleback. he left the zoo in 1966 to pursue a career as a surrealist painter and author. morris’ work, the naked ape: a zoologist's study of the human animal, is in partial a result of his studies at the universities of birmingham and oxford and his work with the london zoo primates. the naked ape focuses on humanity’s relationship with other primates and our striking similarities to the other great apes. “there are 193 living species of monkeys and apes. 192 of them are covered with hair. the exception is a naked ape self-named homo sapiens. this unusual and highly successful species spends a great deal of time examining his higher motives and an equal amount of time studiously ignoring his fundamental ones. he is proud that he has the biggest brain of all the primates, but attempts to conceal the fact that he also has the biggest penis, preferring to accord this honor falsely to the mighty gorilla. he is an intensely vocal, acutely exploratory, over-crowded ape, and it is high time we examined his basic behavior” (morris, 9). as a professional zoologist, morris wrote the naked ape for laypeople, making the biology and behavior of humans more accessible. morris simplifies human behavior and habits to the most fundamental animal instincts. no subject is left untouched, including science and religion. "at first sight, it is surprising that religion has been so successful, but its extreme potency is simply a measure of the strength of our fundamental biological tendency, inherited mailto:topacademicjournals@gmail.com american journal of art and communication vol.8, issue 2; march-april 2023; issn: 2994-0540 impact factor: 6.91 1252 columbia rd nw, washington dc, united states https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac; mail: topacademicjournals@gmail.com 58 | american journal of art and communication | https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac directly from our monkey and ape ancestors, to submit ourselves to an all-powerful, dominant member of the group" (morris, 121). morris draws correlation between groups of humans, submitting, kneeling, closing their eyes, prostrating themselves, chanting and begging the most dominant member of the tribe – the one they call god. morris speculates that this allpowerful being may have in fact been a super-dominant and successful member of our ancestor’s tribe. religion and science are not the only disciplines that morris establishes an evolutionary origin. morris believes art, too, can find its origins in our primitive ancestors – as evidenced by congo the chimpanzee. one of congo’s earlier compositions, morris described as “lyrical abstract impressionism” (morris,124). at the age of two, congo grabbed hold of his first pencil and began making marks on paper. congo had an innate sense of composition – creating circles and balancing his drawings without training. morris pushed the chimpanzee, testing his artistic sense: morris would draw on congo’s pictures, forcing the chimpanzee to draw more shapes to achieve balance, morris would take paintings away from congo before he was finished sending the chimpanzee into a fitted rage filled with tantrums and morris would try to coax congo to continue painting, thought the chimpanzee would refuse when he felt he was finished. congo displayed personal tastes, often choosing reds to complete his paintings. though chimpanzees, like congo, are not our ancestors, we do share a common ancestor. it is estimated that between five and eight million years ago our common ancestor diverged into the two lines which would ultimately become the modern day chimpanzee and bonobo, and we humans (elton, 3). it is by studying modern day relatives, that many primatologists hope to glean a better understanding of our more primitive ancestors. traits common to all primates could result from two plausible scenarios: 1) convergent evolution in that both species developed similar traits coincidentally (ie. bats and pterodactyls both evolving wings from their finger-bones and being able to fly) or 2) sharing a common ancestor, as chimpanzees and humans do, which evolved that trait and past it on to the subsequent species. when concerning primates, the mailto:topacademicjournals@gmail.com american journal of art and communication vol.8, issue 2; march-april 2023; issn: 2994-0540 impact factor: 6.91 1252 columbia rd nw, washington dc, united states https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac; mail: topacademicjournals@gmail.com 59 | american journal of art and communication | https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac latter of these possibilities is typically more likely, as the extant groups of primates are more closely related to one another than to extinct groups. behaviorism from modern theorists like desmond morris, alison jolly studies a modern day primate in order to better understand human evolution. though she attempts to dig far deeper into the primate past, by studying a far-removed group from the human ape. alison jolly began studying lemur behavior at berenty in 1963-64, and has for the past two decades returned to madagascar every fall for the birthing season. she focused primarily on the demographics of ringtailed lemurs and studied particularly their intertroop and territorial behavior (lucy, 1 – 4). her studies have confirmed that primates have the capacity to deceive in order to obtain food. like lemurs, capuchin monkeys also demonstrate this behavior. a capuchin, lowest in the hierarchy wishes to steal the food of its higher brethren: in order to do so, the capuchin will call out the vocalization warning for “snake” and watch its brethren retreat to the trees. as they do, the lowest capuchin will gather the dropped the food and quickly consume it before being caught (lucy, 149). alison jolly explains these behaviors displayed by capuchins and lemurs as a result of intelligence evolution. “primate society preceded the growth of primate intelligence, [making intelligence] possible, and determining its nature” (lemur, 495). jolly argues that primate societies and social instincts, led to the need for communication and thus, evolved intelligence (as a capacity for communication). she cites deception, social structures, vocalizations and “language” as all indications of social intelligence. because lesser, more primitive primates, such as lemurs display such social traits, though do not have the hand dexterity nor display the complex tool usage of their higher counterparts, the monkeys and apes, it is likely that social structures evolved before the faculties of intelligence. jolly, like morris, applies her research of primates and primate intelligence to the evolution of humanity. in her book lucy's legacy: sex and intelligence in human evolution, she emphasizes a different “evolutionary story” than is commonly accepted. unlike traditional darwinian views of humanity’s struggle, jolly emphasizes cooperation and social networks as opposed to violent, selfish, competitive struggles (lucy, 212 – 216). jolly describes the mailto:topacademicjournals@gmail.com american journal of art and communication vol.8, issue 2; march-april 2023; issn: 2994-0540 impact factor: 6.91 1252 columbia rd nw, washington dc, united states https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac; mail: topacademicjournals@gmail.com 60 | american journal of art and communication | https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac evolution of intelligence through the social structure of early humans (or even more remote ancestors, like the australopithecines like lucy). lucy was an australopithecus afarensis, discovered in ethiopia by donald johanson (lucy, 357). the three million year old fossil, discovered in 1973, was named after the famous beatles song (popular at the time). like the australopithecine that found the makapansgat pebble, lucy is thought to be either an ancestor or cousin to homo sapiens. jolly speculates that lucy and other australopithecines lived in cooperative groups that shared food, migrated with one another and developed links between generations. like the lemurs jolly studied in madagascar, it is likely that the australopithecines would have needed to develop greater verbal capacities in order to communicate with one another in the social grouping (lucy, 180). natural selection would have worked differently in these early human tribes. creative mating practices would have outranked mere competition and fighting for mates. those australopithecines that could show higher intelligence, higher creativity and higher communicative skills would have been more desirable. there are three different reasons this may have been true: 1) communication helped pass information which would have lead certain australopithecines to be better at finding food and water, 2) australopithecines who had the “time to waste” on such things as communication and symbolic thinking were not preoccupied with foraging and perhaps displayed better constitution and health, and/or 3) cooperating with friends and allies to outsmart rivals (lucy,210). jolly proposes that some of the earliest forms of “wooing” the affections of mates may have included: endearments for desired individuals, insults for enemies, remembering which foods were safe and which ones were not, being able to perform comedy or music, feeling jealousy and developing ways to steal a desired mate or trick a rival, and deception (lucy, 106, 297). for jolly, the struggle for survival of the fittest was not in speed or strength, but in wits – which mind was creative and ingenious (lucy, 10). this mate-driven development of intelligence could have perhaps contributed to the development of art. denis dutton, an art professor in new zealand, builds on this idea in the art instinct: beauty, pleasure, and human evolution. like jolly, dutton believes that the mailto:topacademicjournals@gmail.com american journal of art and communication vol.8, issue 2; march-april 2023; issn: 2994-0540 impact factor: 6.91 1252 columbia rd nw, washington dc, united states https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac; mail: topacademicjournals@gmail.com 61 | american journal of art and communication | https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac adaptation of intelligence and interdependence helped our ancestors pick winning mates (dutton, 45). dutton lists a set of behavioral adaptations which lead to better chances of mating: being good at sex, understanding facial expressions, using logic, being able to acquire language, and appreciating beauty (dutton, 31, 56). for dutton these traits had a primary function in survival, but ultimately lead to a secondary function in art. as illustrated in previous sections, these primary adaptations once used for a singular purpose, could be later applied to new situations. face to face copulation forces the couple to look at one another while being intimate. by looking at one another, there is a greater chance of being aware of the other’s feelings during the act of sex (dutton, 100). this brings new meaning to sex as opposed to being a simple act of procreation. understanding the other’s facial expressions (especially during this intimate act) is crucial to connecting – something also crucial for a social species. furthermore, the use of meaning and reasoning are functions of logic and problem solving. all of which leads to the use of symbols and language (dutton, 161 – 163). so for dutton – this expression of one biological need links too many other needs and intellectual stimulus. as jolly argues that our intelligence and social structure were functions of darwinian selection, dutton argues that art and aesthetic appreciation are functions of evolution. furthermore, dutton speculates that the creation of art can be a useful trait in seducing a mate. modern humans joke, sing, tell stories, play games, give gifts and create tokens of affection in order to woo a mate. dutton argues that the same was true for our distant ancestors (dutton, 218). the act of creating a piece of artwork requires skill. often our primitive ancestors found a stone or piece of ivory to create their piece of art out of – and this material was precious. using a unique skill combined with a precious item, the person was able to create something that others could not. for dutton, this skill was not only valuable but desirable. dutton does not necessarily explain why humans appreciate beautiful things or have a sense of aesthetic, but argues that because we have one there must have been an evolutionary advantage (dutton, 87). dutton goes on to claim that humans are genetically predispositioned to appreciate landscapes – and not just any landscape, but those that depict a piece of grassland, near a water source mailto:topacademicjournals@gmail.com american journal of art and communication vol.8, issue 2; march-april 2023; issn: 2994-0540 impact factor: 6.91 1252 columbia rd nw, washington dc, united states https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac; mail: topacademicjournals@gmail.com 62 | american journal of art and communication | https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac and accompanied by a few sparse trees. it is not a cultural taste preference, but inherited fondness for savannah-type landscapes (dutton, 21 – 23). it is not some socially constructed enculturation which gives us our tastes, or our art appreciation. aesthetics is a taste shaped by natural selection. the human draw to art and beauty is innate. furthermore, crossculturally there is a universal appreciation for landscapes – especially those most similar to those oases sought most by our ancient and primitive ancestors (dutton, 14). for dutton, art criticism and the appreciation of the aesthetic has little to do with abstract theory, noumenal philosophies, or premises of phenomenology. rather, art criticism has more in common with evolutionary biology, than any other discipline. in his seminal work, dutton build the “savannah hypothesis” using such a methodology. he claims that humans have a fondness for certain land types as they tend to support human life. these lands should include: “open spaces of low (or mown) grasses, interspersed with thickets of bushes and groupings of trees; presence of water directly in view, or evidence of water nearby or in the distance; an openingup in at least one direction to an unimpeded vantage on the horizon; evidence of animal and bird life; and diversity of greenery, including flowering and fruiting plants” (dutton, 25). this is not just a vague preference, but it happens to describe the african savannahs that our ancestors most likely evolved in. dutton claims, though over millions of years humans left the african savannah to new lands, we are still emotionally connected to those landscapes. as such, humans from every culture, in every time period, across the planet tend to depict similar landscapes in their art. this commonality across cultural lines seems to imply that somewhere in our ancient lineage this preference was adopted. analysis of the premise interpretation of the premise the primary adaptations dutton identifies which benefit choice of mating and were once used for a singular purpose, could be later applied to new situations. one of the premier advantages selected for in human evolution was the imagination and language capacity. “creative storytelling – perhaps the oldest of the arts – is found throughout history and, like language itself, is spontaneously devised and understood by human beings everywhere,” (dutton, 8). “universal themes of love, death, adventure, family conflict, justice and overcoming mailto:topacademicjournals@gmail.com american journal of art and communication vol.8, issue 2; march-april 2023; issn: 2994-0540 impact factor: 6.91 1252 columbia rd nw, washington dc, united states https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac; mail: topacademicjournals@gmail.com 63 | american journal of art and communication | https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac adversity” surface in stories and images cross-culturally, and form the archetypal repertoire of the imaginative species (dutton, 8). dutton justifies his evolutionary model of art through: “the universality of art and artistic behaviors, their spontaneous appearance everywhere across the globe and through recorded human history, and the fact that in most cases they can be easily recognized artistic across cultures suggest they derive from a natural, innate source: a universal human psychology,” (dutton, 32). one such universality is the symbol and its first incarnation, artistic expression – both tied intimately to human nature (dutton, 33). “human beings are born image-makers and image-enjoyers” (dutton, 35). if this is the case, then a natural question arises: is “every universal human behavior pattern disposition an adaptation or the result of adaptations?” (dutton, 43). humans have evolved faculties which allow for: intuitive physics, tool-making, personal psychology and the sense of self/otherness, intuitive sense of space, intuitive sense of numbers, understanding of probability, precision in movement, a sense of logic and an ability to read facial expressions, among others, (dutton, 46 – 47). here dutton is not suggesting a freudian explanation for the creation of art, rather he is claiming that use of symbols, developments of language, and the creation of art are products of what jolly calls the social intelligence and technical intelligence. through the altruistic sharing of products created using socially and technically intelligent skills, mates became more desirable. the darwinian criterion for a successful species or member of that species is its ability to mate – those that mate pass on their dna and thus are successful. for our earliest ancestors, mate-choosing was intertwined with art because on a subconscious level, art implied higher social and technical intelligence. the mistake of associating intelligence with fitness should not be made – evolution does not choose for progression of intelligence. rather, at a particular time in human evolution social and technical intelligence were as strong of adaptations as large tusks, sharp fangs or thick hides. “sexual selection explains the will of human beings to charm and interest each other,” (dutton, 163). at this time, charm and skill were as or more desirable than size, strength and aggression. one way in which our ancestors were successful at charming one another was offering an mailto:topacademicjournals@gmail.com american journal of art and communication vol.8, issue 2; march-april 2023; issn: 2994-0540 impact factor: 6.91 1252 columbia rd nw, washington dc, united states https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac; mail: topacademicjournals@gmail.com 64 | american journal of art and communication | https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac object of art; even though “the arts squander brain power, physical effort, time and precious resources” which is counterintuitive to natural selection which favors economy and efficiency (dutton, 136). the brain is a selfish organ – so selfish to run it requires incredible power and large quantities of protein. in fact, it is possible that such protein-needs may have caused our ancestors to change from a vegetarian diet to a carnivorous one. as the brain sucks resources, it constantly craves more in order to operate with more complexity. and one of the operations it desires most is information – the brain seeks stimulus. so although symbolic thinking and beauty appreciation is far less useful an adaptation, then say redirecting resources in order to develop fangs or claws, it does feed the brain its cravings. a byproduct of intelligence evolution is stimulus need. humans place a high priority on mental fitness – “on the serious question of choosing a mate, men and women on average place kindness first on their respective with both naming intelligence as number two,” (dutton, 151). it is this fact which creates such a demand for communicative ability. the greater vocabulary creates a greater amount of communication and a greater repertoire of thoughts to be communicated, thus demonstrating higher intelligence. contemporary english speakers have at their disposal an “excess vocabulary of sixty-thousand-plus words” which is directly proportionate to the “evolutionary function of language [which] is not only a means of efficient communication but a signal of fitness and general intelligence” (dutton, 153). intelligence, knowledge and information have replaced size, strength and brutality in human natural selection. this fact has lead dutton to speculate that the human animal has undergone self-domestication. “every direct prehistoric ancestor of every person alive today at times faced critical survival choices: whether to run or hold ground against a predator, which road to take toward a green valley, etc.” yet their most important choice was “whether to choose this man or woman as a mate with whom to rear children and share a life of mutual support,” (dutton, 164 – 165). assessment of the premise expression is a way of looking at the world, art is a reflection of that expression. the creation and aesthetic of art is: understanding and relating social issues and events; understanding emotions, developing emotional intelligences, and developing empathy and sympathy; mailto:topacademicjournals@gmail.com american journal of art and communication vol.8, issue 2; march-april 2023; issn: 2994-0540 impact factor: 6.91 1252 columbia rd nw, washington dc, united states https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac; mail: topacademicjournals@gmail.com 65 | american journal of art and communication | https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac communicating ideas visually, sensuously, emotionally, and intuitively; and deeply challenging ourselves. dr. betty edwards, professor of art at california state university, is perhaps one of the most famous researchers in the area of creativity. in her seminal work, drawing on the artist within, edwards quotes albert rothenberg saying: “the problem of creativity is beset with mysticism, confused definitions, value judgments, psychoanalytic admonitions, and the crushing weight of philosophical speculation dating from ancient times” (edwards, 7). in lieu of such statements, it would seem impossible to come to a conclusive definition of what creativity is. for edwards, creativity is “the force that drives problem-solving, informs effective decisionmaking, and opens new frontiers for ambition and intelligence.” like dutton, edwards believes the creative drive is innate. it is a darwinian, freudian force contained within everyone. furthermore, edwards argues that every single person can be taught to be artistic, that it is not a skill reserved for a special, gifted few. this would also support dutton’s premise, which in turn supports the materialistic, biological origin of art and aesthetic. the act of creation is willful but also cognitive. when one engages in creation or creativity, that person is doing two things: experiencing the aesthetic and learning. explaining how animals evolve or how galaxies move; painting a landscape; writing a sonnet; or solving an impossible equation – all of these are acts of creation and are creative. but more so, they tell a story – each of these activities communicates meaning. this is how creativity relates to learning – it is a willful act of understanding and examining the nature of things. inherent in all of these skills, is the ability to “look.” edwards claims that there are two main components to creativity: 1) looking at problems in new, innovative ways and 2) focusing on connections that might not be apparent (edwards, 12 – 17). “this special way of seeing includes the ability to see a whole field while at the same time perceiving parts within the field in relationship to each other as well as the whole…” (edwards, 34). there is an undeniable link between the way we think and the ways we use creativity. we are conditioned to use words and numbers to express concepts. yet, expressing something visually can sometimes open new doors and opportunities. creativity is a form of problem solving that requires thinking in a different language – a visual language. this visual language mailto:topacademicjournals@gmail.com american journal of art and communication vol.8, issue 2; march-april 2023; issn: 2994-0540 impact factor: 6.91 1252 columbia rd nw, washington dc, united states https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac; mail: topacademicjournals@gmail.com 66 | american journal of art and communication | https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac can be observational and perceptual, meaning it is carried out by physical acts like: seeing, studying, drawing etc. or it can be conceptual meaning it is carried out in the “mind’s-eye” and through visualization. edwards is a major proponent of this vision of creativity, based on her years of teaching and her studies of the artistic process. edwards says, “drawings, like words, have meaning – often beyond the power of words to express, but nonetheless invaluable in making the chaos of our sensory impressions comprehensible,” (edwards, 2). for edwards, creativity and art are behaviors of looking at problems in new, innovative ways and focusing on connections that might not be apparent. again, i am reminded of dutton and his explanation of an intelligence selection for primates. jolly, morris and dutton all celebrate the primate’s development of communication as integral to its survival. art is simply another extension of this communicative ability. for edwards, creativity requires intense study, practical application of theory and methodology, and a philosophical basis. she claims that creative success is based on: training in observation and seeing, practicing methods and techniques, and developing ways to represent the world through models (not unlike scientific models or equations). creativity is about the thinking process and education, for instance: no college student would accept an introductory french course in which the instructor expected students to speak french on the first day and those students who had no “talent” (or prior knowledge of french) were unable to continue in the course. creativity and perceptual skills are no different than arithmetic or language skills, they must be introduced, studied and practiced. no one is born creative (edwards, 5). “the right half of the brain functions in a nonverbal manner, specializing in visual, spatial, perceptual information” (edwards, 91). the 20th century placed special emphasis on leftbrain thinking – logic, rationale, sequencing etc. the process of creativity is a conscious, deliberate effort that must be decided in the right-brain. edwards says “creative solutions come more easily to a mind prepared with knowledge” (edwards, 126). when a person is saturated with research and resources, ideas sort of spring up on their own – edwards calls this “looking around for information” (edwards, 126). mailto:topacademicjournals@gmail.com american journal of art and communication vol.8, issue 2; march-april 2023; issn: 2994-0540 impact factor: 6.91 1252 columbia rd nw, washington dc, united states https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac; mail: topacademicjournals@gmail.com 67 | american journal of art and communication | https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac the fact that art can be seen as a form of aesthetic information – something that can be transmitted, translated and received, only furthers the hypothesis that creating art is universal. by extension it is plausible that appreciating art is also universal. concluding thoughts on the origins of art the appreciation of beauty corresponded to symbolic thinking and the development of language. the development of language allowed for communication and the formation of symbols. symbols, intelligence, religion and culture are functions of human society. at some level all extant primates show these characteristics and primatologists now believe that primates, other than humans, transmit culture. so too can be said for extinct primates, our ancestors and primitive cousins. thus, we can infer a biological origin of the aesthetic sense. a biological origin implies a universality that is built on shared senses of beauty, passed down from our ancestors to today. although the validity of the theory of materialism and by extension, evolution, is opposed by many camps, it is important to establish that as a model it is very comprehensive. there are different versions, but the most widely accepted is the synthesis between natural selection and genetics. this means biological changes occur in a class of organisms over time. these adaptations are physiological, instinctual, and cultural. for humans, all of these point to why we act the way we act and why we think the way we think. for decades, arguments concerning the impetus for human evolution have emphasized: the increase in brain size, the shift to bipedilism, the use of tools, the organization of tribes and even the shift to carnivorous diets from vegetarian. but i think another impetus plays an important role: developing meaning. for the human species has been and is consistently and constantly in search of descriptions of the world: models, symbols, and representations. through a greater understanding of space, time, causality, perception, awareness, and consciousness, humans continue to develop systems of knowledge intended on answering fundamental questions about nature. this is the true human history – a perpetual seeking of this information to make sense of the seemingly nonsensical reality. mailto:topacademicjournals@gmail.com american journal of art and communication vol.8, issue 2; march-april 2023; issn: 2994-0540 impact factor: 6.91 1252 columbia rd nw, washington dc, united states https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac; mail: topacademicjournals@gmail.com 68 | american journal of art and communication | https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac just as we maintain an inner drive to eat fatty and sweet foods as an evolutionary adaptation, so too, is communication, artistry and creativity. our ancestors lived in vegetation-rich environments, but when it came to proteins and complex-sugars, well those were rarities. so when one of our ancestors located a sugary fruit or a piece of meat, they devoured it ravenously – even if they were already full. today, when we crave a fast food burger or double-chocolate, chocolate chip cookie it is because biologically we need to sustain the need of protein and sugar. this is why we eat beyond capacity, because in our prehistoric days such treasures were scarce and needed to be seized upon. the truth of the aesthetic is perhaps no different. the pleasure of art might be tied to charm and choosing mates, it might be tied to the prized landscapes our ancestors sought, or it might be tied to our need to communicate and understand – to feed our hungry, cognitive brains. ultimately, physical adaptations, the development of intelligence and the development of interdependence lead to the success of the primate order. this success eventually set the foundations for the creation of art. as an evolutionary advantage, art became desirable among the human ancestors. and thus, the visual arts can trace their lineage along the same biological lineages of humanity. references marx, karl. economic and philosophic manuscripts of 1844. new york: international, 1964. print.university of jena. kuhn, thomas s. the structure of scientific revolutions. chicago, il: university of chicago, 1996. print. university of chicago. darwin, charles. on the origin of species. new york: sterling, 2008. print.geological society of london. mayr, ernst. "the growth of biological thought: diversity, evolution, and inheritance [paperback]." the growth of biological thought: diversity, evolution, and mailto:topacademicjournals@gmail.com american journal of art and communication vol.8, issue 2; march-april 2023; issn: 2994-0540 impact factor: 6.91 1252 columbia rd nw, washington dc, united states https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac; mail: topacademicjournals@gmail.com 69 | american journal of art and communication | https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac inheritance: ernst mayr: 9780674364462: amazon.com: books. n.p., n.d. web. 01 dec. 2013.harvard university science center. elton, sarah. "fossils, hunters, and controversies: exploring primate evolution." reviews in anthropology 36.4 (2007): 283-309. print.durham university. spuhler, james n. "biology, speech, and language." biology, speech, and language 6.october (1977): 509-61. print. chair department of anthropology, university of michigan. sane, sanjay p. "the aerodynamics of insect flight." the journal of experimental 206.december (2003): 4191-208. print.department of biology, university of washington. kleiner, fred s., christin j. mamiya, and helen gardner. gardner's art through the ages. fort worth, tx: harcourt college, 2004. print.columbia university. morris, desmond. the naked ape; a zoologist's study of the human animal. new york: mcgraw-hill, 1967. print.vice-chairman of oxford united f.c. jolly, alison. lucy's legacy: sex and intelligence in human evolution. cambridge, ma: harvard up, 1999. print.new york zoological society, visiting scientist at the university of sussex. jolly, a. "lemur social behavior and primate intelligence." science 153.3735 (1966): 50106. print.new york zoological society, visiting scientist at the university of sussex. dutton, dennis. the art instinct: beauty, pleasure and human evolution. new york [u.a.: bloomsbury, 2009. print. university of michigan–dearborn. mailto:topacademicjournals@gmail.com american journal of art and communication vol.8, issue 2; march-april 2023; issn: 2994-0540 impact factor: 6.91 1252 columbia rd nw, washington dc, united states https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac; mail: topacademicjournals@gmail.com 70 | american journal of art and communication | https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac edwards, betty. drawing on the artist within: a guide to innovation, invention, imagination, and creativity. new york: simon and schuster, 1986. print.california state university, long beach. mailto:topacademicjournals@gmail.com american journal of arts and communication vol. 9, issue 1; january-february 2024; issn: 2994-0540 impact factor: 6.91 1252 columbia rd nw, washington dc, united states https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac; mail: topacademicjournals@gmail.com 14 | a m e r i c a n j o u r n a l o f a r t s a n d c o m m u n i c a t i o n | https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac dialogue dynamics: a comprehensive analysis of conversation textbooks for undergraduates at an-najah national university, palestine 1yasmin a. mansour, 2omar h. khalil 1,2department of education and teacher training, college of education and teacher training, an-najah national university, nablus, palestine. doi: https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.10600342 abstract: the role of textbooks in education is central and indispensable, serving as the heartbeat of teaching and a cornerstone in the educational process. acknowledged as the primary reservoir of information and activities, textbooks play a pivotal role in aiding learners to actively engage with language and supporting educators in realizing their educational objectives (graves, 2000:175). this paper delves into the multifaceted significance of textbooks, particularly in fostering independent and responsible learning. drawing from the insights of basturkmen (2010), the paper underscores the pivotal role a well-crafted textbook play in cultivating students' independence and instilling a sense of responsibility for their own learning. by providing a structured framework of information and exercises, textbooks empower learners to navigate their educational journey autonomously, thereby contributing to the development of crucial skills for lifelong learning. furthermore, the study embraces the perspective of minh (2007), emphasizing that textbooks serve as indispensable tools in the teaching and learning landscape. minh's findings highlight the facilitative role of textbooks, streamlining the responsibilities of educators, enhancing learners' comprehension, and conserving valuable time and effort. this study explores the nuanced ways in which textbooks act as catalysts for efficient teaching practices and effective learning experiences. the analysis extends beyond the traditional view of textbooks as mere instructional materials, positioning them as dynamic agents that shape the educational landscape. through a comprehensive examination of the impact of textbooks on both educators and learners, this study aims to contribute to the ongoing discourse on pedagogical tools and strategies. keywords: textbook, independent learning, responsible learning, pedagogical tools, educational process introduction a textbook is the heart of teaching and the most important element of the educational process. it is the primary source of information and activities that help learners practice the language as well as support teachers in achieving the desired goals) graves, 2000:175(. with regard to independent and responsible learning, basturkmen mailto:topacademicjournals@gmail.com american journal of arts and communication vol. 9, issue 1; january-february 2024; issn: 2994-0540 impact factor: 6.91 1252 columbia rd nw, washington dc, united states https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac; mail: topacademicjournals@gmail.com 15 | a m e r i c a n j o u r n a l o f a r t s a n d c o m m u n i c a t i o n | https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac (2010(, confirmed that a good textbook encourages students to be independent and take responsibility for learning. textbooks are also considered an essential tool in teaching and learning as emphasized by minh (2007(who showed that textbooks can facilitate teachers' jobs, ease learners' understanding and save time and effort. the success of the educational process depends mainly on the quality of the selected textbook. in selecting the textbook, all stakeholders in the teaching and learning process should participate in selecting the materials or in choosing the objectives (raba, 2007). when selecting textbook to be used, teachers need to analyze and evaluate it to determine its suitability to the learners' level, needs, age, and interests. the process of textbook analysis helps teachers determine their strengths and weaknesses and then decides what areas need to be modified or changed to make them more suitable for learners. through analyzing textbooks, teachers make valuable judgments and gain insights about the type of activities involved to choose the approach to render ideas behind each part of the textbook (gómez-rodríguez, 2010). according to byrd and schuemann (2014), textbooks are valuable tools that are considered the basis for the teaching and learning process. however, there is no single perfect textbook that fits completely the teaching settings. as a result, teachers need to analyze and evaluate the chosen textbook to adapt it to the curriculum, teacher, and students. despite the importance of textbook content analysis, studies focusing on analyzing conversational textbooks are very limited. it is known that teaching individuals’ english conversation skills is very essential but is not an easy task. teachers are challenged to select the appropriate content, activities, and techniques that stimulate learners to use the language fluently (ur, 2012). to ensure successful teaching of these skills and achieve the desired goals, teachers need to analyze and evaluate the textbook to determine its merits and demerits, reveal the language used in it and determine the effective and suitable classroom pedagogy (cerezo, 2007). speaking a foreign language in the right way is one big problem student’s face and using think-pairand –share activities could be a good solution and could enrich both creative and interactive activities in the textbook. in recent years, the nature of language teaching has changed. whereas traditional education has been based on primitive methods in which language learning was viewed as a matter of habit formation, memorization, repetition, and imitation, now the main goal of modern teaching methods is to communicate. therefore, developing students' oral communication ability has become the basic priority for teaching which in turn affects what language teachers are supposed to teach (littlewood, 2007). because of the significant role of speaking, researchers like bailey )2005(and goh )2007(emphasized the role of teaching pedagogies, types of activities and types of materials. milova (2015) emphasized that teaching conversation is the most important phase of the language learning process. teachers can develop students' conversation skills by bringing real-life situations to the classroom where they got the opportunity to deal with real problems and use the language automatically. this can be achieved by using effective procedures and various activities such as role-play activities, discussions, brainstorming, simulations, interviews, and debates. mailto:topacademicjournals@gmail.com american journal of arts and communication vol. 9, issue 1; january-february 2024; issn: 2994-0540 impact factor: 6.91 1252 columbia rd nw, washington dc, united states https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac; mail: topacademicjournals@gmail.com 16 | a m e r i c a n j o u r n a l o f a r t s a n d c o m m u n i c a t i o n | https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac sze )1995), stated that conversation is the oral exchange of information that is based on conversational competence. this type of competence can be developed by keeping it as a goal for language teaching. the type and quality of the activities and materials used to teach conversation within the classroom have a great role in the success or failure of the teaching process. besides, the good practice of language is the basis for developing students' conversational skills. this does not include systematic memorization or repetition drills, but by engaging students in activities that motivate them to produce the language themselves. statement of the problem a good textbook content is one of the most important resources for teaching all language skills and it is the teacher's responsibility to select the appropriate textbook that helps them fulfill the desired goals. therefore, they need to analyze the content of the selected textbooks carefully to understand their nature and to determine whether or not they possess the characteristics that are important to help students produce the language properly, naturally and fluently. based on this ground, the researcher conducted this study and related the final judgment of a good textbook to the five rubrics that entail all the learning dispositions. questions of the study this study answers the question "what is the level of existence or frequency of the five rubrics with the different learning dispositions in a conversation english textbook for second-level university students? purpose of the study this study aims to determine if the conversation textbook used for second-level university students is appropriate or not and this can be done according to the level of existence or absence of these rubrics: topic consistency, frequency of drill use, type of syllabus, self-expressing activities, and the appropriate type of language they use. significance of the study the finding of this study may yield valuable information for conversation textbook writers. the result of this study may also point out the need for improving and modifying some of the textbooks' weak points according to the five rubrics that contain learning dispositions. the information gathered may provide ideas about what and how modification should be implemented, and how can we develop the conversation textbook which should include the five variables in a consistent, fair, and good way. besides, the findings of this study provide valuable information for oral communication courses as they shed light on different aspects of what should a conversation textbook be like, and how can they develop their students' conversation skills. review of related literature several previous studies have focused their attention on analyzing conversation textbooks. the researcher was able to come up with some of these studies and arranged them chronologically. in the area of suitable communicative activities to be used for teaching oral proficiency, fukut et al. )2017(assured authentic activities that match with meaning, and the learners’ language use are found to be suitable and promote students' language proficiency. similarly, romney and holsworth (2016) in their study reviewed a specific system and created some rubrics for selecting a new efl oral communication curriculum. they focused on the context of the textbook and determined the areas that need to be changed to make it more appropriate for students. similar mailto:topacademicjournals@gmail.com american journal of arts and communication vol. 9, issue 1; january-february 2024; issn: 2994-0540 impact factor: 6.91 1252 columbia rd nw, washington dc, united states https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac; mail: topacademicjournals@gmail.com 17 | a m e r i c a n j o u r n a l o f a r t s a n d c o m m u n i c a t i o n | https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac in content, but different in the region, ellif and maarof (2011) revealed that textbooks used for teaching oral communication for the saudi efl third-year university students are not rich with activities that promote natural communication. in the area of teaching natural and authentic communication, gómez-rodríguez (2010) found that all the textbooks used in colombia for teaching communication using english do not include adequate communicative activities, thus, they do not promote students' communicative competence. effective teaching along with suitable and natural content can produce effective communication. in the area of self-expression activities that an effective communication textbook should include, akutsu (2006) showed that an oral communication textbook included many direct strategies, but it lacks indirect strategies. if an activity included in a textbook used for communication focuses on form more than on contextual meaning, it will fail to achieve fluent and authentic communication among learners (ellis and ellis 1994). gibson (2004) conducted a study about the effect of class size on teaching english conversation skills. this study mentioned the difficulties faced by teachers in developing this type of skill in large classes and how to overcome them. the findings showed that applying some effective raba techniques can be useful and facilitate teachers' jobs during the teaching process. one of the most effective activities is the group work and peer work that enhance students' interaction and engages them in discussions that suit their interests. to sum up, most of the studies presented in the literature review have shed light on the importance of analyzing the contents of the textbooks to understand their nature and determine what aims they serve. some studies rely on specific standards and certain variables during the analysis process that is compatible with their goals as what fukuta et al. (2017) follow in their study. the researcher agrees with what ellif and maarof (2011) and gómezrodríguez (2010) found in their studies that there are not enough activities in the textbooks that promote natural communication among students. the present study suggested that an effective textbook for teaching communication that is fluent, natural, and authentic should be in the line with the five rubrics that contain learning dispositions mentioned earlier in the study. methodology and procedures this study followed content analysis research design which is an appropriate research method to analyze the conversation textbook for second -year english majors and tefl majors in an-najah national university concerning the five-item rubrics that emphasized the inclusion of all the learning dispositions such as persistence, flexibility, motivation, questioning and problem solving skills. these learning dispositions are included in interactive activities, creative activities and self-expressing activities which are rubrics included as focal ideas to refer to in the process of content analysis. the study was conducted during the second semester of the academic year 2019-2020. instrumentation the only tool used was the five-item rubrics that include all the learning dispositions to determine the appropriateness or the inappropriateness of the conversation textbook which can be achieved according to the mailto:topacademicjournals@gmail.com american journal of arts and communication vol. 9, issue 1; january-february 2024; issn: 2994-0540 impact factor: 6.91 1252 columbia rd nw, washington dc, united states https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac; mail: topacademicjournals@gmail.com 18 | a m e r i c a n j o u r n a l o f a r t s a n d c o m m u n i c a t i o n | https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac level of existence or absence of these rubrics in the textbook. these rubrics are topic consistency, frequency of drill use, type of syllabus, self-expressing activities, and the appropriate type of language they use. this tool allows the researcher to calculate the frequencies of each item in the conversation/oral communication textbook that is used in an-najah national university for second-year students. choosing the textbook an oral communication textbook for second-level university students was used in implementing this study. at this level, students should be exposed to activities that consider the five variables to develop their speaking and oral communication skill. results and interpretations this section illustrates the results that were obtained after analyzing the oral comprehension textbook. the following five-item rubric was used: 1-topic consistency 2frequency of drill use 3-type of syllabus 4selfexpressing activities and 5the appropriate type of language they use. interpretation regarding topic consistency do all the textbook units have topic consistency or topic inconsistency? if topics are consistent, this means that the textbook is organized in a complementary way. for example, the same topic is internally connected smoothly and coherently until it is complete. this completion is basic in the sense that it emphasizes content and exchanges ideas that can stimulate and promote students' communication. unit title: the art of conversation model dialogue (a conversational skill that deals with culture): what topic should you avoid when talking to strangers? what topics are taboos for your culture? what topics are taboos for you personally? why do people like to learn bad words in other languages? by answering these questions adequately and appropriately, we can say that the topic is consistent and students can adequately communicate the topic. in this way, the conversation will be structural, situational, and notional. the conversation and oral communication textbook emphasizes on situational syllabus and focuses on what language needed in various situations and how to use it in a certain context, for example how to use language (when you are talking to foreigners, in arguing, on birthdays), but the textbook doesn't provide enough exercises for practicing. for example: from conversation and oral communication textbook p.106: booking an airline ticket call and book an airline ticket. the airline agent will need information such as time and day of departure, class, smoking, and non-smoking section and day of return, the traveler wants to know the price, seating, and whether it is a direct or nonstop flight. keywords and phrases departing, arriving, flight number, tourist, business, or first class, direct or nonstop, check-in time. using these words or phrases, book a ticket with an airline agent. after you have done this once, reverse roles and do it again. when you do it again. when you play the agent, be sure to confirm all details about the ticket. interpretation about drilling activities mailto:topacademicjournals@gmail.com american journal of arts and communication vol. 9, issue 1; january-february 2024; issn: 2994-0540 impact factor: 6.91 1252 columbia rd nw, washington dc, united states https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac; mail: topacademicjournals@gmail.com 19 | a m e r i c a n j o u r n a l o f a r t s a n d c o m m u n i c a t i o n | https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac language patterns are basic in achieving better communication. these chunks and patterns can be better learned and taught via drills whether repetitive, substitutional or transformational. the goal of using drilling activities is to produce and practice utterances and chunks to be used for meaningful communication. for example: from conversation and oral communication textbook p.39: hobbies i have a talent for (verb) ing-i have a talent for writing poems. i have been (verb)ing for 5 yearsi have been playing tennis for 5 years. i (verb) 3 times a weeki go in for sports 3 times. interpretation concerning self-expressing activities the role of these activities is to enhance meaning rather than form through encouraging students to generate their own language, and so they can be motivated and actively engaged in all class tasks. for example from conversation and oral communication textbook p.83: (empathic listening application). describe a relationship in which you need to use the skill as well as the attitude of empathy. what is your usual response to this situation? how does your attitude influence your listening in this relationship? specifically, what will you do to apply empathy the next time in your interaction in this relationship? in such situations, learners are to explain and describe the relationship between attitude and empathy. interpretation concerning activity type (interactive activities and creative activities) in interactive activities, it is important for participants to be of equal proficiency in the target language. these activities involve a conversational exchange between students whereas non-interactive activities can be performed alone. creative activities such as creating interviews and working with peers to adapt them allow students to engage with meaningful topics and get to know each other. non-creative activities focus more on form, and students memorize language that may not relate to their real lives. non-interactive activities: table 1. scale and result. result conversation and oral comprehension + situational 20% 8 creative:3 interactive:0 source: author table 2. scales and frequencies. scales frequencies topic consistency 5 type of syllabus 8 frequency of drill use 4 s cale s name of the textbook / + topic consistency main syllabus percentag e of drilling activities number of activities for expressing the self activities types mailto:topacademicjournals@gmail.com american journal of arts and communication vol. 9, issue 1; january-february 2024; issn: 2994-0540 impact factor: 6.91 1252 columbia rd nw, washington dc, united states https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac; mail: topacademicjournals@gmail.com 20 | a m e r i c a n j o u r n a l o f a r t s a n d c o m m u n i c a t i o n | https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac self-expressing activities 8 the appropriate type of language they use creative activities 3 activities types: interactive activities 0 source: author for example, from english street oral communication: hello, may i speak to kate? i think you have the wrong number. what number you are calling? 22173131 this is 2117313 oh, i’m sorry. this activity can be performed alone since necessary information is already present. in such activities the existence of an interlocutor is unnecessary; therefore, they are categorized as non-interactive. tables 1 and 2 summarize the analysis oral communication textbook analysis table 2 shows that: the total number of exercises in the conversation textbook that are related to the different scales is 28. the frequencies range from 3-8. the lowest frequency is found in activity types which are creative activities and there aren't activities related to interactive type. the highest frequencies are found in both syllable organization and activities for self-expression. both syllables of the syllabus and activities for self-expression are equal. conclusions after the data analysis, it was found that the conversation textbook for second-level university students lacks interactive activities. it was also found that there were not enough exercises that encourage students to practice the language naturally, which is the key to develop their speaking skills. for successful teaching, teachers need to look for the appropriate textbook that fits their goals and helps students developing their oral communication skills. an effective conversation textbook should include creative and interactive activities that create a good class discussion and communication which is important for language learning. recommendations based on the above-mentioned conclusions, the researcher recommended the following: 1. teachers should not underestimate the role of textbooks in facilitating the learning process. they have to increase the quality of their teaching and use various activities to enrich the educational process. 2. the educational institution should conduct training courses for teachers on how to select the appropriate textbook and what rubrics should be taken into consideration when analyzing textbooks. 3. more interactive and practical activities must be included in textbooks to enhance students' interaction, and so improve their conversation skills. mailto:topacademicjournals@gmail.com american journal of arts and communication vol. 9, issue 1; january-february 2024; issn: 2994-0540 impact factor: 6.91 1252 columbia rd nw, washington dc, united states https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac; mail: topacademicjournals@gmail.com 21 | a m e r i c a n j o u r n a l o f a r t s a n d c o m m u n i c a t i o n | https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac 4. more studies need to be conducted about analyzing conversational textbooks. conflict of interests the author has not declared any conflict of interests. references akutsu y (2006). request strategies in “oral communication a” textbooks. the economic journal of takasaki city university of economics 48(3):135-149. bailey km (2005). practical english language teaching: speaking. new york:mcgraw-hill. faculty of arts, 2004. undergraduate catalog. nakhon pathom: silpakorn university press. basturkmen h (2010). developing courses in english for specific purposes. new york: palgrave macmillan. byrd p, schuemann c (2014). english as a second/foreign language textbook: how to choose them how to use them. in: brinton, d.m., celce-murcia, m., & snow, m.a. (eds.), teaching english as a second or foreign language. boston, ma: heinle cengage learning pp. 380-393. cerezo (200 ). investigaci n sobre las directrices curriculares relativas a la ense anza de la lengua inglesa y su aplicaci n en el aula (1 ؛de bachillerato) (doctoral dissertation). university of murcia, spain. http://www.tesisenred.net/tdr-0114109-114314 ellif a, maarof n (2011). oral communicative activities in the saudi third-year secondary efl textbooks. advances in language and literary studies 2(1):7-17. ellis r, ellis r (1994). the study of second language acquisition. oxford university. fukuta j, tamura y, kurita a (2017). analysis of oral communicationoriented activities in junior high school textbooks: focusing on task criteria proposed by second language research. jalt journal 36(2):165-182. gibson g (2004). facilitating english conversation development in large classrooms. the internet tesl journal 10(9):11-26. goh c (2007). teaching speaking in the language classroom. singapore city: seameo regional language centre. gómez-rodríguez f (2010). english textbooks for teaching and learning english as a foreign language: do they help to develop communicative competence? education and educators 13(3):327346. graves k (2000). designing language course, a guide for teachers. boston. heinle. cengage learning. mailto:topacademicjournals@gmail.com american journal of arts and communication vol. 9, issue 1; january-february 2024; issn: 2994-0540 impact factor: 6.91 1252 columbia rd nw, washington dc, united states https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac; mail: topacademicjournals@gmail.com 22 | a m e r i c a n j o u r n a l o f a r t s a n d c o m m u n i c a t i o n | https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac littlewood w (2007). communicative and task-based language teaching in east asian classrooms. language teaching 40(3):243-249. milova y (2015). teaching conversation in english language classroom: conversational techniques. issn online. освітологічний дискурс 2(10):2312-5829. minh t (2007). textbook evaluation: the case of english textbooks currently in use in vietnam’s upper-secondary schools. college of foreign languages vietnam national university, hanoi. raba a (200 ). analyzing “english for palestine iv” in terms of the characteristics of a good english textbook. the islamic university journal 15(1):663-690. romney c, holsworth m (2016). the textbook selection and evaluation process for an intermediate-level english oral communication course. sze p (1995). teaching conversation in the second language classroom: problems and prospects. education journal-hong kongchinese university of hong kong 23(2):229-250. ur p (2012). a course in english language teaching (2nd ed.). cambridge: cambridge university press, cambridge. mailto:topacademicjournals@gmail.com chapter one american journal of arts and communication vol.10, issue 2; march-april 2025; issn: 2994-0540 impact factor: 7.94 1252 columbia rd nw, washington dc, united states https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac; mail: topacademicjournals@gmail.com 16 | a m e r i c a n j o u r n a l o f a r t s a n d c o m m u n i c a t i o n | https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac broadcast media as a catalyst for language and cultural identity in rivers state, nigeria ire, ebele stella (phd) email: ebere.ire@uniport.edu.ng department of broadcasting, university of port harcourt, rivers state, nigeria doi: https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.15295156 abstract: this study ascertained the broadcast media as a catalyst for language and cultural identity in rivers state, nigeria. cultural transmission theory was anchored in this study. this study adopted the qualitative research approach using the library research method. the population of the study comprised all published and unpublished works relevant to media and cultural studies in nigeria, estimated at over 2,000 accessible academic sources within university libraries, media archives, and online scholarly databases. from this population, a purposive sample size of 150 key texts was selected based on their relevance, recency, credibility and thematic alignment with the study's objectives. the sampling technique employed was purposive sampling and data collection involved systematically reviewing and synthesizing these sources, focusing on thematic content such as language representation, cultural promotion, and the roles of local media in rivers state. data analysis was conducted through content analysis, which enabled the identification of recurring themes, patterns and conceptual linkages across the reviewed literature. the study found that broadcast media in rivers state incorporates indigenous languages and cultural content to a moderate extent, with certain ethnic groups, such as the ikwerre, kalabari, and ogoni, being better represented than others due to linguistic diversity and the broader popularity of their languages in the media. however, the incorporation of these languages remains limited by market demands and resource constraints within local broadcasting stations. the study concluded that while broadcast media in rivers state incorporates indigenous languages to a moderate extent, the diversity of languages spoken in the region requires further efforts to ensure equitable representation of all ethnic groups. addressing the limitations in resources and market demands could. the study recommended that broadcast media in rivers state should increase the representation of all indigenous languages to ensure equitable cultural representation and foster inclusivity across the region’s diverse ethnic groups. keywords: broadcast media, catalyst, language and cultural identity, rivers state, nigeria introduction broadcast media play a critical role in the preservation, promotion and propagation of language and cultural identity in any society. in multicultural and multilingual societies like nigeria, particularly in states such as rivers state, broadcast media have become a vital tool for fostering cultural understanding, inclusivity, and mailto:topacademicjournals@gmail.com american journal of arts and communication vol.10, issue 2; march-april 2025; issn: 2994-0540 impact factor: 7.94 1252 columbia rd nw, washington dc, united states https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac; mail: topacademicjournals@gmail.com 17 | a m e r i c a n j o u r n a l o f a r t s a n d c o m m u n i c a t i o n | https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac identity consciousness among diverse ethnic groups. rivers state, known for its rich linguistic and cultural diversity, is home to over 20 indigenous languages and numerous ethnic nationalities, including the ikwerre, kalabari, ogoni, okrika, and ibani. the media's ability to penetrate these communities and disseminate culturally relevant content in indigenous languages makes it a powerful force in the sustenance of linguistic heritage and the reinforcement of cultural values (umezinwa & omego, 2019). in the age of globalization and digital transformation, cultural identities are increasingly threatened by homogenizing forces, with western values and languages dominating mass communication platforms. this encroachment creates a cultural crisis that endangers indigenous languages and traditions, especially in nigeria where many native languages are now classified as endangered (eberhard et al., 2023). broadcast media, therefore, emerges as a potent cultural weapon against this marginalization, providing a space for the expression and celebration of indigenous identities through localized content. in rivers state, local radio and television stations such as radio rivers fm, rhythm 93.7, and rivers state television (rstv) have tailored programs that reflect local traditions, proverbs, songs, festivals, and vernacular expressions, thereby reinforcing a sense of identity among native listeners and viewers (okonkwo, 2020). broadcast media serve both as a mirror and a mould of society. it reflects cultural norms while simultaneously shaping them by the nature of the content it promotes. the power of media in shaping identity lies in its ability to influence perceptions, attitudes, and behaviours. when local content is prioritized, be it in language, storytelling, news, or entertainment. it validates the experiences and realities of the audience, thereby cultivating cultural pride and continuity. for the various ethnic groups in rivers state, listening to news or music in their mother tongue or watching cultural re-enactments on local television helps to preserve their unique heritage, language nuances, and oral traditions (asein, 2018). furthermore, the role of broadcast media in linguistic development is crucial in areas where literacy levels are low. through radio programs in indigenous languages, communities can access educational, health, and civic information in a manner that is both understandable and culturally relevant. this accessibility promotes not only the survival of local dialects but also enhances the community’s participation in social and political discourse. in rivers state, radio has been particularly instrumental in reaching remote communities where formal education may not be widespread, making it an indispensable tool for language preservation and cultural reinforcement (asemah et al., 2013). however, despite the apparent advantages of broadcast media, challenges persist in fully utilizing its potential for cultural identity promotion in rivers state. one major issue is the disproportionate focus on englishlanguage content at the expense of local dialects. this trend, influenced by economic pressures and the need to attract a broader audience, often side-lines indigenous languages, contributing to their gradual decline. moreover, inadequate funding, policy neglect, and lack of technical resources limit the capacity of local stations to produce and air high-quality indigenous content (ojebuyi & salawu, 2017). mailto:topacademicjournals@gmail.com american journal of arts and communication vol.10, issue 2; march-april 2025; issn: 2994-0540 impact factor: 7.94 1252 columbia rd nw, washington dc, united states https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac; mail: topacademicjournals@gmail.com 18 | a m e r i c a n j o u r n a l o f a r t s a n d c o m m u n i c a t i o n | https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac there is also the issue of urban bias in content production, where the cultural narratives and languages of urban centres dominate media programming, to the detriment of smaller ethnic communities. this urban-centric broadcasting approach marginalizes less dominant groups and limits their representation in the media landscape. in rivers state, for instance, while the ikwerre and kalabari languages may receive more airtime due to their numerical strength and political visibility, smaller languages like baan or bille receive little or no attention, endangering their survival (olaoti, 2021). thus, equitable media representation remains a significant challenge in using broadcast media as a catalyst for cultural identity. despite these constraints, several initiatives have demonstrated the effectiveness of broadcast media in fostering cultural identity in rivers state. programs like “ogele” on radio rivers fm, which showcases local music, folklore, and news in native dialects, have gained popularity and increased awareness of traditional norms and practices. such initiatives illustrate the potential of media to not only entertain but also educate and preserve cultural heritage. additionally, the inclusion of local festivals and cultural ceremonies in television broadcasts helps instil cultural consciousness, especially among the younger generation who may be more exposed to globalized content (ugboma, 2019). academic discourse supports the notion that cultural identity is not static but continually negotiated through symbols, language, and media. stuart hall's theory of cultural identity underscores the media's role in this identity formation process, asserting that the media helps shape how individuals and groups perceive themselves and others (hall, 1990). in the rivers state context, broadcast media thus becomes a space for constructing and reconstructing ethnic and linguistic identities through recurring cultural narratives, visual symbolism, and vernacular usage. these mediated representations contribute to a shared sense of belonging and communal memory. ultimately, this study aims to investigate the extent to which broadcast media in rivers state serves as a catalyst for the preservation and promotion of language and cultural identity. by examining local programming, linguistic representation, and audience reception, the research seeks to uncover how media contributes to cultural sustainability amidst globalization pressures. the findings are expected to provide insights into policy formulation, media practice, and community engagement strategies that can bolster indigenous culture and language revitalization efforts in rivers state and beyond. the significance of this study lies in its potential to highlight the critical role of broadcast media in preserving and promoting indigenous languages and cultural identity in rivers state, nigeria, by providing empirical insights that can inform media policies, content development strategies, and cultural advocacy initiatives aimed at fostering inclusivity, heritage preservation, and intergenerational cultural transmission in an era of increasing globalization and digital influence. this study aims to achieve three key objectives. first, it seeks to examine the extent to which broadcast media in rivers state incorporates indigenous languages and cultural content in its programming. secondly, the study intends to assess the influence of such culturally rooted media content on the preservation and promotion of cultural identity among the diverse ethnic groups in the state. lastly, it aims mailto:topacademicjournals@gmail.com american journal of arts and communication vol.10, issue 2; march-april 2025; issn: 2994-0540 impact factor: 7.94 1252 columbia rd nw, washington dc, united states https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac; mail: topacademicjournals@gmail.com 19 | a m e r i c a n j o u r n a l o f a r t s a n d c o m m u n i c a t i o n | https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac to identify the challenges and limitations faced by broadcast media practitioners in developing and sustaining indigenous language and cultural programs. statement of the problem despite nigeria’s rich linguistic and cultural diversity, indigenous languages and cultural practices are increasingly endangered due to the pervasive influence of globalization, westernization and the dominance of english in public communication and education. in rivers state, this threat is compounded by urbanization and media content that often prioritizes foreign or metropolitan narratives at the expense of local traditions. while broadcast media holds immense potential to reverse this trend by promoting indigenous languages and cultural identity through targeted programming, its actual contribution remains inadequately explored and underutilized. many local media outlets focus more on mainstream entertainment and news in english, neglecting the diverse ethnic languages and cultural expressions that define the state's heritage. this disconnection creates a vacuum in identity formation and intergenerational transmission of cultural knowledge, especially among the youth who increasingly identify with global rather than local identities. moreover, the uneven representation of ethnic groups in media programming in rivers state raises concerns about cultural inclusivity and linguistic equity. some communities and languages receive more airtime and visibility than others, leading to the marginalization of minority cultures and dialects. this imbalance not only undermines the role of broadcast media as a unifying and representative tool but also accelerates the erosion of less-promoted languages and traditions. there is a pressing need to critically investigate how broadcast media in rivers state contributes to or detracts from cultural identity preservation and linguistic diversity. without intentional strategies and supportive media policies to enhance local content production and indigenous language broadcasting, the media risks becoming a vehicle for cultural alienation rather than cultural affirmation. broadcast media and indigenous language preservation broadcast media, particularly radio and television, have proven to be powerful tools for promoting linguistic diversity and indigenous language preservation in multilingual societies. radio, for instance, is especially effective in reaching remote and rural areas where formal education systems may be lacking or underdeveloped. in nigeria, where over 500 languages exist, the use of indigenous languages in broadcast media not only enhances comprehension and inclusiveness but also reaffirms speakers’ cultural identity (asemah et al., 2013). in rivers state, local radio stations like radio rivers fm and ogoni radio have introduced programs in ikwerre, kalabari, and ogoni, aiming to educate, entertain, and inform the populace in their native tongues, which in turn fosters a strong sense of cultural pride and continuity (umezinwa & omego, 2019). the deliberate use of indigenous languages in broadcast programming serves as a mechanism for intergenerational linguistic transmission. children and young adults who are regularly exposed to radio and television content in their native language are more likely to learn and appreciate it, thereby sustaining its use within the community. scholars argue that when media content is delivered in indigenous languages, it promotes familiarity and reinforces the daily use of such languages, which may otherwise be threatened by mailto:topacademicjournals@gmail.com american journal of arts and communication vol.10, issue 2; march-april 2025; issn: 2994-0540 impact factor: 7.94 1252 columbia rd nw, washington dc, united states https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac; mail: topacademicjournals@gmail.com 20 | a m e r i c a n j o u r n a l o f a r t s a n d c o m m u n i c a t i o n | https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac globalization and english-language dominance (okonkwo, 2020). broadcast content such as news, interviews, folk stories, music, and public service announcements in native languages contributes significantly to both language learning and cultural awareness. however, there remain several barriers to the full realization of this potential. media stations often face constraints such as lack of funding, scarcity of trained indigenous language broadcasters, and insufficient policy support from regulatory agencies (ojebuyi & salawu, 2017). additionally, there is a growing trend among media owners to prioritize english content due to its perceived commercial appeal, especially in urban areas. these challenges inhibit the consistent use of indigenous languages in media, thereby undermining efforts aimed at language preservation. for broadcast media in rivers state to fulfil its cultural mandate, stakeholders must invest in language revitalization through content development, media training, and policy reform that promotes multilingual broadcasting. cultural identity formation through broadcast media cultural identity is shaped by the values, language, traditions, and historical experiences that individuals share within a community. media plays a significant role in the construction and reinforcement of these identities by selecting, framing, and disseminating cultural narratives to mass audiences. broadcast media, particularly local television and radio, serve as conduits through which communities reflect on who they are, where they come from, and how they relate to the world (hall, 1990). in rivers state, programs that showcase traditional ceremonies, folklore, festivals, and indigenous music allow communities to see their culture represented and validated, thereby reinforcing a sense of belonging and collective identity. research shows that consistent exposure to culturally rooted media content influences how individuals perceive themselves and their communities. according to stuart hall’s cultural identity theory, identity is not fixed but rather formed and re-formed through repeated symbolic interaction within a cultural context (hall, 1990). thus, when broadcast media presents stories, idioms, and visuals that resonate with a group’s lived experiences, it reaffirms their sense of self and cultural worth. in a diverse state like rivers, such mediated representations help bridge cultural gaps, reduce ethnic stereotypes, and promote unity among its various groups through shared cultural narratives (asein, 2018). nevertheless, the media’s ability to shape cultural identity is a double-edged sword. when local media platforms fail to include minority ethnic voices or disproportionately represent dominant cultures, they inadvertently contribute to cultural marginalization and identity erosion. this imbalance not only threatens cultural diversity but also breeds resentment and alienation among underrepresented communities. for instance, if broadcast content in rivers state largely favours languages and traditions of the majority groups while ignoring others, it could reinforce social hierarchies and diminish cultural participation among minority ethnicities (olaoti, 2021). therefore, equitable cultural representation in media is essential for fostering inclusive identity formation and inter-ethnic harmony. cultural transmission theory mailto:topacademicjournals@gmail.com american journal of arts and communication vol.10, issue 2; march-april 2025; issn: 2994-0540 impact factor: 7.94 1252 columbia rd nw, washington dc, united states https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac; mail: topacademicjournals@gmail.com 21 | a m e r i c a n j o u r n a l o f a r t s a n d c o m m u n i c a t i o n | https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac this theory was propounded by albert bandura in 1963. this theory posits that individuals, especially the youth, acquire behaviours, values, norms, and cultural identity through observation, imitation, and modelling of others within their environment, particularly through influential agents like the media. one of the major tenets of the theory is that media content serves as a socializing agent by portraying cultural symbols, languages, traditions, and lifestyles that audiences internalize and replicate. the theory assumes that media users, particularly in formative years, are likely to adopt attitudes and behaviours consistent with what they are repeatedly exposed to, thus making the media a powerful tool for transmitting cultural knowledge across generations. however, a criticism of the theory is that it overemphasizes passive learning and does not account for the audience's ability to critically interpret, resist, or negotiate media messages based on individual or contextual factors. despite this, the theory remains highly relevant to this study as it underscores how broadcast media in rivers state can influence cultural identity formation and indigenous language retention by consistently exposing audiences to culturally-rooted content. it provides a framework for understanding the role of radio and television in modelling cultural practices and promoting linguistic heritage in a multicultural society. empirical review ojebuyi (2017) carried out a research titled indigenous language radio broadcasting and the promotion of african cultures in south-west nigeria. this study examined how indigenous language radio contributes to the promotion and preservation of african cultural values in south-west nigeria. the study adopted a survey research design using questionnaires administered to 400 respondents in selected urban and rural areas of oyo state. the study found that indigenous language radio programs significantly influence the listeners' sense of cultural identity and help reinforce traditional values and practices among the yoruba people. both this study and the current one focus on the role of indigenous language broadcasting in promoting cultural identity. while the reviewed study is limited to the yoruba-speaking south-west nigeria, the current study is situated in rivers state and focuses on multiple ethnic groups and languages. okonkwo (2020) conducted a study on indigenous language broadcasting and cultural identity in nigeria: a case study of radio nigeria. this study investigated the impact of indigenous language programs on the cultural awareness and identity of listeners across different nigerian regions. the study employed content analysis and in-depth interviews with 20 media professionals and 50 regular listeners of radio nigeria's indigenous language programs. the results indicated that consistent use of indigenous languages in broadcasting strengthens cultural identity and promotes linguistic pride among various ethnic groups. both studies explore how indigenous language programming affects cultural identity among radio audiences. while the reviewed study used a national platform (radio nigeria) as a case study, the current study focuses specifically on local broadcast stations in rivers state. umezinwa and omego (2019) did a study on language use in nigerian broadcast media: implications for national development. this study analysed the linguistic patterns in nigerian broadcast media and how they mailto:topacademicjournals@gmail.com american journal of arts and communication vol.10, issue 2; march-april 2025; issn: 2994-0540 impact factor: 7.94 1252 columbia rd nw, washington dc, united states https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac; mail: topacademicjournals@gmail.com 22 | a m e r i c a n j o u r n a l o f a r t s a n d c o m m u n i c a t i o n | https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac affect national integration and development. the researchers used a mixed-method approach involving content analysis of selected programs from national and regional broadcast stations and surveys with 300 media consumers. the study found that english dominates broadcast content, marginalizing indigenous languages and limiting their potential in fostering cultural continuity and development. both studies are concerned with the use and marginalization of indigenous languages in nigerian broadcast media. the reviewed study focused more broadly on national development and language policy implications, whereas the current study focuses specifically on cultural identity in rivers state. gap identification the reviewed literature underscores the significant role of broadcast media in the preservation and promotion of indigenous languages and cultural identity across various nigerian contexts. studies by ojebuyi (2017), okonkwo (2020), and umezinwa and omego (2019) consistently reveal that radio and television programs delivered in indigenous languages positively influence cultural awareness, identity formation, and linguistic pride. the theoretical underpinning, particularly bandura’s cultural transmission theory (1963), further supports the notion that consistent exposure to culturally relevant media content shapes audience behaviour and identity. however, a critical gap exists in the geographic and demographic specificity of previous studies, as most were conducted in south-west or national contexts, often overlooking the unique linguistic and cultural diversity of rivers state. additionally, limited empirical attention has been given to how local broadcast stations in the state navigate language representation and cultural inclusivity among its numerous ethnic groups. this study fills the gap by focusing specifically on rivers state, offering a localized analysis of how broadcast media serves as a catalyst for language preservation and cultural identity within a diverse, multilingual environment. methodology this study adopted the qualitative research approach using the library research method, which relies on the collection and analysis of existing scholarly materials, publications, archived documents, books, journals, and credible online resources related to broadcast media, indigenous language preservation, and cultural identity in rivers state. the population of the study comprised all published and unpublished works relevant to media and cultural studies in nigeria, estimated at over 2,000 accessible academic sources within university libraries, media archives, and online scholarly databases. from this population, a purposive sample size of 150 key texts was selected based on their relevance, recency, credibility and thematic alignment with the study's objectives. the sampling technique employed was purposive sampling, allowing the researcher to deliberately select materials that provide rich insights and in-depth perspectives on the topic. data collection involved systematically reviewing and synthesizing these sources, focusing on thematic content such as language representation, cultural promotion, and the roles of local media in rivers state. data analysis was conducted through content analysis, which enabled the identification of recurring themes, patterns and conceptual linkages across the reviewed literature, thereby facilitating an interpretative understanding of how broadcast media functions as a catalyst for language and cultural identity in the region. data presentation and analysis mailto:topacademicjournals@gmail.com american journal of arts and communication vol.10, issue 2; march-april 2025; issn: 2994-0540 impact factor: 7.94 1252 columbia rd nw, washington dc, united states https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac; mail: topacademicjournals@gmail.com 23 | a m e r i c a n j o u r n a l o f a r t s a n d c o m m u n i c a t i o n | https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac themes were deduced deductively following the research objectives. the following themes were deduced: promotion of indigenous languages through broadcast media; broadcast media and the reinforcement of cultural identity; and challenges and limitations facing indigenous language and cultural representation in media. these were presented and discussed below: promotion of indigenous languages through broadcast media this theme explores how radio and television in rivers state contribute to the preservation and revitalization of native languages by incorporating them into news, cultural programs, and public discourse. existing literature reveals that while the use of indigenous languages in nigerian media has gained attention in recent years, it is still limited by factors such as market demand and the predominance of english as the language of official and commercial communication. according to ojebuyi (2017), while indigenous language radio programs exist in regions like south-west nigeria, their scope remains narrow, focusing predominantly on ethnic groups with larger populations. in rivers state, however, there is a diversity of languages spoken by ethnic groups such as the ikwerre, kalabari, and ogoni, which requires broadcast media to balance the representation of multiple languages in its content. studies like those of umezinwa and omego (2019) emphasized that the inclusion of indigenous languages in broadcasting is essential for creating content that resonates with local audiences and preserves the cultural heritage of various communities. broadcast media and the reinforcement of cultural identity this theme examines the extent to which broadcast media shapes, strengthens, or reflects the cultural values, traditions, and identity of the diverse ethnic groups in rivers state. research suggests that language and culture are deeply intertwined, and the media plays a critical role in sustaining cultural identity by fostering pride and continuity among local communities. okonkwo (2020) argued that when indigenous languages are used in media, they not only serve as a tool for communication but also act as a powerful mechanism for cultural preservation, enabling younger generations to connect with their roots. for instance, programs that highlight traditional ceremonies, folk stories, and indigenous music help maintain cultural practices and values. in rivers state, the widespread use of local languages in radio programs can potentially enhance cultural awareness and foster a deeper connection to indigenous heritage. this is particularly important in regions where globalization and the dominance of english pose a threat to indigenous cultural practices (asemah et al., 2013). challenges and limitations facing indigenous language and cultural representation in media this theme investigates the barriers, such as policy neglect, commercialization, language dominance, or lack of skilled presenters that hinder the effective representation of indigenous languages and cultures in broadcast media. several studies point to challenges such as inadequate funding, a lack of qualified personnel, and audience preferences for english content (asein, 2018). in rivers state, as noted by ojebuyi (2017), many local media stations are constrained by financial limitations that make it difficult to invest in quality programming in indigenous languages. furthermore, the commercial nature of broadcast media often prioritizes content that appeals to larger, urban audiences, which tends to be english-based. these economic factors, along with the mailto:topacademicjournals@gmail.com american journal of arts and communication vol.10, issue 2; march-april 2025; issn: 2994-0540 impact factor: 7.94 1252 columbia rd nw, washington dc, united states https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac; mail: topacademicjournals@gmail.com 24 | a m e r i c a n j o u r n a l o f a r t s a n d c o m m u n i c a t i o n | https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac limited training available for media practitioners in indigenous languages, create significant barriers to the development and sustainability of culturally relevant content. thus, while broadcast media has the potential to be a powerful agent for cultural identity and language preservation, its impact is often undermined by these structural challenges. the findings from the literature indicate that broadcast media plays a pivotal role in both the promotion of indigenous languages and the reinforcement of cultural identity in rivers state. however, this potential is often hindered by various challenges, such as the commercialization of media, limited resources, and a lack of skilled personnel. it is evident that for media to truly serve as a catalyst for language preservation and cultural identity, stakeholders must prioritize indigenous language programming, offer incentives for content creators, and develop policies that support the inclusion of diverse cultural representations. future research could benefit from a more in-depth exploration of local media’s specific strategies for overcoming these challenges and the role of government in fostering an environment conducive to cultural preservation through media. discussion of findings the study found that broadcast media in rivers state incorporates indigenous languages and cultural content to a moderate extent, with certain ethnic groups, such as the ikwerre, kalabari, and ogoni, being better represented than others due to linguistic diversity and the broader popularity of their languages in the media. however, the incorporation of these languages remains limited by market demands and resource constraints within local broadcasting stations. the findings of ojebuyi (2017) and umezinwa and omego (2019) align with the first finding, as they both emphasize the importance of incorporating indigenous languages in broadcast media to enhance cultural representation. ojebuyi (2017) highlights how indigenous language radio programs in south-west nigeria contribute to cultural identity, which mirrors the situation in rivers state where ethnic languages are moderately represented but limited by resource constraints. the cultural transmission theory, as proposed by bandura (1963), validates the first finding by demonstrating that broadcast media, through the portrayal of indigenous languages and cultural content, plays a critical role in shaping the cultural identity of the audience. this theory supports the study’s conclusion that incorporating indigenous languages in rivers state media, even in limited capacity, contributes to cultural preservation by reinforcing cultural norms and behaviours among the local population. the finding that broadcast media in rivers state incorporates indigenous languages to a moderate extent implies that there is potential for greater integration of local languages in media programming, which could help foster a stronger sense of cultural identity and pride. however, it also highlights the need for policy support and investment in local media to ensure a more inclusive representation of the region's linguistic diversity, ensuring all ethnic groups are fairly represented. the study discovered that broadcast media content in indigenous languages significantly influences the preservation and promotion of cultural identity in rivers state, as local radio and television programs help foster a sense of pride and cultural continuity, particularly through the portrayal of indigenous music, folklore, and traditional practices. this media exposure strengthens cultural ties, especially among younger generations who may be disconnected from their heritage due to globalization. the second finding is supported by okonkwo (2020), who discusses the role of indigenous language broadcasting in fostering cultural pride and mailto:topacademicjournals@gmail.com american journal of arts and communication vol.10, issue 2; march-april 2025; issn: 2994-0540 impact factor: 7.94 1252 columbia rd nw, washington dc, united states https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac; mail: topacademicjournals@gmail.com 25 | a m e r i c a n j o u r n a l o f a r t s a n d c o m m u n i c a t i o n | https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac identity. okonkwo’s study, which found that media in indigenous languages reinforces cultural values, directly correlates with the current study's conclusion that local broadcast content plays a crucial role in promoting cultural identity in rivers state, particularly through the use of local folklore, music, and traditions. the cultural transmission theory further validates the second finding by emphasizing how media content in indigenous languages acts as a vehicle for transmitting cultural values and identities. bandura’s theory highlights the significant influence of media on individual and group behaviours, reinforcing the study's finding that broadcast media in rivers state, through its indigenous language content, plays a pivotal role in preserving and promoting local cultural identity. the discovery that broadcast media in indigenous languages influences the preservation and promotion of cultural identity implies that further expansion of such content could strengthen cultural cohesion among local communities, especially among younger generations. it suggests that media outlets have a responsibility to prioritize cultural programs that celebrate local traditions, music, and languages, while also educating the public about their cultural heritage to counteract the effects of globalization. the study revealed that broadcast media in rivers state faces several challenges in sustaining indigenous language programming, including financial limitations, the commercialization of media content, and a shortage of qualified personnel proficient in local languages. these barriers significantly hinder the development of quality cultural programs, leading to an over-reliance on english content that appeals to a broader audience. the challenges highlighted in the third finding resonate with the difficulties outlined in umezinwa and omego’s (2019) study, where they identify financial constraints, lack of skilled personnel, and audience preference for english content as significant barriers to effective language representation in media. these barriers, echoed in the current study, significantly hinder the growth and sustainability of indigenous language programs in rivers state. the cultural transmission theory also reinforces the third finding by addressing the barriers to cultural transmission, such as limited resources and the commercialization of media content. bandura’s assertion that media can only effectively transmit cultural values if it is accessible and consistent supports the study’s conclusion that financial limitations and the dominance of english content hinder the effective dissemination of indigenous cultural practices in rivers state media. the finding that broadcast media faces significant challenges in sustaining indigenous language programming has implications for the development of strategies aimed at overcoming financial and resource-related barriers. this underscores the need for increased funding, capacity-building for media practitioners, and governmental support to encourage the production of highquality, culturally relevant content that reflects the linguistic diversity of rivers state, ensuring its sustainability in the long term. conclusion this study concluded that while broadcast media in rivers state incorporates indigenous languages to a moderate extent, the diversity of languages spoken in the region requires further efforts to ensure equitable representation of all ethnic groups. addressing the limitations in resources and market demands could the study established that broadcast media content in indigenous languages plays a vital role in the preservation and promotion of cultural identity in rivers state. by showcasing local traditions, folklore, and mailto:topacademicjournals@gmail.com american journal of arts and communication vol.10, issue 2; march-april 2025; issn: 2994-0540 impact factor: 7.94 1252 columbia rd nw, washington dc, united states https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac; mail: topacademicjournals@gmail.com 26 | a m e r i c a n j o u r n a l o f a r t s a n d c o m m u n i c a t i o n | https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac music, media outlets help strengthen cultural pride and awareness, particularly among younger generations who are increasingly exposed to globalized influences. in conclusion, the challenges faced by broadcast media in rivers state, such as financial constraints, commercialization, and a lack of qualified personnel, significantly hinder the development of robust indigenous language programming. overcoming these obstacles through better funding, training, and policy support is essential for sustaining the cultural and linguistic diversity that broadcast media can promote. this study contributes to the body of knowledge by offering a localized analysis of how broadcast media in rivers state, nigeria, serves as a catalyst for the preservation and promotion of indigenous languages and cultural identity. unlike previous studies that predominantly focus on larger, more homogenous regions of nigeria, this research highlights the unique challenges and opportunities that arise in a multicultural and multilingual state like rivers. by examining the role of broadcast media in representing diverse ethnic languages such as ikwerre, kalabari, and ogoni, this study provides a nuanced understanding of the complexities involved in balancing cultural representation in media. it underscores the potential of local broadcast stations to be agents of cultural change, while also shedding light on the resource limitations that hinder their capacity to fully represent all ethnic groups equitably. furthermore, the study extends existing theoretical frameworks, particularly bandura’s cultural transmission theory (1963), by demonstrating its application in the context of indigenous language programming and cultural identity formation. through its focus on rivers state, the research enriches the theoretical discourse by providing empirical evidence of how media content in indigenous languages can shape cultural perceptions and identity in a diverse community. the findings suggest that the media not only serves as a platform for communication but also as a key instrument in preserving and transmitting cultural values, especially in the face of globalization and the dominance of english. as such, this study contributes to the growing literature on media and cultural studies by providing valuable insights into the specific dynamics of local media in a linguistically diverse region. recommendations in view of the findings from the work, the following recommendations have been made. 1) broadcast media in rivers state should increase the representation of all indigenous languages to ensure equitable cultural representation and foster inclusivity across the region’s diverse ethnic groups. 2) media outlets in rivers state should prioritize the production of more cultural content in indigenous languages, especially programs that highlight local traditions, folklore, and music, to further promote cultural identity. 3) the government and media organizations provide greater funding and training for media practitioners to overcome financial constraints and resource challenges in sustaining indigenous language programming. references asein, s. o. (2018). the role of indigenous languages in national development. lagos concept publications. mailto:topacademicjournals@gmail.com american journal of arts and communication vol.10, issue 2; march-april 2025; issn: 2994-0540 impact factor: 7.94 1252 columbia rd nw, washington dc, united states https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac; mail: topacademicjournals@gmail.com 27 | a m e r i c a n j o u r n a l o f a r t s a n d c o m m u n i c a t i o n | https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac asemah, e. s., anum, v. c., & edegoh, l. o. n. (2013). radio as a tool for rural development in nigeria: prospects and challenges. arabian journal of business and management review (oman chapter), 3(1), 29–37. bandura, a. (1963). social learning and personality development. holt, rinehart and winston. baran, s. j., & davis, d. k. (2015). mass communication theory: foundations, ferment, and future (7th ed.). cengage learning. eberhard, d. m., simons, g. f., & fennig, c. d. (eds.). (2023). ethnologue: languages of the world (26th ed.). dallas, tx: sil international. hall, s. (1990). cultural identity and diaspora. in j. rutherford (ed.), identity: community, culture, difference (pp. 222–237). london: lawrence & wishart. mccombs, m. e., & shaw, d. l. (1972). the agenda-setting function of mass media. public opinion quarterly, 36(2), 176–187. ojebuyi, b. r. (2017). indigenous language radio broadcasting and the promotion of african cultures in southwest nigeria. journal of african media studies, 9(2), 265–281. okonkwo, r. (2020). indigenous language broadcasting and cultural identity in nigeria: a case study of radio nigeria. international journal of communication, 14, 1123–1142. olaoti, r. (2021). the role of community radio in preserving minority languages in nigeria. journal of communication and media research, 13(2), 45–55. ugboma, e. (2019). local content development and cultural preservation in nigerian broadcast media: the rivers state experience. nigerian journal of communication, 16(1), 1–16. umezinwa, e., & omego, c. (2019). language use in nigerian broadcast media: implications for national development. mgbakoigba: journal of african studies, 8(2), 67–81. mailto:topacademicjournals@gmail.com american journal of arts and communication vol.10, issue 3; may – june 2025 issn: 2994-0540 impact factor: 7.94 1252 columbia rd nw, washington dc, united states https:// topjournals.org/index.php/ajac; mail: topacademicjournals@gmail.com 1 | a m e r i c a n j o u r n a l o f a r t s a n d c o m m u n i c a t i o n | https:// topjournals.org/index.php/ajac correlates of school culture dimensions and teachers’ job satisfaction in public secondary schools in abia state, nigeria. 1dr. baptista chinyere chigbu, 2dr. chika nonye eziamaka and 3ferdinand nwafor okoye 1department of educational foundations, university of nigeria, nsukka 2,3department of educational management and policy, nnamdi azikiwe university, awka. e-mail: baptista.chigbu@unn.edu.ng, cn.eziamaka@unizik.edu.ng, fn.okoye@unizik.edu.ng doi: https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.15487698 abstract: this study determined correlates of school culture dimensions and teachers’ job satisfaction in public secondary schools in abia state, nigeria. two research questions guided the study and two null hypotheses were tested at 0.05 level of significance. the correlational survey research design was adopted for the study. from a population of 4,812 teachers, a sample of 241 was drawn using stratified random sampling technique. two questionnaires titled ““organizational culture scale (ocs) and teachers’ job satisfaction scale (tjss)” were used to collect data for the study. the instruments were validated by two experts from the department of educational management and policy and one expert from the department of educational foundation (measurement and evaluation) all in the faculty of education, nnamdi azikiwe university. internal consistency of the instruments were determined using cronbach’s alpha method and coefficients of 0.86 and 0.90 were obtained for ocs and tjss respectively. data were analyzed using pearson product moment correlation coefficient and p-value was used to determine the significance of correlation at 0.05 significant level. the result revealed that there is a moderate positive and significant relationship between bureaucratic school culture and teachers’ job satisfaction in public secondary schools in abia state. there is also a high positive relationship between team orientation school culture and teachers’ job satisfaction in public secondary schools in abia state. based on the findings, it was recommended among others that principals should reduce the rigidity in bureaucratic organizational culture that minimizes the freedom of staff to execute tasks in order to enhance their job satisfaction. key words: school culture, job satisfaction, teachers’ job satisfaction, secondary schools introduction education plays a pivotal role in nation-building, serving as a fundamental instrument for the transmission of knowledge, the inculcation of values, and the enhancement of individual skills. through education, individuals mailto:topacademicjournals@gmail.com mailto:baptista.chigbu@unn.edu.ng mailto:cn.eziamaka@unizik.edu.ng american journal of arts and communication vol.10, issue 3; may – june 2025 issn: 2994-0540 impact factor: 7.94 1252 columbia rd nw, washington dc, united states https:// topjournals.org/index.php/ajac; mail: topacademicjournals@gmail.com 2 | a m e r i c a n j o u r n a l o f a r t s a n d c o m m u n i c a t i o n | https:// topjournals.org/index.php/ajac are empowered to act responsibly and contribute meaningfully to societal development. furthermore, education provides opportunities for personal growth, character development, and the realization of one's full potential, ultimately shaping individuals into productive members of society. education may be acquired either informally, outside structured institutions, or formally within the school system. in nigeria, the educational system is structured into three main levels: primary, post-primary (secondary), and tertiary education. the secondary level, also referred to as the post-primary stage, serves as a critical transitional phase within this framework secondary education serves as a critical link between basic and tertiary levels of education. according to obasi, enyi, and ibueavunam (2023), the secondary school functions as an institution designed to refine individuals by developing their competencies, shaping their behavior, and fostering holistic excellence. positioned between primary and tertiary education, the secondary school provides learners with the knowledge, skills, and attitudes necessary for meaningful societal engagement (olori & adelotan, 2020). this level of education not only prepares students for active and responsible citizenship but also equips them with the academic foundation required for admission into higher institutions of learning. the secondary school curriculum is designed to be comprehensive and multidisciplinary, offering students exposure to a wide range of subjects that facilitate intellectual development and readiness for advanced studies. furthermore, the behavior and academic performance of both students and teachers within the secondary school environment are significantly influenced by the prevailing school culture. school culture encompasses the collective norms, values, communication practices, decision-making processes, motivational strategies, and shared conventions upheld by members of staff within an educational institution. it represents the unique atmosphere and set of shared expectations that guide the behavior and daily interactions of both staff and students. omenyi and emengini (2020) describe school culture as a combination of written and unwritten beliefs, values, symbols, and practices that shape interpersonal dynamics among school personnel. these cultural elements influence how staff members dress, communicate, and relate to one another, while also reflecting the internal philosophy and identity of the school. the prevailing culture within a school significantly impacts how teachers interact, collaborate, and carry out their responsibilities. as school cultures vary, it is essential for all members of the school community, regardless of hierarchical position to adapt to their institutional culture in order to foster job satisfaction and enhance professional performance. supporting this perspective, thompson, unachukwu, obiekwe, and amaonye (2022) emphasize that each school should establish its own distinct set of values, policies, and principles, which collectively form its cultural identity. in schools characterized by a positive culture, there is often a strong alignment among staff in terms of values, beliefs, and practices, which influences not only individual behavior but also the overall administration and management of the institution. consequently, a school’s culture appears to be closely linked to its organizational effectiveness and performance. several scholars have proposed various dimensions of school culture. bamidele (2022) identifies power culture, role culture, achievement culture, and supportive culture. similarly, aranki, suifan, and sweis (2019), as well as mailto:topacademicjournals@gmail.com american journal of arts and communication vol.10, issue 3; may – june 2025 issn: 2994-0540 impact factor: 7.94 1252 columbia rd nw, washington dc, united states https:// topjournals.org/index.php/ajac; mail: topacademicjournals@gmail.com 3 | a m e r i c a n j o u r n a l o f a r t s a n d c o m m u n i c a t i o n | https:// topjournals.org/index.php/ajac ghewari and pawar (2019), highlight bureaucratic, supportive, innovative, and team-oriented cultures. oroka and oroka (2020) categorize school culture into power, task, role, and person cultures. for the purpose of this study, particular attention is given to bureaucratic and team-oriented cultural dimensions. bureaucratic culture refers to a school environment characterized by a well-defined organizational structure, rigid adherence to rules, standardized procedures, and clear operational standards. dereje, woldie, adamu, and bekele (2020) assert that such a culture is distinguished by strict control, clearly delineated responsibilities, and established lines of authority. in schools operating under a bureaucratic culture, principals often rely on cautious approaches, the use of sanctions, and close supervision to ensure compliance with institutional norms. discipline, command, and procedural fidelity are emphasized as mechanisms for guiding teacher behavior. this culture typically discourages favoritism, as duties are expected to be performed strictly in accordance with established rules. however, a major limitation of the bureaucratic culture is its tendency to stifle creativity and initiative, as teachers are expected to follow laid-down procedures with minimal deviation or innovation. in contrast, a team-oriented school culture is one in which collaborative work takes precedence over individual efforts. this culture promotes the idea that collective effort among teachers leads to better outcomes. okonkwo, osita, olisaemeka, and chigbo (2019) affirm that in schools with a team-oriented culture, goals are achieved through joint efforts rather than isolated tasks. principals in such schools often foster collaboration, open communication, and the exchange of ideas among teachers. nonetheless, team-oriented cultures can also present challenges, particularly when differing ideologies and values among staff members lead to conflict, which may affect job satisfaction. job satisfaction refers to a teacher's emotional response and overall attitude toward their job. udemba (2021) defines it as the extent to which individuals feel positively or negatively about their work. it encompasses feelings of happiness, fulfillment, and contentment derived from one’s professional role (okorji & njoku, 2020). srinivasan (2021) emphasizes that individuals who are highly satisfied with their jobs tend to maintain positive attitudes, while those with low satisfaction often express negativity toward their roles. teachers who are satisfied with their jobs are generally more committed, punctual, and consistent in lesson delivery. as kwizera, mwirumubi, and kizito (2021) note, satisfied employees demonstrate reduced absenteeism, increased punctuality, enhanced performance, and long-term organizational commitment. bahtilla and hui (2021) similarly found that satisfied teachers are more likely to remain in the profession, contribute extra effort, and show dedication to student learning. job satisfaction is influenced by both the challenges and opportunities presented by the school environment. according to joshua, adamu, and jigayi (2017), teachers express greater job satisfaction when school leadership fosters inclusion, transparency, and shared decision-making. teachers who feel heard and valued are more likely to experience job fulfillment and engage positively with their responsibilities. however, in public secondary schools in abia state, there are indications of teacher dissatisfaction, often manifested through lateness, absenteeism, lack of commitment, and involvement in non-teaching activities during mailto:topacademicjournals@gmail.com american journal of arts and communication vol.10, issue 3; may – june 2025 issn: 2994-0540 impact factor: 7.94 1252 columbia rd nw, washington dc, united states https:// topjournals.org/index.php/ajac; mail: topacademicjournals@gmail.com 4 | a m e r i c a n j o u r n a l o f a r t s a n d c o m m u n i c a t i o n | https:// topjournals.org/index.php/ajac official hours (iroegbulam, 2021). such behaviors may be symptomatic of deeper organizational issues, particularly those stemming from rigid and unsupportive school cultures. okeze (2021) observes that many teachers rarely adhere to the norms and values of their institutions due to a lack of inclusion in school governance. this absence of participatory culture has been linked to diminished innovation and morale among teaching staff. similarly, njoku and modebelu (2019) report pervasive dissatisfaction in abia state’s public secondary schools, attributing it to poor interpersonal relations, conflicts, and a lack of respect between teachers and administrators. the overreliance on bureaucratic systems, including excessive rules and a reluctance to adapt to change, contributes to teacher frustration. such rigidity can hinder timely decision-making and prevent teachers from exercising professional autonomy. nweke and okai (2022) express concern that many public secondary schools in the state lack the enabling culture necessary to achieve their educational objectives. given these challenges, this study investigates the relationship between school culture and teachers’ job satisfaction in public secondary schools in abia state. statement of the problem an ideal school culture is one that is supportive, healthy, and conducive to teamwork and creativity, factors which are essential for boosting teacher morale and overall job satisfaction in secondary schools. however, in many public secondary schools in abia state, the prevailing school culture appears to be rigid and unfriendly, creating an atmosphere that stifles innovation and limits creative expression among teachers. the organizational structure of these schools is often overly bureaucratic and inflexible, thereby restricting teachers’ professional autonomy and limiting their involvement in decision-making processes. this rigidity tends to discourage the implementation of new ideas, as some principals prefer to maintain the status quo and resist changes introduced by teachers. the bureaucratic nature of these institutions characterized by an overdependence on rules and hierarchical control further restricts the use of teacher initiative. in such environments, the absence of collaborative practices and the lack of clear, open communication channels often lead to teacher demotivation and emotional exhaustion. in response, some teachers may engage in counterproductive behaviors as a form of expressing dissatisfaction. there are growing concerns about the extent to which core values and professional norms are upheld in these schools. instances of lateness, absenteeism, uncooperative attitudes, disrespect, and dishonesty among staff members suggest a potential breakdown in organizational culture. in many cases, teachers are required to follow top-down directives with little room for participation, leading to feelings of frustration and disengagement. some dissatisfied teachers have been reported to absent themselves from duty without justification, neglect lesson delivery, or engage in non-academic activities, such as trading during official hours. such behaviors compromise instructional quality and negatively affect student learning outcomes. while educational stakeholders have made efforts to address these issues through the development of behavioral norms, teacher empowerment programs, and enhanced monitoring of school activities, these measures have not fully mitigated the root causes of teacher dissatisfaction. consequently, this study seeks to investigate the extent to which school culture correlates with teachers’ job satisfaction in public secondary schools in abia state. mailto:topacademicjournals@gmail.com american journal of arts and communication vol.10, issue 3; may – june 2025 issn: 2994-0540 impact factor: 7.94 1252 columbia rd nw, washington dc, united states https:// topjournals.org/index.php/ajac; mail: topacademicjournals@gmail.com 5 | a m e r i c a n j o u r n a l o f a r t s a n d c o m m u n i c a t i o n | https:// topjournals.org/index.php/ajac purpose of the study the purpose of the study is to determine the relationship between school culture and teachers’ job satisfaction in public secondary schools in abia state. specifically, the study determined the: 1. relationship between bureaucratic school culture and teachers’ job satisfaction in public secondary schools in abia state. 2. relationship between team-orientation school culture and teachers’ job satisfaction in public secondary schools in abia state. research questions the following research questions guided the study: 1. what is the relationship between bureaucratic school culture and teachers’ job satisfaction in public secondary schools in abia state? 2. what is the relationship between team-orientation school culture and teachers’ job satisfaction in public secondary schools in abia state? hypotheses the following null hypotheses were tested at 0.05 level of significance: 1. there is no significant relationship between bureaucratic school culture and teachers’ job satisfaction in public secondary schools in abia state. 2. there is no significant relationship between team-orientation school culture and teachers’ job satisfaction in public secondary schools in abia state. method correlational research design was employed for this study. the study was conducted in abia state, nigeria. the population of the study comprised all the 4,812 teachers in the 277 public secondary schools in the state. the sample size of the study was 241 teachers (5% of the population) drawn using proportionate stratified random sampling technique. structured questionnaires titled: “organizational culture scale (ocs) and teachers’ job satisfaction scale (tjss)” were used for data collection. the instruments were face validated by three experts in faculty of education nnamdi azikiwe university, awka. internal consistency co-efficient of 0.86 and 0.90 were obtained for ocs and tjss respectively using cronbach’s alpha statistical method. the researchers administered the instrument to the research participants with the help of three research assistants. out of the 241 copies distributed, 233 copies were returned duly completed, and used for data analysis. pearson product moment correlation coefficient (r) was used to answer the research questions. the (r) was used to determine the nature of the relationship between the variables of the study. the magnitude of the relationship was determined using nworgu (2015) guidelines, thus: 0.00-0.19, very low; 0.20-0.39, low; 0.40-0.59, moderate; 0.60-0.79, high, and 0.80-1.00, very high. the p-value was used to determine the significance of the relationship for the three hypotheses. the decision rule was: a null hypothesis was not accepted where the calculated p-value was less than mailto:topacademicjournals@gmail.com american journal of arts and communication vol.10, issue 3; may – june 2025 issn: 2994-0540 impact factor: 7.94 1252 columbia rd nw, washington dc, united states https:// topjournals.org/index.php/ajac; mail: topacademicjournals@gmail.com 6 | a m e r i c a n j o u r n a l o f a r t s a n d c o m m u n i c a t i o n | https:// topjournals.org/index.php/ajac the stipulated level of significance (0.05). the reverse is the case where the calculated p-value was greater than the stipulated level of significance. all analyses were carried out using statistical package for social science (spss) version 25. results table 1: pearson r on the relationship between bureaucratic school culture and teachers’ job satisfaction in public secondary schools in abia state. source of variation n r remark bureaucratic culture job satisfaction 350 0.45 moderate positive relationship table 1 shows that there is a moderate positive relationship existing between bureaucratic school culture and teachers’ job satisfaction in public libraries in abia state. this is evident by the size of pearson's correlation coefficient r, which is 0.45. table 2: pearson r on the relationship between team-orientation school culture and teachers’ job satisfaction in public secondary schools in abia state. source of variation n r remark team orientation culture job satisfaction 350 0.72 high positive relationship as shown in the above table, there is a high positive relationship existing between team orientation school culture and teachers’ job satisfaction in public libraries in abia state. this is evident by the size of pearson's correlation coefficient r, which is 0.72. table 3: test of significance of relationship between bureaucratic school culture in schools and teachers’ job satisfaction in public secondary schools in abia state. source of variation n r p-value remark bureaucratic culture job satisfaction 350 0.45 0.00 sig analysis in table 3 shows that there is a significant relationship between bureaucratic school culture and teachers’ job satisfaction in public secondary schools in abia state. the calculated r (0.45) had p.value <0.05. the 1st null hypothesis was therefore rejected. mailto:topacademicjournals@gmail.com american journal of arts and communication vol.10, issue 3; may – june 2025 issn: 2994-0540 impact factor: 7.94 1252 columbia rd nw, washington dc, united states https:// topjournals.org/index.php/ajac; mail: topacademicjournals@gmail.com 7 | a m e r i c a n j o u r n a l o f a r t s a n d c o m m u n i c a t i o n | https:// topjournals.org/index.php/ajac table 4: test of significance of relationship between team-orientation school culture and teachers’ job satisfaction in public secondary schools in abia state. source of variation n r p-value remark team orientation culture job satisfaction 350 0.72 0.00 sig analysis in table 4 shows that there is a significant relationship between team orientation school culture and teachers’ job satisfaction in public secondary schools in abia state. the calculated r (0.72) had p.value <0.05. the 2nd null hypothesis was therefore rejected. discussion of result bureaucratic school culture and teachers’ job satisfaction the findings of this study revealed a weak positive relationship between bureaucratic culture and teachers’ job satisfaction in public secondary schools in abia state. this result contradicts the findings of al-shammari and al-am (2018), who reported a strong positive relationship between bureaucratic organizational culture and employee job satisfaction. the disparity in these findings may be attributed to variations in research contexts, including differences in the time frame, participant demographics, sample size, and organizational settings of the two studies. the weak relationship observed in the current study may be explained by the nature of bureaucratic culture in schools, which prioritizes strict adherence to rules and policies over addressing the professional, emotional, and developmental needs of teachers. in such settings, the rigidity associated with bureaucratic structures may suppress innovation and limit teachers’ ability to exercise professional autonomy, thereby dampening their job satisfaction. the hierarchical control and excessive procedural requirements often lead to delays in decisionmaking, which may further contribute to teacher frustration and reduced morale. despite this, the study also found that a significant relationship exists between bureaucratic culture and teachers’ job satisfaction. this aligns with the findings of indiyati, fauziah, and putri (2020), who reported a significant association between bureaucratic culture and employee job satisfaction. the perceived fairness and transparency associated with bureaucratic systems—such as the discouragement of favoritism and the promotion of equity through clearly defined rules and policies—may explain the statistically significant relationship observed in this context. team-orientation school culture and teachers’ job satisfaction the finding of this study revealed that team-orientation culture in schools has strong positive relationship with teachers’ job satisfaction in public secondary schools in abia state. this agreed with the finding of chukwuemeke and owenvbiugie (2022) which showed that team-orientation organizational culture has strong positive relationship with job satisfaction of business educator. the similarity of time span in which the two studies were conducted could explain the agreement in the findings. team-orientation organizational culture of schools which encourage teachers to work together by sharing ideas, cooperating and learning from each other uplifts their mailto:topacademicjournals@gmail.com american journal of arts and communication vol.10, issue 3; may – june 2025 issn: 2994-0540 impact factor: 7.94 1252 columbia rd nw, washington dc, united states https:// topjournals.org/index.php/ajac; mail: topacademicjournals@gmail.com 8 | a m e r i c a n j o u r n a l o f a r t s a n d c o m m u n i c a t i o n | https:// topjournals.org/index.php/ajac morale and strongly improve their job satisfaction. teachers who work together in team-orientation organizational culture have the tendency of coming up with multiple solutions to tackle work problems which thereby go a long way to improve their job satisfaction. further result showed that there is significant relationship between team-orientation culture in schools and teachers’ job satisfaction in public secondary schools in abia state. this affirmed the finding of kumari and mukherjee (2021) which indicated that there was a significant correlation between team-orientation school culture and job satisfaction. a unified team encouraged in team-orientation creates strong bonds, reduces conflicts and also enables teachers to gain fresh perspectives of performing their duties which significantly contribute to their job satisfaction. conclusion following the findings of the study, it was concluded that there is a moderate positive and significant relationship between bureaucratic school culture and teachers’ job satisfaction in public secondary schools in abia state. there is also a high positive relationship between team orientation school culture and teachers’ job satisfaction in public secondary schools in abia state. recommendations based on the findings of this study, the following recommendations were made: 1. principals should minimize the rigidity in bureaucratic culture which reduces the freedom of staff to be innovative while executing tasks. this will enhance their job satisfaction. 2. principals should assign tasks to teachers in teams and groups. this will help develop team-orientation culture which will help improve teachers’ job satisfaction. references al-shammari, m. & al-am, z. (2018). organizational culture and job satisfaction in a telecommunications company in the kingdom of bahrain. polish journal of management studies, 18(1), 33-43. aranki, d.h., suifan, t.s., & sweis, r.j. (2019). the relationship between organizational culture and organizational commitment. modern applied science, 13(4), 137-154. bahtilla, m. & hui, x (2021). the impact of school environment on teachers’ job satisfaction in secondary schools. european journal of educational studies, 8(7), 16-43. bamidele, r. (2022). organizational culture. in r. bamidele (eds). industrial sociology, industrial relations and human resource management (pp. 284-292). awka: fab educational books. chukwuemeke, h.e. & owenvbiugie, r.o. (2022). organizational culture, shared task, and job satisfaction among business educators in edo state. sokoto educational review, 21(1), 80-90. mailto:topacademicjournals@gmail.com american journal of arts and communication vol.10, issue 3; may – june 2025 issn: 2994-0540 impact factor: 7.94 1252 columbia rd nw, washington dc, united states https:// topjournals.org/index.php/ajac; mail: topacademicjournals@gmail.com 9 | a m e r i c a n j o u r n a l o f a r t s a n d c o m m u n i c a t i o n | https:// topjournals.org/index.php/ajac dereje, m., woldie, m., adamu, a., & bekele, f. (2020). perceived organizational culture and its’ relationship with job satisfaction in primary hospitals of jimma zone and jimma town administration: a correlational study. bmc health services research, 20(1), 1-9. ghewari, a.a. and pawar, s.n. (2019). impact of organizational culture on employee job satisfaction: a case of indian it sector. international journal for research in engineering application & management, 5(3), 6466. indiyati, d., fauziah, a.r. & putri, r.k. (2020). organizational culture, communication and job satisfaction. international journal of economics, business and management research, 4(8), 1-12. iroegbulam, e.o. (2021). principals’ transformational leadership practices on teachers’ job satisfaction and commitments in abia state, nigeria. journal of educational research in developing areas, 2(2), 173182. joshua, o., adamu, f. & jigayi, l.s. (2017). principals’ leadership behaviour and teachers’ job satisfaction in secondary schools in bauchi state, nigeria. atbu, journal of science, technology & education, 5(1), 12-16. kwizera, e., mwirumubi, r. & kizito, j.b. (2021). job satisfaction and its effect on academic staff performance in chartered private universities in burundi. direct research journal of social science and educational studies. 8(1), 14-21. kumari, p., & mukherjee, a.n. (2021). organizational culture and job satisfaction among employees. journal of research in humanities & social sciences, 9(6), 27-32. njoku, a.o. & modebelu, m.n. (2019). organizational climate and teachers’ job performance in public secondary schools in abia state, nigeria. open access library journal, 6(1), 1-8. nworgu, b.g. (2015). educational research: basic issues and methodology (3rd ed.). enugu: university trust publishers. obasi, o.u., enyi, d. and ibueavunam, o.j. (2023). principals’ administrative competencies and students’ academic performance in public secondary schools in ebonyi state. unizik journal of educational research and policy studies, 15(3), 30-44. okeze, w.o. (2021). perceived influence of organizational culture on teachers’ job performance in public secondary school in abia state. international journal of innovative education research, 9(1), 72-80. mailto:topacademicjournals@gmail.com american journal of arts and communication vol.10, issue 3; may – june 2025 issn: 2994-0540 impact factor: 7.94 1252 columbia rd nw, washington dc, united states https:// topjournals.org/index.php/ajac; mail: topacademicjournals@gmail.com 10 | a m e r i c a n j o u r n a l o f a r t s a n d c o m m u n i c a t i o n | https:// topjournals.org/index.php/ajac okonkwo, n.r., osita, f.c., olisaemeka, d.m., & chigbo, d.n. (2019). influence of organizational culture on job satisfaction and workers retention: a study of selected banks in anambra state. international journal of management and entrepreneurship, 1(1), 84-102. okorji, p. and njoku, n.e.a. (2020). relationship between school climate and principals’ job satisfaction in secondary schools in imo state, nigeria. national journal of educational leadership, 5(1), 99-111. olori, a.l. & adelotan, a.m. (2020). the use of information technologies for improved school administration and management in ogun state, nigeria. journal of contemporary issues in educational planning and administration, 5(2), 44-49. omenyi, a.s., & emengini, b. (2020). relationship between teachers’ perceived organizational culture and their job performance in secondary schools in anambra state. nnadiebube journal of education in africa, 5(2), 47-64. oroka, o. & oroka, v. (2020). influence of organizational culture on employees behavioural pattern in college of education, mosogar, delta state. international journal of business & law research, 8(4), 99-108. thompson, c.c., unachukwu, g.c., & obiekwe, k.k. (2022). relationship between school organizational culture and teachers’ task performance in public secondary schools in anambra state. udemba, n. (2021). relationship between self-efficacy and job performance and satisfaction of secondary school teachers in anambra state. international journal of multidisciplinary research and analysis, 4(5), 537-542. mailto:topacademicjournals@gmail.com american journal of arts and communication vol. 9, issue 1; january-february 2024; issn: 2994-0540 impact factor: 6.91 1252 columbia rd nw, washington dc, united states https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac; mail: topacademicjournals@gmail.com 23 | a m e r i c a n j o u r n a l o f a r t s a n d c o m m u n i c a t i o n | https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac cultural mosaic: complex gender identities in igbo and yoruba languages and cultures 1chijioke u. eze, 2olumide a. oni 1,2department of philosophy, adekunle ajasin university, akungba-akoko, ondo state, nigeria. doi: https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.10600346 abstract: this study delves into the intricate web of metaphysical identities imposed upon women in africa, particularly exploring how these perceptions contribute to sustaining derogatory status within the cultural consciousness. rooted in ancient african beliefs, shaped by ignorance, tradition, and confirmed through coincidences, the exploitation of women's sexuality through metaphysical lenses has persisted through the postcolonial era. this enduring narrative is propagated by mental poisoning, instilling attitudes of uncontrollable fear and premonition. in the traditional african context, women's sexuality has been burdened with negative attributes, manifesting in concepts such as witchcraft and spirit-child, each reinforcing a detrimental metaphysical identity. these metaphysical attributions, often rooted in superstition, create stereotypes that significantly impact women's social relations. notably, the widespread belief that women are responsible for societal evils perpetuates this negative metaphysical identity, as documented in various african cultures (ogungbemi, 2007:128; parrinder, 1974:124; lawson, 1984:23-4 as an illustrative example, among the ga people of the guinea coast in west africa, women are perceived as vessels possessed by evil demons, a condition inherited by their daughters upon death. this perspective posits that a woman exists with dual identities—the physical and the metaphysical. the ensuing sub-sections dissect these two identities, shedding light on the intricacies and implications of the metaphysical burdens placed upon women in african societies. this study aims to unravel the historical roots and contemporary repercussions of these metaphysical identities, providing insights into the complex interplay between cultural beliefs, gender roles, and societal expectations. by critically examining the narratives surrounding women's metaphysical identities, this research contributes to the ongoing discourse on gender, cultural consciousness, and the need for transformative perspectives. keywords: women's sexuality, metaphysical identity, african cultural consciousness, gender roles, societal expectations introduction mailto:topacademicjournals@gmail.com american journal of arts and communication vol. 9, issue 1; january-february 2024; issn: 2994-0540 impact factor: 6.91 1252 columbia rd nw, washington dc, united states https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac; mail: topacademicjournals@gmail.com 24 | a m e r i c a n j o u r n a l o f a r t s a n d c o m m u n i c a t i o n | https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac the exploitation of women’s sexuality through metaphysical identities is one of the perceptions which still keep women in derogatory status within the trad cultural consciousness in africa. in ancient africa, beliefs were birth out of ignorance, though governed by tradition and confirmed by strange coincidence. in post-colonial era, beliefs are entrenched through mental poisoning which inaugurates attitudes of uncontrollable fear and premonition. women’s sexuality has been given negative attributes in african societies. the conceptions of witchcraft, spiritchild were all attributes of negative women metaphysical identity. metaphysical identity gives women a sort of stereotype that affects them in their social relations. mbiti writes that witches who are mainly women are people with inherit power by means of which they can abandon their bodies at night and go to meet similar people or suck or eat away the life of their victims. it is widely believed in most african cultures that women are usually blamed for experiences of evil in the society (ogungbemi, 2007:128; parrinder, 1974:124; lawson, 1984:23-4). among the ga people of guinea coast of west africa, women are usually possessed by evil demons, which live in them and passed to their daughters at death. the implication of the above perspective is that a woman has two identities: the physical and the metaphysical. the two identities are presented one after the other in the next subsections. physical identity identity can be understood from the perspective of sameness and otherness. sameness connotes the nature of something without reference to another thing (amaku, 2004:105). it connotes the autonomy of being as well as the point of departure and return in discussion of the nature of a particular being (ibid). the authors‟ daily experience and observation are such that teaches people that identity is connected by resemblance, contingency or causation (hume, 1978:251-263). in this work identity here has to do with gender; anatomy or biological resemblance. identity is inextricably linked to the sense of belonging. people perceive themselves through identity, and others see them, as belonging to certain groups and not others. being part of a group entails active engagement (díaz-andreu et al., 2005:2). this resemblance necessitates the classification of one as a woman. research reveals that human is made up of physical as earlier mention and spiritual otherwise referred to as metaphysical identity. the concept of metaphysical identity is point of discussion in the next sub-section. metaphysical identity metaphysics has to do with the study of what lies beyond the physical world of sensory experience (popkin and stroll, 2008:116). this metaphysical explanation of human identity includes the most general and fundamental characteristics of gendered identities both physical mental and spiritual. in this study the authors shall adopt spiritual to include the metaphysical. spiritual has to do with connections with the human spirit (hornby, 2000:1147), whereas identity means who or what someone is. (hornby, 2000:953). identity, therefore, is not a static thing, but a continual process (literally, that of identification (hall and du gay, 1996). identities are constructed through interaction between people, and the process by which people acquire and maintain their identities requires choice and agency. through agency people define who they are. they are potentially able to choose the groups they want to identify with, although this selection is always constrained by structures beyond their control such as boundaries and their own body. the active role of the individual leads to identities being mailto:topacademicjournals@gmail.com american journal of arts and communication vol. 9, issue 1; january-february 2024; issn: 2994-0540 impact factor: 6.91 1252 columbia rd nw, washington dc, united states https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac; mail: topacademicjournals@gmail.com 25 | a m e r i c a n j o u r n a l o f a r t s a n d c o m m u n i c a t i o n | https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac historical, fluid, subject to persisting change. they are also socially mediated, linked to the broader cultural discourse and are performed through embodiment and action. the concept of identity deployed in this volume, therefore, is not an essentialist, but a strategic and positional one (díaz-andreu et al., 2005:3). identities can be hybrid or multiple and the intersection between different types of identities is one of the most enriching aspects of this study. it means that metaphysical identity is what someone is in relation to his /her spirit. this is contrasted from physical identity. women‟s spiritual and metaphysical identity means what women are in connection with their human spirits. it is thus described as a complex and challenging interactions between internal (self) and external (spiritual or supernatural) forces within an individual. this issue of spiritual identity may be properly considered as a phenomenon of human nature, worthy of examination. if we can determine its cause, an addition is made to human wealth of knowledge; if not, it must be held as part of our usual constitution. african concept of identity within african traditional belief systems, it is generally believed that humans are both biological and spiritual beings; the biological is expressed in the physical world whereas the spiritual is expresses in the non-physical world. there are also two ontological realms of existences; the supernatural (invisible realm) and the natural (visible realm) (nwala, 2010:46). the belief is allied with the ontological conviction that life exists beyond the physical and extends to the spiritual. in order words, the ontology of any distinctively african world-view is replete with spirit: spirit is the animating, sustaining creative life-force of the universe. spirit is real. it is as real as matter. it reality is primordial and it is if not superior at least as primitive as that of matter. in its pure state it is unembodied (idonibiye, 1973:83). the physical world is real as well as an intimate part of the spiritual world. thus, african thought system cannot condone regimentations because there is a continuous interplay, intermingling and interdependence between spirit (forces) and material world. okoro also emphasized that africans consider humans and society to be embodiments of spirituality and physicality (okoro, 2011:7), thus: wisdom consists in the harmonization of the compositions of man and his society. this is usually done in a hierarchized order with the singular purpose of unifying the horizontal and vertical factors in man and in the society (okoro, 2011: 8). humans maintain relationship in the physical world through the human body and the unseen world of gods and spirit through their spiritual aspect. the african world could best be describes in what nwọga (1984:25) captured as; a multidimensional field of action admitting of three types of reality; physical, spiritual and abstract … they acknowledge that things may change their nature ... a world view that provides the framework for the goals of community and for the hopes and aspiration for the good life of the individual persons. thus the traditional african cultures evolved world views, which are categorised within traditional cosmology as world-views which produce a way of life based on man‟s spiritual needs; a socio-religious well-ordered communally integrated way of life. there is no sharp distinction between the religious and the secular, between the natural and the supernatural. thus cosmological relativism underlies the african worldview. it has be mailto:topacademicjournals@gmail.com american journal of arts and communication vol. 9, issue 1; january-february 2024; issn: 2994-0540 impact factor: 6.91 1252 columbia rd nw, washington dc, united states https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac; mail: topacademicjournals@gmail.com 26 | a m e r i c a n j o u r n a l o f a r t s a n d c o m m u n i c a t i o n | https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac expressed that african traditional religion is excessively pragmatic and utilitarian, as their primary motivation of the traditional human religiosity was purely spiritual (ekwuru, 1999:75), aimed at striking a balance in relationship, particularly with humans and spirits. the implications of these is that culture can be true and genial; it can be false and hostile (eboh and idika, 2019:24). but then, culture embodies morality, creativity, collection of wisdom and world-views. justification for the study contemporary study points to the fact that in this era of modernization and christianity, maintaining a balance between humans and spirits in igbo and yoruba traditions is highly branded especially in dealing with spiritual identities and their rituals of healing. the identities of women are being presumed through spiritual and metaphysical stereotypes. this is so because western religious consciousness has become the ideal and those traditional beliefs are assumed fetish, irrational and superstitious. this is in the form of positive affirmation which could affect women, men and humanity. again, this is a way of calling for new spiritual orientation which will foster tolerance and embrace the respect and recognition among and between sexes. the authors chose to discuss this issue of women‟s spiritual identities under philosophical anthropology. this is because philosophy is distinct in its use of method of rational reflection in an attempt at discovering the most general principles underlying things. philosophy appeals to the very nature or essence of things. one of the presuppositions of philosophy is its attempt at discovering the most fundamental or underlying and general principles of reality in its various dimensions (ukpokolo, 2004:5). philosophy has been described as the principle of explanation that underlines all things without exception, the element common to gods and men, animals and stars, the first „whence‟ and the last „wither‟ of the whole cosmic procession, the conditions of all agoyi and osuji knowing, and the most general rules of human action (james, 1970:11). this means that philosophy tries to understand what is beyond the foreground of the life situation. philosophy by interrogating the spiritual identities of women in two cultures (igbo and yoruba) deals with the fundamental issues and pursues certain varied but connected inquiries; what is spiritual identity? what are the nature and connection(s) of the spiritual with the physical? what are the grounds for valid belief in the spiritual? how do we know? this is why the idea of women‟s spiritual identity as perceived in the languages of the people is best discussed in philosophical anthropology which is a discipline that seeks to unify the several empirical investigations of human nature in an effort to understand individuals as both creatures of their environment and creators of their own values… it refers to the systematic study of man conducted within philosophy (ukpokolo, 2004:8). it is within this meaning that the idea of women spiritual identity has become a philosophical issue rather than religious issue. what is central here is the extent to which the study of women spiritual identities can be an object of systematic and scientific study. philosophical anthropology involves a conceptual analysis of such issues as whether humans possess a specific human nature. again it investigates the implications of human possessing diverse natures as in the case of spiritual identity. it is within philosophical anthropology that issues between fragmentation of knowledge and the human condition is discussed. this is why the study of women‟s spiritual identities is open for serious philosophical investigations. the kind of philosophical anthropology being proposed mailto:topacademicjournals@gmail.com american journal of arts and communication vol. 9, issue 1; january-february 2024; issn: 2994-0540 impact factor: 6.91 1252 columbia rd nw, washington dc, united states https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac; mail: topacademicjournals@gmail.com 27 | a m e r i c a n j o u r n a l o f a r t s a n d c o m m u n i c a t i o n | https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac here will therefore be based on the following assumptions; a human being is a unified biological organism, capable of action, which has evolved to produce culture and also to be shaped by it (ukpokolo, 2004:15). this, more so, provokes some accounts on the biological „make-up‟ and gender behaviour. it also informs the search for sociobiological ideas about women as well as differences between men and women especially of any identifiable biological basis for female (human) behaviour. it will further question the roots of those spiritual differences and their divergences in the biological makeup of the two sexes. in the following chapter, metaphysical identities will be discussed from igbo and yoruba perspectives. this will be followed by cross examination of those cultural stereotypes then conclusion will come last. the igbo conception of women’s metaphysical identity in igbo cosmological anthropology, there are different levels of interdependence; nothing is absolute “everything, everybody, however apparent independent, depends upon something else; interdependence exhibited as duality or reciprocity, now as ambivalence or complementarities, has always been the fundamental principle in the igbo philosophy of life” (ifemesia, 1979:67-8). this interdependence of everything and everybody, more so, account for the traditional belief in the interdependence of humans and spirits thus there are categories of spirits; (anyanwu and ruch, 1981:87; iroegbu, 1995:339-41; okoro, 2011:12) including powerful spirits, good spirits (mmuo oma), bad spirits (ajo mmuo, chi ojo) to mention but a few. women also participate in this interdependence between the spirits and humans. however, this interaction could be negative or positive. when it is a positive interaction, it means it conforms within the ideals of communal life. but then when it is negative, it becomes problem to the society. in this situation the spirits provide opportunities for the malformation of ties forbidden in the purely human social filed. this function is discharge in two ways; first by providing non-human patterns with whom people can take up relationship forbidden with other human beings. second, through the mechanism of possessions; by allowing people to „become‟ spirits and so to play nonhuman and unacceptable roles; they are debarred from playing as ordinary human beings. this is premised on the belief that being human is metaphysics and metaphysics here is a deductive system. the igbo women‟s spiritual identity is a complex issue in igbo culture. sometimes, it is believed that women are usually possessed by strange and bad powers or beings that foster anti-social activities. this is traditionally understood in different ways; this manifest in their ways of life, characters and essentially behaviour. within the igbo traditional anthropology, humans are both social and spiritual. being social is what distinguishes humans living within the community while being spiritual depicts that there is life beyond the physical. uchegbue captured this believe in the spiritual as; (hu)man consists of physical and spiritual (or immaterial) aspects and the (hu)man is made of physical and spiritual substances … (hu)man is a biological and spiritual being … this belief logically presupposes the allied ontological conviction that life exists beyond the physical world and extends to the spiritual. the basic social understanding of existence ... is the firm belief that a community of spirits and of the dead exist alongside the community of human beings and that there is a mutual partnership between them (uchegbue. 1995:91). mailto:topacademicjournals@gmail.com american journal of arts and communication vol. 9, issue 1; january-february 2024; issn: 2994-0540 impact factor: 6.91 1252 columbia rd nw, washington dc, united states https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac; mail: topacademicjournals@gmail.com 28 | a m e r i c a n j o u r n a l o f a r t s a n d c o m m u n i c a t i o n | https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac the carnal of this is that there is extra-human and supernatural dimension of life and being human. the spiritual world is very real and intimate. the igbo cosmology sees human as having more spiritual essence than biological. humans, therefore, maintain relationship between the physical and spiritual. this relationship between human and the spiritual world is conceived and completely expressed in the sense of the normal social interaction within the extended family, through the transcendental, invisible and enigmatic way (ibid, 92). there are certain spiritual relationships which can endanger the goodness and fruitfulness of humans‟ lives on earth; those relationships are considered negative and abnormal. women’s spiritual identities in classical igbo language and culture there are different forms of negative spiritual relationships among and within sexes and cultures. for the sake of this study, the authors shall limit their discussion on women. these negative forms of spiritual identities affect woman more than the man. it is diverse among traditions and cultures. these different forms of women spiritual identities in igbo worldview include; the spirit-child (nwa mmuo), the water lady (agbo mmiri), spiritual playmates or comrades (ogbanje, ojembe, ogbonuke), nwanyi ihe na ákwà (woman of double personality), spiritual spouses (nwunyi mmuo / dimmuo) and witches (amosu). these cases and categories of spiritual problems are usually dictated traditionally based on their menaces. the concept of the spirit-child (nwa mmuo) is observed in an instance where a child who is usually an only child, well loved by the parents and relatives develops a complex health issues that could not be treated and will surely die leaving her biological parents poorer, childless and stressed. it is believed that the spirit-child is sent to a family to punish them. the child will not allow the biological parents to have another child through her spiritual powers and will definitely die unproductive before her parents. within the igbo cosmology, the concept of the spirit child is understood as a psychic pact between the specific girl and the spirit world, which is celebrated by oath-taking, representing the girl‟s acceptance of her mission on earth, who is the girl‟s parent, friends and relatives. this pact can be broken through the expertise of a strong medicine man (dibia). the identity of the water-lady (agbo mmiri) is usually conceived by people who live around the river areas. the woman or young girl identified with this negative interaction is seen going to the stream or river at odd hours. she can be talking and smiling alone along or at the river. she sometimes displays negative attitudes against the normal social-cultural milieu of her traditional settings. she will definitely not get married; if she marries, she will die on the eve of her wedding day or during childbearing or her husband will die strangely. but then, if her husband is alive, she will not bear a child. her barrenness will defy all medications and clinical diagnosis. they are viewed as odd especially in terms differing of healing and the inability of their healer to comprehend the nature of their illness. thus this condition is theorized as anomalous which is in opposition and conflict with normal life of the woman. it is within the cultural setting that she will be identified as possessed by water spirit and traditional prescriptions and rituals are done to separate her from such act and she begins to have her own children. momoh expressed this reality in his doctrine of „existential reality‟ where in an environment characterized by water, spirit-beings of the water kingdom are usually the major channel of ritual, worship, explanation of reality, or used as an ontological background to the meaning of life. thus, momoh wrote; the mailto:topacademicjournals@gmail.com american journal of arts and communication vol. 9, issue 1; january-february 2024; issn: 2994-0540 impact factor: 6.91 1252 columbia rd nw, washington dc, united states https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac; mail: topacademicjournals@gmail.com 29 | a m e r i c a n j o u r n a l o f a r t s a n d c o m m u n i c a t i o n | https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac simple consideration is the pervasive and strategic role of which an existent plays or had played in one‟s life. whether the existent is natural, fabricated by man or even a superstitious existent is beside the point. the simple question is: does or has the existent played any core or central role in the life of the individual or community? if the answer is positive, chances are that the individual or community will institute a religion or a ritual in honour of that existent (momoh, 1998:38). this is to show that the conceptions of spiritual identity of women vary from culture to culture, from community to community. it is important also to note that the universal status of spiritual identity is always localized, generated and informed by surrounding and existential factors as well as coloured by peculiar epistemic contexts. some things are similar with water-lady and spiritual spouses. it is believed that both case of identity will not marry since they are connected strongly with their spiritual families. it is believed that they have husbands, children and a functional family in the spiritual realm. and until they are properly cut off they will not have a good family life on earth. the case of nwanyi ihe na ákwà (woman of double personality), is a situation where a young lady displays two different characters. it is believed that there are two spiritual personalities living in one body. when the first personality is in her, she behaves normally, when the second personality manifests, she behaves abnormally. this is seen in women that steal occasionally, fights furiously occasionally. and after each adventure, she apologizes and confesses that she does not know what happened to her. it is traditionally believed that there is the presence of strange personalities who did not fulfil their destinies before their lives were cut short by death; so they are in perpetual search of bodies to accomplish their destines. there are traditional means of removing the strange personality in her, and she becomes normal again. spiritual playmates or comrades (ogbanje, ojembe, ogbonuke) are of different forms. an instance of ogbonuke is when young woman is identified as having spiritual playmates through some of her attitudes. as a young child she will be crying excessively, uncontrollably and spontaneously without any overt cause sometimes. the young woman may be suffering from hysterical psychosomatic syndromes. the young woman may as well be excessively careless and causing accidents as a result of the presences of her spiritual playmates. she may still be bedwetting beyond childhood. she may find it difficult to live with others, since igbo believe that to „we are therefore i am‟ (unah, 2018:4; oni, 2019: 169). within the igbo cosmology, the ogbanje is conceived as a spiritual group or association of children who are members of a group in the spiritual world. they have already taken a decision to be born in the human world in various homes. they also decide that they will live for a short time and die, all in a group, normally before reaching puberty (uchegbue, 1995:95). they as well cause pains and shame to any member of their spiritual association that deviates from their covenant. there are preventive and curative rituals from the medicine man. there are also spiritual spouses (nwunye mmuo / dimmuo). the belief in marital relationship between human beings and spiritual beings abound among the igbo. uchegbue noted that; mailto:topacademicjournals@gmail.com american journal of arts and communication vol. 9, issue 1; january-february 2024; issn: 2994-0540 impact factor: 6.91 1252 columbia rd nw, washington dc, united states https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac; mail: topacademicjournals@gmail.com 30 | a m e r i c a n j o u r n a l o f a r t s a n d c o m m u n i c a t i o n | https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac this belief is inferred from the marital experience of particular individuals with spiritual entities who came to have sex with them at night, from some personal names, from certain propitiatory and matrimonial rituals performed by some individuals and from many igbo folktales, oral and written (uchegbue, 1995: 95-6). there are two identified phenomenon which inform the presence of spiritual spouse in a woman. the first is the case of the wife or husband of one‟s former life who either craves the continuation of the marital union from the spiritual world or seeks a redress or revenge for the injustice done to her or him in the former life by the living partner. the second is the belief that some gods or divinities have or seek to have marital relationship with human of opposite sex. ezeanya opined that in those parts of africa where deities are represented in human forms, male deities have their female counterparts as wives (ezeanya, 1976:114). this is rooted in the igbo cosmological belief that the happenings in the world of men are the reflections of the happenings in the world of the spirits. this can be seen as the thrust of the spirithuman relationship is best understood through our known human parlance. there are also preventive and curative rituals within the igbo medical and psychological closures though it depends of what the spirit husband is asking for. for instance, in the case of an affective and love-seeking spiritual husband, two alternative rituals are performed; (a) a ritual of acceptance and (a) a ritual exchange. both ways involve lots of demands in terms of both material and psychological. the other form of spiritual identity is the witches (amosu). the term witch connotes a supernatural, mysterious power devoid of scientific explanation. it has been argued that to say that something is mysterious does not necessarily mean that it is beyond explanation. so the possibility of an explanation may exist at least in the future (oluwole, 1989). in explaining the concept of witches mbiti (1990:253) stated as follows; witches, who are mainly women, are people with an inherent power by means of which they can abandon their bodies at night and go to meet with similar people (other witches) or „suck‟ or „eat-away‟ the life of their victims (1970:263). table 1. women‟s spiritual identities and their menaces in igbo perspective. spiritual identity menace ogbanje, ojemgbe (spiritual playmates/ comrades) hysterical psychosomatic syndromes, carelessness and accidents, incessant sickness, abnormal bed wetting nwuye mmo (spiritual spouses) loss and wretchedness, psychosomatic syndromes, disappointment in life, spendthrift, kleptomania, constant sexual intercourse in dreams. nwanyi ihe na ákwà (woman of double personality) stubbornness, excessively quarrelsome, outlaw, unusual behaviours (agbo mmiri) (water-lady) constant disappearance for days and weeks, soliloquizing, nwa mmuo (spirit-child) beloved child in wretched home, strange sickness, short lived. amosu (witch) usually wretched, isolated, unfriendly, exhibiting bitterness at human progress and interactions. mailto:topacademicjournals@gmail.com american journal of arts and communication vol. 9, issue 1; january-february 2024; issn: 2994-0540 impact factor: 6.91 1252 columbia rd nw, washington dc, united states https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac; mail: topacademicjournals@gmail.com 31 | a m e r i c a n j o u r n a l o f a r t s a n d c o m m u n i c a t i o n | https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac he also wrote that sorcery is an anti-social employment of mystical power, the use of poisonous ingredients put into the food or drink of someone to harm people and their belongings and that it is mainly women who get blamed for experiences of evil kind (ibid, 262); and many women have suffered and continue to suffer under such accusations. within the igbo cosmology, there are epistemic structures of knowing, confirming, preventing and curing these spiritual identities. it is generally believed that eighty per cent of victims are women; it is only on few instances that men are victims. most of the preventive and curative prescriptions are traditionally rooted and has no scientific bases. these days with modernity and christianity, the practices are seen as obsolete, pagan practices and lacking in orthodox means. one of the ways through which these spiritual identities are observed is through their behaviour, social menace, and attitude. it is generally believed that they show who they really are, that is their spiritual side through their behaviour, they as well exhibit odd attitude at unexpected times. women with issues of spiritual identities are usually unfair to their relations, parents, spouses, friends of who that are their suppose victims (suffer misfortunes originated from them). space will not allow the authors to discuss all these here and the traditional explanations of these spiritual identities. this paper moves with the ontological analysis rather than mere phenomenological narrative and description; table 1 states the categories of their menaces and curative rituals; their curative measures are traditionally accessed and are in various forms; they are living their curative and preventive measures for further research and discussions. now let examine spiritual identity from the yoruba perspective. yoruba conception of women’s spiritual identity to understand the nature and status of women‟s identity in yoruba, people must first understand that the identity of women in traditional thought is polarised. the polarity is evident in the philosophical and mythical saying that feature women attitude and contribution to the happenings in the immediate society as well as finding solutions to societal problems. specifically the yoruba view of a woman as a member of the larger community is seen in yoruba mythological explanation of the woman in ẹsẹ ifá „ bàrà méjì‟; who they portrayed as betrayals, untrustworthy, have no endurance and sexually weak. women as weaklings wádé abíbọ lá (1978‟s) bàrà méjì the mthy on how rúnmìlà dated rọ before getting married to her. rúnmìlà did not haẹe a plesant eọperence after the marraige.this version goes on to portray women as beings lacking in enduring spirit. they are seen as beings that lack emotional and selfcontrol. this is captured in the relationship between òrúnmila and his wife, orò, as follows; … he consulted oracle on behalf of òrúnmila when he intended to have olowo‟s daughter orò as wife. òrúnmila was away for economic reasons. orò, the wife of òrúnmila, after the birth of the third child, settled at ife. òrúnmila was invited to olokun, before leaving ife; he settled the wife with enough provision and told her that he will be back on the seventeenth day. he gave her provisions enough to make her comfortable for some time. but after three months òrúnmila did not return, orò mailto:topacademicjournals@gmail.com american journal of arts and communication vol. 9, issue 1; january-february 2024; issn: 2994-0540 impact factor: 6.91 1252 columbia rd nw, washington dc, united states https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac; mail: topacademicjournals@gmail.com 32 | a m e r i c a n j o u r n a l o f a r t s a n d c o m m u n i c a t i o n | https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac ran out of money and the provisions. being a big woman, she never engaged in any economic activity. the problem became complicated with the indefinite absence of her husband. she joined women in the vicinity to collect firewood for sale to generate money. however, on one of the trips to the farm, as a beautiful woman, she befriended ondááró who gave her a hundred thousand cowries. from their canal knowledge of each other, oro was impregnated. oridaro did not own up after finding out that she was òrúnmila‟s wife. she became a single mother to agbé. she lived on the hundred thousand cowries. after exhausting the money, she had to join others again in the old business, but was deceived by oigoosun, who paid her two hundred thousand cowries. the union resulted in another pregnancy that produced aluko. she suffered similar fate as with that of ondááró, she could not discipline herself as in the third attempt to find money for her upkeep. she had a union with olúúkọ ọ lọ , who gave her one million cowries. the union resulted her bringing forth àgbìgbò, she also raise àgbìgbò as a single mother…(abimbola, 1978: 67-73). both the spiritual and physical identity of women is already biased within the traditional society portrayed above. this is so because it has been integrated into our traditional folktale and myths in such a way that she is not free in the society. the female is defined as a being that stands in antagonistic opposition and reciprocity with the male gender. the idea of stereotypical women‟s identity is traditional and historical; this ideology has been transferred from one generation to another. next is to consider women‟s spiritual identity in traditional yoruba thought. women as ęlęyę / ìyà mi; (witches) the spiritual identity of women within the yoruba traditional thought is not very clear. yoruba proverbs seems to be positive in the portrayal of women as witches, for example; bóbìnrin bá pé nílé ọkọ a dàyḝ (a woman who lives long in the matrimonial home is always tagged a witch). this implies that it is not too common for a woman to endure matrimonial hardship till old aged. however the ifa oracle sees a woman as an ingrate and wicked spiritual being. this claim is captured in bàrà méjì; a pá ńlá nigi ájẹ oṣè abìgi rẹ rẹ ẹ rẹ adíá fún rúnmìlà ifá ńlọ lèé gbé rọ tíì ṣe ọmọ olówu níyàwó… (ibid, 67) big trees are witches abode oṣè with big canopy rúnmìlà consulted his oracle while on his bead to propose to rọ that is the daughter of olówu … the above quotation implies that yoruba assumes that witches adorn big trees particularly oṣè. yoruba believed that the ęlęyę ‘witches‟ were female beings that descended from heaven. they were among the four hundred and one spiritual beings recorded in òsá mejì, one of the ifa verses thus; òòle‟ ló ṣẹ yìn gùnmọ lè mailto:topacademicjournals@gmail.com american journal of arts and communication vol. 9, issue 1; january-february 2024; issn: 2994-0540 impact factor: 6.91 1252 columbia rd nw, washington dc, united states https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac; mail: topacademicjournals@gmail.com 33 | a m e r i c a n j o u r n a l o f a r t s a n d c o m m u n i c a t i o n | https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac (the root of a house is with raise back) bí ẹni arìnmọ rìn (like a slow mover) bó bá jà kó rìn (if broken it will move) a dúró sii (it is immovable) a dífá fún ọ kànlénú irúmọlé (he was the oracle consultants to 401 spiritual beings) wọ n ńtọ run bọ wáyé … (on their journey from heaven to earth…) (ibid, 84-87) on the journey of all spiritual beings to the earth, all wore clothes. the witches were naked because they were ingrate and wicked. this is captured in the verse thus; gbogbo wọ n ló rí aṣọ bora they were all wearing clothes ṣùgbọ n ihòòhò ni àwọn iyàmi wà but my mothers were naked … nígbà ti wọn dé bodȇ on their arrival at the gate of heaven wọn ò leè lọ mọ they were unable to precede the journey ojú ńti wọn … they were feeling shy the ẹlẹyẹ „witches‟ pleaded with other spiritual beings to help them cover their nakedness but they all refused, only òrúnmìlà offered assistance. but they refused to come out of òrúnmila. they were feeding on his intestine and liver on arrival from heaven. consequently, after consulting the oracle, òrúnìlà had to take them back to the gate of heaven where he met them. there are many arguments on why the female witches (ęlęyę) came naked from heaven among other spiritual beings; the authors will not go into this argument in this paper. this goes to express how the society perceives this kind of spiritual identity mostly associated with women. the above account sees the women as ingrates. however, scholars such as ogungbemi present a defrent view of yorùbá women spiritual identity. the scholar argues that witches in yoruba belief were created to make yoruba trust god and worship him; to him, without the witches, the yoruba will not have recourse to worship the supreme being deity because in yoruba cosmology, witches are the major causes of misfortunes, illness, poverty and death. it is common to accuse old women of witchcraft. however no yorùbá person dear addressed any woman, publicly, as witches instead, euphemism like awon iya wa („our mothers‟), or agbalagba („the elders‟) are used (ogbungbemi, 2007:128). yoruba believe the cult of witches is mostly women who pass their witchcraft spirits to their daughters not sons. this is expressed as „fi gbogbo omo bi obinrin’, mailto:topacademicjournals@gmail.com american journal of arts and communication vol. 9, issue 1; january-february 2024; issn: 2994-0540 impact factor: 6.91 1252 columbia rd nw, washington dc, united states https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac; mail: topacademicjournals@gmail.com 34 | a m e r i c a n j o u r n a l o f a r t s a n d c o m m u n i c a t i o n | https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac ‘ęyę ń yí lu ęyę’ (she gave birth to only female children, which multiplies the witchcraft spirit). it is also traditionally believed that passing the art to their daughters will enable them to increase their population and give them their control of their guilds (ibid, 129). even though there are good and bad witches, the tensions created in families and communities by the belief in witchcraft are polarizing the essence of human social relations and essence of communal living. this explains why witches are separated from physical human transactions in the society. the fear of attack and manipulation of innocent people informs the yoruba believe as express in the traditional thought, that whatever belongs to witches is sacred; therefore set aside to avoid their wrath. this obedience to the wishes/the keeping of the witches taboo is captured in òsá mejì as; the above demonstrates the ground of being a witch in yoruba thought. the fact is that within the yoruba cosmology, witches are separated from human otún ęyę kangó the witches‟ right side are hard òsì ęyę kingo the left sides are hard òòsa ló ní kéyę mó jowú òan the gods forbids witches from devouring its special cotton cake … a díá fún talàbí he was talàbí‟s oracle consultant omǫ òòsa consulted oracle on behalf of òrúnmila ĺfá ḿbệ láàrin ipọ njú ifa was facing a great difficulty ẹ ẹ rùn ló yán, ni omí dòwọ n it was dry season, there was drought àwón ęlęyę gbẹ odòo ti wọn sílẹ the witches dug a well. àwọn èèyàn náà sì gbé ti won human beings also dug well. ní àwọn ęlęyę bá lagogo káà kiri pé witches made a decree, kí awọn èèyàn ó má ṣe, dé ibi odò awọn o that prohibited human beings from their water source nígbà tí odó awọn yàn ò lómi ńnú mọ however, human water source dried up ní talàbí bá lọ pọnmi ní odò àwón ęlęyę talàbí ventured to fetch from the witches‟ water source agbe ni awọn ẹlẹlẹyẹ sì fi ṣọ odò agbe was employed by ẹlẹyẹ as gate man to the water source títí tí tàlàbí fi pọnmi tán, agbe ò jí talàbí successfully fetched water because agbe was fast asleep. jé kí talàbí ó màa gbé agbè omi náà rú tàlabí‟s attempted to place the gorge of water on his head ni àdá òòsa tó mú lówó bá lu agbè náà but mistakenly hit the gorge with cutlass he was holding ní agbé bá jí agbe woke up jíjí tí agbe jí. igbe ló fi bọnu agbé alerted the witches … gbogbo àwón ęlęyę ba tú jéde all the witches came out … talàbí hǫ talàbí took to his heels awọn ęlęyę gbá. wọ n fi yá a… the witches pursued him hard … (abimbola, 1978: 88-9) mailto:topacademicjournals@gmail.com american journal of arts and communication vol. 9, issue 1; january-february 2024; issn: 2994-0540 impact factor: 6.91 1252 columbia rd nw, washington dc, united states https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac; mail: topacademicjournals@gmail.com 35 | a m e r i c a n j o u r n a l o f a r t s a n d c o m m u n i c a t i o n | https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac endeavours. the witches are sets of beings that are always obeyed to avoid their wrath. in sá méjì, every one obeyed ẹlẹyẹ by abstaining from their water source. anyone who disobeys them always incure their wrath; as in the case of tàlàbí, that tried to fetch water from the witches separate water source: no body including aláàfin abíọ dún (the king) came to his rescue while he was pursued, until he got to òrúnmìlà‟s abode. this goes on to show how the idea of the witch affects the psychology of the people and their way of life. now let us examine another form of spiritual identity in yoruba anthropology. the emèrè cult again, within the yoruba cosmology, there are various forms of spiritual identities. they are peculiar to both sexes but more on women and female children. it is believe within the traditional ontology that women get in contact with the spirit in many ways, which could as well affect their children. within the yoruba cosmology, it is believed that a pregnant woman is not supposed to be out from twelve noon to one pm since it is the time spiritual entities come and interact and could enter the pregnant woman. the el re (female) and eméré (male) depicts the spiritual identities of humans in yoruba cosmology. the yoruba categorized the varying spiritual identities based on their traditional sources. table 2 shows their sources and the place they have meetings. these are some of the various spiritual identities in yoruba cosmology. in the case of the spirit child they usually die young. in some cases, they are given marks on their bodies when they die; and when another child is born, the child comes with the marks inscribed on the dead child. in such instances, a higher form of power is consulted so as to stop the child from untimely death. this child is called abiku. this idea of abiku (re-occurring still birth) and spiritual identities is widely believed by yoruba people. it has also given rise to the high attendance and patronage of the white garment churches in yoruba land. in yoruba land, it is widely believed that emere is the general name for spiritual identity pertaining to those that have their source from banana. there are various types of emere spiritual identity. there is also the alujonnu and oro: they are spiritual identities pertaining to trees. within the yoruba traditional cosmology, it is table 2. names, sources and places of meeting of spirits in yoruba cosmology. place of meeting mọ-omi or olomi, emèrè-omi omi (water) note that they are bath with cold water when born inside water ogédé / emèrè emereofurugu banana, paw-paw they stay in the sky under banana stalks sky apata emereawon rock refuge bins flat rock refuge bins alujonnu and oro and abiku trees for example agbalomo (cherry tree), qparim (bamabo) ori igi (iroko) oro lives inside (bewitched) trees. big trees aje (witch) oludumare nocturnal meetings name source mailto:topacademicjournals@gmail.com american journal of arts and communication vol. 9, issue 1; january-february 2024; issn: 2994-0540 impact factor: 6.91 1252 columbia rd nw, washington dc, united states https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac; mail: topacademicjournals@gmail.com 36 | a m e r i c a n j o u r n a l o f a r t s a n d c o m m u n i c a t i o n | https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac generally believed that alujonnu and oro do not harm people, but then there are wicked people who mix with them and use their influence to harm and initiate human beings. there are also the omo-omi (marine/ mermaid child) who does not harm people but they always have mission and thereabout to turn to females (human beings) in order to accomplish their mission.4 it is mostly those in the cult or who seek power or refuge from the sect who go down to the spirit world to associate with them. philosophy interrogates women’s spiritual identity in igbo and yoruba philosophy from the exposition of the ontology, metaphysics and epistemology of women‟s spiritual identities among the igbo and the yoruba of southern nigeria, one can inference that although they were conscious of the difference of gender, these two african nations in the precolonial times did not develop stereotypes in which ideally women‟s spiritual identities were outraged and mischievously exploited. the issues of spirit-child, spiritual spouses and spiritual comrades and their rituals of healing were not spitefully contrived to exploit femininity but are conceived as a way of solving socialspiritual problem. from our knowledge of spiritual identity, and from our everyday experience, we have many ideas and opinions about what these issues of spiritual identities are like. this is to say that these issues of spiritual identity and their ritual of healings were direct response to perceived theological, spiritual and metaphysical problems of typical traditional settings within a specific time in history. given this age of modernity, these ideas of spiritual identities reflect the need for identifying in contract to the true nature and socio-cultural „situatedness‟ of the women. since spiritual identities in these cultures are stereotypes, it brings to the fore the need to reshape the social behavior of women especially those stereotyped. it more so calls for reconceptualization especially in terms of the foundations of learning, social, cultural and even legal and political relations. this is also suggestive of the idea of the comparative worth of women’s lives and personalities. comparative worth defines women as people in need of protection because they are different from men and there is need to polish this principle of comparative worth beyond philosophical limits. it is obvious within these cultures that there is something true about their spiritual identities, studies on them have not been systematic and comprehensive. the understanding of them is still within the epistemic closures of cultures that practice them. for a clearer philosophical analysis of the challenges of women’s spiritual identities, we will discuss them under three headings; the problem of context, women’s spiritual identities and resistant culture and finally dealing with dilemma from a postmodernist perspective. problem of context this study on women’s spiritual identities is contextual and relative, creating a perceptual problem within philosophy. the problem of women’s spiritual identity is that it is culturally oriented. since there are variations of the conceptions of spiritual identities given these cultures, an examination of the problem of context is useful in understanding the cosmological basis these cultural practices are built on. again, there are difficulties in attempting to use critical concepts, ideas, theories, terms to understand the nature of spiritual identities of the traditional woman. it is more so difficult to prescribe alternatives to these spiritual identity models. these create gap in understanding and dealing with issues boarding on the reality and challenges of spiritual identities. mailto:topacademicjournals@gmail.com american journal of arts and communication vol. 9, issue 1; january-february 2024; issn: 2994-0540 impact factor: 6.91 1252 columbia rd nw, washington dc, united states https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac; mail: topacademicjournals@gmail.com 37 | a m e r i c a n j o u r n a l o f a r t s a n d c o m m u n i c a t i o n | https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac this deficiency is not grounded in women domination and oppression but serves as critiques that relates to contextualization of feminist issues. but then, it creates the ideology that sees men as fair, and more socially, spiritually and psychologically accurate. this is because the idea of spiritual identities between these two cultures pertains more to women than men. the fact that women were portrayed as oppressed stereotypes, gender minorities and inferior: women’s spiritual identities add to this as well. this study also presents the problem of the pluralistic nature of women’s spiritual identities. this is because it dwells within our cultural setting, showing itself in various forms and types, making the problems of women’s spiritual identities subjective and relative. what is meant as spiritual identity varies within cultural settings as exemplified in igbo and yoruba cultural settings. since the spiritual identities of women are cultural, it also gives rise to the problem of methods of explanation. there is lack of concepts with equivalent meanings when translated from source language to target language. this idea has either been over-simplified or lack correct words and connotations for in english language. most times it is dismissed as superstitions and myths (otakpo, 2016:28-9). another problem generated by women’s spiritual identity is that it is controlled by a traditionally understood „cause-effect mechanism. ‟ it posits the lack of scientific method of verification, testing of hypothesis, no controlling principles, laws or theorems, and moves within the concepts of epistemic closure or secrecy. this is to say that because of the varying cultural realms it operates, its activities are explained by reference to cause and effect within the particular culture: this raises the problem of explanatory models. it is worthwhile to note that women’s spiritual identities are not accounted for in critical literature. thus, it exhibits the same proclivities of patriarchy that renders that account of human incomplete. the explanation to this is that women’s spiritual experiences are also part of human experiences and as such should be accounted for. the issue of context presents to us the need to censure the idea of spiritual identity as premised on a notion that people are mystified by conservative cultural ideology and consequently cannot remake the world until they see how contingent such idea is. thus, it is built on the principle of error in that their version of stereotype by consent does not present a realistic picture of women domination by men or spiritual aspects and their psychological consequences. women’s metaphysical identity and resistant culture the problem of spiritual identity is challenging the confidence of the traditional woman in her development model. this is evident in the challenging population structure of traditional and cultural practitioners which vary and add to the high uncertainty in women‟s movement, social, political as well as women‟s rights groups. in ekwuru‟s (1999:59) words; “… one thing i must tell you is that those things which the white men (modernity and christianity) came to destroy are still with people and shame to them if they abandon the religion and practice of their fathers.” these controversial issues for women spiritual identities are part of the problems that escalated with the clash of cultures; what may be called the traditional igbo / yoruba verses the modern igbo / yoruba? is a struggle between deculturisation and depersonalisation. the place of women‟s spiritual identities in igbo and yoruba cultures are evident in the art and literature of each culture. even with the influence of western education and religion (christianity and islam), the problem of mailto:topacademicjournals@gmail.com american journal of arts and communication vol. 9, issue 1; january-february 2024; issn: 2994-0540 impact factor: 6.91 1252 columbia rd nw, washington dc, united states https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac; mail: topacademicjournals@gmail.com 38 | a m e r i c a n j o u r n a l o f a r t s a n d c o m m u n i c a t i o n | https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac women‟s spiritual identities still persist. the exigence of this situation of dual cultural existence puts the woman in a state of a tragic clash of values, and unconsciously imbues in their social personality a form of schizophrenic pathology with paranoid tendencies. this has brought the woman under a stereotyped socioanthropological surveillance. part of the objectives of this essay is to propose a way to help women and the society at large rethink and overcome these stereotypes. this research proposed three projects; 1) reconstruction of the existing culture (the culture of spiritual identity and its manifestations) through consolidation with a more rational culture. this is purely inventive not recovery moves. 2) to make conscious efforts to enter into this discourse of spiritual identities (discourse on this area is minimal within scholarly writing) within indigenous belief systems; that is to mix with it, transform it to make it acknowledged instead of marginalized, stereotyped or suppressed or as forgotten history. this is because; some traditional women still holds this system tenaciously. 3) it is time to put resilient culture towards a more integrative view of human community and human liberation. dealing with dilemma from a postmodernist perspective to offer a simple solution to the dilemma of women’s spiritual identities is to think of a possible way of contradicting the message. it would be a capitulation of the igbo and yoruba ontology that we seek to destabilize in order to explain it. if one argues that spiritual identity is different from physical or intellectual identity then where is the place of the essential ingredients that constituent humanity such as human freewill, determinism and moral responsibility? since humans are both homo sapiens and rational, where is the place of self-consciousness and the basis of value? the problems of spiritual identities of women create paradox of existence. it also raises the problem of personality and division of the self. the problem of spiritual identity has to a large extent created polarity in human existence. this is because women do not live in the objective world alone. the world belongs both to men and women, other animals and things. philosophically speaking, women’s spiritual identities raise issues in the conceptions of human nature, culture, destiny among others. it will be mistaken if these (igbo and yoruba) perspectives on women’s spiritual identities are dismissed. it will be novel if philosophical discussions on them are deepened. the task should not be to show how resolute the philosophical tensions between identity and women, but rather to consciously inhabit that very tension. this inspires a philosophical anthropology of reconstruction; an attempt to reconstruct women’s identity itself in the light of the difference cultural makings. thus, history has shown that women’s spiritual identity can coexist happily with formal commitment to objectivity, neutrality and with old optimistic faith to reason, truth, blind justice and neutrality. thus, this study prescribes intersubjectivity as a theoretical frame upon which human social-cultural relations can be built. since human experiences and descriptions of spiritual identity thereof can no more be shown to correspond to such an „objective‟ description, (especially in contrast to the understanding normal identity), then there is need to accommodate these variations, not as stereotypes but as part of the human accounts of identity variation. it is also true that we cannot establish the „objectivity‟ of our experiences' content, there is need to mailto:topacademicjournals@gmail.com american journal of arts and communication vol. 9, issue 1; january-february 2024; issn: 2994-0540 impact factor: 6.91 1252 columbia rd nw, washington dc, united states https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac; mail: topacademicjournals@gmail.com 39 | a m e r i c a n j o u r n a l o f a r t s a n d c o m m u n i c a t i o n | https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac resist a slide into relativism by insisting that they are mediated by rationally delineated categories which supposedly assure the transcendental or universal nature of their form. this will provide an absolute standard against which we might check the veridicality of our descriptions of, and communications concerning women’s spiritual identities. there is need to understand the interpersonal and intercultural states of women’s spiritual identity especially through communication. it is through the addition of various subjective accounts of spiritual identity that a proper understanding of women spiritual identity will be realized even beyond the two cultures in this study. spiritual identity as a complex and challenging interactions between internal and external (spiritual) forces between the individual agency and structure of power can be changed by reducing cultural essentialism and accepting agoyi and osuji universal truths and justice within the intersubjective frame. the idea of change must flow directly from a focus on ideology, which is a major weakness that separates the actual from the possible. the prominence of ideology is that it prevents people from thinking in terms that are less than human hence from implementing a freer social condition. thus ideology is the first logical step to cancel stereotyping and yield social transformation. not only that the idea of consciousness-raising on the implications and effects of modelling a woman‟s identity in the code of spiritual identity must have to be enlightened. this leads us to self-consciousness, and other parameter such as storytelling, awareness creation to combat this social stereotyping. it will involve a strategic thinking about the philosophical and social implication of the meanings and programmes we endorse in our cultures. for example, what are the implications of arguing for and against women‟s spiritual identity? if both have negative implications there should be suggestion in the need to reframe the issue; to ask previously unanswered question about the relevance or stability of spiritual identity. critical thinking about norms and cultural practices should open up unexamined aspects of the cultural systems, conversations about altering norms; bring about new ways of reasoning, and taking definitions of existing terms. also definitions must be justified by exploration of cultural contexts and experiences of existing but excluded voices and offering wholly new concepts, themes, theories, and terminologies. this work examines the complex women identity the scheme of things in nigeria especially with the igbo and yoruba cosmology as perceive in the language use within each society. the research finds out that the way each linguistic group perceive women differs significantly. while the igbos demonise the identity of women with exception talents as well as those who experience misfortune in marriages and life endeavours. the youruba women spiritual identity is more libraries in that the good virtue is positively rewarded with kind words. the term ìyá mi „my mother‟ signifies a motherly attachment, honour and respect for the famine gender. good mothers always protect the children but are always out to punish anyone who dears to take them for granted as in the case of àlàbì in the myth. the igbo society is not as tolerant in the treatment of women perceived to be connected to the so called spiritual world. in essence women identity in the two culture is complex. the contemporary society holds the traditional values in relating to women in the different cultural and religious gatherings. therefore, by linking and pulling the contextual points of the two cultures together, the research presents conceptions of women‟s complex spiritual identity for the understanding of human nature more clearly from the cultural and mailto:topacademicjournals@gmail.com american journal of arts and communication vol. 9, issue 1; january-february 2024; issn: 2994-0540 impact factor: 6.91 1252 columbia rd nw, washington dc, united states https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac; mail: topacademicjournals@gmail.com 40 | a m e r i c a n j o u r n a l o f a r t s a n d c o m m u n i c a t i o n | https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac indigenous ideology. analyzing, the perceived identity portals the contemporary relevance in the scheme of things in the larger society. this research attempts to open up the interested researchers‟ understanding of two nigerian linguistic groups (igbo and yoruba) to how complexities within african and indeed nigerian social and political culture have been made to question gender and identity. it is assumed that understanding of the problem of achieving human solidarity and proper accommodation in a multicultural postmodern world can be approach through thorough investigation of the social cultural background as perceived in the language. conflict of interests the authors have not declared any conflicts of interests. references abimbola w (1978). ìjinkè ohìm enu ifá apá kejì awọn ifá m lánálá (2nd edition), nigeria. oxford university press. amaku ee (2004). language as a powerful expression of human dignity and cultural identity. journal of igbo youths and their language. anyanwu kc, ruch ea (1981). african philosophy: an introduction to the main philosophical trends in contemporary africa. rome: catholic book agency. díaz-andreu m, lucy s, babic s, edwards dn (2005). archaeology of identity. taylor & francis. eboh mp, idika cmn (2019). “igbo culture, creative thinking and moral development, in african moral character and creative thinking principles, unah jim i. (ed.), ife: university of ife press pp. 23-44. ekwuru eg (1999). the pangs of an african culture in travail, uwa ndi igbo yaghara ayagha, owerri, imo state: totan publishers limited. ezeanya sn (1976). women in african traditional religion. orita: ibadan journal of religious studies. 10(2):105-121. available at: https://www.africabib.org/rec.php?rid=189588608 idonibiye de (1973). the idea of african philosophy: the concept of spirit in african metaphysics in second order: an african journal of philosophy 11(1):83. ifemesia c (1979). traditional human living among the igbo; a historical perspective, enugu: fourth dimension publishers. iroegbu p (1995). the kpim of philosophy. owerri: international university press. james w (1970). selected paper on philosophy, in history of philosophy, london: hodder and stoughton. lawson te (1984). religions in africa, newyork: harper and roll. hall s, du gay p (1996). questions of cultural identity: sage publications. sage pp. 1-17. mailto:topacademicjournals@gmail.com american journal of arts and communication vol. 9, issue 1; january-february 2024; issn: 2994-0540 impact factor: 6.91 1252 columbia rd nw, washington dc, united states https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac; mail: topacademicjournals@gmail.com 41 | a m e r i c a n j o u r n a l o f a r t s a n d c o m m u n i c a t i o n | https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac hornby as (2000). oxford advances learner‟s dictionary. sixth edition. oxford: oxford university press. hume d (1978). of personal identity in a treatise of human nature. selby-bigge edition, revised by nidditch ph. oxford: oxford university press pp. 251-263. mbiti js (1990). african religions & philosophy. heinemann. momoh cs (1998). the substance of african philosophy, auchi: african philosophy projects‟ publications. nwala tu (2010). igbo philosophy. third edition. abuja: niger books and publishing company limited. nwọga d (1984). nka na nzere: the focus of igbo worldwide, ahiajoku lectures, owerri; ministry of information, culture, youth and sports. okoro c (2011). the notion of integrative metaphysics and its relevance to contemporary world order. integrative humanism journal 2(2):328. ogungbile do (2015). african indigenous religious traditions in local and global contexts: perspectives on nigeria. malthouse press. ogungbemi s (2007). philosophy and development, ibadannigeria: hope publications. oluwole s (1989). witchcraft, re-incarnation and god-head. ikeja: excel publication. oni mo (2019). being with others: metaphysical pedagogy for social peace, in african moral character and creative thinking principles, unah jim i. (ed.). ife: university of ife press pp. 163-174. otakpo n (2016). idegbe: linage continuity through a daughter. benin: university of benin press. parrinder ge (1974). african traditional religion, london: sheldon press. popkin rh, stroll a (2008). filosofia per tutti (vol. 17). il saggiatore. uchegbue co (1995). the concept of man‟s spiritual companions in igbo traditional thought” in footmarks on african philosophy. uduigwomen af (ed.). ikeja-lagos: obaroh and ogbinaka publishers limited. ukpokolo ie (2004). philosophy interrogates culture, a discourse in philosophical anthropology. ibadan: hope publication. unah ji (2018). african philosophy and phenomenology of peace. lagos: concept publications. mailto:topacademicjournals@gmail.com american journal of art and communication vol.8, issue 1; january-febuary 2023; issn: 2994-0540 impact factor: 6.91 1252 columbia rd nw, washington dc, united states https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac; mail: topacademicjournals@gmail.com 10 | american journal of art and communication | https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac dialectical space in contemporary art: insights from alfredo jaar and gordon mattaclark dr. juan simo and dr. maria garcia university of murcia, spain, campus de espinardo, 30100 murcia, spain. university of murcia, spain, campus de espinardo, 30100 murcia, spain. abstract: this text delves into the intricate relationship between space and time, particularly within the context of late capitalism's impact on the perceived space. lefebvre's notion of the "perceived space" serves as the foundation for understanding how space is increasingly subjugated to the demands of capitalism, causing a crisis in its inherent premises. however, it is crucial to recognize that space is not static; rather, it exists as a vessel within which temporality defines its functional parameters. this exploration revolves around the concept of "contextual interventions" in artistic practices, which have the potential to reshape the social functions of space and provoke novel ways of contemplating the political and societal roles of these spaces. these interventions are not only catalysts but also critical tools for societal experimentation, challenging the conventions imposed by the society in which we live. notably, the transformation and displacement of space and time are central elements in these artistic interventions. a significant portion of contextual art practices relies on a meticulous examination of the interplay between space and time, further elucidating the profound impact of these interventions on the fabric of society. keywords: perceived space, late capitalism, contextual interventions, artistic practices, space-time study mailto:topacademicjournals@gmail.com american journal of art and communication vol.8, issue 1; january-febuary 2023; issn: 2994-0540 impact factor: 6.91 1252 columbia rd nw, washington dc, united states https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac; mail: topacademicjournals@gmail.com 11 | american journal of art and communication | https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac introduction “the perceived space” (lefebvre, 1991) refers to a problematic space that is being subordinated to an imposed functionality by late capitalism and the placing in crisis of the premises in which they were enabled. however, the space itself is a container where the temporality defines and gives its functional framework. that is why the purpose of this text manages two inseparable frequencies to analyze the transformations and displacements of a place, an image and a specific context: the space and time. the thesis starting the text is based on the “contextual interventions” within the artistic practices that are able to transform the social uses of space and provide ways of thinking in order to change their political and social functions. hence we can consider them as a catalyst and a critical means of experimentation around the society that produces us as individuals. but altering the temporality and spatiality as a cornerstone of the changes and transformations to which these intervention spaces have been exposed has configured these artistic interventions. and we can say that a great part of the contextual art practices methodology is based on the space-time study. for this purpose this text is meant to analyse, define and investigate the transformations and displacements of a context under production rhythms and spatio-temporal consumption that are grafted on it. in this way alfredo jaar reproduces the “heterochronic space” that enables a temporal multiplicity where the rhythms of production and consumption causes the latent temporalities to collide in order to articulate other features of space. and finally the “invasive space” in the case of gordon matta-clark is meant to reactivate the forces of the context of intervention developing stratified spatialities to articulate a hybrid dialogue. this is managed by these recurrent alterations of temporality and spatiality that constitute modes of resistance to a conception of time and history. since temporary architectures provide a discursive framework for analysing convulsions and transformations to which the discourses of space are subjected, thus addressing social, political and economic issues from a perspective where these ideals are not self proclaimed, nor are they decreed, but instead mailto:topacademicjournals@gmail.com american journal of art and communication vol.8, issue 1; january-febuary 2023; issn: 2994-0540 impact factor: 6.91 1252 columbia rd nw, washington dc, united states https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac; mail: topacademicjournals@gmail.com 12 | american journal of art and communication | https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac they are inserted into the production process and configuration of space in the way that relations with the context are made and thought. it is these relationships that release their ideological characteristic, in short, those who develop a representational problem that delve into the confrontation of latent temporalities in space. in this sense we cannot ignore the interpretations of edward soja (1996) that open the way to a possibility of a socio-spatial dialectic to reconsider the notion of place versus space as closed expression. in short, what is meant is to interpret space and spatiality as an interdisciplinary matter. whereas considering spaces as social, cultural constructs, political and essentially experimental and capable of being lived in. thus, the three spaces proposed by soja from the contributions of henri lefebvre (2008), attempt to deconstruct the binary logic of traditional spatial thinking. soja proposes a first space that belongs to the physical, verifiable material world; a second space referring to the realm of ideas, imagination and mental and subjective performances, and a third space in which the author proposes a new way of thinking about space and social spatiality. the third space is derived from the definition of urban space in which the symbolic imagination or spatial contextualization is possible and is characterized by the narrative created by politics and culture, but that is also inseparable and interdependent of the other two spaces. as a critical strategy, this third space implies what soja called the “critical thirdness as otherness” or “the third as other” whereas the third introduces an “other” critical, a choice that speaks and criticises through its otherness (soja, 1996, p. 75). soja also breaks the purely binary descriptive nature of spatial planning as a historical, ideological, economic, ecologicalprocess, in which space does not act or does not mean more than what it actually produces. in “the third space” soja advocates a dynamic spatial construction where spatiality is taken into account as an element by itself. the third space alternative expands the scope of the previous two, particularly in its complexity of spatial geographical imagination, which is given by the factor of time experienced and lived, similar to a historiographical proposal of the urban spaces. in this sense soja says: mailto:topacademicjournals@gmail.com american journal of art and communication vol.8, issue 1; january-febuary 2023; issn: 2994-0540 impact factor: 6.91 1252 columbia rd nw, washington dc, united states https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac; mail: topacademicjournals@gmail.com 13 | american journal of art and communication | https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac understanding the lived space can be compared to writing a biography, an interpretation of lived time of an individual, or more broadly to historiography, i.e. the attempt to describe and understand the lived time of the collectives or the human societies (...) the best we can do is to selectively investigate, the more subtly as possible, the infinite complexity of life through their intrinsic interrelated spatial, social and historical dimensions and its spatiality, sociability and historicity (soja, 2008, p. 4041). 2. the spatiality of the political subject: alfredo jaar rosalyn deutsche compares the artist hans haacke with the next generation of artists that includes cindy sherman, barbara kruger and sherrie levine. haacke's work, says deutsche: (...) invited viewers to decipher relationships and to find content already registered in the pictures, but he was not asking them to examine their own role and participation in the production of images. instead, the next generation of artists saw the image itself as a social relationship and the viewer as a subject constructed by the subject hitherto claimed to be separate (deutsche, 2006). in this sense, the work of alfredo jaar is committed to construction of the subject through the object and space, especially the subject's relationship with the political and social space. thus, it begins to dissect the image, casting up crucial questions in contemporary artistic creation. some of these questions are formulated in a continuous process whose answers always are restructured. but if anything characterizes his work, it is critical reflection, or rather the constant doubt about the critique of images. the combination of excitement and media manipulation spread throughout his work from its inception, or put in another way, confrontation, merger and concatenation of artistic practice and political practice in its political-spatial dimension. in this sense, some works by alfredo jaar embrace the form of performances and interventions in public space, materializing in furtive signs, even negligible in the urban landscape, and revealing impossibilities, censorship, abolition of fundamental rights, etc., by the ruling dictatorship in chile. the declarative and spatial strategies also reflect the idea of replacing a story to mean something else, so characteristic of dictatorial regimes. however mailto:topacademicjournals@gmail.com american journal of art and communication vol.8, issue 1; january-febuary 2023; issn: 2994-0540 impact factor: 6.91 1252 columbia rd nw, washington dc, united states https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac; mail: topacademicjournals@gmail.com 14 | american journal of art and communication | https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac this process is done with a clear intention to “dialectize” the image, where his creations try to arouse emotions and generate thinking about the appropriation of public and political space. in telecomunicación (1981), through a press clipping, he shows women in belfast using the old ritual of hitting the road with trash can lids to vindicate the death of an activist. alfredo jaar in downtown santiago aligned six can lids to take a picture. and that is all. the problem here lies in how to deploy spatially that which cannot be represented literally in a particular historical context. although, maybe it is in estudios sobre la felicidad (1979-1981) where one of his work strategies, repeated throughout his work, is fermented, creating devices in public spaces where people can play a role and whose outcome is unpredictable. the creation of spatial and temporal relational contexts allows a triggering of events that exceeds its significance. alfredo jaar proposed transforming the image linked to the spatial discourse, to the social production of space, as lefebvre would say, and to the reinterpretation of the image from the coordinates of an artistic discourse based on the historical space that becomes social and political time, that is to say historical discourse. this sociability and historicity is found in the media. these questions often reveal a journalistic setting where you try to generate the voice and presence of a people who had lost their place, their social space. didi-huberman explains it as: a work resists, in this sense, if it knows how to “dislocate” the vision, that is to say involve it as “that which concerns us”, while rectifying at the same time the approach itself, i.e., explain and deploy, explicit, or criticize, by a concrete act (didi-huberman et al., 2008, p. 41). these records lead him to an approach that allows him to articulate his thoughts on the manipulation of images. therebyhe begins to draw press images or advertising modified by his framing from their spatial and temporal context and recontextualizes them through multiple strategies: insertion deviation, spatial relocation, where he makes that duality between the observed and the observer appear, creating distance and what concerns you directly. thus, in you and us (1984), he reverses the cbs phrase “if it concerns you, it concerns us” for “if it concerns us, it concerns you” revealing, as noted by nancy princenthal “the power mailto:topacademicjournals@gmail.com american journal of art and communication vol.8, issue 1; january-febuary 2023; issn: 2994-0540 impact factor: 6.91 1252 columbia rd nw, washington dc, united states https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac; mail: topacademicjournals@gmail.com 15 | american journal of art and communication | https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac structures operating in the dissemination of information” (didi-huberman et al., 2008, p. 25). this work, carried out in the subway in new york, operating the original version posters coined by him, is one of his first interventions in public space. and so begins a line of investigation where the presence of the subject in space is the beginning of a process in which the document of a particular situation fluctuates in achieving images before returning to build and shape criticism of that of which the artist has witnessed. on a trip to the gold mines of serra pelada, he filmed and photographed the garimpeiros (independent miners who come in search of fortune), and from these images come the movie introduction to a distant world (1985), a public intervention in the metro, rushes (1986), the installations gold in the morning (1986), frame of mind (1987), out of balance (1989) and unframe (1992). the various concerns in the development of these pieces focus on spatiotemporal contextualization of the image by choosing the frame and the assumption of a form-scene where theatricality stops or starts moving our eyes by moving the viewer. the strategy is then to articulate vision models that change the symbolic relationship and activate another way of meaning. thus, the first work devoted to the slaughter in rwanda was a spatial intervention in situ signs of life (1994). he acquired many tourist cards showing animals from natural parks and sent them to some friends with some brief information on each card including the name of a victim and his condition as a survivorof the genocide. this seemingly small gesture displays a poeticismwhere the fable and the litote develop an elliptical shape that by its explicit absence convenes a palpable presence. another piece of this project is the real pictures (1995) a work in which the artist buries the images in boxes on which he writes the description of the image it contains. in this image inaccessibility manoeuvre he singles out each of the deaths and dignifies them in the face of the anonymous masses, putting into practice the motto: “an omission is stronger than an action”. another work that emerged from this project is the eyes of gutete emerita (1996), which consisted of a million slides representing a million people from minority tutsis killed in a few weeks. the slides up close all showed the same image: the two eyes of a survivor with mailto:topacademicjournals@gmail.com american journal of art and communication vol.8, issue 1; january-febuary 2023; issn: 2994-0540 impact factor: 6.91 1252 columbia rd nw, washington dc, united states https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac; mail: topacademicjournals@gmail.com 16 | american journal of art and communication | https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac whom the artist had met. jaar uses metonymy to articulate a strategy, where he doesn’t show the thing but instead shows the effect it produces. this repetition of a look, the look that alludes to memory, but especially the emotion of a recreated event, restructured, made visible in its effects as george didihuberman points out: “the myth of medusa first recalls that the real pain is a source of impotence (...) but the reflected horror, extended, reconstructed as image (...) can be a source of knowledge (...)” (didi-huberman et al., 2008, p. 28). this ellipse resource used by jaar offers an absence that builds an intersubjective presence on the visitor. this is especially evident in lament of the images (2002), which brought the aforementionedworkstogether as a whole. however, we should note that in this series of papers jaar does not delete the images but insteadhe redistributes them ideologically and emotionally, preferring to formulate a story and make the names visible. here the investment procedures extracted from the media revert our relationship with the image and deploy a number of tools that allow us to establish a dialectic between the documentation of what is real and the management carried out by the media, thereby modulating our eyes in an appropriate direction to the dominant ideology. in his installation the sound of silence (2006) he registers our relationship as spectators and the consumption we make of them, producing new images. in this way, he explores blindness and understanding in one plane of interaction, trying to clarify a particular event through multiple viewpoints. in doing so, jaar is rethinking not only the limits of the unrepresentable but also the very problem of liability in the face of the images of both photojournalism and the industry that controls the distribution and circulation of images. using a text that tells the story of kevin carter, a south african photojournalist who became famous for his photograph of a starving child crawling on the floor under the eye of a vulture, captured in a report in sudan in 1993, jaar implements an installation. by inserting flashes on a liquid text flowing through the wall, he modulates standard perceptual systems and connotes the industrial character of the images, but he also inverts a political program where words slide under things and things under words. in this sense, the construction of spaces and times articulated by devices that operate outside of the dominant ideology is subverting distribution channels and is bringing an idea to mailto:topacademicjournals@gmail.com american journal of art and communication vol.8, issue 1; january-febuary 2023; issn: 2994-0540 impact factor: 6.91 1252 columbia rd nw, washington dc, united states https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac; mail: topacademicjournals@gmail.com 17 | american journal of art and communication | https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac “produce image” that opposes dynamics of hegemonic power. so it should be remembered here what edward soja tells us about the construction of postmodernism in his study of spatiality. the idea of image production and manufacturing by the media of hegemonic powers is addressed by the artwork of jaar in the same sense as soja discusses space and time: “the postmodern confusion of time and space, in which the temporal continuity collapses in extent and spatial dimension is lost for duplication, it transforms urban culture into a giant hologram able to produce any image in an apparent void” (soja, 2008, p. 460). therefore, the iconicity of image production in which both media producers and passive spectators act and become the artistic process of jaar, in representing scenes in the same manner as in the game of spatial meanings in postmodernism in which “(...) the time and space become icons themselves and consequently become scenarios” (soja, 2008, p. 460). the production image system and art installation that generates the work of alfredo jaar is designed from the interpretation of history generated by the media. this historicity of the media where jaar finds the subject of his works builds “biographies”, as notedby lefebvre, and is socially and historically connected with space, even beyond politics, and thus reconstructs the significance of thought and spatial reflection in the work of jaar. perhaps the work of alfredo jaar responds to the third space proposed by soja, in the debate between space, politics and the reception of his works by the viewer. the wayin which he deconstructs the meaning of the images and media narratives and restores it to the viewer diversifying their meanings, confusing their identities and proposing an endless game of symbolic metaphors that expand without a final conclusion. as soja points out, the third space “is not simply derived from an additive combination of their binary background but from a disorder, from a deconstruction and provisional reconstruction of their alleged totalization, producing an open alternative that is both similar and surprisingly different” (soja, 1996, p. 61). soja uses this strategyin his concept of the third space. breaking the dialectic between binary to display a knowledge that goes beyond opposites, to build an imaginative otherness based on the thirdness, on the third visual and temporal space. mailto:topacademicjournals@gmail.com american journal of art and communication vol.8, issue 1; january-febuary 2023; issn: 2994-0540 impact factor: 6.91 1252 columbia rd nw, washington dc, united states https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac; mail: topacademicjournals@gmail.com 18 | american journal of art and communication | https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac the third space is (...) build even more, to move forward, to continuously expand the production of knowledge beyond what is currently known, lefebvre organizes the production of space around only to the third in his own long interest in the dialectic of the lived and conceived, the “real” and “imaginary” material world and our thoughts on it (soja, 1996, p. 70). the contrast of the images, the dialectic between the experience, the mediated and the simulated in the historical image of the media is the wayof processing images that alfredo jaar performs in his work. 3. gordon matta-clark: the invasive space gordon matta-clark is known especially for his artistic interventions in buildings and in certain urban areas. his work was carried out between the sixties and seventies in relation to practices, strategies primarily site-specific, process art, minimalism and conceptual art. his range of proposals extends from cuts in buildings, architectural fragments, and experiments in the kitchen, performances, and appropriation of sunken ruins of urban objects. matta-clark and his work were at the forefront of the boldest discussions during these two decades: property, urban planning, architecture and the agenda in the role of institutions in the strategy of the art exhibitions of the seventies. what is interesting to note in the work of matta-clark is the violent gesture of cutting physiognomy in space and of the invasion in the space. this appearance of the invasive cut is one of the hallmarks of the work of matta-clark; and we would like to underline its history and the interdisciplinary approaches that can be made from the “spatial choreography” of the section line, separation, fragmentation and invasion following the cut made in space. his gesture causes and conditions the status of the artwork in its ontological security and traditional notion in western aesthetics in the sense of something perceived as a whole, centrality, concluding, self-determined and rational. matta-clark was referring to his main activity with the term “deconstruct”, pointing out in two directions the reception of his work. first, split buildings without hermetic sealing exist today only as waste and fragments of the photographic record, documentary or movies. but mailto:topacademicjournals@gmail.com american journal of art and communication vol.8, issue 1; january-febuary 2023; issn: 2994-0540 impact factor: 6.91 1252 columbia rd nw, washington dc, united states https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac; mail: topacademicjournals@gmail.com 19 | american journal of art and communication | https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac this feature is intrinsic to the design of their interventions and is something wanted and desired. cuts made in buildings, in their most intimate parts, i.e. rooms, stairs, doors and in the same rational structure of the house: entrance, first floor, roof, bearing walls, spatial division into units, etc., make an appeal to the interpretative resistance as something established, defined and stable. these interventions are designed so that the in situ viewer could experience decentralization, vertigo and synesthetic passage through their boundaries, ultimately for the viewer to invade, occupy and penetrate the space. in 1974 matta-clark made a proposition to his dealers horace and holly solomon: he wanted to cut a house. horace solomon had bought a house in a neighbourhood in decline, not for the house but for the buildinglot. this opportunity to have a home within reach helped him develop his splitting project. what was a crude act of speculation by solomon along with the drama that in only a few months it had to be demolished, became added ingredients for mattaclark in the artistic intervention, and also meant that his work would not be finally permanent. the house on humphrey street in englewood new jersey had a prosaic narrative before and after the cutting that matta-clark incorporated into his documents. the house was a standard, single-family box type with front and rear porches and the floor was completely symmetrical and rigid. the centrality of the house and the sharpness of its gestalt are decisive in the cutting action. matta-clark emptied the whole house and all the debris and objects left by the previous occupants. he was now the new occupant and invader. mailto:topacademicjournals@gmail.com american journal of art and communication vol.8, issue 1; january-febuary 2023; issn: 2994-0540 impact factor: 6.91 1252 columbia rd nw, washington dc, united states https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac; mail: topacademicjournals@gmail.com 20 | american journal of art and communication | https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac figure 1. gordon matta-clark, splitting, 1974. source: http://camilayelarte.blogspot.com.es. creative commons. with this emptying of any human reference matta-clark refuses to work with any idea of anthropomorphism. after emptying the house he made two vertical cuts with a chainsaw through the midpoint that divided the house into two halves. this event was recorded with photographs and a film documenting the whole process of partition. matta-clark described the process of cutting the house as something akin to a “juggling with the syntax” (lee, 2001, p. 28). and this is a valid metaphor for intervention, as matta-clark plays with the signs of architectural experience, breaking the unity and stability that organizes all the perception of domestic architecture. cutting, fragmenting, sectioning, mauling, these are the weapons used by matta-clark and it is inevitable to interpret the reception of his work as an act of violence and invasion with their interventions. that brings us to the reflections of henri lefebvre about the production of space (2008), which suggest that the “conceived space” that is projected, reduces experience to the visible andlegible. this produces what might be described as the fallacy of “spatial transparency”. the public space is shown as completely transparent, innocent, with no secrets and no surprises in which the actors are appropriate to the areas of consensus. lefebvre’s spatial mailto:topacademicjournals@gmail.com american journal of art and communication vol.8, issue 1; january-febuary 2023; issn: 2994-0540 impact factor: 6.91 1252 columbia rd nw, washington dc, united states https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac; mail: topacademicjournals@gmail.com 21 | american journal of art and communication | https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac concern leads to a conception of civic space consensus of public space as a continuation of domestic space. in this sense, the performative action of matta-clark can be understood as the opening of the domestic space outwards to the exterior, to the civic space and consensus that lefebvre speaks about. but this spatial and gestural transposition of matta-clark contrasts with the position in space of consensus, to perfectly match the gesture of appropriation of domestic space to imbalances, differences, the conflict space separations, contradictions and segregation of the cultural and political of public space. as he points out: the space itself simultaneously a product of the capitalist mode of production, and economicpolitical instrument of the bourgeoisie reveals its own contradictions. the dialectic emerges from timeand is performed; it works unexpectedly in the space. the contradictions of space, without abolishing those from the historical time, emerge from history and convey the old contradictions to another level inglobal simultaneity; some are tempered, others are worsen, and contradictory set takes on new meaning and comes to designate “something else”, another mode of production (lefebvre, 2008, p. 182). lefebvre's thesis on the production of space is formed on the basis that it is in “space and the space where capitalist relations of production reproduce” (lefebvre, 1974, p. 223). therefore the new relationship between the body and the society are defined, as points out lefebvre, through a dialectical system that covers the entire space, between the dominant space and the dominated space. the contradiction, the dialectics arise from space and violence manipulation as resources of power and the social relationship that develops from the contradiction of treating large-scale space and private ownership of space. matta-clark used these contradictory and dialectical effects of space in his work, which connects the space and society, the urban and architectural territories and starts from some of these contradictions to operate the urban space as a criticism towards the fragmentation of the experiences and spaces. lefebvre speaks of a negative appropriation of public space and in general about the urban space as being a space domination of capitalism. his proposal to socialize space, open to the participation of the inhabitants can be interpreted and translated into the spatial gesture works mailto:topacademicjournals@gmail.com american journal of art and communication vol.8, issue 1; january-febuary 2023; issn: 2994-0540 impact factor: 6.91 1252 columbia rd nw, washington dc, united states https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac; mail: topacademicjournals@gmail.com 22 | american journal of art and communication | https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac of matta-clark. to open the space of buildings and appropriate them positively i.e. socialize them and eventually occupy the spaces. the appropriation of space is also inserted in the process of dislocation and transposition which is essential to the processes of collage and involves some violence: the construction process begins beyond the pictorial field in a destructive act, gutting and uprooting, and the quality of the act naturally plays a decisive role in determining the nature of the fragment (parisier, 1983, p. 132). so says david rostand on using the cut in the collage. he also says the neat, clean and incisive act of cutting forms is a deliberate act of deconstruction anticipating the reconstitutionprocesses following amputation. we must, however, make a distinction between sectioning and tear: matta-clark clearly cleanly severed his objects in a preconceived way, based on the idiosyncrasy and the history of the subject, respecting its functional, formal and allegorical concept before and after cutting. the post-partition is as important as the integrity of the building before the intervention, because the dissection of the building is based on a pre-existing totality that reinforces the physical and rhetorical act of cutting, opening and invadingits privacy. his way of proceeding is not to tear or gut the building but stays true to a plan that has conditions of scale, volume and precision cutting. in this sense there is a minimalist theatricality in performance. the shape of a regular cut of matta-clark is one that allows us to mentally reconstruct the fragment and leaves a visual icon on the place and spaceimprinted on the retina. it is in this sense that the work of mattaclark has a clear conjunction with the neat cut of some collages made by picasso or schwitters, or even the type of design of lissitski or rodchenko. in an interview matta-clark made the marks of his work very clear, his work was “(...) all but illusionist (...) it is rather a direct physical activity and not to make associations with something outside the own work itself” (lee, 2001, p. 21). the close relationship matta-clark had with robert smithson, was of paramount importance; bringing together the notions of smithson's “site and non-site” and the concept of entropy. these proposals, however, are based on the work done “in situ” by the possibility of producing the work in locations and spaces outside the continentof the gallery or museum. mailto:topacademicjournals@gmail.com american journal of art and communication vol.8, issue 1; january-febuary 2023; issn: 2994-0540 impact factor: 6.91 1252 columbia rd nw, washington dc, united states https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac; mail: topacademicjournals@gmail.com 23 | american journal of art and communication | https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac besides its metonymic displacement of reintroducing fragments in the enclosed space of the gallery, with all kinds of photographic, film and explanatory documentation of the work done. smithson gave rise to a kind of “entropy of architecture” and certainly matta-clark’s work of sectioning the buildings reminds us of this entropic idea of the architecture of smithson. but the contribution of mattaclark in this sense is overcoming the concrete framework and defined in the work of smithson, since according to him, it needs a particular place and an entropic monumentality in the form of a ruin. the work of matta-clark as in the case of the work day's end or conical intersect (1975), in which the intervention is made with simple holes, is separated from the work of smithson and does not recycle a certain place, but instead it is based on the temporary loan of a physical space within the social and urban fabric of the city. no need for a real and lasting framework. it is the negation of monumentality, as understood by smithson that stands for an idea of randomness and vacuum material. the idea of matta-clark spontaneously reopens the concept of cubism spaces and overlapping planes. at day's end and conical intersect (1975) the arcs of the holes intersect to form an overlapping withdrawal of circles and arcs. this juxtaposition is far more evident when cutting through the different floors and rooms of the building. this juxtaposition in collage form also refers to the way of inserting “social spaces” through the cuts made by matta-clark. 4. conclusion alfredo jaar's strategy is to propose a scene, an encounter between a public and a picture that reveals the structures of a media world that is disabled by suffering. thus, it proposes to generate the possibility that acting is possible and desirable. the creation of encounters in his installations takes the viewer into the abyss through the disclosure of a trauma. but here the invisible, the unnoticed and the sign are tense relations not only meaning the actual fact but symbolizing an idea of country, state, nation exposed to colonialism and cruelty. these processes that jaar modulates in his works are configured as heterochronic spaces using spatial and temporal dimensions of the rhythms of advanced capitalism and mass media that make the latent temporalities break up to articulate other qualities of space. mailto:topacademicjournals@gmail.com american journal of art and communication vol.8, issue 1; january-febuary 2023; issn: 2994-0540 impact factor: 6.91 1252 columbia rd nw, washington dc, united states https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac; mail: topacademicjournals@gmail.com 24 | american journal of art and communication | https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac in the work of matta clark a jump to the social space, to the substrate of time and real space of everyday life is proposed. and that's basically what matta-clark explores. by directly intervening in the real social and spatial basis matta-clark makes life and the everyday his true artistic matters. like most artists in the sixties mattaclark puts the value of his work in real time and work as a force in contemporary life. and this is where the inclusion of social, spatial and politics of neo-avant-gardes of the 60s and 70s begins, which in this case we have illustrated with the invasion and occupation of real and imaginary space in the work of mattaclark. references deutsche, r. (1996). evictions: art and spatial politics, cambridge. the mit press. [online]available: http://catalinavaughan.wordpress.com/2009/09/06/artenokiaantagonimo-y-estetica-relacional. (august 15, 2015). didi-huberman, g. et al. (2008). alfredo jaar: la politica de las imágenes. santiago de chile: metales pesados. soja, e. w. (1996). thirdspace: journeys to los angeles and other real-and-imagined places. oxford: blackwell. soja, e. w. (2008). postmetrópolis. estudios críticos sobre las ciudades y las regiones. madrid: traficantes de sueños. lee, p. m. (2001). object to be destroyed, the work of gordon matta-clark.cambridge, massachusetts: the mit press. lefebvre, h. (1974). “la producción del espacio”. papers: revista de sociología, núm. 3, 219 229. lefebvre, h. (1991). the production of space. oxford: blackwell. mailto:topacademicjournals@gmail.com american journal of art and communication vol.8, issue 1; january-febuary 2023; issn: 2994-0540 impact factor: 6.91 1252 columbia rd nw, washington dc, united states https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac; mail: topacademicjournals@gmail.com 25 | american journal of art and communication | https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac lefebvre, h. (2008). la producción del espacio. madrid: capitán swing libros. parisier, j. p., ed. (1983). collage, vol. 10-11. new york: new york literary forum. mailto:topacademicjournals@gmail.com chapter one american journal of arts and communication vol.10, issue 2; march-april 2025; issn: 2994-0540 impact factor: 7.94 1252 columbia rd nw, washington dc, united states https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac; mail: topacademicjournals@gmail.com 1 | a m e r i c a n j o u r n a l o f a r t s a n d c o m m u n i c a t i o n | https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac communicating governance and cultural integrity: the role of broadcast media in combating corruption in nigeria 1eke, chigozi (phd), 2okure, ekemini george (phd) and 3ikebude, olufunke dorcas 1,2department of linguistics and communication studies, university of port harcourt, rivers state, nigeria 3department of broadcasting and media studies, university of port harcourt, rivers state, nigeria email: chigozi_eke@uniport.edu.ng/ ekemini_okure@uniport.edu.ng/ olufunkeikebude1@gmail.com doi: https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.15183419 abstract: this study ascertained communicating governance and cultural integrity: the role of broadcast media in combating corruption in nigeria. the agenda setting theory of publics was anchored in this study. this study adopted a qualitative research methodology, utilizing in-depth interviews to explore the role of broadcast media in combating corruption in nigeria. the population for this study consisted of media practitioners, including journalists, editors, and media managers, as well as government officials and members of civil society organizations who had direct experience or involvement in anti-corruption initiatives. the total population of media practitioners in nigeria was approximately 10,000 (nigerian press council, 2023), and from this, a sample size of 20 participants were selected for the interviews. a purposive sampling technique was employed to ensure that participants have relevant experience and expertise in broadcast media and anticorruption efforts. data were collected through semi-structured interviews, allowing for flexibility in exploring participants' views on media's effectiveness and challenges in combating corruption. the interviews were audiorecorded, transcribed, and analysed thematically using nvivo software, where recurring themes, patterns, and categories were identified to offer a rich understanding of the relationship between broadcast media, governance, and corruption in nigeria. findings revealed that broadcast media plays a crucial role in raising public awareness of corruption in nigeria by exposing corrupt practices, educating citizens on the consequences, and encouraging informed discussions about the issue across various segments of society. the study concludes that broadcast media plays a pivotal role in raising public awareness of corruption in nigeria, effectively educating citizens and sparking necessary discussions that contribute to the broader societal understanding of the issue. the study recommended that broadcast media outlets prioritize corruption-related content, focusing on investigative journalism and public education to raise awareness and engage citizens in the fight against corruption. keywords: communicating governance, cultural integrity, broadcast media, combating corruption, nigeria introduction corruption remains one of the most formidable obstacles to governance, development, and cultural integrity in nigeria. over the years, it has undermined the nation’s political stability, economic progress and societal trust, creating an environment of inefficiency and lack of accountability (akanbi & agboola, 2021). scholars have argued that corruption in nigeria is not merely a political or economic issue but a deeply entrenched societal mailto:topacademicjournals@gmail.com american journal of arts and communication vol.10, issue 2; march-april 2025; issn: 2994-0540 impact factor: 7.94 1252 columbia rd nw, washington dc, united states https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac; mail: topacademicjournals@gmail.com 2 | a m e r i c a n j o u r n a l o f a r t s a n d c o m m u n i c a t i o n | https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac problem that requires a multifaceted approach to address (olu-adeyemi, 2022). broadcast media, with its vast reach and ability to shape public discourse, stands as a crucial tool in the fight against corruption by promoting transparency, accountability, and ethical governance (okon & udoh, 2020). the role of broadcast media in combating corruption is largely anchored on its ability to disseminate timely and factual information that holds public officials accountable. according to mcquail’s media theory, the media functions as a watchdog that exposes irregularities within governance systems, thereby fostering a culture of transparency (mcquail, 2010). in nigeria, the radio and television sectors have played key roles in exposing corrupt practices, facilitating investigative journalism, and mobilizing citizens to demand accountability from their leaders (adesoji, 2021). through programs such as investigative reports and public debates, the media have continually placed corruption-related discussions at the centre of national discourse. despite these efforts, media independence remains a significant challenge in nigeria’s anti-corruption crusade. government control over broadcast stations and restrictive policies often limit journalists’ ability to report freely on corrupt practices (ojebode, 2019). this has led to instances of censorship, harassment, and intimidation of journalists who attempt to expose corruption among powerful political elites (olawale, 2020). consequently, the effectiveness of broadcast media in fostering good governance is often hindered by external pressures that compromise media freedom and professionalism. the ethical dilemmas facing nigerian journalists, including self-censorship and economic constraints, further weaken the impact of media-driven anticorruption campaigns. additionally, the intersection between cultural values and corruption in nigeria presents a unique challenge. scholars have observed that cultural factors, such as patronage, nepotism, and traditional loyalties contribute to the persistence of corrupt practices (achebe, 2012). the media, in its role as a tool for social change, are expected to counter these cultural influences by promoting ethical leadership and civic responsibility (nwoke, 2021). however, the challenge lies in reconciling modern governance ideals with deeply rooted cultural norms that often prioritize personal relationships over merit and accountability (dike, 2020). in addressing corruption through broadcast media, the application of media agenda-setting theory is particularly relevant. the media’s power to shape public perception through persistent coverage of corruption-related issues influences how citizens engage with governance and demand accountability (mccombs & shaw, 1972). studies have shown that increased media coverage of corruption cases correlates with heightened public awareness and civil action (uche, 2022). by placing anti-corruption narratives at the forefront of national discussions, broadcast media can stimulate policy reforms and behavioural changes among both political elites and the general populace. however, media ownership patterns in nigeria raise concerns about the objectivity and effectiveness of broadcast media in combating corruption. many television and radio stations are owned by politicians and business elites who have vested interests in maintaining the status quo (oso, 2021). this has led to biased reporting, selective coverage of corruption cases and the suppression of critical voices within the media space mailto:topacademicjournals@gmail.com american journal of arts and communication vol.10, issue 2; march-april 2025; issn: 2994-0540 impact factor: 7.94 1252 columbia rd nw, washington dc, united states https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac; mail: topacademicjournals@gmail.com 3 | a m e r i c a n j o u r n a l o f a r t s a n d c o m m u n i c a t i o n | https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac (akanji, 2019). independent media organizations and investigative journalists often struggle to operate in an environment where financial and political pressures dictate editorial decisions. the influence of international media and digital broadcasting has introduced new dynamics to nigeria’s fight against corruption. global media networks and foreign correspondents have exposed corruption cases that local media may not be able to report due to internal pressures (bbc africa, 2023). the rise of digital platforms and citizen journalism has also expanded the scope of anti-corruption discourse, enabling ordinary nigerians to participate in investigative reporting and social activism (egbunike, 2022). these developments demonstrate that the future of corruption reporting in nigeria may depend significantly on a hybrid model that integrates traditional broadcast media with digital and global media networks. moreover, legal and regulatory frameworks play a crucial role in determining the extent to which broadcast media can engage in anti-corruption advocacy. the nigerian broadcasting commission (nbc) and other regulatory bodies have often been accused of wielding their powers to silence dissenting voices rather than protecting press freedom (arogundade, 2021). this has created an atmosphere where journalists and media organizations must navigate legal uncertainties while attempting to expose corruption. strengthening legal protections for journalists and reforming restrictive media policies would enhance the role of broadcast media in promoting transparency and accountability. the effectiveness of media-driven anti-corruption campaigns is also contingent on audience engagement and public response. studies have shown that citizens who actively consume media content on corruption-related issues are more likely to participate in civic actions such as protests, petitions and whistleblowing (dunu, 2022). however, media influence is not always uniform, as factors such as political affiliation, media literacy and socioeconomic status affect how individuals interpret and respond to corruption reports (ojo, 2020). this highlights the need for media organizations to adopt audience-tailored communication strategies that resonate with diverse demographic groups. furthermore, the economic implications of corruption underscore the urgency of sustained media intervention. corruption in nigeria has been linked to capital flight, unemployment, poor infrastructure, and declining foreign investments (world bank, 2022). the media, through investigative journalism and policy analysis can educate citizens on how corruption directly affects economic growth and social development. by framing corruption as not only a moral failure but also an economic threat, broadcast media can galvanize greater public support for anti-corruption measures. collaboration between broadcast media and anti-corruption agencies, such as the economic and financial crimes commission (efcc) and the independent corrupt practices and other related offences commission (icpc), is another critical strategy. joint initiatives that integrate media reporting with law enforcement efforts can enhance investigative outcomes and public trust in anti-corruption institutions (okafor, 2021). however, concerns about the political influence on these agencies often undermine their credibility, necessitating a more independent and transparent operational framework. broadcast media remain a powerful instrument in nigeria’s mailto:topacademicjournals@gmail.com american journal of arts and communication vol.10, issue 2; march-april 2025; issn: 2994-0540 impact factor: 7.94 1252 columbia rd nw, washington dc, united states https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac; mail: topacademicjournals@gmail.com 4 | a m e r i c a n j o u r n a l o f a r t s a n d c o m m u n i c a t i o n | https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac fight against corruption, despite the challenges of media ownership, government censorship, cultural influences and legal constraints. strengthening media independence, enhancing investigative journalism, leveraging digital platforms and fostering collaborations between media and anti-corruption agencies are essential steps toward a more transparent and accountable governance system. as nigeria continues to grapple with corruption-related crises, the role of broadcast media in shaping public opinion and influencing policy decisions will be increasingly significant. this study is significant as it provides a critical analysis of the role of broadcast media in combating corruption in nigeria, offering insights into its effectiveness, challenges and potential improvements; it contributes to academic discourse on media and governance, informs policymakers on the need for media-friendly regulations, equips journalists with strategies to enhance investigative reporting and educates the public on the power of media in fostering transparency and accountability, ultimately strengthening the fight against corruption and promoting cultural integrity in nigerian society. statement of the problem corruption remains a pervasive challenge in nigeria, undermining governance, public trust and national development. despite various anti-corruption initiatives, including the establishment of institutions such as the economic and financial crimes commission (efcc) and the independent corrupt practices and other related offences commission (icpc), corruption continues to thrive due to systemic weaknesses, political interference and a culture of impunity. the media, particularly broadcast media, play a crucial role in exposing corrupt practices, fostering transparency, and shaping public opinion on governance. however, the effectiveness of nigerian broadcast media in combating corruption is often constrained by factors such as government censorship, political influence over media ownership, self-censorship by journalists and limited investigative resources. additionally, cultural factors such as nepotism, patronage and societal tolerance for corrupt practices further complicate the fight against corruption, reducing the impact of media-driven accountability efforts. while broadcast media have the potential to serve as a watchdog, its ability to hold public officials accountable is significantly undermined by restrictive regulatory policies and economic pressures that compromise journalistic independence. many media organizations struggle with financial sustainability, making them susceptible to external influences that dictate editorial content and limit their investigative capacities. furthermore, the extent to which the nigerian public engages with and responds to corruption-related media content remains uncertain, as media literacy levels, political affiliations and socio-economic factors influence public perception and action. given these challenges, it is imperative to critically examine the role of broadcast media in combating corruption in nigeria, assess its effectiveness and identify strategies to enhance its contribution to governance and cultural integrity. this study seeks to explore these issues, highlighting the strengths, limitations and future prospects of media-driven anti-corruption efforts in nigeria. this study examines the effectiveness of broadcast media in combating corruption in nigeria by assessing its role in promoting transparency, accountability and public engagement in governance. it identifies the challenges mailto:topacademicjournals@gmail.com american journal of arts and communication vol.10, issue 2; march-april 2025; issn: 2994-0540 impact factor: 7.94 1252 columbia rd nw, washington dc, united states https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac; mail: topacademicjournals@gmail.com 5 | a m e r i c a n j o u r n a l o f a r t s a n d c o m m u n i c a t i o n | https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac that hinder media-driven anti-corruption efforts, including government censorship, political influence and economic constraints on journalistic independence. furthermore, the study explores strategies for enhancing the impact of broadcast media in fostering good governance and cultural integrity, with a focus on strengthening investigative journalism, regulatory frameworks and audience engagement. the role of broadcast media in promoting transparency and accountability broadcast media play a pivotal role in promoting transparency and accountability within governance structures by serving as a watchdog, exposing corruption and holding public officials accountable for their actions. according to the watchdog theory, the media acts as a guardian of the public interest by investigating and revealing wrongdoings within government institutions (mcquail, 2010). in nigeria, broadcast media such as radio and television stations are critical tools in disseminating information about corruption, government mismanagement and societal injustice, thereby empowering citizens to demand accountability. research shows that investigative journalism in nigerian broadcast media has been instrumental in uncovering high-profile corruption cases and fostering public discourse on ethical governance (uche, 2022). furthermore, broadcast media in nigeria help bridge the information gap by educating citizens on the implications of corrupt practices and the importance of good governance. studies have demonstrated that citizens who are exposed to corruptionrelated media content are more likely to become involved in civic activities, such as voting, participating in public debates and engaging in social advocacy (dunu, 2022). broadcast media, through news programs, talk shows and documentaries, provide citizens with critical insights into the functioning of government institutions and the need for transparency. this democratization of information fosters a more informed electorate that can hold public officials accountable during elections and beyond. despite its potential, the effectiveness of broadcast media in promoting transparency is often limited by external constraints such as government censorship, political influence and economic challenges faced by media organizations. the nigerian government’s influence over media ownership and content can restrict journalists’ ability to report on corruption freely (olawale, 2020). in some cases, media outlets may practice self-censorship out of fear of losing advertising revenue or facing legal repercussions (ojebode, 2019). these factors undermine the media's ability to act as an effective accountability tool and allow corrupt practices to persist without scrutiny. to overcome these challenges, scholars argue for greater media independence and support for investigative journalism. a robust media environment where journalists can work freely and without fear of retribution is essential for fostering transparency and accountability (arogundade, 2021). policymakers must therefore focus on creating a media landscape that supports press freedom and strengthens the role of broadcast media in exposing corruption and promoting good governance. this requires not only legal reforms but also efforts to enhance the capacity of media organizations to carry out investigative reporting and provide citizens with accurate, timely information on governmental activities. government influence and media censorship government influence over broadcast media in nigeria has long been a barrier to the free flow of information and the media’s capacity to serve as an independent watchdog. media censorship, both formal and informal, remains a significant issue that hinders the effectiveness of broadcast media in exposing corruption and mailto:topacademicjournals@gmail.com american journal of arts and communication vol.10, issue 2; march-april 2025; issn: 2994-0540 impact factor: 7.94 1252 columbia rd nw, washington dc, united states https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac; mail: topacademicjournals@gmail.com 6 | a m e r i c a n j o u r n a l o f a r t s a n d c o m m u n i c a t i o n | https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac advocating for transparency in governance (olawale, 2020). the nigerian government has, at various points, utilized its control over state-owned media and applied pressure on private media outlets to avoid reporting on sensitive political matters, including corruption. this government influence undermines the role of the media as a check on power and accountability in the country’s political system. media censorship in nigeria manifests in several forms, including editorial interference, the suppression of critical reports and direct attacks on journalists who challenge the status quo. according to ojebode (2019), the nigerian government has often employed the use of media regulatory bodies like the nigerian broadcasting commission (nbc) to curtail dissenting views and suppress coverage of corruption scandals. these actions not only limit the scope of journalistic freedom but also create an environment where media outlets may refrain from publishing stories that could undermine government officials or institutions, even when they are involved in corrupt activities. the political economy of the media in nigeria further complicates this issue. many privately owned broadcast stations are dependent on government contracts and advertisements, creating an incentive for media organizations to align their editorial policies with government interests. this economic dependency fosters a culture of self-censorship among journalists, where critical reporting on corruption risks alienating influential advertisers or political elites (akanji, 2019). as a result, the media may prioritize sensational or governmentfriendly content, neglecting to highlight the severity of corruption in governance. addressing the issue of media censorship requires reforms that ensure media independence and protection for journalists. strengthening the legal framework for press freedom and providing support for investigative journalism can help mitigate the impact of government influence on media content. additionally, there is a need for increased public awareness of the critical role that an independent media plays in holding government officials accountable for corruption and mismanagement. by creating an environment where journalists can operate freely, the media can better contribute to the fight against corruption in nigeria. cultural factors and the persistence of corruption cultural factors play a significant role in the persistence of corruption in nigeria. in many african societies, including nigeria, there exists a complex relationship between governance practices and cultural values, which can often perpetuate corrupt behaviours. traditional practices such as patronage, nepotism and the expectation of personal loyalty over institutional integrity have contributed to the normalization of corruption within both public and private sectors (achebe, 2012). these cultural norms often shape how individuals and communities view corruption, influencing their response to anti-corruption initiatives and media coverage. the role of kinship networks and ethnic affiliations in nigerian society further complicates efforts to combat corruption. in many cases, political and business leaders rely on these networks to maintain power and influence, often at the expense of institutional governance (dike, 2020). as a result, corrupt practices are often excused or overlooked as part of the social fabric, making it challenging for media and anti-corruption agencies to create lasting change. broadcast media, in this context, face the dual challenge of combating deeply ingrained cultural practices while simultaneously educating the public about the ethical and legal implications of corruption. mailto:topacademicjournals@gmail.com american journal of arts and communication vol.10, issue 2; march-april 2025; issn: 2994-0540 impact factor: 7.94 1252 columbia rd nw, washington dc, united states https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac; mail: topacademicjournals@gmail.com 7 | a m e r i c a n j o u r n a l o f a r t s a n d c o m m u n i c a t i o n | https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac in response, nwoke (2021) argues that broadcast media can play a critical role in shifting cultural attitudes toward corruption by reframing it as a societal ill that undermines collective wellbeing. through educational programs, documentaries and public service announcements, the media can challenge the cultural acceptance of corruption and promote values of honesty, transparency and accountability. the media campaigns focused on cultural change can lead to shifts in public attitudes and behaviours. however, these efforts must be long-term and supported by government policies that reinforce ethical leadership and the rule of law. moreover, public engagement with media content on corruption is shaped by social and cultural dynamics. media outlets must tailor their communication strategies to address the specific cultural contexts in which corruption occurs, ensuring that anti-corruption messages resonate with diverse audiences. effective communication strategies that combine traditional media with grassroots outreach and community engagement are crucial in fostering cultural transformation and creating a more transparent and accountable society. broadcast media’s role in promoting cultural integrity thus extends beyond simply reporting corruption to actively influencing cultural perceptions and behaviours that perpetuate or challenge corrupt practices. agenda-setting theory this theory was developed by maxwell e. mccombs & donald l. shaw (1972). the agenda-setting theory posits that the media has the ability to influence the salience of topics on the public agenda by highlighting certain issues, thus, shaping the public’s perception of what is important in society. the theory assumes that while the media may not tell the audience what to think, it can tell them what to think about, influencing the public discourse and priorities. a common criticism of the theory is that it underestimates the power of the audience in actively selecting and interpreting media content, suggesting that the media influence is more passive than it is often portrayed. the agenda-setting theory is relevant to the current study as it highlights the role of broadcast media in shaping public discourse about corruption in nigeria. by focusing media attention on corruption-related issues, broadcast media can influence the public's understanding of the issue and set the agenda for governance and anti-corruption efforts. this aligns with the study’s exploration of media’s impact on public engagement and governance. empirical review dunu (2022) carried out a study on investigating the impact of media coverage on public perception of corruption in nigeria. this study assessed the influence of media coverage on public perceptions and actions regarding corruption in nigeria. the research used a survey design, collecting data from a sample of 500 nigerian citizens through structured questionnaires. the study found that media exposure to corruptionrelated content significantly influenced public awareness and led to increased civic engagement, though the effects were more prominent among educated respondents. like the current study, the reviewed study focused on the role of media in shaping public understanding and engagement with corruption. while this study emphasizes public perception, the current study specifically explores the role of broadcast media in governance and combating corruption. mailto:topacademicjournals@gmail.com american journal of arts and communication vol.10, issue 2; march-april 2025; issn: 2994-0540 impact factor: 7.94 1252 columbia rd nw, washington dc, united states https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac; mail: topacademicjournals@gmail.com 8 | a m e r i c a n j o u r n a l o f a r t s a n d c o m m u n i c a t i o n | https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac olawale (2020) conducted a research on government control and media censorship in nigeria: implications for investigative journalism. the study explored how government control and censorship affect the quality and independence of investigative journalism in nigeria. a qualitative approach was employed, with in-depth interviews conducted with 20 journalists and media experts in nigeria. finding discovered that government control and censorship significantly limit the scope of investigative journalism, leading to a lack of transparency and reduced media independence in nigeria. both studies address the challenges faced by nigerian media, specifically focusing on how government censorship impacts media freedom and corruption reporting. while the reviewed study focuses on the limitations faced by journalists, the current study examines the broader role of broadcast media in combating corruption. arogundade (2021) did a research on the role of broadcast media in promoting anti-corruption campaigns in nigeria. this study evaluated the effectiveness of broadcast media campaigns in promoting anti-corruption messages and raising public awareness in nigeria. a mixed-methods approach was used, incorporating content analysis of broadcast media campaigns and interviews with media practitioners. finding revealed that while broadcast media campaigns had raised awareness about corruption, the lack of follow-up actions and the political influence on media content hindered long-term impact. like the current study, the reviewed study focused on broadcast media's role in addressing corruption and promoting transparency. the current study delves deeper into the broader societal factors influencing media's effectiveness, whereas the reviewed study specifically focuses on the campaigns themselves. gap identification the literature on the role of broadcast media in combating corruption emphasizes the critical function media plays in shaping public perceptions, promoting transparency and holding public officials accountable. studies have shown that broadcast media, through investigative journalism and anti-corruption campaigns can expose corrupt practices and influence public discourse on governance (dunu, 2022; arogundade, 2021). however, the effectiveness of media in this regard is often hindered by factors such as government censorship, political influence and media ownership structures (olawale, 2020). while many studies focus on the challenges faced by broadcast media in promoting anti-corruption efforts, fewer have examined the broader societal and cultural factors, such as the normalization of corruption that limit media influence in nigeria. additionally, there is a lack of comprehensive research on how different segments of the nigerian population respond to corruptionrelated media content. this study fills these gaps by exploring the interplay between broadcast media, cultural attitudes toward corruption and public engagement with anti-corruption messages, offering insights into ways to enhance the media's role in promoting governance and cultural integrity in nigeria. methodology this study adopted a qualitative research methodology, utilizing in-depth interviews to explore the role of broadcast media in combating corruption in nigeria. the population for this study consisted of media practitioners, including journalists, editors and media managers, as well as government officials and members mailto:topacademicjournals@gmail.com american journal of arts and communication vol.10, issue 2; march-april 2025; issn: 2994-0540 impact factor: 7.94 1252 columbia rd nw, washington dc, united states https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac; mail: topacademicjournals@gmail.com 9 | a m e r i c a n j o u r n a l o f a r t s a n d c o m m u n i c a t i o n | https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac of civil society organizations who have direct experience or involvement in anti-corruption initiatives. the total population of media practitioners in nigeria was approximately 10,000 (nigerian press council, 2023), and from this, a sample size of 20 participants was selected for the interviews. a purposive sampling technique was employed to ensure that participants have relevant experience and expertise in broadcast media and anticorruption efforts. data were collected through semi-structured interviews, allowing for flexibility in exploring participants' views on media's effectiveness and challenges in combating corruption. the interviews were audiorecorded, transcribed, and analysed thematically using nvivo software, where recurring themes, patterns and categories were identified to offer a rich understanding of the relationship between broadcast media, governance, and corruption in nigeria. this approach provided in-depth insights into how media professionals perceive their roles in promoting transparency and combating corruption in nigeria. data presentation and analysis themes were deduced deductively following the research objectives. the following themes were deduced: broadcast media's role in shaping public awareness of corruption; challenges facing broadcast media in combatting corruption and the relationship between media content and public engagement with anti-corruption efforts. these were presented and discussed below: broadcast media's role in shaping public awareness of corruption this theme explores how broadcast media influence the public’s understanding of corruption highlighting its ability to educate, inform and mobilize citizens in advocating for transparency and accountability within governance. from the interview extraction: broadcast media have played a significant role in shaping public awareness of corruption in nigeria by acting as a primary source of information for the general population. through investigative journalism, news reports, documentaries and special features, broadcast media have exposed numerous corrupt practices, making the public aware of the widespread nature of corruption across different sectors of society. programs that focus on corruption-related issues often break down complex situations into digestible formats, allowing the public to better understand how corruption affects governance, public services and national development. the media’s ability to bring corruption to light through vivid reporting and interviews with key figures helps foster a greater understanding of the issue among nigerians. in addition to exposing corruption, broadcast media also raise awareness by actively engaging the public in conversations about its consequences. public service announcements, talk shows and interviews with experts play a role in educating the population on how corruption harms the country's social, economic and political systems. such content is designed to appeal to various segments of the population, using language and formats that resonate with both urban and rural communities. for example, the use of indigenous languages in broadcasts ensures that corruption-related messages are accessible to a wider audience, bridging gaps in education and language barriers. despite its effectiveness, the role of broadcast media in shaping public awareness can sometimes be undermined by factors like media ownership, political bias and economic constraints. media outlets that are owned by mailto:topacademicjournals@gmail.com american journal of arts and communication vol.10, issue 2; march-april 2025; issn: 2994-0540 impact factor: 7.94 1252 columbia rd nw, washington dc, united states https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac; mail: topacademicjournals@gmail.com 10 | a m e r i c a n j o u r n a l o f a r t s a n d c o m m u n i c a t i o n | https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac influential political figures or corporate interests may have a vested interest in downplaying or censoring corruption-related stories. this poses a challenge in ensuring that the public receives an unbiased and thorough view of corruption in nigeria. moreover, the financial difficulties faced by many media houses in nigeria mean that investigative journalism often takes a back seat to more commercially viable content, potentially limiting the depth of coverage on corruption issues. however, when broadcast media address corruption with credibility and investigative rigor, it not only informs the public but also motivates citizens to demand accountability from their leaders. public awareness of corruption, generated through media coverage, prompts individuals and groups to become more active in political and social movements that aim to combat corruption. while broadcast media may not always offer immediate solutions, it serves as a catalyst for public discourse, increasing scrutiny of government actions and ultimately contributing to efforts for greater transparency. challenges facing broadcast media in combatting corruption this theme addresses the external and internal factors, such as government censorship, political pressure, and economic constraints that hinder the effectiveness of broadcast media in investigating and exposing corruption. from the interview extract; broadcast media in nigeria face numerous challenges when it comes to combating corruption, with political interference being one of the most significant hurdles. media outlets are often subjected to pressure from government officials or political figures who may either directly influence editorial content or indirectly shape it through subtle means such as advertising withdrawal or intimidation. in some cases, government policies or laws restrict media freedom, making it difficult for broadcasters to report on corruption without facing repercussions. as a result, media outlets may practice self-censorship, limiting their coverage of corruption to avoid possible retaliation. another challenge is the financial pressure that many broadcast media outlets in nigeria face. many media organizations are not adequately funded, which affects their ability to conduct investigative journalism. investigative reporting requires substantial resources, including time, money, and access to expert sources. due to limited resources, many media houses focus on more sensational, entertainment-based content that can generate higher viewership and advertising revenue. this focus on profit over investigative work often means that issues like corruption, which require in-depth analysis and long-term investigation, are not prioritized. further complicating the issue is the lack of media independence, particularly in government-owned media outlets. in these cases, broadcast media may not be able to fully report on corruption or hold public officials accountable due to the direct influence of the government on their operations. the government’s control over funding, programming and staffing decisions can lead to biased coverage, especially when it comes to corruption. this limits the ability of broadcast media to present an objective, unfiltered portrayal of corruptionrelated issues. despite these challenges, some broadcast media outlets continue to play an important role in exposing corruption, often through creative means. some media organizations have adopted digital platforms and social mailto:topacademicjournals@gmail.com american journal of arts and communication vol.10, issue 2; march-april 2025; issn: 2994-0540 impact factor: 7.94 1252 columbia rd nw, washington dc, united states https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac; mail: topacademicjournals@gmail.com 11 | a m e r i c a n j o u r n a l o f a r t s a n d c o m m u n i c a t i o n | https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac media to bypass traditional constraints, allowing them to reach a broader audience and engage with corruptionrelated issues in a more independent and flexible manner. however, while digital media presents new opportunities, it also brings its own set of challenges, such as the proliferation of fake news and the digital divide, which can limit its effectiveness in reaching certain segments of the population. the relationship between media content and public engagement with anti-corruption efforts this theme focuses on how media content, including investigative reports and anti-corruption campaigns, motivates or discourages public involvement in anti-corruption activities, shaping citizens' participation in governance processes. from the interview extraction: the relationship between media content and public engagement with anti-corruption efforts is complex but crucial. broadcast media have the potential to ignite public interest in anti-corruption initiatives by presenting compelling, informative and often emotional content about the effects of corruption on society. when the media highlight specific cases of corruption and the individuals or organizations responsible, it serves to personalize the issue, making it more relatable for the public. this can lead to greater public awareness and encourage citizens to become more engaged in efforts to address corruption, whether by participating in protests, supporting advocacy groups, or demanding transparency from government institutions. additionally, anti-corruption campaigns promoted through broadcast media have the power to mobilize people by presenting them with clear, actionable steps. for example, media content that showcases successful anticorruption initiatives, such as investigations that lead to the prosecution of corrupt officials, provides the public with a sense of agency. it shows that corruption can be tackled and encourages citizens to play an active role in the fight against it. by depicting the positive outcomes of public engagement, such as the removal of corrupt officials or the implementation of reforms, broadcast media create a sense of hope and possibility among the audience. however, despite these positive outcomes, the public’s engagement with anti-corruption efforts can sometimes be limited. one of the barriers to deeper engagement is the often passive consumption of media content, where individuals are exposed to corruption-related stories without being prompted to take action. this may be due to a general sense of disillusionment with the political system, where citizens feel that efforts to combat corruption will not lead to real change. moreover, when media reports on corruption without offering solutions or actions that citizens can take, it risks creating a sense of helplessness rather than motivation. despite these challenges, broadcast media remain an important tool for encouraging public engagement with anti-corruption efforts. the media have the capacity to spark debates, raise questions, and inspire action through its content. by providing information, framing issues in a way that resonates with the public and highlighting concrete examples of successful anti-corruption efforts, broadcast media can help to galvanize support for transparency and accountability. this, in turn, can lead to a more engaged and active citizenry that holds both the government and private sector accountable in the fight against corruption. mailto:topacademicjournals@gmail.com american journal of arts and communication vol.10, issue 2; march-april 2025; issn: 2994-0540 impact factor: 7.94 1252 columbia rd nw, washington dc, united states https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac; mail: topacademicjournals@gmail.com 12 | a m e r i c a n j o u r n a l o f a r t s a n d c o m m u n i c a t i o n | https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac discussion of findings the study found that broadcast media play a crucial role in raising public awareness of corruption in nigeria by exposing corrupt practices, educating citizens on the consequences and encouraging informed discussions about the issue across various segments of society. this finding is in tandem with akinmoladun (2020) who explored how nigerian broadcast media have influenced public awareness of corruption, revealing that media content, especially investigative reporting, effectively educates the public and fosters widespread conversations about corruption. similar to this finding, akinmoladun's study emphasizes the importance of media in disseminating information about corrupt practices, making the public more aware and concerned. however, unlike the current study, akinmoladun's research primarily focuses on media’s role in urban areas, whereas the current study takes a broader view of media's impact across urban and rural settings. according to the agenda setting theory, media has the power to influence the salience of issues by giving them prominence in their content. this theory supports the finding that broadcast media play a crucial role in raising public awareness of corruption in nigeria by highlighting it consistently and making it a priority topic in the public agenda. the more the media focus on corruption, the more likely the public will perceive it as a significant issue, which aligns with the theoretical premise that media’s coverage shapes public perception and concern about certain issues. the finding implies that broadcast media can serve as a powerful tool for educating the public on corruption, suggesting that media outlets should prioritize investigative journalism and corruption-related content to further raise awareness and encourage public discourse on the issue. the research revealed that broadcast media face significant challenges in combating corruption, including political interference, financial constraints and the lack of media independence, which limit its ability to report on corruption in a comprehensive and unbiased manner. this finding aligns with nwogwugwu (2018) examined the challenges faced by nigerian media in addressing corruption, identifying political interference, economic constraints and media ownership as major factors limiting investigative journalism. nwogwugwu’s findings align with the current study, as both highlight the impact of external pressures on the ability of the media to report corruption effectively. however, nwogwugwu's research concentrated on the impact of governmental censorship, while the current study expands the scope to include financial challenges faced by media outlets in nigeria. the agenda setting theory also suggests that media’s ability to set the agenda is influenced by external factors such as political or economic pressures. this aligns with the finding that broadcast media face challenges such as political interference and financial constraints in addressing corruption. these external pressures limit the media's autonomy in determining which issues are given attention, thereby impeding its effectiveness in combating corruption and setting the corruption issue on the public agenda as intended. the finding implies that overcoming political interference, financial constraints, and media ownership issues is crucial for media outlets to effectively combat corruption, calling for policies that support media independence and provide necessary resources for investigative journalism. mailto:topacademicjournals@gmail.com american journal of arts and communication vol.10, issue 2; march-april 2025; issn: 2994-0540 impact factor: 7.94 1252 columbia rd nw, washington dc, united states https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac; mail: topacademicjournals@gmail.com 13 | a m e r i c a n j o u r n a l o f a r t s a n d c o m m u n i c a t i o n | https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac the study identified media content has a direct impact on public engagement with anti-corruption efforts by motivating citizens to participate in advocacy, while also highlighting the need for action, although passive consumption and disillusionment can sometimes hinder deeper engagement. this finding corroborates with olalekan and abiola (2021) studied the relationship between media content and public participation in anticorruption campaigns in nigeria, concluding that media coverage of successful anti-corruption initiatives significantly boosts public engagement and support for anti-corruption reforms. their findings support the current study's finding that media can motivate citizens to take action against corruption, although their research was more focused on the role of social media, while the present study emphasizes broadcast media's influence in driving public participation. the agenda setting theory further asserts that media content can shape not just the awareness but also the engagement of the public with specific issues. this theoretical backing supports the finding that media content, particularly, concerning anti-corruption efforts, influences public participation by framing corruption as a critical issue. by giving prominence to anti-corruption campaigns or highlighting successful reforms, the media help foster public engagement, as individuals are more likely to act on issues that are continuously emphasized in media coverage. the finding implies that media coverage of anti-corruption initiatives can significantly motivate public involvement, suggesting that consistent and impactful media content can drive citizens to take action and support reforms, potentially influencing public behaviour and political outcomes. conclusion the study concludes that broadcast media play a pivotal role in raising public awareness of corruption in nigeria, effectively educating citizens and sparking necessary discussions that contribute to the broader societal understanding of the issue. the research establishes that while broadcast media can significantly contribute to combating corruption, its effectiveness is hindered by challenges such as political interference, financial constraints, and lack of media independence, which need to be addressed to ensure more robust anti-corruption efforts. the study concludes that media content has a substantial impact on public engagement with anti-corruption efforts, with consistent and compelling coverage serving as a catalyst for motivating citizens to take action and support anti-corruption campaigns. this study contributes to knowledge by highlighting the critical role of broadcast media in shaping public awareness, combating corruption and encouraging public engagement in anti-corruption efforts in nigeria, offering insights into the challenges faced by media outlets and the impact of media content on fostering civic participation in the fight against corruption. this study contributes to knowledge by highlighting the critical role of broadcast media in shaping public awareness, combating corruption, and encouraging public engagement in anti-corruption efforts in nigeria. it offers insights into the challenges faced by media outlets, such as political interference, financial constraints, and media ownership, which limit their capacity to effectively address corruption. additionally, the study mailto:topacademicjournals@gmail.com american journal of arts and communication vol.10, issue 2; march-april 2025; issn: 2994-0540 impact factor: 7.94 1252 columbia rd nw, washington dc, united states https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac; mail: topacademicjournals@gmail.com 14 | a m e r i c a n j o u r n a l o f a r t s a n d c o m m u n i c a t i o n | https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac demonstrates how media content influences public behaviour by motivating citizens to take action in support of anti-corruption campaigns. the findings provide valuable implications for enhancing media practices, policy formulation, and the strengthening of media independence, ultimately advancing the role of broadcast media in promoting transparency and accountability in nigeria. recommendations in view of the findings from the work, the following recommendations have been made. 1) broadcast media outlets should prioritize corruption-related content, focusing on investigative journalism and public education to raise awareness and engage citizens in the fight against corruption. 2) policies should be introduced to protect media independence and provide necessary financial support to media outlets, enabling them to effectively investigate and report on corruption without external interference. 3) broadcast media continue to highlight successful anti-corruption initiatives and foster public dialogue to inspire greater citizen engagement in anti-corruption campaigns and reforms. references achebe, c. (2012). there was a country: a personal history of biafra. penguin books. adesoji, a. (2021). investigative journalism and accountability in nigeria. african journal of media studies, 9(3), 112-129. akanbi, o. & agboola, t. (2021). corruption and governance in nigeria: challenges and prospects. ibadan university press. akanji, a. (2019). media ownership and editorial independence in nigeria. journal of african media studies, 11(2), 45-67. arogundade, a. (2021). the role of media regulations in nigeria’s press freedom. african media review, 20(1), 1-17. bbc africa. (2023). investigative journalism and anti-corruption efforts in nigeria. bbc africa reports, 15(4), 89-102. dike, v. (2020). cultural values and corruption in nigeria. journal of african socioeconomic studies, 7(1), 2341. dunu, i. (2022). investigating the impact of media coverage on public perception of corruption in nigeria. journal of nigerian media studies, 10(2), 78-94. mailto:topacademicjournals@gmail.com american journal of arts and communication vol.10, issue 2; march-april 2025; issn: 2994-0540 impact factor: 7.94 1252 columbia rd nw, washington dc, united states https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac; mail: topacademicjournals@gmail.com 15 | a m e r i c a n j o u r n a l o f a r t s a n d c o m m u n i c a t i o n | https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac mccombs, m. & shaw, d. (1972). the agenda-setting function of mass media. public opinion quarterly, 36(2), 176-187. mcquail, d. (2010). mcquail's mass communication theory (6th ed.). sage. ojebode, a. (2019). media freedom and government interference in nigeria. journal of african communication, 12(4), 49-63. olawale, i. (2020). government censorship and its impact on the nigerian media. international journal of media studies, 16(3), 28-40. uche, e. (2022). media coverage of corruption and public awareness in nigeria. journal of nigerian politics, 6(2), 85-102. world bank. (2022).the economic cost of corruption in nigeria. world bank group. mailto:topacademicjournals@gmail.com american journal of art and communication vol.7, issue 5; september-october 2022; 1252 columbia rd nw, washington dc, united states https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac; mail: topacademicjournals@gmail.com 8 | american journal of art and communication | https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac the challenges and opportunities for providing inclusive library spaces for persons with disabilities in kenyan universities 1mary wambui, 2peter muigai, 3christine kamau, 1university of nairobi, nairobi, kenya. 2moi university, eldoret, kenya. 3department of information and knowledge management, the technical university of kenya. abstract university libraries are constantly evolving to meet the changing needs of their users. this includes making their spaces and facilities more inclusive for persons with disabilities. however, there are challenges in ensuring that the needs of all users are met, particularly in the needs assessment and planning process. this paper discusses the importance of inclusive library spaces for persons with disabilities, and the challenges and opportunities in providing such spaces. keywords: inclusive library, challenges, disabilities introduction like other service institutions, libraries are important and provide users with different services and facilities aiming to satisfy their needs. libraries are like catalysts in the lives of persons with disabilities because they facilitate their full participation in the society. considering that there are people with disabilities within the society, it is important for the universities to take necessary measures to cater for their needs by making provision for them. in the global sphere, university library users’ needs continue to change thus driving university libraries to reposition themselves to address the changing users’ needs. an important aspect of the change revolves around the library space and many university libraries are making efforts to change their spaces to meet the need driven by information technology, improved higher education systems and shifting of users’ expectations. this implies having inclusive library spaces and facilities within the university libraries that cater for the needs of all of its users. however, the efforts in changing the spaces in order to meet users’ needs in some cases leave out the user as indicated in several studies particularly in the needs assessment and planning process (musangi,odero & kwanya, 2019; ateka, 2018; wanyonyi, 2018; ellison, 2016). this leads to having reconfigured spaces which meet the users’ needs less. mailto:topacademicjournals@gmail.com american journal of art and communication vol.7, issue 5; september-october 2022; 1252 columbia rd nw, washington dc, united states https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac; mail: topacademicjournals@gmail.com 9 | american journal of art and communication | https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac besides, library users have diverse needs and wants. therefore, libraries ought to strike a balance to meet those needs and wants in order to attain user satisfaction. persons with disabilities require special attention and specialised services. the world health organization (2012: 3) describes disability as a “physical or mental characteristic labelled or perceived as an impairment or dysfunction” and “some personal or social limitation associated with that impairment. impairments are problems in body functions or structures, while activity limitations are difficulties encountered by an individual in executing tasks or actions.” the importance of providing accessible facilities and services to persons with disabilities in libraries has been a topic of interest. research conducted by the world health organisation (2018) indicates that persons with disabilities make up 15% of the entire population of the world and the people identified as having disabilities are now less stigmatised. both international and national frameworks that support and advocate for inclusivity have been developed. the frameworks contain a number of provisions which constitute the foundation of resolutions concerning disabilities based on the principle of equal rights. education is a fundamental human right that every individual is entitled to irrespective of race, gender, nationality, ethnic origin, religion or political affiliation, age or disability. the right has universally been recognized since the universal declaration of human rights in 1948. this declaration has since been integrated in various international and national conventions including constitutions and development plans. libraries all over the world have a moral obligation to ensure educational services and facilities are availed to all categories of users without discrimination. in the kenyan context, both international and local laws issue guidance on the extent to which persons with disabilities have a right to inclusive education in kenya. article 24 of the united convention on the rights of persons with disabilities and the kenya persons with disability act 2003 proclaim the right to inclusive education for this category of people and that they should participate in the general education system. the kenya disability act of 2003 advocates for pwds entitlement to a barrier free and disability friendly environment as a way of facilitating them to easily access buildings, roads and other communal facilities. in addition, international federation of library associations and institutions (ifla) guidelines that focuses on providing equal access to library services and facilities to all inclusive of persons with disabilities. according to the guidelines, the surrounding of the library, the entrance, restrooms, stairs, elevators and special rooms should be accessible to persons with different kinds of disabilities. outside the library, there should be sufficient parking spaces well marked with international symbol for pwds, parking space that is close to the library, smooth and non-slip surface at the entrance and where need be a non-slip not too steep ramp with railings next to the stairs. in terms of library physical space, there should be shelves reachable from a wheelchair, reading and computer tables of varying heights throughout the library, chairs with study armrests and staff trained to assist users in case of emergency. in addition, at least one toilet for persons with disabilities that has the required standards such as door wide enough for a wheelchair to enter and sufficient space for a wheelchair turn around. mailto:topacademicjournals@gmail.com american journal of art and communication vol.7, issue 5; september-october 2022; 1252 columbia rd nw, washington dc, united states https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac; mail: topacademicjournals@gmail.com 10 | american journal of art and communication | https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac since students with disabilities enroll in various institutions of higher learning such as the universities, these institutions ought to follow the required standards in catering for their needs. kenya is one of the african countries which have witnessed a significant increase in student enrolment as shown in the table 1 table 1. student enrolment in the kenyan universities 2015-2023. no. academic year student enrolment 1 2015/2016 67,790 2 2016/2017 86,142 3 2017/2018 88,620 4 2018/2019 68,545 5 2019/2020 89,486 6 7 2020/2021 2021/2022 122,831 128,073 8 2022/2023 123,963 source: kenya universities and colleges central placement service financial statements and accounts 2021/2022 among the important criteria of education landscape in the universities are the libraries that facilitate learning, teaching and research and the spaces within them is part of the important focus. these particular students encounter difficulties in accessing library spaces and this simply means they never get to fully benefit from the services and facilities offered. a report on increasing access for pwds, the case for kenyatta university by mugenda (2012) reveals that out of a population of 44,000 students, 300 live with disabilities while from a total of 2,792 staff, 70 live with disabilities. therefore, it is important for university libraries to promote architectural designs and spaces that encourage more students with disabilities into their buildings thus enabling them enjoy the benefits of the services and facilities that are provided. this implies that libraries ought to restructure the library spaces so as to accommodate users with disabilities in case it is realised that the spaces are not inclusive. therefore, as a starting point, it is important to establish the status of the library spaces and facilities in serving persons with disabilities before embarking on library space restructuring. to establish the status of access of library spaces and facilities in the kenyan universities, this paper was guided by four objectives; to identify the available library spaces and facilities offered by kenyan universities to persons with disabilities, determine the extent to which library staff in kenyan universities are able to serve persons with disabilities, ascertain university library users awareness of the availability of special library spaces and facilities for persons with disabilities and establish the relationship between the provision of library spaces and facilities for persons with disabilities with their satisfaction with the spaces and facilities. findings of this study have implications on educational policy at the institutional and government levels. this is because creating a knowledge economy means more than supporting the university but ensuring the resources are put into proper use by having library spaces and facilities that efficiently serve users inclusively. this study mailto:topacademicjournals@gmail.com american journal of art and communication vol.7, issue 5; september-october 2022; 1252 columbia rd nw, washington dc, united states https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac; mail: topacademicjournals@gmail.com 11 | american journal of art and communication | https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac expands body of knowledge on access to library spaces and facilities for persons with disabilities particularly in the global south. 1. literature review beg and sarkar (2021) argue that access to library services and facilities for persons with disabilities is a topic of considerable attention in the world. several studies have been conducted on library and information services for persons with disabilities in different parts of the world such as the united states of america (hardesty, 2016; mulliken, 2017); the united kingdom (gibson et al., 2016; lawson, 2017) ; australia (goggin et al., ); canada (kaeding et al., 2017); countries of africa (ayoung et al., 2021; chiputula & mapulanga, 2016; eneya et al., 2021; kavishe & isibika, 2018; kiruki & mutula, 2021; kaunda & chizwina, 2021; majinge & stilwell, 2013); and india (chaurasia & singh, 2022; nazim et al., 2021; solanki & mandaliya, 2016; subramaniam et al 2012). beg and sarkar (2021) are of the view that the global north countries like the united kingdom and the united states of america are ahead in terms of access to library facilities and services for persons with disabilities as compared to the global south where progress is relatively slow. the two authors argue that there is need for research initiatives to assist in addressing the predicaments especially in the university libraries. according to them, in global south, there are other challenges such as poor attitude towards disabilities, limited funding and infrastructure. baffoe (2013) provides an example of ghana, one of the countries in the global south and says that the issues of disabilities are surrounded with myths, misconceptions and superstitious beliefs associated with certain types of disabilities. for instance, in ghana, a child born with a deformity is deemed to be as a result of evil spirits, a failure of the family to keep taboos or attributed to witchcraft. similar views are held by mckenzie and smith (2009) as they say that the problem of isolation and stigmatisation are more evident in global south countries. they continue to say that global south countries have limited facilities and services, few people trained enough to support and empower persons with disabilities. according to hughes (2017), there are a limited number of studies that tend to focus on the physical environment such as space planning, furniture, lighting, cleanliness of the library and ambience among others. nazim and sarkar (2021) emphasise that it is important to look at the physical state of library facilities as well as services and programmes for persons with disabilities in order to provide equitable access considering their special needs. kumbier and starkey (2016) hold a similar view that within the library environment, users with disabilities ought to get into the building, have access to the bathrooms, use the stacks and work at desks. a number of scholars note that despite the progress that has been made in increasing the number of students with disabilities in higher education internationally, there are persistent inequities in participation and completion of higher education by pwds (cotton et al., 2017; chaputula & mapulanga, 2017). further, evans et al. (2017) says that the growing demand for equitable higher education necessitates changes in the design and delivery of higher education. this is supported by burgstahler (2017) by quoting physical spaces as one of the aspects that should be changed to ensure that they are accessible to all. mailto:topacademicjournals@gmail.com american journal of art and communication vol.7, issue 5; september-october 2022; 1252 columbia rd nw, washington dc, united states https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac; mail: topacademicjournals@gmail.com 12 | american journal of art and communication | https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac in addition to the increasing number of students with disabilities in higher education, literature shows that persons with disabilities in universities have different library facilities requirements (yadav & singh, 2022; arbes et al., 2019; crabb et al., 2019). however, persons with disabilities continue to face challenges in accessing library facilities. findings of solanki and mandaliya (2016) on accessibility of library services to persons with disabilities in india indicated that services offered to persons with disabilities were not adequate. ayoung, baada and baayel (2020) investigated the extent to which university libraries in ghana had made library facilities and services accessible to persons with disabilities. their study revealed that most of the universities were incapable of implementing persons with disabilities act in ghana and providing physical and intellectual access to persons with such special needs. there was inadequate knowledge on issues relating to persons with disabilities and their rights to access information. chaputula and mapulanga (2017) investigated the provision of library services to persons with disabilities in malawi. the study highlighted the lack of adequate library and information services for persons with disabilities such as braille and acknowledged possible hindrances. the study also revealed that there was inadequate equipment to support persons with disabilities to access library services and facilities such as reading tables and computer tables that are wheelchair friendly. on library staff training, ifla guidelines provide examples of appropriate staff training such as inviting persons with disabilities to staff meetings to talk about their needs as library users, including information about services to special user groups in orientation for new staff and sending emails and other information to staff on a regular basis about library services to specific disability groups. majinge and msonge (2020) conducted a study in tanzania where library staff were asked to indicate whether they had training related to serving persons with disabilities. the majority responded negatively (47; 96%) and only two responses (4.1%) were in the affirmative. ifla’s guidelines are clear that it is important for all staff to be knowledgeable about various kinds of disabilities and how well to assist the pwd library users. pionke (2020) analysed library staff’s attitude towards persons with disabilities and accessibility to assess the training needs of existing library staff. the findings revealed that librarians felt unprepared to work with users with disabilities. some of the staff reported that they knew there existed computers with assistive technology or software but they did not know how to help in troubleshooting when the computers failed to work. the staff were also not sure whether their interactions with the users with disabilities were useful and respectful to them. the discomfort and self-doubt are related to lack of adequate knowledge which is a training issue. another concern was that despite the library staff being aware of the need for training, the administrators may not see the urgency of the training. therefore, the library staff concluded that all staff needed training in working with persons with disabilities not just librarians and supervisors. mailto:topacademicjournals@gmail.com american journal of art and communication vol.7, issue 5; september-october 2022; 1252 columbia rd nw, washington dc, united states https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac; mail: topacademicjournals@gmail.com 13 | american journal of art and communication | https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac training of library staff is emphasised by cassner et al., (2011) by saying that staff training is a key factor in addressing issues surrounding serving persons with disabilities. based on the 2019 census, 2.2% (0.9 million people) of kenyans live with some form of disability. according to elder (2015), inclusive education is still at its initial stage in kenya. a report released by commission for university education (2016) on university education indicated that in the more than 70 public and private universities in the country at the time, only 645 students with disabilities were enrolled. this report stated that most of the students are those who had physical disability followed by vision and finally hearing disability. compared to the overall student enrolment at the universities, the enrolment of students with disabilities was said to be small. this was interpreted to be an indication of inadequate deliberate structures and facilities that were available to motivate enrolment of this category of students. the report further stated that the universities were not well prepared in terms of services and facilities to support people with disabilities. the report recommended that universities ought to collaborate with the national council for people with disabilities in order to enhance their services and facilities that they provide to students and persons living with all classes of disabilities. kenya as a country recognises disability inclusion and the important part it plays in achieving sustainable development that aims to leave no one behind. an example of the country’s commitment is in co-hosting of global disability summit (gds). this was a summit where world leaders, government officials, civil society, the donor community and organizations of persons with disabilities (opds) came together to share experiences, ideas and aspirations for development for inclusivity of persons with disabilities. on 24th july 2018, kenya, united kingdom and the international disability alliance cohosted the gds 2018. the summit aimed at transforming the lives of persons with disabilities by raising global attention on neglected areas as well as mobilise global and national commitment goals and the un convention on the rights of persons with disabilities. one of the summit’s thematic areas was inclusion in education. university libraries are integral parts of university education system and they ought to respond to the changes that the education sector is undergoing. restructuring library spaces is a way of supporting inclusive education that aims at providing equitable and quality services for all without discrimination. by the end of the gds 2018 summit, over 300 organisations and governments had signed the charter for change, a framework for action on implementing the convention on the rights of persons with disabilities (crpd) and the disability movement ‘nothing about us, without us’. based on the 2018 global disability summit that kenya co-hosted, the country has made progress. global disability summit accountability report (2019) showed that most of the commitments done in gds 2018 were underway (74%) and 10% were reported as complete and only 5% of the commitments were reported as having not started. in the country, the persons with disability draft bill 2018 was presented in parliament for the second reading at the senate in april 2019. part iii section 20 (1) of the draft bill states that every person with disability has a right to admission to any institution of learning and access to an inclusive, quality education on an equal basis with others. students with disabilities are enrolled in different universities and it is important to ensure they enjoy the right of access to facilities and services, according to ilako et al., (2020), one important area of focus in the university is the library mailto:topacademicjournals@gmail.com american journal of art and communication vol.7, issue 5; september-october 2022; 1252 columbia rd nw, washington dc, united states https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac; mail: topacademicjournals@gmail.com 14 | american journal of art and communication | https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac building and the spaces within them. the physical library spaces ought to be those that are inviting to all users including the ones with disabilities. there is limited literature on access to university libraries for persons with disabilities particularly in the country. kiruki and mutula (2021) examined public university library websites in kenya in reference to their accessibility and usability to students with visual and physical disabilities and concluded that in public universities libraries, this category of library users is excluded in access and use of the library websites. the study revealed that the website design posed challenges to students with visual disabilities. the library website ought to have disability services page with specific information for persons with disabilities. gichuhi et al., (2021) research concentrated on exploring approaches taken by kenyatta postmodern library in support of inclusive education. the study findings revealed that the structure was accessible and comfortable. however, this research was carried out only in one university without any other university comparison and library spaces were not part of the research. there is no known recent research in the country that has established the special spaces and facilities offered by kenyan university libraries. this paper embarked on establishing the status of access to spaces and facilities provided to pwds using the following objectives; identify the available library spaces and facilities offered by kenyan universities to persons with disabilities, determine the extent to which library staff in kenyan universities are skilled in serving persons with disabilities, ascertain university library users’ awareness of the availability of special library spaces and facilities for persons with disabilities and examine the relationship between the provision of library spaces and facilities for persons with disabilities with their satisfaction with the spaces and facilities. 2. research methodology the paper adopted a pragmatic research philosophy, a convergent mixed methods design and a multiple-case studies strategy. the study population was university library users and librarians drawn from six public and private universities in kenya. the six universities were selected purposefully based on their age (time they have been in existence) with an assumption that old universities have more developed infrastructure. data was collected from students and academic staff who participated in an online survey; librarians participated in online focus groups while university librarians and students with disabilities had telephone call interviews. the online survey was conducted using online questionnaires that were distributed via emails and whatsapp. online focus group discussions were conducted in google meet platform and interviews were conducted via personal telephone calls. the paper assumes that the combination of public and private universities, coupled with the different phases of infrastructure, would provide a clear picture of the responsiveness of university libraries to the library space and facilities for persons with disabilities. the mode of funding public and private universities in kenya is different whereby public universities are largely financed by the government and private universities receive conditional grants for specific programmes. a comparison between public and private universities infrastructure shows that mailto:topacademicjournals@gmail.com american journal of art and communication vol.7, issue 5; september-october 2022; 1252 columbia rd nw, washington dc, united states https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac; mail: topacademicjournals@gmail.com 15 | american journal of art and communication | https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac private universities excel in library, information, community and technology infrastructure (the kenya institute for public policy research and analysis, 2022). since the researcher was not in a position to include the 193,880 students (159,951 undergraduates and 33,929 postgraduates) in a survey, a sample determination table provided by krejcie and morgan (1970) was employed. the total number of undergraduate respondents for the survey in both public and private universities was seven hundred and fifty four (754). the total number of postgraduate respondents for the survey in both public and private universities was seven hundred and thirteen (713). a sample size of 754 and 713 respectively that adds up to 1467. out of the 1467 questionnaires administered to university students in a population of 193,880, 785 were properly filled and returned representing a 53.5% response rate. the study was conducted during covid19 lockdown regulations that restricted data collection to remote and virtual methodologies. according to revilla and ochoa (2015), online surveys have lower completion rates than in-person interviews. similar opinion is held by campo-arias et al. (2022) as they say response rate of online questionnaires is typically lower than that of paper-based questionnaires. in addition, there were eight hundred and fifteen (815) respondents from academic staff in public universities while in private universities there were four hundred and seventy three (473). a total sample size of one thousand two hundred and eighty eight (1288). a total of 863 academic staff out of 1288 participated in the study representing a 67 % response rate. the qualitative data collected from university librarians (5; 83%), librarians (6; 100%) on special spaces and facilities offered to persons with disabilities and students with disabilities (5; 100%) on their personal experiences and satisfaction with special spaces and facilities offered to them was analysed thematically while the quantitative data collected from students and academic staff on ascertaining users’ awareness of the availability of special spaces and facilities for users with disabilities adopted a statistical approach that encompasses descriptive and inferential statistics. later on, there was a follow up online survey with the librarians on special spaces and facilities offered to library users’ with disabilities. there was one private university that reported that they did not have any student with disability. for the sake of anonymity and confidentiality, the libraries where the respondents, interviewees were based are not mentioned in the findings but denoted with library 1, library 2 and so on in no particular order. the names of key informants have been replaced with pseudonyms. 3. findings and discussion the results of the study on provision of special library spaces and facilities for persons with disabilities in kenyan universities are presented as per the objectives. the objectives of this paper were to; i) identify the available library spaces and facilities offered by kenyan universities to persons with disabilities; ii) determine the extent to which library staff in kenyan universities are able to serve persons with disabilities iii) ascertain university library users’ awareness of the availability of special library spaces and facilities for persons with disabilities iv) establish the relationship between the provision of library spaces and facilities for persons with disabilities with their satisfaction with the spaces and facilities. mailto:topacademicjournals@gmail.com american journal of art and communication vol.7, issue 5; september-october 2022; 1252 columbia rd nw, washington dc, united states https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac; mail: topacademicjournals@gmail.com 16 | american journal of art and communication | https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac 3.1 provision of special library spaces and facilities for persons with disabilities the study explored the extent to which the libraries provided special library spaces and facilities for users with disabilities. the data was collected from a follow up online survey from the librarians. descriptive results are presented in table 2 table 2. available special library spaces and facilities for persons with disabilities. special library spaces and facilities university libraries public private presence ✓ absence x li b1 li b2 li b3 li b1 li b2 li b3 parking close to the library entrance x ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ availability of wheel chair ramps ✓ x ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ railings at both sides of the ramp ✓ x ✓ x ✓ ✓ level, non-slip surface at the entrance x ✓ x ✓ ✓ ✓ sufficient space at the door to allow wheelchair turn around ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ adapted toilet for the persons with disability x ✓ ✓ x x x shelves reachable from a wheelchair x x x x x x emergency facilities for pwds ✓ x x x ✓ x adjustable desks x x x x x x designated computer workstations adapted for users in wheelchairs ✓ ✓ ✓ x x x designated computers equipped with screen reading programs, enlargement and synthetic speech x ✓ ✓ x x x talking books, talking newspapers and talking periodicals ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ talking elevators /lifts ✓ x x x x x availability of trained library personnel to serve persons with disabilities x ✓ ✓ ✓ x x interviews with librarians confirmed the facilities and services the libraries offered to persons with disabilities: our library has spaces and resources which are well labelled, toilets and ramps for pwds. nonetheless, there is need for improvement of the facilities to take care of pwds including providing lifts for persons with walking disabilities within the library and short shelves that are easy to access. currently, the shelves are tall; pwds have mailto:topacademicjournals@gmail.com american journal of art and communication vol.7, issue 5; september-october 2022; 1252 columbia rd nw, washington dc, united states https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac; mail: topacademicjournals@gmail.com 17 | american journal of art and communication | https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac to depend on the librarians to help them to pick books. in addition, our university has reserved parking spaces for persons with disabilities. [librarian 1, june 2022] the use of technology to enhance library facilities and services for pwds also emerged from the interview with librarians: there are computers installed with relevant applications put aside for pwds in my library. there are also special tables and seats to accommodate their needs. moreover, there is also a reading area which is accessible through ramps and wheelchairs. the university also has a lift for library users with mobility challenges. with the lift, they are able to go upstairs and access more materials with ease. [librarian 2, june 2022] some libraries have created specialised reading areas or rooms for pwds. these facilities are located in areas which can easily be accessed by pwds. however, as one librarian elaborated, additional facilities such as lifts are required to make accessibility to upper floors easier: our library has a study room at the library’s ground floor for library users with disabilities. this is fully equipped with relevant study materials. nevertheless, the university does not have sophisticated facilities for pwds like lifts which need to be installed. [librarian 3, june 2022] based on ifla guidelines, there are some areas that all the six libraries have met the requirements. all the six libraries have sufficient space at the door to allow wheelchair turn around and talking books, talking newspapers and talking periodicals. the findings suggest that although some efforts have been made by the universities, there is much scope for universities libraries in kenya to add facilities for serving users with disabilities more effectively and at ease. 3.2 determine the extent which library staff in kenyan universities are able to serve persons with disabilities follow up telephone call interviews with the librarians revealed that to effectively serve pwds, librarians need to have multiple skills and knowledge. however, this was not the case; in some cases, the librarians lacked the prerequisite skills: we have different categories of pwds and they require varied skills to serve them better. for instance, in our library there are those who are visually impaired and others have challenges in mobility. we also have users with hearing impairments. visually impaired users use special software like jaws, nvda and orbit readers and some of the librarians are not well equipped to guide the users and may not be aware of how the software operates. when the librarians are not aware of how to operate the machines, it is difficult to know when maintenance is required or replacement of any of the gadgets. the technology is also changing fast and librarians need to keep training to acquire latest skills. in my opinion, sign language should also be prioritised. [librarian 1, january 2023] another librarian added: information resources for pwds are in several media formats. for instance, talking books, captioned films, closed circuit tvs and various printing conversion systems. therefore, the librarians need to be sensitised on the available information media formats. librarians also require to be equipped with the knowledge of various websites that are available for pwds in order to direct users on where to find relevant information resources. mailto:topacademicjournals@gmail.com american journal of art and communication vol.7, issue 5; september-october 2022; 1252 columbia rd nw, washington dc, united states https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac; mail: topacademicjournals@gmail.com 18 | american journal of art and communication | https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac sensitisation on how to treat pwds is required so that they feel welcome in the library. in addition, serving pwds requires librarians who are passionate about the service. for instance, in helping the pwds with mobility challenges, one may even need to carry them to the location that they cannot access. [librarian 2, january 2023] the issue of trained staff turnover amongst the librarians as well as shortage of staff also emerged: sign language skills are important. unfortunately, the staff who was trained on sign language retired last year. with the limited financial resources in the institution, it may take some time to have another staff trained on the same. additionally, there is need to train more than one staff because libraries have work shifts. for instance, there is daytime shift and night shift and could be only one staff is trained. there should also be at least one librarian with the knowledge of classifying the information resources for pwds for ease of retrieval. [librarian 3, january 2023] follow up telephone interviews with the librarians revealed that to effectively serve pwds, librarians need to have multiple skills and knowledge. however, this was not the case; in some cases, the librarians lacked the prerequisite skills. 3.3 ascertain university library users’ awareness of the availability of special library spaces and facilities for persons with disabilities to ascertain university library users’ awareness of the availability of special spaces and facilities for students with disabilities, the students were asked to confirm the presence or absence of various special library spaces and facilities for pwds. the descriptive results provided in figure 1 indicate that only 34.1% provided emergency facilities for library users with disabilities such as emergency doors; another 32% and 38.2% had adjustable desks and designated computer workstations adapted for users in wheelchairs respectively. also, only 33.2% and 36.3% had designated computers equipped with screen reading programs, synthetic speech and talking elevators or lifts respectively. the availability of trained library personnel to serve users with disabilities was also limited in most universities as already revealed in the follow up interviews with the librarians. figure 1. library users' awareness of special spaces and facilities for students with disabilities. mailto:topacademicjournals@gmail.com american journal of art and communication vol.7, issue 5; september-october 2022; 1252 columbia rd nw, washington dc, united states https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac; mail: topacademicjournals@gmail.com 19 | american journal of art and communication | https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac table 3. special spaces and facilities for pwd missing i don't know no yes % parking close to the library entrance 8.3 12.6 15.3 63.8 wheelchair ramps 7.5 12.6 11.2 68.7 railings at both sides of the ramp 13.5 18.1 12.0 56.4 level, non-slip surface at the entrance 13.6 15.9 10.6 59.9 sufficient space at the door to allow wheelchair turn around 11.2 10.4 9.7 68.7 dedicated toilet for the persons with disability 11.5 23.2 13.4 52.0 shelves reachable from a wheelchair 12.7 18.9 18.3 50.1 emergency facilities for pwds 18.0 32.7 15.2 34.1 adjustable desks 16.9 22.5 28.5 32.0 designated computer workstations adapted for users in 16.9 29.2 15.7 38.2 wheelchairs designated computers equipped with screen reading programs, 17.8 31.1 17.8 33.2 enlargement, and synthetic speech talking elevators/lifts 18.2 16.1 29.4 36.3 availability of trained library personnel to serve persons with 17.8 21.8 10.2 50.2 disabilities information gathered through interviews with the students with disabilities of their personal experiences indicates that although the university libraries offered special spaces and facilities for pwd, these were far from sufficient: am a visually-impaired student. the university provides visually-impaired users aid facilities and computers that have apps to read what is in the computers. however, there are much more facilities to be included for persons with disabilities. some of these include braille machines and orbit readers. the braille machine which is currently available in the library makes a lot of noise to other library users thereby interrupting them. it is a mechanical one which makes a lot of noise. [student 1, june 2022] we have computers to scan notes. we also use computers to read. there is a special software installed in the machines that can speak alongside non-visual desktop access (nvda) fitted in the computers. nvda is a free screen reader that allows visually-impaired users to interact with the windows operating system. however, there is still much more to be done including the acquisition of automated audio books and material we can just listen to. in case of assignments, we tell library workers to record for us so that we just listen. [student2, june 2022] the statements made by the library users with disabilities corroborate khetarpal (2014) who contends that assistive technologies are either limited or non-existent in low-income countries. mailto:topacademicjournals@gmail.com american journal of art and communication vol.7, issue 5; september-october 2022; 1252 columbia rd nw, washington dc, united states https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac; mail: topacademicjournals@gmail.com 20 | american journal of art and communication | https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac ifla categorises library users with disabilities into five groups; visually impaired persons, hearing impaired persons, persons with reading difficulties, persons with physical disabilities and cognitively disabled persons. it would be useful for university libraries to categorise users with disabilities in order to serve them effectively. 3.4 correlation between provision of library facilities for pwds and satisfaction with library services a chi-square test was performed to examine the relation between the provision of library facilities for persons with disabilities and their satisfaction with library spaces and facilities. the results in table 4 shows the relation between provision of library facilities for pwds and satisfaction with library services was statistically significant. table 4. provision of library facilities for pwds and satisfaction with library services. satisfaction with library services library provides facilities for pwds yes yes no total 501 77 578 no 98 109 207 total 599 186 785 chi-square (χ) 9.316 p-value .037 (χ =9.316 and a reported p value of .037<0.05). this implies that the provision of library facilities for pwds is a significant predictor of user satisfaction with the type of library spaces and facilities available in the university libraries for pwds. 4. conclusion and recommendations the paper aimed at establishing the status of access to library spaces and facilities for persons with disabilities. the study noted though the university libraries offered some space and facilities for pwds, these were far from sufficient. the findings revealed that library staff required training on how to handle and assist pwds and sign language was largely emphasised. the study also noted that access to services and facilities for pwds is another significant aspect of modernised university library. however, the study concluded that accommodating diverse needs of persons with disabilities is a longterm process that requires involvement of all the relevant stakeholders. based on the findings, this paper therefore concludes with the following recommendations; i. university libraries should strive to implement ifla guidelines even if it means doing it gradually. by doing so, the libraries will continue making progress however small they may seem. ii. university libraries should upscale awareness on disability issues so that the rest of the students and staff can be brought on board since they are also important in achieving some milestones. iii. library and information science schools may consider including some of the required skills in the curriculum in preparation for improved services for persons with disabilities. in line with the library staff training, kenya mailto:topacademicjournals@gmail.com american journal of art and communication vol.7, issue 5; september-october 2022; 1252 columbia rd nw, washington dc, united states https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac; mail: topacademicjournals@gmail.com 21 | american journal of art and communication | https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac library and information services consortium (klisc) could consider including some of the skills in their capacity building programmes with similar efforts that other emerging trends have been accorded. the current study did not concentrate on the number of persons with disabilities that are served by the participating libraries and the categorization of their disabilities. further studies could be conducted to categorise persons with disabilities in the universities and compile a comprehensive guide of their required spaces and facilities and get input from relevant bodies like national council of persons with disabilities. references ateka, a. n. 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(2015), compliance of section 508 in public library systems with the largest percentage of underserved populations, government information quarterly, vol. 32 no. 1, pp. 75-81. doi:10.1016/j.giq.2014.11.005 yoon, h.y. and kim, s.y. (2016). a study of collection development policy to strengthen south korea’s library services for persons with disabilities/une étude des politiques de développement des collections pour renforcer les services en bibliothèque pour personneshandicapées en corée du sud. canadian journal of information and library science 40(2): 162–185. https://muse.jhu.edu/pub/50/article/627001/pdf mailto:topacademicjournals@gmail.com https://doi.org/10.5865/ijkct.2021.11.2.055 https://doi.org/10.5865/ijkct.2021.11.2.055 https://doi.org/10.5865/ijkct.2021.11.2.055 https://doi.org/10.1080/01930826.2019.1704560 https://doi.org/10.1080/01930826.2019.1704560 http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/0961000616654959 http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/0961000616654959 http://dx.doi.org/10.1353/lib.2019.0009 http://dx.doi.org/10.1353/lib.2019.0009 https://www.emerald.com/insight/search?q=ruth%20v.%20small https://www.emerald.com/insight/search?q=ruth%20v.%20small https://www.emerald.com/insight/search?q=william%20n.%20myhill https://www.emerald.com/insight/search?q=william%20n.%20myhill https://www.emerald.com/insight/search?q=william%20n.%20myhill https://www.emerald.com/insight/search?q=lydia%20herring-harrington https://www.emerald.com/insight/search?q=lydia%20herring-harrington https://www.emerald.com/insight/search?q=lydia%20herring-harrington https://www.emerald.com/insight/search?q=lydia%20herring-harrington https://doi.org/10.1108/s0065-283020150000040013 https://doi.org/10.1108/s0065-283020150000040013 https://doi.org/10.1108/s0065-283020150000040013 https://doi.org/10.1108/s0065-283020150000040013 https://doi.org/10.1108/s0065-283020150000040013 https://strategicjournals.com/index.php/journal/article/view/858 https://strategicjournals.com/index.php/journal/article/view/858 https://www.who.int/en/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/disability-and-health https://www.who.int/en/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/disability-and-health https://www.who.int/en/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/disability-and-health https://www.who.int/en/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/disability-and-health https://www.who.int/en/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/disability-and-health https://www.who.int/en/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/disability-and-health https://www.who.int/en/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/disability-and-health https://www.who.int/en/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/disability-and-health https://www.who.int/en/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/disability-and-health https://www.who.int/en/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/disability-and-health https://doi.org/10.1016/j.giq.2014.11.005 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.giq.2014.11.005 https://muse.jhu.edu/pub/50/article/627001/pdf https://muse.jhu.edu/pub/50/article/627001/pdf american journal of arts and communication vol.10, issue 4; july-august 2025; issn: 2994-0540 impact factor: 7.94 1252 columbia rd nw, washington dc, united states https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac; mail: topacademicjournals@gmail.com 11 | a m e r i c a n j o u r n a l o f a r t s a n d c o m m u n i c a t i o n | https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac a critical assessment of public relations techniques in managing anthropogenic disaster control in the niger delta alikor, queen nneka, okon, godwin bassey (ph.d), amadi, richard nlemanya (ph.d) and dike, harcourt whyte (ph.d) department of mass communication, faculty of communication and media studies, rivers state university, port harcourt, rivers state, nigeria email: queen.alikor@ust.edu.ng/ okon.godwin@ust.edu.ng/ amadi.richard@ust.edu.ng/ harcourt.dike@ust.edu.ng doi: https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.16028557 abstract: this study was an examination of a critical assessment of public relations techniques in managing anthropogenic disaster control in the niger delta. the study was anchored on three theories; the systems theory, environmental justice theory and stakeholders’ theory. the study adopted the survey research design. the population of the study comprised of two streams, first the public relations department of the selected multinational companies and secondly, the population of their host communities in the niger delta. the total population of the study for the first stream was 3,825,499. the population of the second stream was 25. a census and taro yamane sampling size determination formula was used to arrive at sample size of 400 for the study. purposive sampling technique and the proportionate sampling technique were used for the study, and the data obtained from the instruments were analyzed using the four-point likert scale. findings of the study showed that the three companies employed public relation techniques to address anthropogenic disasters in niger delta. findings of the study further showed that the three multinational companies had best practices of public relations techniques with which they successfully engaged local communities’ remediation efforts in the niger delta. the conclusions drawn from the study revealed that not without certain challenges, the spdc, total energies, and naoc each implemented public relations techniques tailored to address anthropogenic disasters in the niger delta, demonstrating that pr was a core instrument in their environmental management frameworks. the companies consistently aligned their approaches with best practices in public relations, which facilitated meaningful engagement with host communities and enhanced the legitimacy of their remediation efforts. it was therefore recommended that oil companies in the niger delta should adopt more structured, transparent, and inclusive public relations techniques in the remediation of man-made disasters to ensure active participation and trust from host communities. the study also recommended that companies should align their mailto:topacademicjournals@gmail.com mailto:queen.alikor@ust.edu.ng/ mailto:okon.godwin@ust.edu.ng/ mailto:amadi.richard@ust.edu.ng/ american journal of arts and communication vol.10, issue 4; july-august 2025; issn: 2994-0540 impact factor: 7.94 1252 columbia rd nw, washington dc, united states https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac; mail: topacademicjournals@gmail.com 12 | a m e r i c a n j o u r n a l o f a r t s a n d c o m m u n i c a t i o n | https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac public relations strategies with internationally recognized best practices, integrating proactive and reactive communication measures such as early warning systems, crisis preparedness, and rapid response mechanisms. keywords: critical assessment, public relations, techniques, managing anthropogenic, disaster control, niger delta keywords: public relations, anthropogenic disasters, niger delta, remediation efforts, stakeholder engagement introduction over the years, multinationatfrdel companies operating in the niger delta region have been facing one form of crisis or the other due to perceived inadequate attention in the remediation of anthropogenic disasters most especially with their host communities. this often leads to militancy, kidnapping of oil workers, vandalization of facilities. thus, this has sometimes raised some question marks on the public relations crisis management strategies of the oil firms. the british institute of public relations (bipr) sees public relations as the deliberate, planned and sustained effort to establish and maintain mutual understanding between an organization and its publics. hence, public relations is a process that must be deliberately planned, carefully implemented and assiduously monitored to achieve a given goal or objective, targeted mainly at building and sustaining mutual understanding between an organization and its publics (onwaunali, 2006). every organization has both internal and external publics with whom mutual understanding must be nurtured and maintained for the growth of the organization. according to meintjes (2011) issues management in public relations practice is the proactive monitoring and resolving of simmering issues with negative potentials before they escalate into crisis. on the other hand, crisis management is the coordinated effort to handle effects of unfavourable publicity and ensuring fast and accurate communication in times of emergency especially during anthropogenic disasters. furthermore, it involves the communication management function used to convey accurate facts and data to the general public and to specific publics during a crisis or disaster situation in order to minimize negative publicity that could adversely affect the success of the company (fuchs, 2009). this involves identifying the type of disaster, planning a response to the disaster and confronting and remediating the disaster. in addition, the success and failure of multinational companies operating in the niger delta region such as shell petroleum development company (spdc), nigerian agip oil company (naoc) and total energies nigeria limited will be determined by the strategies employed by the company’s public relations department to address and redress reputation, issues, challenges, and disasters that arise in the course of their operations, that is, exploration, exploitation and distribution of petroleum and gas product (nwosu & uffor, 2005). according to asemah, (2011), today’s business would have become very competitive; hence, to survive in this ever-changing business environment requires the recognition as well as acceptance of public relations crisis communication tools as vital weapon in the hands of all organization in all modern societies. the mexican statement 1978 as mailto:topacademicjournals@gmail.com american journal of arts and communication vol.10, issue 4; july-august 2025; issn: 2994-0540 impact factor: 7.94 1252 columbia rd nw, washington dc, united states https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac; mail: topacademicjournals@gmail.com 13 | a m e r i c a n j o u r n a l o f a r t s a n d c o m m u n i c a t i o n | https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac stated in uduji (2012) must have borne disaster management in mind when it defined public relations practice as “the art and social science of analyzing trends, predicting their consequences, counseling organization leaders and implementing planned programmes of actions which will serve both the company’s and the public interest.” in this very definition, analyzing trends, predicting their consequences and counseling company leaders entails proactive disaster management approach. according to hazarika (2013) disaster is an incident or event with consequences which pose a significant thrits to the strategic objectives of the company or an organization. these include oil spillage, water pollution/soil, gas flaring, sooth pollution and other environmental degradations. disaster management works to minimize all these and the consequent damage to a company’s reputation. at the same time, it tries to take advantage of any benefit that can be obtained from the disaster such as communication that occurs with response phase of emergency management method of a company (hazarika, 2013). this is because all stages of oil exploitation negatively affect the environment and the gritsest single intractable problem caused by crude oil exploitation in the niger delta is oil spillage. in spite of all these, the manner and way in which these multinational companies, shell petroleum development company, nigeria agip oil company and total energies nigeria limited apply their public relations will either go a long way in reducing the problems faced by the companies as a result of inadequate attention given to remediation of anthropogenic disaster in the niger delta region or compound the woes of these companies. the niger delta region, rich in oil and natural resources, has suffered decades of environmental degradation and anthropogenic disasters due to oil exploration and extraction activities. multinational corporations (mncs) operating in the region have been criticized for their role in these disasters, sparking public outrage, protests, and litigation. effective public relations (pr) techniques are crucial in addressing these issues, restoring stakeholder trust, and ensuring sustainable operations. the thrust however, is to appraise the use of public relation techniques in the remediation of anthropogenic disasters in niger delta state. statement of the problem the niger delta region of nigeria, rich in biodiversity and natural resources, has been plagued by anthropogenic disasters primarily stemming from the activities of multinational corporations involved in oil exploration and extraction. these disasters, which include oil spills, gas flaring, and environmental degradation, have had devastating effects on the local communities, resulting in significant ecological damage, health issues, and socio-economic challenges. the repercussions of these disasters extend beyond the immediate environment, affecting the livelihoods and well-being of the communities that depend on these natural resources for their sustenance. the inability of traditional communication strategies to effectively address the challenges posed by these disasters necessitates an exploration of public relations techniques that can facilitate effective remediation and foster better community relations. despite the presence of numerous multinational corporations operating in the niger delta, there seems to be noticeable gap in the understanding of how these companies employ public relations strategies to engage with mailto:topacademicjournals@gmail.com american journal of arts and communication vol.10, issue 4; july-august 2025; issn: 2994-0540 impact factor: 7.94 1252 columbia rd nw, washington dc, united states https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac; mail: topacademicjournals@gmail.com 14 | a m e r i c a n j o u r n a l o f a r t s a n d c o m m u n i c a t i o n | https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac local communities affected by man-made environmental disasters. existing literature on public relations and environmental communication often overlooks the specific dynamics at play in the niger delta, where distrust between local communities and multinational companies has reached alarming levels (emenike, 2018). this disconnect has resulted in a lack of effective communication and engagement strategies that could potentially mitigate the impact of anthropogenic disasters and enhance corporate social responsibility (csr) initiatives. this study therefore sought to contribute to the existing body of knowledge by exploring the intersection of public relations and environmental management in the context of anthropogenic disasters in the niger delta. objectives of the study 1. find out the public relations techniques often adopted by the oil companies under review in the remediation of man-made disasters in their areas of operations; 2. ascertain if the public relations techniques are in line with conventional practice by way of being proactive and reactive; and 3. appraise how well the public relations techniques have served the companies under review by way of goal accomplishment. public relations wilcox and cameron (2009:p.5) explain that folks often define public relations by a number of its visible techniques and tactics, like publicity during a newspaper, a television interview with an organization’s spokesperson, or the looks of a star at a special event. what people fail to know is that a public relations may be a process involving many subtle and far-reaching aspects. public relations include research and analysis, policy formation, programming, communication, and feedback from numerous publics. its practitioners operate two distinct levels as advisers to their clients or to an organization’s top management and as technicians who produce and disseminate messages in multiple media channels. public relations is therefore, a particular management function which helps establish and maintain mutual lines of communication, understanding, acceptance, and cooperation between an organization and its publics; involves the management of and the way it relates to the study. emphasis is placed on the concept, role, functions, the positioning of public relations within the hierarchy of a corporation and an in-depth discussion on how public relations differs from marketing. defining public has been, for academics and professionals alike, a difficult obstacle to bits. the matter is not in knowing what it is that public relations does, or hopes to accomplish, but rather breaking it right down to an easy, easily understood definition. one amongst the challenges lies within the incontrovertible fact that public relations is practiced in many various sorts of organizations, and focuses on many various stakeholders, and sometimes to the dismay of writers of textbooks, it is difficult to parse all of these areas into an easy definition. texts public relations centers on different areas. each generally will mention a minimum of several of the following: investor relations, community relations, employee relations, various practices and tactics public relations focused on educational institutions, corporations, agencies, hospitals, not-for-profits, entertainment, mailto:topacademicjournals@gmail.com american journal of arts and communication vol.10, issue 4; july-august 2025; issn: 2994-0540 impact factor: 7.94 1252 columbia rd nw, washington dc, united states https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac; mail: topacademicjournals@gmail.com 15 | a m e r i c a n j o u r n a l o f a r t s a n d c o m m u n i c a t i o n | https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac religious institutions, and an assortment of other areas counting on the interests or expertise of the authors (adams, 1965; cutup, center & broom, 1994; lattimore, baskin, heiman. toth & van, 2004; lesly, 1950; seitel, 2007; stephenson, 1960; wilcox, cameron, ault & agee, 2003). the commonly mentioned tactics, strategies and general principles of practice in each of those areas often includes the design of special events, developing relationships with targeted audiences, doing research and evaluation, strategic planning and analyzing audiences, composing speeches and using other internal communication vehicles. however, one thing that is common across all texts public relations is a thorough discussion of media relations (turk & snedeker, 1986). though seemingly as challenging as it is to define as public relations can generally be viewed as the relationship between the uncontrolled mass media and public relations practitioners (kendall, 1996). media relations are often seen as the systematic (kendall, 1996), planned (lesly, 1991), purposeful (miller, 1984) and mutually beneficially relationship (guth & marsh, 2003) between journalists within the mass media and public relations practitioners. its goal is to determine trust, understanding and respect between the two groups (lattimore et al., 2004). fetig (2004), a media relations practitioner, sums up the relationships. public relations techniques the following are examples of common pr tactics you can use to gain a competitive advantage: a. press release: press releases are a conventional pr tactic that organizations use to make announcements about their activities, such as a new product launch or merger. a press release is essentially a detailed news article. it consists of an intriguing story angle to entice journalists to write and talk about your brand. agencies and professionals in the field usually have a list of media contacts they can share a press release with. b. press conferences: larger companies whose actions make a sizable shift in the market or are of substantial interest to customers hold press conferences to discuss their decisions and goals. press conferences are a media event that allows journalists to ask important questions. it's an effective pr tactic to show transparency and disseminate information quickly. c. events: from small trade shows to large launch parties, events are a dynamic pr tactic to connect with customers and potential partners in person. events also generate buzz with their influential attendees and exciting photo opportunities. they capture marketable moments that you can share on social media and press releases. d. partnerships: partnerships are a pr tactic that allows you to grow your audience by leveraging on someone else's following. it's important to choose partnerships carefully, as your partner's values and reputation can impact your own. most brands with a similar target market will partner with each other to achieve a shared goal. e. letter to the editor: if building support for a cause or issue is part of your organization's goals, a letter to the editor of your local newspaper can be highly effective. it exemplifies your values to your customers, showing them that there is much more to your brand than just generating sales. mailto:topacademicjournals@gmail.com american journal of arts and communication vol.10, issue 4; july-august 2025; issn: 2994-0540 impact factor: 7.94 1252 columbia rd nw, washington dc, united states https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac; mail: topacademicjournals@gmail.com 16 | a m e r i c a n j o u r n a l o f a r t s a n d c o m m u n i c a t i o n | https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac f. pop-up stores: pop-up stores not only help you access new customers, but they are also interesting pr angles you can promote to gain more coverage for your brand. the interactive event is an opportunity to try out critsive tactics that you might not otherwise do on your online or in your retail store. this makes for marketable stories that you can share on other platforms too. g. publicity stunt: a publicity stunt is an artificially critsed event or story that captures people's attention. its unusual nature sparks discussion about a brand and its activities. publicity stunts are a pr tactic professionals use to generate hype about an upcoming event, such as a new partnership or marketing campaign social and environmental sustainability sustainability and sustainable development have been considered within the accounting literature in the context of social and environmental sustainability reporting (hereafter “sustainability reporting” or sr). this has arisen because accounting for sustainable development shares some of the concerns of sr and both consider the same range of issues, namely the social and environmental impacts of corporate activity (bebbington, 2001). what is the function of sustainability reporting? sustainability reporting helps organizations to set goals, measure performance, and manage change in order to make their operations more sustainable. a sustainability report conveys disclosures on an organization’s impacts be they positive or negative on the environment, society and the economy. in doing so, sustainability reporting makes abstract issues tangible and concrete, thereby assisting in understanding and managing the effects of sustainability developments on the organization’s activities and strategy (global reporting initiative, 2013c). sr examines the areas where accounting affects its functional environment and seeks to develop accounting tools to assess these effects. as we have seen in the previous section, the concept of sustainability has gained wider acceptance, there has been a worldwide trend toward gritser use of sustainability reports. over the last decades, companies have paid growing interest towards environmental and social issues and there has been substantial growth in the research attention being devoted to social and environmental accounting topics (bagnoli, 2004; barth & wolff, 2009; deegan et al., 2002; elkington, 1999; epstein, 2007; kolk, 2008; laine, 2010; manetti & toccafondi, 2011; thorne, mahoney, & manetti, 2014). it is the emergence of large-scale business organizations in the last third of the nineteenth century within europe and the united states that gave rise to concerns about corporate social responsibility (epstein, 2007). the development of social and environmental accounting and reporting over the last 40 years has resulted in a wide range of actual and potential accounts of organisational interactions with society and the natural environment: such accounts can be understood as narratives of events articulating, with varying degrees of thoroughness and misdirection, the relationships of the organisation with its ‘stakeholders and its immediate substantive environment (gray, 2010). while the focus in the early 1990s was on environmental reporting and this was joined by growing interest in social reporting from about the mid-1990s, the principal focus in the latest years is on either triple bottom line reporting or sustainability reporting (gray & milne, 2002). it is important to note that these two latter concepts, despite appearances, are not synonyms. although in practice there is a lot of confusion on the use of mailto:topacademicjournals@gmail.com american journal of arts and communication vol.10, issue 4; july-august 2025; issn: 2994-0540 impact factor: 7.94 1252 columbia rd nw, washington dc, united states https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac; mail: topacademicjournals@gmail.com 17 | a m e r i c a n j o u r n a l o f a r t s a n d c o m m u n i c a t i o n | https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac terms as “sustainability report” and “social and environmental report” and even “social, environmental and sustainability report”, on a theoretical level much literature argues that is important to highlight the specific features of each concept. on the first hand, as stated in section 1.3.2, the concept of triple bottom refers to the notion that organisations that are beginning to think about issues related to sustainable development need to work away from a single, only financial bottom line and to a recognition that organisations also have both social and environmental performances, or social and environmental bottom lines (gray, 2010; gray & milne, 2002). the merit of triple bottom line is that promoted the idea that for full accountability, an organisation needed to produce, alongside its financial statements, a full set of both social and environmental disclosures (gray, 2010; gray & milne, 2002). pollution and ecological destruction of the niger delta ecosystem is a community of living organisms that exist with the nonliving components of their environment that share the benefits in the environment such as air, food, water and soil (hatcher, 1990). these biotic and abiotic components are connected together through nutrient cycles and energy flows (odum, 1971). humans operate within ecosystems and their cumulative effects are large enough to influence external factors like climate, as the ecosystems provide a variety of goods and services upon which people depend (schoener, 2009). human can pollute and destroy the ecosystem through the overuse of the available natural resources (jones, lawton & shachak, 1994). pollution is simply the introduction of contaminants into the natural environment that could alter the normal occurrences or distort the orderliness in the system. pollution was also defined by the european union 1996 council directive on integrated pollution prevention and control (ippc) as “the direct or indirect introduction as a result of human activity, of substances, vibrations, hits or noise into the air, water or land which may be harmful to human health or the quality of the environment, result in damage to material property, or impair or interfere with amenities and other legitimate uses of the environment” (fagbeja et al., 2008). the pollution of the environment overtime usually leads to the total destruction of the entire ecosystem (bodo, 2019). ecological destruction is happening everyday as it is reported that 25% of our coral reefs have disappeared and it is expected that 60% more will be gone in 30 years (gimah and bodo, 2019a; gimah and bodo, 2019b) . this is as a result of acidification of the oceans through water pollution and illegal fishing. quest for development has necessitated to intense deforestatio n leading to the burning and cutting down of more than 4.6 million hectares of forest (bodo and gimah, 2018; gimah and bodo, 2019a; gimah and bodo, 2019b). the case of niger delta ecosystem is even more pathetic as the people are not knowledgeable on the consequences and implications of destroying their environment (bodo, 2018; gimah and bodo, 2019a) as oil exploitation has led to massive habitat loss (gimah and bodo, 2019b). oil exploration and exploitation shell british petroleum (now royal dutch shell) first discovered crude oil in 1956 at oloibiri, a village in the niger delta, and as already mentioned commercial production began in 1958. today, there are 606 oil fields mailto:topacademicjournals@gmail.com american journal of arts and communication vol.10, issue 4; july-august 2025; issn: 2994-0540 impact factor: 7.94 1252 columbia rd nw, washington dc, united states https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac; mail: topacademicjournals@gmail.com 18 | a m e r i c a n j o u r n a l o f a r t s a n d c o m m u n i c a t i o n | https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac in the niger delta region, out of which 360 are on-shore and 246 are offshore (nigeria country analysis brief, 2005). nigeria is at present the largest oil producer in africa and the sixth largest in the world, averaging 2.7 million barrels per day (bbl/d) in 2006. nigeria’s economy is heavily dependent on earnings from the oil sector, which provides 20% of gdp, 95% of foreign exchange earnings, and about 65% of budgetary revenues (cia world fact book, 2005). nigeria’s state-held refineries (port harcourt 1 and 11, warri, and kaduna) have a combined capacity of 438,750 bbl/d, but problems including sabotage, fire, poor management and lack of regular maintenance contribute to low current capacity of around 214,000 bbl/d, according to world markets research center. plans for several small, independently owned refineries are also being developed with the nigerian government planning for three new refineries to come on stream by 2008 (nigeria country analysis brief, 2005). oil and gas reserves in nigerian niger delta oil and gas journal (2005) estimates nigeria’s proven oil reserve at 35.2 billion barrels. the nigerian government plans to expand its proven reserves to 40 billion barrels by 2010 (nwilo and badejo 2005). in february 2005, nigeria announced the award of five oil blocks in the joint development zone (jdz), shared by nigeria and neighbouring sao tome and principe (stp). the jdz reportedly holds reserves of 11 billion barrels and could potentially yield up to 3 million bbl/d in the next 2-3 years. development is also occurring in the waters surrounding the jdz (nigeria country analysis brief, 2005). oil and gas journal (2005) further stated that nigeria has an estimated 176 trillion cubic feet (tcf) of proven natural gas reserves in 2005, giving the country one of the top ten natural gas endowments in the world and the largest endowment in africa (see figure 2 below). the question has been, how sustainable are the mining of these natural resources in the niger delta region? this study recommends that the exploitation of these resources be carried out sustainably in such a manner that the environment is well protected by using clean technologies, with net economic gains by the oil companies, and the local communities where these activities take place get better treatment by way of human and infrastructural development opportunities. valuation of contaminated environment in the niger delta jackson (2001) posited that the literature available on the valuation concepts and methods for valuing the effects of environmental contamination on real estate relates to incomeproducing, commercial and industrial real estate and that only very few empirical studies of contaminated real estate exist. the available literature has focused on how existing appraisal methods can be adapted to estimate the impact of contamination on value. within the niger delta context, there is a dearth of literature on the subject of valuation of contaminated/polluted properties, despite the widespread pollution from oil spillages. attempts to value any polluted land have adopted methods prescribed for the compulsory acquisition of land in nigeria, see ogedengbe (2007) and otegbulu (2009). mailto:topacademicjournals@gmail.com american journal of arts and communication vol.10, issue 4; july-august 2025; issn: 2994-0540 impact factor: 7.94 1252 columbia rd nw, washington dc, united states https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac; mail: topacademicjournals@gmail.com 19 | a m e r i c a n j o u r n a l o f a r t s a n d c o m m u n i c a t i o n | https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac the niger delta the niger delta with an estimated area of about 70,000km 2 is one of the world's largest deltas. it is located in the central part of southern nigeria between above latitude 5 o 33 ' 49 '' n and 6 o' 31'38"e in the north. its western boundary is given as benin 5 o 44 ' 11 " n and 5 o 03'49 " e and its eastern boundary is imo river 4 o 27'16"n and 7 o 35'27"e. the niger delta is located along the atlantic coast which forms the southern boundary of nigeria, and it is the entrance of rivers niger and benue into the ocean through a web of rivers, creeks, and estuaries. it is the largest wetland in africa and the third largest in the world, with about 2370 square kilometres of rivers, creeks and estuaries. its vegetation is predominantly of the forest type with 8600 square kilometres of swamp forest and about 1900 square kilometres of mangrove forests (alagoa, 2005). the region situated in the southern part of nigeria, is bordered in the east by the republic of cameroun and in the south, by the atlantic ocean. within nigeria, the region is defined both geographically and politically. the later, being for revenue sharing purposes. the geographic niger delta includes the littoral states of rivers, bayelsa, delta cross river and akwa ibom and has an area of about 67,284 square kilometres with a combined population of 16,331,000 persons. the political niger delta includes these and in addition, abia, edo, imo, and ondo states, with a total area of 112,110 square kilometres of land as at 2006. the region represents about 12% of nigeria’s total surface area (nddc, 2006). the region has a lot of gas reserves which when sufficiently harnessed, could yield income far in excess of crude oil incomes. there are about 606 oil fields in the niger delta, of which 360 are on-shore and 246 are offshore (nwilo and badejo, 2005). most of the new oil fields are deep water fields developed and being developed offshore. figure 2.2 shows the states now known as the niger delta (the political niger delta states) while table 2.1 shows the respective states and their land areas and populations and table 2.2 shows the geographical niger delta states. the region is dominated by the ijaw ethnic group. other groups in the western delta include; the isoko, itsekiri, kwale and urhobo. in the eastern delta are groups like the ekpeye, andoni, ikwerre, ndoni and the ogoni. the niger delta region with its natural endowments of oil and gas which drives the international economy is poverty ridden as a result of political marginalization, economic pauperization and environmental degradation occasioned by its small soil and oil company activities in the region and long years of reflect by the federal government of nigeria. (akpan, 2007). the systems theory systems theory is an interdisciplinary framework that views complex entities as cohesive systems comprised of interrelated parts. it emphasizes the relationships and interactions between these parts, rather than focusing solely on individual components. the theory originated in the early to mid-20th century and has been applied across various fields, including biology, engineering, sociology, and management. the foundational concepts of systems theory were significantly advanced by ludwig von bertalanffy, an austrian biologist, who is often mailto:topacademicjournals@gmail.com american journal of arts and communication vol.10, issue 4; july-august 2025; issn: 2994-0540 impact factor: 7.94 1252 columbia rd nw, washington dc, united states https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac; mail: topacademicjournals@gmail.com 20 | a m e r i c a n j o u r n a l o f a r t s a n d c o m m u n i c a t i o n | https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac credited with its development in the 1940s. bertalanffy introduced the idea of "general systems theory" in his 1968 book, "general system theory: foundations, development, applications." he sought to establish a common framework that could be utilized across diverse disciplines to better understand the complexity of various systems. at its core, systems theory posits that a system is more than just the sum of its parts; rather, the interactions and relationships among the parts are critical to understanding the system as a whole. this perspective is particularly useful in analyzing social, ecological, and organizational systems. bertalanffy's work highlighted that systems have boundaries, inputs, outputs, and feedback loops, all of which play essential roles in the functioning of the system. a system is comprised of four aspects. the first type is items, which are also the system's components, elements, or variables. depending on the nature of the system, these can be physical, abstract, or both. second, a system is made up of attributes, which are the characteristics or properties of the system and its objects. third, a system's objects had internal relationships with one another. fourth, systems exist in their surroundings. a system, then, is a collection of items that interact with one another in a given context to generate a bigger pattern that is distinct from any of the pieces. the basic systems-interactive approach of the organizational analysis incorporates continuous stages of input, throughput (processing), and output, demonstrating the concept of openness/closeness. wholeness refers to the interdependence of the various elements that constitute the system. this means that individual parts of a system contribute to the existence of the organization. this theory is relevant to this study because it emphasizes the adaptive and proactive behaviour of organisations that should be based upon systems theory conceptual pillars to promote and manage man-made disasters so as to encourage sustainable and long-lasting performance. environmental justice theory environmental justice theory was not propounded by a single individual but rather evolved from grassroots movements and scholarly contributions that highlighted systemic environmental inequalities. the concept gained significant traction in the early 1980s, with a landmark study and subsequent activism that catalyzed the movement. robert d. bullard (1990) often regarded as the "father of environmental justice," robert (1990) played a pivotal role in articulating the framework of environmental justice. his work, particularly the publication of “dumping in dixie: race, class, and environmental quality” in 1990, systematically documented how african-american communities in the southern united states were disproportionately affected by environmental hazards. bullard’s research provided empirical evidence of environmental racism and laid the groundwork for the environmental justice movement. in 1982, civil rights leader benjamin (1987) coined the term “environmental racism” during the protests against the siting of a hazardous waste landfill in warren county, north carolina. this event, where a predominantly african-american community protested against the dumping of toxic waste in their area, is often cited as the beginning of the environmental justice mailto:topacademicjournals@gmail.com american journal of arts and communication vol.10, issue 4; july-august 2025; issn: 2994-0540 impact factor: 7.94 1252 columbia rd nw, washington dc, united states https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac; mail: topacademicjournals@gmail.com 21 | a m e r i c a n j o u r n a l o f a r t s a n d c o m m u n i c a t i o n | https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac movement. chavis’s advocacy highlighted the intersection of civil rights and environmental health, bringing national attention to the issue. environmental justice (ej) theory is a critical framework that addresses the intersection of environmental issues and social inequality, emphasizing the fair distribution of environmental benefits and burdens across different socio-economic and demographic groups (clinton, 1994). the theory highlights how marginalized communities, particularly low-income groups and ethnic minorities, disproportionately bear the brunt of environmental hazards, such as pollution and toxic waste, while often having less access to environmental goods, like clean air and water. this framework emerged in response to growing evidence that environmental problems were not just ecological or technical issues but were deeply intertwined with social justice concerns. environmental justice (ej) theory is highly relevant to public relations (pr) techniques used in the remediation of anthropogenic (human-caused) disasters, particularly in regions like the niger delta states. this area is marked by extensive environmental degradation due to activities such as oil extraction, leading to significant social, economic, and ecological impacts on local communities. the theory provides a critical framework for understanding and addressing the complex interplay between human activities and environmental impacts in the niger delta. by integrating ej principles into public relations techniques, multinationals can enhance their remediation efforts, build trust with local communities, and contribute to a more just and sustainable future for the region. effective pr strategies should prioritize equity, transparency, and community participation, ensuring that the voices of affected communities are heard and that their rights and well-being are respected in the remediation process. empirical review rajans (2012) carried out a study entitled: public relations techniques adopted by total energies nigerian limited in remediation of environment disasters in niger delta state. the objective was to find out the special ways the public relations department of total energies nigeria limited in solving the problems of manmade environmental disasters. the study employees of very research design with purposive technique to derive a sample of 400 respondents from a population of 31.2 million people. questionnaire was used as instruments for data gathering. define things of the study review that the public relations department of total energies nigerian limited apply the following public relations techniques such as transparent communication, building trust and engaging with stakeholders. the findings of the study show that the public relations department of the company gold beyond media coverage to resonate with the target audience based on the current public relations trends. the study concluded that the public relations department of total energy nigeria limited applies the following public relation techniques such as transparent communication, building trust and engaging with stakeholders. the study also concluded that the public relations department of the company goes beyond media coverage to resonate with the target audience based on the current public relations trends. the study therefore, recommended that companies and order organizations should apply public relations techniques in their day-today activities so as to enhance productivity and established mutual relationship between them and their host community. the study also recommended that the public relations department of companies and organizations should god beyond media coverage to resonate with target audience olayinka and ogbonna (2013) environmental remediation of oil spillage in niger delta region mailto:topacademicjournals@gmail.com american journal of arts and communication vol.10, issue 4; july-august 2025; issn: 2994-0540 impact factor: 7.94 1252 columbia rd nw, washington dc, united states https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac; mail: topacademicjournals@gmail.com 22 | a m e r i c a n j o u r n a l o f a r t s a n d c o m m u n i c a t i o n | https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac the impacts of oil spills are not limited to the direct effect on the ecosystem; it goes a long way to affect the social welfare, aggravates poverty, population displacement, social conflict, production reduction and also affects the profit margin of the companies involved. this study is aimed at providing a review and comparison of the remediation techniques currently in use and suggest the most suitable methods of oil spill cleanup and remediation in nigeria niger delta region based on certain criteria and to also suggest ways of mitigating oil spill occurrences in this region. in the course of this research study, data collection was on primary and secondary data. for the primary data, a structured questionnaire was drafted and used for survey relating to the research study to rank and evaluate different perspectives of stakeholders on various remediation techniques that are in consideration. for the secondary data, the study was carried out with a literature study to gain an overview of the different remediation methods for phcs contaminated soils. finally using specific criteria including cost efficiency, operation and maintenance of the technique, environmental friendliness, time frame of achieving remedial objectives, health concerns, and applicability of the techniques were used to make an evaluation design for the different remediation techniques for hydrocarbons contaminated soils. the results from these studies show that single remedial action cannot be used for cleanup but the thermal desorption and remediation by enhanced natural attenuation (rena) was the best placed technique ranking highest under the different criteria of the evaluation design and the sample survey of the remediation techniques considered. more so, in-situ vitrification is the most cost effective techniques with little or no disturbance of site. kingsley et al. (2021) environmental implications of petroleum spillages in the niger delta region of nigeria the issue of environmental pollution has been recognized as a typical example of an anthropogenic activity that constitutes a global challenge coupled with the influence of climate change. this has constituted several hazards which include bioaccumulation of toxic substances, pollution of the aquatic environment, and high rate of dilapidation of soil structure and texture, health hazards, high level of imbalance in the ecosystem and a high level of toxicity in humans and the environment. despite the intervention of governments, industries, researchers and relevant stakeholders, these problems remain paramount in most regions. therefore, given the aforementioned, it is essential to identify sustainable remediation techniques, innovative knowledge on remediation strategies and clean up techniques that could help in the mitigation of all these highlighted challenges. moreover, several studies have revealed the deleterious influence of petroleum or oil spillages resulting in irreparable environmental dilapidation and other potential hazards to human health, agriculture, climate system, and the ecosystem in general. from the systematic analysis of the evidence-based, meta-databased review and other reviewed literature, it is noticeable that there is scant holistic review study that will incorporate all these aforementioned environmental implications resulting from the activities of petroleum resources in the niger delta region of nigeria (ndrn) in just a single study. in the interim, it is alleged that there is hardly a permanent and tangible solution to these petroleum spillage issues and their impacts on the region; albeit, awareness will be fundamental for its mitigation. hence, this review study will attempt to fill this gap by holistically reviewing the selected environmental implications of petroleum spillages in the ndrn drawn from 219 evidence and metadata-based reviews and other articles. furthermore, the relevant legal frameworks that could guild in protecting against environmental issues and petroleum spillages, are discussed in this study. in conclusion, the study cautiously provides a way forward by submitting that effective research and development measures ranging from public health assessments of mailto:topacademicjournals@gmail.com american journal of arts and communication vol.10, issue 4; july-august 2025; issn: 2994-0540 impact factor: 7.94 1252 columbia rd nw, washington dc, united states https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac; mail: topacademicjournals@gmail.com 23 | a m e r i c a n j o u r n a l o f a r t s a n d c o m m u n i c a t i o n | https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac petroleum contamination to an all-embracing application of bioremediation technology should frequently be carried out as a matter of urgency with resilient adaptation, mollification and management of these menaces. methodology the study adopted the survey research design. the population of the study comprised of two streams, first the public relations department of the selected multinational companies and secondly, the population of their host communities in the niger delta. the total population of the study for the first stream was 3,825,499. the population of the second stream was 25. a census and taro yamane sampling size determination formula was used to arrive at sample size of 400 for the study. purposive sampling technique and the proportionate sampling technique were used for the study, and the data obtained from the instruments were analyzed using the fourpoint likert scale. table 1 public relations techniques and the remediation of man-made disasters in their areas of operations s/n companies resposnes s a 4 a 3 d 2 sd 1 total wms decision 1 spdc community engagement, corporate social responsibility 14 56 7 21 3 6 1 1 25 84 3.82 agree 2. total energies media relations, stakeholder collaboration, and conflict resolution programs 15 60 8 24 1 2 1 1 25 87 3.48 agree 3 nigeria agip oil company sustainability reporting capacity building, oil company environmental remediation and transparency efforts 16 64 6 18 2 4 1 1 25 87 3.48 agree criterion mean 2.5 data in the table show that the three companies employed public relation techniques in the style and manner shown above to address anthropogenic disasters in niger delta. table 2: public relations techniques and conventional practices s/n companies resposnes s a 4 a 3 d 2 sd 1 total wms decision mailto:topacademicjournals@gmail.com american journal of arts and communication vol.10, issue 4; july-august 2025; issn: 2994-0540 impact factor: 7.94 1252 columbia rd nw, washington dc, united states https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac; mail: topacademicjournals@gmail.com 24 | a m e r i c a n j o u r n a l o f a r t s a n d c o m m u n i c a t i o n | https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac 1 nigeria agip oil company community development project, host community agreement and local employment initiatives establish open communication channels 15 60 9 27 1 2 0 0 25 89 3.56 agree 2. spdc global (memorandum of understanding (gmou), health outreach programmes collaboration, empathy 21 84 2 6 1 2 1 1 25 93 3.72 agree 3 total energies youth empowerment programmes, environmental sustainability campaigns, inclusive stakeholder engagement and transparency 11 44 7 21 4 8 3 3 25 76 3.04 agree criterion mean = 2.5 data in table 2 above show that the three multinational companies employed public relations techniques that fall with the frame of best practices. data also revealed that the companies successfully engaged local community’s remediation efforts in the niger delta mailto:topacademicjournals@gmail.com american journal of arts and communication vol.10, issue 4; july-august 2025; issn: 2994-0540 impact factor: 7.94 1252 columbia rd nw, washington dc, united states https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac; mail: topacademicjournals@gmail.com 25 | a m e r i c a n j o u r n a l o f a r t s a n d c o m m u n i c a t i o n | https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac table 3: public relations techniques and goal accomplishment by companies under review s/n companies resposnes s a 4 a 3 d 2 sd 1 total wms decision 1 agip agip oil company has employed effective public relations strategies in managing hos communities clear communication, traditional press engagement, industry event participation content create creation 12 48 16 30 2 4 1 1 25 83 3.32 agree 2. spdc community employment, development programme reputation management stakeholders collaboration 14 56 5 15 4 8 2 2 25 81 3.24 agree 3 total energies reputation management, facilitating effective communication, compensation programme, media management and transparency 17 68 7 21 1 3 0 0 25 92 3.68 agree criterion mean = 2.5 table 3 above shows that the three multinational companies utilize public relations techniques to accomplish their goals. discussion of findings findings of the study showed that three companies employed public relation techniques to address anthropogenic disasters in niger delta. the findings of the study is in agreement with the earlier study carried out by rajans (2012) whose study revealed that the public relations department of the company gold beyond media coverage to resonate with the target audience based on the current public relations trends. the findings of the study is also in agreement with the earlier study carried out by olayinka and ogbonna (2013) whose study revealed that single remedial action cannot be used for cleanup but the thermal desorption and remediation by enhanced natural attenuation (rena) was the best placed technique ranking highest under the different criteria of the evaluation design and the sample survey of the remediation techniques considered. the findings mailto:topacademicjournals@gmail.com american journal of arts and communication vol.10, issue 4; july-august 2025; issn: 2994-0540 impact factor: 7.94 1252 columbia rd nw, washington dc, united states https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac; mail: topacademicjournals@gmail.com 26 | a m e r i c a n j o u r n a l o f a r t s a n d c o m m u n i c a t i o n | https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac of the study corroborate with the principles of the systems theory which states that the governance of the viable organizations then has to address and direct the system towards a final goal by transforming static structural relationships into dynamic interactions with other viable systems. the findings of the study also corroborate with the principles of environmental justice theory which states that the theory highlights how marginalized communities, particularly low-income groups and ethnic minorities, disproportionately bear the brunt of environmental hazards, such as pollution and toxic waste, while often having less access to environmental goods, like clean air and water. findings of the study shows that the three multinational companies had best practice of public relations techniques which they successfully engaged local communities’ remediation efforts in the niger delta. the findings of the study is in agreement with the earlier study carried out by kingsley, hussain, charles, uyiosa, robert, and olufemi (2021) whose study revealed that cautiously provides a way forward by submitting that effective research and development measures ranging from public health assessments of petroleum contamination to an all-embracing application of bioremediation technology should frequently be carried out as a matter of urgency with resilient adaptation, mollification and management of these menaces. the findings of the study also is in agreement with the earlier study carried out by richard, sylvester and muhammad (2022) whose study revealed that waste dumps, gas flaring, and food processing units are sources of ammonia, hydrogen sulfide, carbon monoxide, sulfur dioxide, nitrogen dioxide, volatile organic compounds, and particulates released into the atmosphere. the findings of the study corroborate with the principles of stakeholder theory, which states that the foundation of stakeholder theory lies in its emphasis on the interconnectedness of stakeholders and the organization. the findings of the study also corroborate with the principles of the systems theory, which states that the governance of the viable organizations then has to address and direct the system towards a final goal by transforming static structural relationships into dynamic interactions with other viable systems. findings of the study shows that the three multinational companies utilize public relations techniques by way of goal accomplishment. data showed that the companies under review at the very least have been able to forge a relationship with host communities, granting them access to the areas during disasters. the findings of the study is in disagreement with amodu (2012) whose study revealed that community relations strategies adopted by the selected oil companies were not adequate in preventing and resolving conflicts in the niger delta. the findings of the study is however in agreement with the earlier study carried out by rajans (2012) whose study revealed that the public relations department of total energy nigeria limited applies the following public relations techniques such as transparent communication, building trust and engaging with stakeholders, which accomplished organisational goals. the finding of the study corroborates with the principles of the environmental justice theory, which states that the area has become a focal point for environmental justice advocacy, highlighting the disproportionate health impacts of industrial pollution on marginalized populations. the findings of study also corroborate with the principles of stakeholder theory, which states that the mailto:topacademicjournals@gmail.com american journal of arts and communication vol.10, issue 4; july-august 2025; issn: 2994-0540 impact factor: 7.94 1252 columbia rd nw, washington dc, united states https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac; mail: topacademicjournals@gmail.com 27 | a m e r i c a n j o u r n a l o f a r t s a n d c o m m u n i c a t i o n | https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac traditional views of corporate governance often prioritize shareholders' interests, focusing on financial returns as the primary measure of success. in contrast, stakeholder theory challenges this notion by arguing that businesses must consider the interests and well-being of all parties affected by their actions. conclusion the conclusions drawn from the study reveal that spdc, total energies, and naoc each implemented public relations techniques tailored to address anthropogenic disasters in the niger delta, demonstrating that pr was a core instrument in their environmental management frameworks. the companies consistently aligned their approaches with best practices in public relations, which facilitated meaningful engagement with host communities and enhanced the legitimacy of their remediation efforts. furthermore, the application of public relations techniques proved instrumental in advancing the companies’ strategic goals, including reducing community unrest, improving corporate image, and sustaining operational continuity. recommendations 1. oil companies in the niger delta should adopt more structured, transparent, and inclusive public relations techniques in the remediation of man-made disasters to ensure active participation and trust from host communities. 2. the companies should align their public relations strategies with internationally recognised best practices, integrating both proactive and reactive communication measures such as early warning systems, crisis preparedness, and rapid response mechanisms. 3. regular evaluation of public relations strategies should be conducted to assess their effectiveness in achieving corporate goals such as conflict reduction, enhanced reputation, and environmental restoration. references abracosa, a. & ortolano, e., ( 1987). environmental impact a s s e s s m e n t in the philippines: 1977–1985. environmental impact assessment review 7, pp. 293–310. adebayo, a. a., & olatunbosun, l. o. 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(1993). constraints on implementing environmental impact assessments in africa. environmental impact assessment review 13, pp. 299–308. kassim-momodu, m., (1986 & 1987). ‘gas re-injection and the nigerian oil industry’ 5 & 7 journal of private & property law 69 – 90. kingsley, hussain, charles, uyiosa, robert and ohifemi (2021) environmental implications of petroleum’s spillage in the niger delta of nigeria. international journal of mineral processing 64:20-40 kotler, p., & lee, n. (2005). corporate social responsibility: doing the most good for your company and your cause. wiley. kuru, p., (2004). customary water laws and practices: nigeria. laws of the federation of nigeria, (1958), mineral oils ordinance of nigeria under the british colonial rule. osuji, l. c. (2001). post impact assessment of oil pollution in agbada west plain of niger delta, nigeria: field reconnaissance and total extractable hydrocarbon content. j. appl. sci. environ. mgt., 5, 35. oyeranti, o. a. (2001). economics and management of environmental resources: theory and policy issues”. proceedings of the nigerian economic society. petters, s.w., (2007). conservation and development of the niger delta. online nigeria. september 04, 2007. raji, a. o. y. & t. s., abejide, (2013). an a s s e s s m e n t of environmental problems associated with oil pollution and gas flaring in the niger delta region nigeria (1960s-2000).’ arabian journal of business and management review, 3(3) p. 1. richard g., sylvester c.i. & muhammad i. (2022). air pollution in the niger delta region of nigeria: sources, health effects, and strategies for mitigation. international journal of environmental studies 29(1): 1-15. mailto:topacademicjournals@gmail.com american journal of arts and communication vol.10, issue 4; july-august 2025; issn: 2994-0540 impact factor: 7.94 1252 columbia rd nw, washington dc, united states https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac; mail: topacademicjournals@gmail.com 46 | a m e r i c a n j o u r n a l o f a r t s a n d c o m m u n i c a t i o n | https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac communication strategies, virtual collaboration platforms and job understanding among staff of akwa ibom state university philomena effiong umoren department of mass communication, akwa ibom state university email: philoumoren12@gmail.com doi:https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.16314811 abstract: this study examined the communication strategies and utilisation of ai-enhanced cloud-based collaboration platforms among remote workers in akwa ibom state, with particular focus on their influence on job understanding. the theoretical framework for this study was the media richness theory (mrt). the study evaluates organisational communication strategies, assessing ai platform usage, and analysing their impact on job clarity. a survey research design was employed, targeting 388 pensionable academic staff at akwa ibom state university. using the australian bureau of statistics sample size calculator, a sample of 193 was selected; 113 valid responses were analysed after data screening. findings showed that 83.8% of respondents disagreed that regular virtual meetings were used for communication, and 82.4% disagreed on the effective use of email. however, 71.8% agreed that structured feedback channels were in place, while 69.7% acknowledged the official use of instant messaging apps. regarding ai-enhanced tools, 69.7% reported non-use of cloud platforms, and 58.5% indicated absence of ai features. despite this, 62.7% received training, and 74.7% agreed these platforms improved communication and document sharing. additionally, 78.2% affirmed that supervisor feedback clarified job expectations, while 80.9% disagreed that virtual briefings enhanced understanding. notably, 69.7% stated that platform dashboards improved understanding of project goals, and 66.2% agreed that collaboration tools reduced miscommunication. the study recommends adopting structured communication strategies, investing in ai-integrated platforms, continuous staff training, and promoting feedback-driven communication to enhance job clarity among remote workers. keywords: communication strategies, virtual collaboration platforms, job understanding, akwa ibom state university. introduction collaborations in organisational communication has undergone a remarkable transformation in today’s dynamic work environment. this is driven by technological advancements and the shift towards remote as well as hybrid work (okoli, okpongkpong & ukpong, 2021). as organisations strive to maintain productivity and cohesion in geographically dispersed teams, the integration of digital tools and platforms has become not only essential but mailto:topacademicjournals@gmail.com mailto:philoumoren12@gmail.com american journal of arts and communication vol.10, issue 4; july-august 2025; issn: 2994-0540 impact factor: 7.94 1252 columbia rd nw, washington dc, united states https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac; mail: topacademicjournals@gmail.com 47 | a m e r i c a n j o u r n a l o f a r t s a n d c o m m u n i c a t i o n | https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac revolutionary. one striking example is the increasing reliance on ai-enhanced, cloud-based collaboration platforms, which promise to bridge the communication gap among remote workers, particularly in regions with emerging digital economies such as akwa ibom state, nigeria. the capacity of these technologies to facilitate seamless communication, foster understanding of job roles, and ensure effective collaboration across distances presents a compelling area for empirical inquiry. communication strategies refer to the deliberate methods and practices employed by organisations or individuals to convey messages effectively, achieve mutual understanding, and accomplish set goals (mfon & uford, 2024; akai, akpan-atata & udoh, 2025). in a remote work context, strategic communication becomes even more critical, as it compensates for the absence of face-to-face interactions and physical workplace cues (akarika, umoren & ikon, 2021). these strategies may include the use of synchronous tools like video conferencing and asynchronous channels like emails and messaging platforms. effective communication strategies are linked to improved employee engagement, productivity, and clarity in role expectations (downs & adrian, 2012). moreover, remote work settings demand adaptive communication strategies that account for technological limitations, cultural diversity, and time zone differences (walden, 2021). ai-enhanced, cloud-based collaboration platforms are digital environments that utilise artificial intelligence to support real-time teamwork and data sharing over the internet. these platforms, such as microsoft teams, slack, and google workspace, are equipped with ai features including automated meeting transcription, intelligent task allocation, and predictive typing, all designed to enhance communication efficiency and user experience (uford, charles & etuk, 2022). the cloud infrastructure ensures accessibility from any location, while ai capabilities facilitate streamlined workflow and intelligent communication support (luo et al., 2023). these platforms have become indispensable for remote teams, offering scalable, reliable, and intelligent solutions for communication and project management. job understanding refers to an employee's clear comprehension of their roles, responsibilities, performance expectations, and how their work contributes to organisational objectives. in remote work settings, achieving such clarity can be challenging due to limited physical supervision and interaction (uford, 2017). lack of job understanding can lead to confusion, reduced productivity, and job dissatisfaction. however, when communication is strategic and technology is optimally utilised, remote workers are better positioned to understand and align with their job roles (gajendran & joshi, 2012). enhancing job understanding among remote employees is crucial for maintaining operational effectiveness and employee morale. the interplay between communication strategies, ai-enhanced platforms, and job understanding has been the focus of various academic inquiries. previous studies have underscored that effective digital communication strategies significantly influence role clarity and job performance among remote workers (maduka et al., 2018). additionally, research by waizenegger et al. (2020) highlights that cloud-based collaboration tools, especially those augmented with ai capabilities, can foster a sense of presence and collaboration among remote teams, thereby mitigating the isolation often associated with remote work. however, they also point out that the efficacy of these tools largely depends on how well they are integrated into organisational communication strategies. mailto:topacademicjournals@gmail.com american journal of arts and communication vol.10, issue 4; july-august 2025; issn: 2994-0540 impact factor: 7.94 1252 columbia rd nw, washington dc, united states https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac; mail: topacademicjournals@gmail.com 48 | a m e r i c a n j o u r n a l o f a r t s a n d c o m m u n i c a t i o n | https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac furthermore, azizi et al. (2023) found that while ai tools offer enhanced communication functionalities, they do not automatically translate to improved job understanding unless paired with well-defined communication frameworks and continuous feedback mechanisms. most existing studies have focused on developed economies, with limited attention given to how these dynamics play out in emerging contexts like akwa ibom state, where infrastructural and digital literacy challenges may affect adoption and usage. despite the growing body of literature on digital communication and remote work, there remains a significant gap in understanding how these concepts converge in sub-national contexts within developing countries, particularly in nigeria. in akwa ibom state, where digital infrastructure is still evolving, the integration of aienhanced collaboration tools and strategic communication remains underexplored. existing studies often generalise findings from technologically advanced regions, thereby overlooking contextual challenges and opportunities in regions with distinct socio-economic and technological realities. this study seeks to address this gap by examining how communication strategies and ai-enhanced cloud-based platforms influence job understanding among remote workers in akwa ibom state. by doing so, the research aims to contribute to a nuanced understanding of remote work efficacy in emerging digital economies and provide actionable insights for organisations operating in similar contexts. statement of the problem in the wake of global transitions to remote and hybrid work, accelerated by events such as the covid-19 pandemic, organisations around the world have increasingly relied on digital technologies to maintain business continuity. however, in many developing regions, this transition has exposed underlying challenges in communication, technological infrastructure, and workforce adaptability. one of the most pressing issues faced by workers in this region is the difficulty in achieving effective communication and clear job understanding, which are essential for productivity, performance, and job satisfaction. despite the proliferation of digital tools, many employees continue to struggle with unclear expectations, miscommunication, and a lack of alignment with organisational goals, all of which negatively impact work outcomes. scholars have recognised these challenges and have examined the role of communication strategies and digital collaboration platforms in bridging the communication gap among remote workers. various studies have explored how artificial intelligence and cloud-based tools can improve real-time interaction, support teamwork, and foster a sense of inclusion among dispersed teams. others have investigated the role of communication competence and leadership in enhancing remote team performance. while these studies have yielded valuable insights, they have primarily focused on organisations in technologically advanced environments where digital literacy, infrastructure, and access are relatively stable. as a result, their findings often fall short when applied to regions such as akwa ibom state, where the local context presents unique socio-economic and technological challenges that are yet to be adequately addressed in existing literature. this gap presents an urgent need to understand how communication strategies and ai-enhanced cloud-based collaboration platforms function in a context where digital transformation is still unfolding. it is particularly crucial to examine how these tools influence job understanding in remote work settings that are constrained by mailto:topacademicjournals@gmail.com american journal of arts and communication vol.10, issue 4; july-august 2025; issn: 2994-0540 impact factor: 7.94 1252 columbia rd nw, washington dc, united states https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac; mail: topacademicjournals@gmail.com 49 | a m e r i c a n j o u r n a l o f a r t s a n d c o m m u n i c a t i o n | https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac inconsistent internet access, limited technological exposure, and varying levels of employee readiness. given these challenges and knowledge gaps, a striking question arises: to what extent do communication strategies and ai-enhanced cloud-based collaboration platforms influence job understanding among remote workers in akwa ibom state? objectives of the study the objectives of this study were to: i. examine the communication strategies adopted by organisations to facilitate remote work among employees in akwa ibom state. ii. assess the extent to which ai-enhanced cloud-based collaboration platforms are utilised by remote workers in akwa ibom state. iii. investigate the influence of communication strategies on job understanding among remote workers. iv. determine the relationship between the use of ai-enhanced cloud-based collaboration platforms and job understanding among remote workers in akwa ibom state. research questions the study was guided by the following research questions: i. what communication strategies are employed by organisations to support remote work in akwa ibom state? ii. to what extent are ai-enhanced cloud-based collaboration platforms used by remote workers in akwa ibom state? iii. how do communication strategies affect job understanding among remote workers? iv. what is the relationship between the use of ai-enhanced cloud-based collaboration platforms and job understanding among remote workers in akwa ibom state? review of concepts communication strategies communication strategies refer to the systematic approaches individuals or organisations adopt to exchange information effectively. in the context of organisational management, particularly remote work environments, these strategies play a central role in ensuring clarity, reducing ambiguity, and aligning team members towards shared goals. effective communication strategies typically involve a combination of verbal and non-verbal cues, choice of communication channels, frequency of communication, and feedback mechanisms (akarika, umoren & ikon, 2021). in remote work, where face-to-face interaction is absent, the strategic selection of digital tools becomes imperative to replicate the immediacy and effectiveness of traditional communication (cardon & marshall, 2022). communication strategy in a virtual context therefore involves not only content delivery but also digital literacy, tone management, and platform-appropriate message formatting (akarika, umoren & ikon, 2021, umoren & ukpe, 2025). the effectiveness of communication strategies in remote work is significantly influenced by organisational culture, employee training, and the choice of communication technology. as virtual teams grow, asynchronous mailto:topacademicjournals@gmail.com american journal of arts and communication vol.10, issue 4; july-august 2025; issn: 2994-0540 impact factor: 7.94 1252 columbia rd nw, washington dc, united states https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac; mail: topacademicjournals@gmail.com 50 | a m e r i c a n j o u r n a l o f a r t s a n d c o m m u n i c a t i o n | https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac tools like emails and forums, as well as synchronous tools such as video calls and chat applications, have become essential, especially in a post covid-19 era (okoli, okpongkpong & ukpong, 2021). each strategy has its strengths and weaknesses; for instance, asynchronous tools provide flexibility but may delay feedback, while synchronous tools foster real-time engagement but require time coordination (walden, 2021). the challenge lies in balancing these tools to match the needs of diverse remote teams. furthermore, leadership communication styles have been found to influence team cohesion and job understanding significantly, particularly in decentralised teams working across time zones. recent research highlights the importance of adaptability in communication strategies to suit changing technological landscapes and diverse work environments. for example, alharthi and khalil (2023) stress that strategic communication must now include emotional intelligence and cultural awareness to build trust and reduce isolation among remote workers. these insights underscore that communication in remote work is no longer just about transmitting information but about maintaining relationships, fostering collaboration, and sustaining motivation. without well-developed communication strategies, remote teams are more prone to misalignment, role confusion, and disengagement—factors that severely impact productivity and job satisfaction. ai-enhanced cloud-based collaboration platforms ai-enhanced cloud-based collaboration platforms are digital ecosystems that combine artificial intelligence (ai) with cloud computing to support team collaboration, communication, and productivity in real-time. these platforms, such as microsoft teams, zoom, slack, researchgate, facebook and google workspace, use aidriven features like smart scheduling, automated transcription, chatbots, predictive text, and intelligent file organisation to streamline team workflows and decision-making (luo et al., 2023; akai & uford, 2025; akai, uford & udoh, 2025). the cloud-based nature ensures that users can access shared data and communication tools from any location, while ai enhancements improve efficiency, personalisation, and ease of use. for remote workers, these platforms have become indispensable, especially in coordinating tasks, managing meetings, and maintaining engagement without physical presence. beyond basic communication, ai-enhanced platforms have reshaped how teams collaborate by offering advanced capabilities such as real-time language translation, virtual whiteboards, sentiment analysis, and workflow automation. these features enable cross-border teams to work more efficiently and inclusively. according to liu, zhang, and guo (2022), these platforms significantly reduce the cognitive load on employees by automating routine tasks and providing intelligent suggestions, thus freeing up time for more strategic or creative work. this automation also minimises the risk of errors and improves data-driven decision-making in project execution. in this regard, ai tools are not merely supportive but increasingly central to how modern remote teams can function. despite their benefits, challenges persist in the adoption and utilisation of these platforms, particularly in regions with inconsistent internet connectivity and limited digital infrastructure. in many parts of africa, including nigeria, for example, affordability, digital literacy, and infrastructure gaps pose significant barriers to effective use (udegbunam, igbokwe-ibeto, c. j., & nwafor, 2023). furthermore, reliance on ai tools may inadvertently widen digital divides within organisations, where some employees may struggle with adapting to new mailto:topacademicjournals@gmail.com american journal of arts and communication vol.10, issue 4; july-august 2025; issn: 2994-0540 impact factor: 7.94 1252 columbia rd nw, washington dc, united states https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac; mail: topacademicjournals@gmail.com 51 | a m e r i c a n j o u r n a l o f a r t s a n d c o m m u n i c a t i o n | https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac technologies. therefore, the successful implementation of ai-enhanced collaboration platforms requires not only technological investment but also employee training, organisational readiness, and strategic alignment with communication goals. job understanding job understanding refers to the degree to which an employee clearly comprehends their role, responsibilities, expectations, and how their work contributes to broader organisational goals. in remote work environments, where informal communication and real-time supervision are limited, achieving and sustaining job understanding becomes a significant challenge (uford, 2017; chales & uford, 2023). without physical presence or immediate access to supervisors, many remote workers report experiencing uncertainty about task expectations, performance standards, and even their standing within the organisation. according to gajendran and joshi (2012), role ambiguity is a critical barrier to performance and satisfaction in virtual teams, and addressing this ambiguity requires structured communication and clear documentation. several studies have shown that job understanding in remote contexts is highly dependent on organisational communication quality and the availability of collaborative support systems. for example, when job roles are well-articulated during onboarding and continuously reinforced through feedback loops and regular updates, employees are more likely to remain aligned with organisational expectations (maduka et al., 2018). technology plays a critical role here: task management tools, shared dashboards, and ai-generated reports can all help reinforce understanding. however, the absence of contextual cues—such as body language, spontaneous peer conversations, and in-person meetings—can leave gaps in interpretation, making it harder for remote workers to fully grasp nuanced job expectations. moreover, the increasing complexity of modern work, combined with distributed team structures, necessitates not just functional clarity but also relational understanding—knowing how one's role fits within the team and contributes to the bigger picture. recent studies, such as those by azizi et al. (2023) and: akpan-atata, akai and jimmy (2024), argue that ai and digital collaboration tools can support this process by providing visual work maps, project timelines, and intelligent summaries of team progress. however, these tools must be embedded in a culture of transparency, consistent leadership communication, and employee empowerment. without this cultural and managerial scaffolding, even the most advanced tools may fail to ensure meaningful job understanding, particularly in under-resourced or transitional digital environments like akwa ibom state. theoretical framework this study is anchored on media richness theory (mrt), which provides a theoretical basis for examining how communication media influence job understanding, particularly in digitally mediated work environments. media richness theory was formulated by daft and lengel (1986) within the domain of organisational communication and information processing. it was developed to explain how managers and employees select communication media to reduce uncertainty and equivocality in decision-making. the theory categorises media along a continuum of richness, based on their ability to facilitate immediate feedback, convey multiple cues (such as tone and facial expression), use natural language, and allow for personal focus. the theory emerged during a mailto:topacademicjournals@gmail.com american journal of arts and communication vol.10, issue 4; july-august 2025; issn: 2994-0540 impact factor: 7.94 1252 columbia rd nw, washington dc, united states https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac; mail: topacademicjournals@gmail.com 52 | a m e r i c a n j o u r n a l o f a r t s a n d c o m m u n i c a t i o n | https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac period when organisations were increasingly grappling with how best to communicate in complex and dynamic work settings. the fundamental assumption of media richness theory is that the effectiveness of communication depends on the degree to which the medium used can adequately convey information relative to the ambiguity or complexity of the task at hand. rich media, such as face-to-face interaction or advanced digital platforms that incorporate video, voice, and real-time collaboration, are capable of transmitting nuanced information, enabling immediate feedback, and facilitating mutual understanding. these are considered most suitable for complex, ambiguous, or emotionally sensitive tasks. lean media, such as written reports or standard emails, which lack immediacy and contextual cues, are best suited for simple, routine, and unambiguous communication. the theory asserts that mismatches such as using lean media for complex tasks can lead to misunderstanding, delayed decision-making, and decreased task performance. therefore, effective communication requires deliberate alignment between task characteristics and media richness to ensure clarity, engagement, and accuracy in information processing. mrt is relevant to this study as it helps evaluate how the richness of ai-enhanced cloud-based platforms, combined with strategic communication practices, influences job understanding among remote workers in akwa ibom state. methodology this study adopted a survey research design involving a population of 388 pensionable academic staff at akwa ibom state university, as reported by usoro and edeminam (2023). using the australian bureau of statistics (abs) sample size calculator, a sample size of 193 was determined based on a 95% confidence level and a 5% margin of error. lecturers from the obio akpa campus were selected through simple random sampling. data were collected using a structured questionnaire. the structured questionnaire had responses measured on a 5point likert scale ranging from 1 (strongly disagree) to 5 (strongly agree). the reliability of the constructs was assessed using cronbach’s alpha, yielding values of 0.882. data analysis and presentation out of the 193 questionnaires administered, 125 were returned over a period of two weeks. after data screening, 12 questionnaires were excluded due to incompleteness or inconsistent answers, resulting in 113 usable responses. this yielded a usable response rate of 58.5%, which is acceptable for the statistical techniques applied in this study. participants were informed that there were no right or wrong answers and were encouraged to respond honestly, with adequate time provided to complete the questionnaire. table 1: frequency and percentage distribution of communication strategies adopted by organisations items strongly agree agree disagree strongly disagree total 1. my organisation provides regular virtual meetings for team updates. 14 (9.9%) 9 (6.3%) 58 (40.8%) 61 (43.0%) 142 mailto:topacademicjournals@gmail.com american journal of arts and communication vol.10, issue 4; july-august 2025; issn: 2994-0540 impact factor: 7.94 1252 columbia rd nw, washington dc, united states https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac; mail: topacademicjournals@gmail.com 53 | a m e r i c a n j o u r n a l o f a r t s a n d c o m m u n i c a t i o n | https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac 2. email is effectively used to disseminate official information. 17 (12.0%) 8 (5.6%) 64 (45.1%) 53 (37.3%) 142 3. there is a structured channel for feedback and response. 45 (31.7%) 57 (40.1%) 28 (19.7%) 12 (8.5%) 142 4. instant messaging apps (e.g., whatsapp) are officially used. 51 (35.9%) 48 (33.8%) 27 (19.0%) 16 (11.3%) 142 source: fieldwork, 2025. the data indicate that a majority of respondents disagreed that virtual meetings (83.8%) and emails (82.4%) are frequently used to communicate remote work information. however, fewer respondents (71.8%) affirmed the existence of structured feedback channels, while the adoption of instant messaging as an official tool was moderately accepted (69.7%). this suggests that while formal communication tools are widely used, there may be inconsistencies in adopting interactive and informal communication strategies. table 2: frequency and percentage distribution on the use of ai-enhanced cloud-based collaboration platforms items strongly agree agree disagree strongly disagree total 1. my organisation uses cloud-based tools like google workspace/teams. 13 (9.2%) 30 (21.1%) 52 (36.6%) 47 (33.1%) 142 2. ai features (e.g., smart replies, autoscheduling) are enabled. 20 (14.0%) 38 (26.8%) 39 (27.5%) 45 (31.7%) 142 3. training was provided on how to use these platforms. 40 (28.2%) 49 (34.5%) 36 (25.4%) 17 (12.0%) 142 4. the platforms improve communication and document sharing. 10 (7.0%) 46 (32.4%) 60 (42.3%) 26 (18.3%) 142 source: fieldwork, 2025. the results show that 69.7% of respondents acknowledged cloud-based tools were not used in the institutions, while 58.5% reported the lack of integration of ai features. however, the level of training provided (62.7%) and satisfaction with communication and document sharing (74.7%) suggest moderate and low utilisation respectively. this indicates a lack of ai-enhanced platforms. table 3: frequency and percentage distribution on the influence of communication strategies on job understanding items strongly agree agree disagree strongly disagree total 1. i understand my responsibilities due to regular virtual briefings. 9 (6.3%) 18 (12.7%) 56 (39.4%) 59 (41.5%) 142 mailto:topacademicjournals@gmail.com american journal of arts and communication vol.10, issue 4; july-august 2025; issn: 2994-0540 impact factor: 7.94 1252 columbia rd nw, washington dc, united states https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac; mail: topacademicjournals@gmail.com 54 | a m e r i c a n j o u r n a l o f a r t s a n d c o m m u n i c a t i o n | https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac 2. feedback from supervisors helps clarify my job expectations. 50 (35.2%) 61 (43.0%) 21 (14.8%) 10 (7.0%) 142 3. communication gaps often lead to confusion about my role. 42 (29.6%) 48 (33.8%) 31 (21.8%) 21 (14.8%) 142 4. clear communication increases my productivity and task focus. 58 (40.8%) 64 (45.1%) 12 (8.5%) 8 (5.6%) 142 source: fieldwork, 2025 a strong majority (80.9%) indicated that regular virtual briefings did not contribute to role clarity, and 78.2% agreed that supervisor feedback supports job understanding. interestingly, 63.4% noted that communication gaps can cause confusion, confirming the vital role of effective communication. overall, clear communication strategies appear to positively influence job understanding among remote workers. table 4: frequency and percentage distribution on relationship between ai platforms and job understanding items strongly agree agree disagree strongly disagree total 1. the platform helps me track my responsibilities in real time. 27 (19.0%) 13 (9.2%) 48 (33.8%) 54 (38.0%) 142 2. ai tools clarify my task deadlines and performance indicators. 33 (23.2%) 17 (12.0%) 40 (28.2%) 52 (36.6%) 142 3. collaboration tools reduce the need for followup clarification. 32 (22.5%) 16 (11.3%) 44 (31.0%) 50 (35.2%) 142 4. i understand project goals better through platform dashboards. 28 (19.7%) 43 (30.3%) 56 (39.4%) 15 (10.6%) 142 source: fieldwork, 2025 the results show that most respondents (71.8%) agreed that ai-enhanced platforms help them track responsibilities and understand deadlines (64.8%). similarly, 66.2% acknowledged that collaboration tools reduce miscommunication, and 69.7% confirmed better project goal comprehension via dashboards. these findings suggest a positive relationship between platform usage and job understanding, supporting the assumption that digital tools, when effectively deployed, enhance clarity and role alignment. discussion of findings this section discusses the results from the data analysis in relation to the study’s research questions, comparing the findings with existing literature and interpreting them through the lens of media richness theory (daft & lengel, 1986), which posits that communication media vary in their capacity to convey information effectively, particularly in ambiguous or complex situations like remote work. mailto:topacademicjournals@gmail.com american journal of arts and communication vol.10, issue 4; july-august 2025; issn: 2994-0540 impact factor: 7.94 1252 columbia rd nw, washington dc, united states https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac; mail: topacademicjournals@gmail.com 55 | a m e r i c a n j o u r n a l o f a r t s a n d c o m m u n i c a t i o n | https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac research question 1: what communication strategies are employed by organisations to support remote work in akwa ibom state? the findings revealed that most respondents disagreed with the notion that virtual meetings (83.8%) and email (82.4%) are frequently used in their organisations to support remote work. however, a significant number agreed that structured feedback channels (71.8%) and instant messaging platforms (69.7%) were employed. these findings contrast with previous studies such as agbozo and sackey (2021) and ajayi and afolabi (2022), who found that regular virtual meetings and email communications were dominant tools used by organisations during remote work transitions. the discrepancy in the present study may indicate either poor digital communication infrastructure or weak policy implementation in organisations within akwa ibom state. from the standpoint of media richness theory, virtual meetings and emails are considered moderately rich communication media. their limited use in this context implies that workers may not be receiving information with the richness required to resolve ambiguities inherent in remote working conditions. this gap may contribute to inefficiencies, miscommunication, and reduced engagement among staff. research question 2: to what extent are ai-enhanced cloud-based collaboration platforms used by remote workers in akwa ibom state? the data show that a substantial majority of respondents indicated that ai-enhanced platforms are not widely used: 69.7% disagreed that tools like google workspace or microsoft teams are utilised, and 58.5% reported that ai features are not integrated. however, 62.7% indicated that training had been offered, and 74.7% acknowledged that where platforms were used, they improved communication and document sharing to some degree. this limited usage contradicts findings from chukwu and omeje (2023) and ogunleye and bakare (2023), who reported a growing integration of cloud-based ai tools in nigerian academic and corporate environments. the variance suggests a possible digital divide or resistance to adoption at the institutional level within akwa ibom state. media richness theory supports the idea that cloud-based platforms with ai features can enrich communication by enabling immediate feedback, customised task scheduling, and collaborative interfaces. their underutilisation here implies that the organisations are not leveraging available rich media that could reduce uncertainty and improve remote work efficiency. research question 3: how do communication strategies affect job understanding among remote workers? the analysis showed that most respondents (80.9%) believed virtual briefings did not contribute to job clarity. yet, 78.2% agreed that feedback from supervisors was helpful, and a notable number recognised that communication gaps led to role confusion (63.4%). furthermore, 85.9% affirmed that clear communication increased productivity and task focus. these findings partially support the research of onwe and asuquo (2022), who argued that consistent, structured communication enhances job clarity. however, the lack of effectiveness of virtual briefings in this study suggests that the format, frequency, or content of these meetings may be inadequate. from the lens of media richness theory, feedback from supervisors qualifies as a richer form of communication due to its interactivity and immediacy. its positive impact on job understanding reaffirms the theory’s claim that mailto:topacademicjournals@gmail.com american journal of arts and communication vol.10, issue 4; july-august 2025; issn: 2994-0540 impact factor: 7.94 1252 columbia rd nw, washington dc, united states https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac; mail: topacademicjournals@gmail.com 56 | a m e r i c a n j o u r n a l o f a r t s a n d c o m m u n i c a t i o n | https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac richer media are more effective in delivering nuanced or complex information. meanwhile, the ineffectiveness of briefings in this study highlights that the richness of the medium must be matched by the appropriateness of content and context. research question 4: what is the relationship between the use of ai-enhanced cloud-based collaboration platforms and job understanding among remote workers in akwa ibom state? the results paint a mixed picture. while the actual use of ai-enhanced platforms was limited, respondents who had access to them acknowledged benefits: 71.8% noted that these tools helped track responsibilities, 64.8% said they clarified task deadlines, and 69.7% agreed that dashboards helped understand project goals. these findings support the claims of eze and okonkwo (2021) and nwachukwu and ifeanyi (2022), who found that ai-powered collaboration tools improve workflow visibility and understanding of job expectations in virtual teams. the implication is that, where these tools are used, they positively impact job comprehension. according to media richness theory, ai-enabled dashboards and collaborative features provide dynamic, layered communication, reducing ambiguity and enhancing decision-making. therefore, their positive correlation with job understanding in this study underscores the theoretical expectation that digital tools can serve as rich media when implemented effectively. summary of findings i. low use of virtual communication strategies. most respondents reported limited use of virtual meetings (83.8%) and email (82.4%) for remote work. ii. minimal adoption of ai-enhanced collaboration tools, with a majority (69.7%) noting their organisations do not use cloud-based platforms, and 58.5% said ai features were lacking. iii. while virtual briefings were not seen as helpful (80.9%), supervisor feedback was mostly effective (78.2%). iv. among users, ai tools helped track responsibilities (71.8%), clarify deadlines (64.8%), and enhance understanding of project goals (69.7%). however, overall usage remains limited. conclusion effective communication and the adoption of innovative technologies have become essential for organisational success especially in today’s rapidly evolving work environment, driven by digital transformation and the rise of remote work. this study highlighted a significant gap in the adoption of modern communication tools and technologies, with many organisations still relying on conventional methods that may not fully support the dynamics of remote work. despite moderate use of structured communication channels and feedback systems, virtual meetings and ai-powered collaboration tools were found to be underutilised. this underutilisation limits the potential benefits of digital platforms in enhancing role clarity, task management, and productivity. however, the findings also revealed that when effectively employed, communication strategies and digital platforms significantly contribute to better job understanding and reduced ambiguity in task execution. as organisations navigate the challenges of remote work, particularly in regions like akwa ibom state, investing in communication infrastructure and employee training will be vital to maximising efficiency and engagement. recommendation mailto:topacademicjournals@gmail.com american journal of arts and communication vol.10, issue 4; july-august 2025; issn: 2994-0540 impact factor: 7.94 1252 columbia rd nw, washington dc, united states https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac; mail: topacademicjournals@gmail.com 57 | a m e r i c a n j o u r n a l o f a r t s a n d c o m m u n i c a t i o n | https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac this study recommends that: i. organisations should adopt structured communication strategies, including regular virtual meetings and official use of emails, to enhance clarity and information flow among remote workers. ii. employers should invest in and integrate ai-enhanced cloud-based collaboration platforms such as google workspace and microsoft teams to support real-time communication, task tracking, and document sharing. iii. comprehensive and continuous training should be provided to employees to improve their digital competencies and ensure effective use of ai-driven collaboration tools. iv. supervisors and team leaders should adopt a feedback-driven communication culture to reinforce job understanding, clarify expectations, and reduce confusion. references akai, i. m., akpan-atata, e., & udoh, u. i. (2025). traditional information communication practices of the annang people of ikot ekpene local government area of akwa ibom state, nigeria. aksu journal of management sciences, 10(1), 279-293. akai, i. m., & uford, i. c. (2025). managing academic research output through researchgate: evidence from federal universities in south-south nigeria. journal of economics, innovative management and entrepreneurship, 3(3). akai, i. m., uford, i. c., & udoh, u. i. (2025). assessing facebook’s influence on research output among lecturers in federal universities in south-south nigeria. direct research journal of social science & educational studies, 13(2), 101-108. akarika, d. c., umoren, p. e., & ikon, a. o. (2021). employees' communication practice and communication climate in tertiary institutions in nigeria. international journal of social sciences & management review, 4(5), 110–122. http://ijssmr.org/uploads2021/ijssmr04_48.pdf akpan-atata, e. a., akai, i. m., & jimmy, k. j. (2024). the role of akwa ibom state university library in leadership and governance for sustainable economic development in nigeria. international journal of library science and educational research, 4(8). https://cambridgeresearchpub.com/ijlser/article/view/274 azizi, s., farzadmehr, v., & montgomery, a. (2023). ai tools and job understanding: when communication strategy matters. journal of applied communication research, 51(1), 45–65. https://doi.org/10.1080/00909882.2022.2132100 cardon, p. w., & marshall, b. 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(2023). comparative analysis and evaluation of business and financial performance of amazon. com: a three-year period critical review of exceptional success. european journal of business, economics and accountancy, 11(2), 69-92. downs, c. w., & adrian, a. d. (2012). assessing organizational communication: strategic communication audit frameworks. guilford press. gajendran, r. s., & joshi, a. (2012). innovation in global virtual teams: accounting for multiple types of diversity. journal of international business studies, 42(6), 718–742. https://doi.org/10.1057/jibs.2011.61 liu, y., zhang, x., & guo, c. (2022). ai-powered collaboration: real-time language translation and sentiment analysis in cloud platforms. computers in human behavior reports, 6, 100175. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.chbr.2022.100175 luo, h., et al. (2023). ai-enhanced cloud collaboration: survey of cloud–edge–terminal networks. ieee communications surveys & tutorials, 25(2), 1432–1471. https://doi.org/10.1109/comst.2023.3338153 maduka, n. s., edwards, h. m., greenwood, d. j., osborne, s. w., & babatunde, s. o. (2018). technologysupported remote work: an exploratory study on the barriers and facilitators of productivity. technological forecasting and social change, 132, 115–129. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.techfore.2018.01.005 maduka, n., onakuse, s. a., & egbon, m. i. (2018). remote communication strategies and job clarity in digital teams. international journal of human resource management, 29(8), 1354–1372. https://doi.org/10.1080/09585192.2017.1359361 mfon, a. a., & uford, i. c. 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(2017). customer and employee-based brand equity driving united bank for africa's market performance (doctoral dissertation, university of the witwatersrand, faculty of commerce, law and management, school of economic & business sciences). umoren, p. e., & ukpe, a. p. (2025a). digital communication in organizations: trends, strengths, and weaknesses. direct research journal of management and strategic studies, 6(1), 55–64. https://journals.directresearchpublisher.org/index.php/drjmss/index umoren, p. e., & ukpe, a. p. (2025b). mediating role of faculty engagement in the relationship between communication strategies and organizational commitment: evidence from akwa ibom state university. direct research journal of social science and educational studies, 13(2), 27–37. https://journals.directresearchpublisher.org/index.php/drjsses waizenegger, l., mckenna, b., cai, w., & bendz, t. (2020). an affordance perspective of team collaboration and enforced working from home during covid-19. european journal of information systems, 29(4), 429–442. https://doi.org/10.1080/0960085x.2020.1800417 waizenegger, l., mckenna, b., cai, w., & bendz, t. (2020). virtual distance matters: the impact of cloud-based collaboration tools on remote work cohesion. journal of information technology, 35(2), 135–156. https://doi.org/10.1177/0268396220905190 walden, j. (2021). adapting strategies for cross-cultural asynchronous work in hybrid teams. international journal of business communication, 58(4), 602–624. https://doi.org/10.1177/2329488420976723 mailto:topacademicjournals@gmail.com https://journals.directresearchpublisher.org/index.php/drjmss/index https://journals.directresearchpublisher.org/index.php/drjsses https://doi.org/10.1177/2329488420976723 american journal of arts and communication vol.10, issue 2; march-april 2025; issn: 2994-0540 impact factor: 7.94 1252 columbia rd nw, washington dc, united states https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac; mail: topacademicjournals@gmail.com 28 | a m e r i c a n j o u r n a l o f a r t s a n d c o m m u n i c a t i o n | https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac principals’ instructional leadership competency and effective management of secondary schools in anambra state obidile, stella ogechukwu (phd) department of educational foundations and administration, nwafor orizu college of education, nsugbe, anambra state email: ellajoseph1920@gmail.com doi: https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.15341181 abstract: this study determined the principals’ instructional leadership competency and effective management of secondary schools in anambra state. two research questions guided the study and two null hypotheses were tested at .05 level of significance. related literature pertinent to the study were reviewed which exposed the need for the study. correlational research design was adopted using a population of all the 263 principals of public secondary schools in the area of the study. the entire population was used as the sample size since the population is a manageable size and the respondents were adequately reached. the instrument for data collection was researcher’s structured questionnaire. cronbach alpha method was used to establish the reliability of the instrument. the overall reliability indexes obtained were 0.81, 0.79 and 0.83. data collected were analyzed using pearson product moment correlation to answer the research questions and to test the null hypotheses at .05 level of significant. statistical package for social sciences (spss) was used to analyze data collected. the results showed that there is an average positive relationship between principals’ instructional leadership competency (monitoring of instruction and promotion of professional development) and effective management of secondary schools in anambra state. the results also showed that there is a significant relationship between principals’ instructional leadership competency (monitoring of instruction and promotion of professional development) and effective management of secondary schools. based on the findings, it was recommended among others that principals should always have routine instructional supervision taking into cognizance the effective classroom management strategies, lesson preparation and delivery as well as class interaction. keywords: instructional leadership competency, principals, effective management of secondary school. introduction secondary education is very important in the nigerian education system and also serves as the link between the primary and higher levels of education. ownership of secondary schools in nigeria is categorized as private and government owned. secondary schools owned by the government are referred to as public schools while those owned by others (religious organizations, non-governmental organizations and individuals) are known as private mailto:topacademicjournals@gmail.com mailto:ellajoseph1920@gmail.com https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.15323413 american journal of arts and communication vol.10, issue 2; march-april 2025; issn: 2994-0540 impact factor: 7.94 1252 columbia rd nw, washington dc, united states https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac; mail: topacademicjournals@gmail.com 29 | a m e r i c a n j o u r n a l o f a r t s a n d c o m m u n i c a t i o n | https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac schools. nnorom, okonkwo, ezeanolue and nwankwo (2020) noted that secondary education develops the individual’s mental capacity, character and behaviour for higher education and useful living within the society. the broad aims of secondary education according to nigeria national policy on education, frn (2014), are preparation of students for useful living within the society and for higher education. the future of a country is on the quality of education given to its citizens, because, education assures the future of the society and provides continuity, as such, it is imperative that a school manager adopts some financial management competencies in order to enhance effective school management in secondary school. for this reason, educational managers responsible for educational institutions have important responsibilities in ensuring quality outputs. this is so because educational system is in continuous interaction with socio-cultural, political and economic systems which surround it. in view of this, for the goals of secondary education to be achieved, school administrators should apply management practices that would help improve school processes and activities. kafele (2016) saw school management as the organization of educational resources and programmes available for education and using them carefully and systematically for achieving educational objectives. school management could be seen as the systematic process of managing the available resources to attain predetermined goals. these resources include; human, time, material, and financial. in secondary schools, principals are the chief executive officers of the schools and they are the head of the school management team. the principal directs the way things are done in the school. thus, principals are in charge of the management of secondary schools. for an administrator to perform effectively, he needs management competency backed by education as a means towards effective management and learning. for example, effectiveness is best estimated in relation to goals of teaching and research. effective school management becomes a necessity for the successful attainment of any educational policy. effective management is the capacity of an administrator to produce desired result of attaining the school objectives. wagbara and ukaigwep (2019) defined effective management as the extent to which the secondary school administrators are able to effectively execute and implement the school policies with regard to the task areas of school administration as laid down by the ministry of education and schools board. wali (2018) stated that effective school management is the process of coordinating human, material and time-based resources efficiently towards the attainment of pre-determined objectives of a school. effective school management should consider successful administrative strategies of what teachers and student value. this is because the underlying basis of secondary school administration and management is the existence of adequately trained administrators with a set goals or aim, and members who have roles assigned to them and a person at the top who coordinates activities to attain the already set goals of the school. effective school administration cut across effective leadership, communication, commitment, social interaction, persuasion and risk management (manager, 2021). according to bilkisu (2018), the success or failure of any educational institution in terms of quality education provision rests highly on the management competence of the administrator. it is most disheartening to note that most principals are underperforming in their statutory administrative functions. empirically, it was reported by mailto:topacademicjournals@gmail.com american journal of arts and communication vol.10, issue 2; march-april 2025; issn: 2994-0540 impact factor: 7.94 1252 columbia rd nw, washington dc, united states https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac; mail: topacademicjournals@gmail.com 30 | a m e r i c a n j o u r n a l o f a r t s a n d c o m m u n i c a t i o n | https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac nmaduagwu (2019) that most public secondary school principals find it very difficult to influence their subordinates to work expectedly. in the same vein, in study involving public secondary school principals, 67% of them agreed that they are not satisfied with their level of achievement in the school administration (nworgu, 2019). similarly, most of the principals submitted that it is difficult to effectively harness the limited human and material resources in the school system (amadi, 2019). thus in any educational enterprise, school administrators with right competencies are hired to perform certain tasks using materials to facilitate the performance of the tasks. okafor in omeke and onah (2012) noted that in nigeria, most of the successes or failures in secondary school management or other institutions depend largely on the influence of these leaders on their subordinates. therefore the success of an organization depends greatly on its management. school management by principals is the planning and delivery of education to ensure that both human and material resources allocated to education are efficiently and effectively used in the achievement of educational objectives and goals. effective school management depends on the competency of principals in handling the activities of the school. stronge, richard and catano (2016) described competency as the ability to do something well, measured against a standard especially ability acquired through experience or training. kruger (2009) stated that competence is a person’s capacity to connect knowledge, skills, attitudes and professional identity that are relevant for a certain profession. it is also described as being adequately or well-qualified physically and intellectually to perform duties of any specific profession. in other words, a competent principal should possess the right knowledge, skills and behaviour needed for effective administration of secondary schools. for organization to meet the expectations of its set goals, it must be effectively and efficiently organized and managed. the ability of the manager to provide sound skills for administration of the school programme is known as managerial competency. managerial competency involves demonstration of one’s abilities through efficient supervision in the classroom, managing human and material resources to achieve the mission and vision of the school. in nigeria today, there is an increasing public fear and complaints that the administrative effectiveness of the principals is jeopardizing due to the falling standard of education over the years (muraina, 2014). ineffective administration have led to hostile school environment, poor implementation of school policies in the area of maintenance of school facilities and inadequate students’ personnel services such as selection, orientation, placement, guidance and counseling as well as poor staff personnel management in secondary schools in nigeria (wagbara & ukaigwep, 2019). there seems to be variations in teachers’ punctuality to school, coverage of scheme of works, mode of continuous assessment of students, date of examinations among others in public and private schools in anambra state. this may be attributed to the difference in instructional leadership practices of public secondary principals. instructional leadership is the act of influencing learning process for desirable academic outcome. according to makau, tanui and ronoh (2016), instructional leadership practices refer to the activities that the principal engages in or delegates to others that promote growth in student learning. si-rajab and musa (2019) defined instructional leadership as the process of setting goals, providing resources for learning, managing curriculum, controlling lessons and evaluating teachers teaching performance. instructional leadership depicts ability to influence people mailto:topacademicjournals@gmail.com american journal of arts and communication vol.10, issue 2; march-april 2025; issn: 2994-0540 impact factor: 7.94 1252 columbia rd nw, washington dc, united states https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac; mail: topacademicjournals@gmail.com 31 | a m e r i c a n j o u r n a l o f a r t s a n d c o m m u n i c a t i o n | https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac to strive for the accomplishment of certain objectives of teaching and learning. the notion of instructional leadership is the attainment of academic excellence for all students. according to boe, lahui and ako in ismail, don, husin and khalid (2018), instructional leadership is very closely related to the role and duty of a school principal such as developing and disseminating school aims, setting targeted standards, coordinating curriculum, supervising and evaluating teachers’ classroom instructions, encouraging students to study and increasing teachers’ and staff professional development. in the view of the researcher, instructional leadership is the act of planning teaching and learning programmes and inspiring, motivating, and exerting influence over staff and students to attain set objectives. there are various components of principals’ instructional leadership practices. these include: framing and communicating, communicating school goals, supervision and evaluation of instruction, curriculum management, monitoring of students’ progress, management of instructional time, providing incentives for teachers (staff welfare), promotion of professional development and providing incentives for students (ahmed, 2016; medina, mansor, wahab & vikaraman, 2018; si-rajab & musa, 2019). hui (2020) noted that the vital roles of principals as instructional leaders include: communicating the vision and mission of the school, using assessment data to improve teaching and learning, monitoring and evaluating teaching and learning, providing professional development programs for teachers, creating and enforcing policies that prioritized teaching and learning. it also involves developing the school time-tables, supervising teachers’ activities and providing resources for effective curriculum implementation. as instructional leaders, school administrators help teachers in identifying trends, discuss with them new teaching techniques and strategies that enhance their teaching skills that benefit learners (lincuna & caingcoy, 2020). the authors also added that it entails managing the introduction of curriculum initiatives in line with policies, working with teachers in curriculum review, enriching the curricular offerings based on local needs, managing the curriculum innovation and enrichment with the use of technology, and organizing teams to champion instructional innovation programs toward curricular responsiveness. the principal can demonstrate effective instructional leadership practices through: planning of school syllabus, assigning tasks to teachers and constantly supervising their instructional for attainment of educational objectives and promoting of sustainable development. instructional leadership practices of principals are directly linked to creating the conditions for optimal teaching and learning. in the context of this study, instructional leadership practices could be referred to as administrative activities and roles that are geared towards providing support for teachers and students to ensure quality instructional delivery for school effectiveness. based on this, it becomes necessary to determine the relationship between principals’ instructional leadership competencies and effective management of secondary schools in these areas of competencies namely monitoring of instruction and promotion of professional development. the quality of teaching and learning outcomes depend on monitoring of instructional practices as well as the administrators involved (komar, komar, kolomiiets, roienko & diachuk, 2019). monitoring is a management tool used in overhauling schools to ensure that effective teaching and learning take place. ndungu, gathu, and bomet (2015) define monitoring as an activity that incorporates constant and systemized checking and keeping mailto:topacademicjournals@gmail.com american journal of arts and communication vol.10, issue 2; march-april 2025; issn: 2994-0540 impact factor: 7.94 1252 columbia rd nw, washington dc, united states https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac; mail: topacademicjournals@gmail.com 32 | a m e r i c a n j o u r n a l o f a r t s a n d c o m m u n i c a t i o n | https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac under scrutiny a program/project that is implemented to improve on the standard of teaching and learning. kyalo, mulwa and nyonje (2015) posited that monitoring is imperative as it guarantees the implementation of the program/project based on plan. it aimed at seeing to it that the project or program plan is followed consistently. in a school set up, monitoring requires inspection and control through ongoing, intermediate and final assessments to highlight improvements in the attainment of learning goals and for quality teaching and learning outcomes. for quality teaching and learning outcomes to be achieved, the school principals’ must put in place and enhance practices that increase monitoring (ibrahim & benson, 2020). in a school, the principal serves as the team leader who monitors teaching and learning processes in schools by putting necessary strategies (kiptum, 2018). principals monitors instructional practices of teachers such as their preparation for the lesson, lesson presentation, assessment methods used by the teacher as well giving monitoring feedback to teachers on their teaching methods and resources. monitoring helps school principals to discover the needs of the learners and difficulties encountered by the teachers as they dispense knowledge (mngomezulu & bhengu, 2015). leiva, montecinos, ahumada, campos, and guerra (2016) asserted that monitoring practices should be more than just formal method of complying with rules/policies but should give information concerning the strengths and weaknesses of a project/program. niyivuga , otara and tuyishime (2019) established that monitoring of instructional practices also apply to different levels of staff self-assessment, student-staff evaluation, peer evaluation, and principals’ evaluation. however, most principals spent most of their time going for meetings and doing other administrative duties with little focus on management of teaching and learning processes (mngomezulu & bhengu, 2015). ndungu’, et al cited in otieno (2022) observed that most of the principals are not checking lesson plans because the teachers are not preparing them, and that a few teachers who make lesson plans are more productive than the ones who did not. the head-teachers’ involvement in observation of instructional process was not frequent, monitoring preparation and use of professional document was never done and that checking of learners’ notebooks was rarely conducted (sankale, 2015). when teachers are not monitored well, their efficacy to instructional delivery is negatively affected and the instructional objective may not be well achieved leading to low quality of teaching and learning outcomes (sule, ameh & egbai, 2015). thus, monitoring makes it easy for managers (principals) to maintain clarity, responsibility, reporting and empowering all the concerns of the people in the organization teachers’ professional development is regarded as a key contribution to enhancing quality education. professional development involves the career-long processes and related systems and policies designed to enable educators (teachers, administrators and supervisors) to acquire, broaden and deepen their knowledge, skills and commitment in order to effectively assist students perform well in their examinations. staff professional development is a learning programme designed to help the staff update and refine their knowledge, skills, and attitudes required to meet the new challenges and technologies in the education system. onyali, akinfolarin and famuti (2018) asserted that teachers’ professional development broadens their knowledge and modernizes their skills to cope with changes and innovation and also handle the various challenges brought about by advancement in technology. teachers require staff professional development programmes to address dynamic roles and responsibilities of mailto:topacademicjournals@gmail.com american journal of arts and communication vol.10, issue 2; march-april 2025; issn: 2994-0540 impact factor: 7.94 1252 columbia rd nw, washington dc, united states https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac; mail: topacademicjournals@gmail.com 33 | a m e r i c a n j o u r n a l o f a r t s a n d c o m m u n i c a t i o n | https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac teaching profession so as to meet the contemporary needs of the society. the staff development practices include; evening courses, short courses; conferences, workshops and seminars; correspondence courses and study leaves with pay among others (ojiemhenkele, 2014). professional development’s main purpose is to improve learner achievement as attested by majority of educational researchers and policy makers (mwihaki, kagema & wambugu, 2019). teachers require ongoing and appropriate training to be able to incorporate evidence-based methods into their teaching, to enhance the quality of instruction given to students and to improve educational outcomes (didion et al., 2020). according to mutuku (2015), the teacher training keep the teachers in touch with the current educational thinking in order to maintain good practice and raise standards of teaching. mutuku (2015) further asserts that these skills promote the performance of the teacher, the teacher is able to transmit the acquired knowledge, skills and attitudes to the learners in the learning process hence attainment of quality education by learners. mwihaki, kagema and wambugu (2019) stated that professional development influences student performance in three different ways: it enhances teacher knowledge and skills which then enhance classroom practice and teaching which on the other hand elevates students’ attainment. the most useful professional development activity focuses on engaging instructors to concentrate on the needs of their learners. they learn together with an aim of ensuring that all students achieve success. school principals as instructional leaders have to employ instructional practices. monitoring of instruction and promotion of professional development of teachers is among these practices. all these are geared towards the achievement of the school’s intended objectives which include better academic performance. school principals have the pivotal roles in leading and managing schools. school principals have crucial roles in any school system in the world especially in developing countries. however, reports showed that principals of nigerian secondary schools are more of administrative leaders rather than instructional leaders because according to the reports, they are mostly preoccupied with strictly administrative duties in their offices, leaving the management, instructional leadership, monitoring of instruction and promotion of professional development responsibilities in the hands of teachers alone. it is against this background that the researchers sought to evaluate the principals’ instructional leadership and effective management of secondary schools in anambra state. statement of the problem ideally, secondary school principals are expected to promote effective management in education of the citizens for national development. it is the expectation of the government, parents and even students that quality education is received by students in nigeria secondary schools through the adoption of appropriate instructional leadership competencies by the principals. however, observations have shown that there seems to be poor principals’ management processes which have led to an ineffective management in secondary schools in anambra state. lack of principals’ effective management and supervision make the teachers to abscond from their duties. some of the teachers do not even properly prepare their lesson and as such dictates or give to the class prefect to write on the board. a good number of them leave their duty post at will. this unfortunate development may negatively affect the performance of the students in both internal and external examinations. this may in one way or the mailto:topacademicjournals@gmail.com american journal of arts and communication vol.10, issue 2; march-april 2025; issn: 2994-0540 impact factor: 7.94 1252 columbia rd nw, washington dc, united states https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac; mail: topacademicjournals@gmail.com 34 | a m e r i c a n j o u r n a l o f a r t s a n d c o m m u n i c a t i o n | https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac other disrupt the normal school operation as well as in the actualization of the lofty goals and objectives. this can be seen in the areas of the inadequate instructional leadership by the principals like school facilities and professional development among others. for any school to function effectively, the school facilities must be in good condition. these situations seem to have led to poor academic achievement among the secondary school students, among others. the above situation should not be allowed to continue, hence the problem of this study put in question form is, ‘what is the relationship between principals’ instructional leadership competency and effective management of secondary schools in anambra state? purpose of the study the main purpose of the study is to examine principals’ instructional leadership competency and effective management of secondary schools in anambra state. specifically, the study sought to determine the principals’: 1. monitoring of instruction and effective management of secondary schools 2. promotion of professional development and effective management of secondary schools research questions the following research questions guided the study: 1. what is the relationship between principals’ monitoring of instruction and effective management of secondary schools in anambra state? 2. what is the relationship between principals’ promotion of professional development and effective management of secondary schools in anambra state? hypotheses the following null hypotheses were tested 0.05 level of significance: 1. there is no significant relationship between principals’ monitoring of instruction and effective management of secondary schools in anambra state. 2. there is no significant relationship between principals’ promotion of professional development and effective management of secondary schools in anambra state. method the correlational research design was adopted in this study. nworgu (2015) defined correlational design as the type of design that seeks to establish the relationship between two or more variables as well as indicating the direction and magnitude of the relationship between the variables. the study was carried out in state-owned public secondary schools in anambra state. the population for this study consisted of all the 263 principals of public secondary schools in the area of the study. the entire population was used as the sample size since the population is a manageable size and the respondents were adequately reached. two structured questionnaires which were developed by the researcher were used for data collection from the respondents (that is; principals). both questionnaires designed for only principals as the respondents, were constructed in line with the purpose of the study and research questions. the first questionnaire was titled “principals’ instructional leadership mailto:topacademicjournals@gmail.com american journal of arts and communication vol.10, issue 2; march-april 2025; issn: 2994-0540 impact factor: 7.94 1252 columbia rd nw, washington dc, united states https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac; mail: topacademicjournals@gmail.com 35 | a m e r i c a n j o u r n a l o f a r t s a n d c o m m u n i c a t i o n | https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac questionnaire (pilq) containing 20 items. pilq has two sections of a and b. section a contained the personal data of the respondents and elicited such information as the status of the respondents based on their education zones. section b of the pilq was arranged and organized into 2 clusters. the second questionnaire titled “effective school management questionnaire (esmq)” was designed to gather information from the principals on effective school administration. esmq have only one section with 10 items. the instrument designed for this study was subjected to face validity. the instrument were validated by three experts in the field. to ascertain the internal consistency of the instrument, cronbach alpha was used. the application of statistical package for social sciences (spss) version 25 using cronbach alpha reliability method was used to determine reliability coefficient values of 0.81, 0.79 and 0.83. the researcher administered 263 copies of the questionnaire personally to the respondents in their schools with the aid of five research assistants who were briefed by the researcher. a period of two weeks was used for the administration of the instrument to ensure a high response rate. out of the 263 copies of questionnaire distributed, sixteen were incompletely filled and eight were not returned, hence twenty four copies of the questionnaire were not utilized. thus, 239 copies of the questionnaire represented 90.87% return rate were used for data analysis. the data collected for this study was analyzed using the pearson product moment correlation to test the degree of relationship. the decision rule for the two research questions, the coefficient (r) and the size of the relationship was interpreted using the interpretation of correlation coefficient by onunkwo in obi (2016) as 0.8 to 1.0 (very high), 0.6 to 0.8 (high), 0.4 to 0.6 (average), 0.2 to 0.4 (low) and 0.0 to 0.2 (very low). for the hypotheses, pvalue was used for decision making for the hypotheses. where the calculated p-value is less than the stipulated level of significance (.05), it means that there is significant difference between subject mean scores and the null hypothesis was rejected. conversely, where the calculated p-value is equal to or greater than the stipulated level of significance (.05), it means that there is no significant difference between mean scores of variables in emphasis and the null hypothesis was not rejected. statistical package for social sciences (spss) version 23 was used to analyze the data. results research question 1 what is the relationship between principals’ monitoring of instruction and effective management of secondary schools in anambra state? table 1: pearson r on the correlation between principals’ monitoring of instruction and effective school management source of variation n r remark principals’ monitoring of instruction effective school management 239 0.593 average positive relationship table 1 shows that there is an average positive relationship existing between principals’ monitoring of instruction and effective management of public secondary schools in anambra state. this is evident by the size of the pearson's correlation coefficient r, which is 0.593. mailto:topacademicjournals@gmail.com american journal of arts and communication vol.10, issue 2; march-april 2025; issn: 2994-0540 impact factor: 7.94 1252 columbia rd nw, washington dc, united states https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac; mail: topacademicjournals@gmail.com 36 | a m e r i c a n j o u r n a l o f a r t s a n d c o m m u n i c a t i o n | https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac research question 2 what is the relationship between principals’ promotion of professional development and effective management of secondary schools in anambra state? table 2: pearson r on the correlation between principals’ promotion of professional development and effective school management source of variation n r remark principals’ promotion of professional development effective school management 239 0.515 average positive relationship table 2 shows that the pearson’s r = 0.515, indicating that there is an average positive relationship between principals’ promotion of professional development and effective management of secondary schools in anambra state. hypothesis 1 there is no significant relationship between principals’ monitoring of instruction and effective management of secondary schools in anambra state. table 3: test of significance of pearson correlation between principals’ monitoring of instruction and effective school management source of variation n r p-value remark principals’ monitoring of instruction effective school management 239 0.593 0.001 sig analysis in table 3 shows that there is a significant relationship between principals’ monitoring of instruction and effective management of secondary schools in anambra state. the calculated r (0.593) had p-value < 0.05. the 1st null hypothesis was therefore rejected. hypothesis 2 there is no significant relationship between principals’ promotion of professional development and effective management of secondary schools in anambra state. table 4: test of significance of pearson correlation between principals’ promotion of professional development and effective school management source of variation n r p-value remark principals’ promotion of professional development effective school management 239 0.515 0.00 sig table 4 shows that there is a significant relationship between principals’ promotion of professional development and effective management of secondary schools in anambra state. the calculated r (0.515) had p-value < 0.05. the 2nd null hypothesis was therefore rejected. mailto:topacademicjournals@gmail.com american journal of arts and communication vol.10, issue 2; march-april 2025; issn: 2994-0540 impact factor: 7.94 1252 columbia rd nw, washington dc, united states https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac; mail: topacademicjournals@gmail.com 37 | a m e r i c a n j o u r n a l o f a r t s a n d c o m m u n i c a t i o n | https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac discussion results of the study revealed that there is an average positive relationship between principals’ monitoring of instruction and effective management of secondary schools in anambra state. this implies that principals diagnostic monitoring include access to curriculum, abiding by scheme of work, use of diary, writing of lesson note, writing of lesson plan, truancy in students, discipline and counselling of students in public secondary schools. this finding corroborates with that of akporehe and asiyai (2021) who discovered that some principals conferred desired courtesy to monitoring of teachers’ school attendance, adequacy of diaries and preparation of lesson notes while duties such as the provision of reference books, instructional materials, review and feedback of activities with educational stakeholders were slightest performed by most school principals. in support of this akinfolarin and emetarom (2017) revealed that school principals are not involved in instructional supervision practices to witness classroom instruction and ensure that curriculum are covered, teachers’ compliance to schedules in school was not monitored, regular meeting with teachers where instructional challenges were discussed and give feedback to teachers after class surveillance in anambra state. in line with the study opurum (2019) stated that instructional supervision helps in lesson preparation, feedback mechanism and teaching aid utilization. effective monitoring to ensure high quality organizational outcomes requires careful consideration of appropriate assessment and data tools. furthermore, findings of this study also indicated a positive significant relationship between principals’ monitoring of instruction and effective management of secondary schools in anambra state. results of the study indicated that there is an average positive relationship between principals’ promotion of professional development and effective management of secondary schools in anambra state. this finding is in consonance with that of ololo, onditi and mwebi (2024) who observed that most teachers have embraced continuous teacher professional development to equip themselves with current professional knowledge and skills to effectively deliver the curriculum and promote good quality learning outcomes. effective professional development should take cognizance of the needs of teachers, learners and school context. these findings were further supported by the principals during the interviews who reported that a few number of teachers demonstrate changes in their professional behaviours after attending t.p.d. courses. the finding imply that the principals should connect professional development of teachers to improvement in academic performance by ensuring that all professional development courses attended by teachers address school needs (darling-hammond, 2017). ndabuki, kasivu and mwanza (2020) also revealed that principals support staff professional development in their schools by ensuring that funds are made available in the school annual budget for capacitybuilding. these study findings imply that principals of public secondary schools greatly support and promote the idea of staff professional development for their teachers. furthermore, findings of this study also indicated a positive significant relationship between principals’ promotion of professional development and effective management of secondary schools in anambra state. this finding is in agreement with that of shikokoti, okoth and chepkonga (2021) who reported that there is a relationship between principals’ involvement on professional development mailto:topacademicjournals@gmail.com american journal of arts and communication vol.10, issue 2; march-april 2025; issn: 2994-0540 impact factor: 7.94 1252 columbia rd nw, washington dc, united states https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac; mail: topacademicjournals@gmail.com 38 | a m e r i c a n j o u r n a l o f a r t s a n d c o m m u n i c a t i o n | https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac and teachers’ job satisfaction. this implies that the more principals do promote professional development the more teachers are satisfied with their jobs. conclusion the findings of the study showed that there is a positive and significant relationship between principals’ instructional leadership (monitoring of instruction and promotion of professional development) and effective management of secondary schools in anambra state. principals’ application of instructional leadership competency in school management is essential for improving quality of instructional delivery. it is hoped therefore, that if all these tasks are satisfactorily performed by the principals and their performance greatly enhanced through ways suggested improving their competencies, the quality (in terms of professional and technical competencies) of our secondary school products will be improved. it will also ensure the attainment of the objectives of secondary school education as stipulated in the national policy on education. recommendations based on the findings of this study, the following recommendations were made: 1. the school principals should always have routine instructional supervision taking into cognizance the effective classroom management strategies, lesson preparation and delivery as well as class interaction. 2. school principals should appoint head-teachers who could assist them in checking teacher lesson note. they should ensure that records (diary, result, continuous assessment) are monitored in the school. 3. there is need to encourage teachers to attend professional developments this will enable them teachers advance with current trends in education. 4. government of nigeria through the ministry of education and teachers service commission and all other education stakeholders embrace and support staff professional development to enhance learner performance in secondary schools. 5. training of both principals and teachers will equip them with knowledge and skills required in curriculum delivery in schools for better learner performance. references ahmed, k.a. (2016). instructional leadership practices in secondary schools of assosa zone, ethiopia. international journal of advanced multidisciplinary research and review, 4(7), 192-05. akinfolarin, a. v. (2017). analysis of principals’ managerial competencies for effective management of school resources in secondary schools in anambra state, nigeria. international journal of social sciences, humanities and education, 1(4), 236-245. akporehe, d. a., & asiyai, r. i. (2021). principals’ management strategies in monitoring instruction towards goal achievement in delta state public secondary school. journal of education and social policy, 8(4), 57-65. mailto:topacademicjournals@gmail.com american journal of arts and communication vol.10, issue 2; march-april 2025; issn: 2994-0540 impact factor: 7.94 1252 columbia rd nw, washington dc, united states https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac; mail: topacademicjournals@gmail.com 39 | a m e r i c a n j o u r n a l o f a r t s a n d c o m m u n i c a t i o n | https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac bilkisu, b.a. (2018). assessment of financial management practices among secondary school principals in kaduna state. international journal of hospitality & tourism management, 2(2), 22-27. didion, l., toste, j. r., and filderman, m. j. (2020). teacher professional development and student reading achievement: a meta-analytic review of the effects. journal of research on educational effectiveness, 13(1), 29–66. https://doi.org/10.1080/19345 747.2019. 1670884 federal republic of nigeria (frn, 2014). national policy on education. lagos: nerdc press. hui, x. (2020). the principal as a curriculum-instructional leader: a strategy for curriculum implementation in cameroon secondary schools. international journal of education and research, 8(4), 81-96. ibrahim, k., & benson, m. (2020). monitoring of teacher effectiveness, a case of teacher performance appraisal and development tool in public secondary schools in nyandarua south subcounty, kenya. advances in social sciences research journal, 7(1) 320-329. ismail, m.z. mansor, a. n., iksan, z. & nor, m.y.m. (2018). influence of principals’ instructional leadership on science teaching competency. creative education, 9(1), 22342244. kiptum, b. (2015). factors promoting the use of non-directive model of instructional supervision among public secondary school teachers in nandi south sub-county, nandi county, kenya (unpublished master’s thesis). university of eastern africa, baraton, kenya komar, o.a, komar, o. s, kolomiiets, n. a, roienko, l. m, & diachuk, p.v. (2019). implementation of a monitoring system in the educational process in primary school. international journal of learning, teaching and educational research. retrieved from https://www.ijlter.org/index.php/ijlter/article/view/1776/0. kyalo, k.,mulwa, a.,& nyonje, r. (2015). monitoring and evaluation of projects and ppograms, a handbook for students and practitioners, aura publishers, nairobi. leiva, m.v., montecinos, c., ahumada, l. campos, i, & guerra, s (2016), novice principals’ instructional management practices in high poverty, low performing schools in chile. procedia -social and behavioral sciences 237 (2017) 3 – 9 lincuna, l.b. & caingcoy, m.e. (2020). instructional leadership practices of school administrators: the case of elsalvador city division, philippines. commonwealth journal of academic research, 1(2), 12-32. mailto:topacademicjournals@gmail.com american journal of arts and communication vol.10, issue 2; march-april 2025; issn: 2994-0540 impact factor: 7.94 1252 columbia rd nw, washington dc, united states https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac; mail: topacademicjournals@gmail.com 40 | a m e r i c a n j o u r n a l o f a r t s a n d c o m m u n i c a t i o n | https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac manager (2021). school administration. https://dismissalsoftware.com/ten-qualitiesofa-good-schooladministrator/ . medina, n.i., mansor, a.n., wahab, j.l.a. & vikaraman, s. (2018). principals’ instructional leadership in small school: a preliminary study. international journal of academic research in business & social sciences, 8(8), 675-685. mngomezulu n.m & bhengu t.t. (2015). strategies of monitoring teaching and learning: a school management team perspective, university of kwazulu-natal. durban, south africa muraina, m.b. (2014). principals’ managerial skills and administrative effectiveness in secondary schools in oyo state, nigeria. global journal of management and business research, 14(3), 51-57. mutuku, k. (2015). kenya national union of teachers’ initiatives influencing provision of quality education in primary schools in machakos county, kenya. (unpublished phd thesis).the university of nairobi. mwikaki, i. c., kagema, j. n., & wambugu, g. m. (2019). principals’ role in promoting teachers’ professional development and learners’ performance in secondary schools in murang’a and kirinyaga counties, kenya. international journal of education and literacy studies, 7(4), 35-45. ojiemhenkele, a.e. (2014). in-service training: a panacea for teachers’ job effectiveness and productivity. studies in education: a journal of the faculty of education, ambrose ali university, ekpoma, 14(1), 7581. ololo, t. o., onditi, m. a., & mwebi, b. (2024). influence of principals’ promotion of professional development of teachers on learners’ academic performance in kenya certificate of secondary education in kisii county kenya. international journal of innovative science and research technology, 9(4), 2186-2198. onyali, l. c., & akinfolarin, a. v. (2017). principals’ application of instructional leadership practices for secondary school effectiveness in oyo state. journal of the nigerian academy of education-jonaed, 13(1), 32-44. otieno, m. (2022). principals’ monitoring of instructional practices and its influence on teaching and learning outcomes in public secondary schools in kajiado county kenya. a research thesis submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements of the award of the degree of master of education (educational research, assessment and evaluation) of kenyatta university mailto:topacademicjournals@gmail.com https://dismissalsoftware.com/ten-qualitiesof american journal of arts and communication vol.10, issue 2; march-april 2025; issn: 2994-0540 impact factor: 7.94 1252 columbia rd nw, washington dc, united states https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac; mail: topacademicjournals@gmail.com 41 | a m e r i c a n j o u r n a l o f a r t s a n d c o m m u n i c a t i o n | https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac ndambuki, b. k., kasivu, g. m., & mwanza, r. (2020). influence of principals’ promotion of staff professional development onstudents’ performance in kenya certificate of secondary education (kcse) in public secondary schools in makueni county, kenya."iosr journal of research & method in education (iosrjrme), 10(3), (2020): pp. 40-45. ndung’u, b.w, gathu, a. & bomett, e. j. (2015). influence of monitoring and evaluation by principals on effective teaching and learning in public secondary schools in githunguri district. journal of education and practice issn 2222-1735 6(9) niyivuga b, otara a, & tuyishime (2019). monitoring and evaluation practices and academic staff motivation: implications in higher education within rwandan context https://doi.org/10.1177%2f2158244019829564 nnorom, s.u., okonkwo, o. e., ezeanolue, a.o. & nwankwo, b.c. (2020). constraints to effective learners disciplinary management and implementation strategies by principals in public secondary schools in south eastern nigeria. international journal of arts and social science, 3(5), 8-19. nworgu, b. g. (2015). educational research: basic issues and methodology (3rd edition). enugu: university trust publishers. sankale, t.a (2015). influence of head teachers’ instructional supervisory practices on pupils’ performance at kenya certificate of primary education in ololulunga division, narok county. unpublished master of education thesis, university of nairobi shikokoti, h., okoth, u., & chepkonga, s. (2021). principals’ promoting professional development on teachers’ job satisfaction in public secondary schools in kakamega county kenya. journal of humanities and social sciences, 26(5,9), 30-37. si-rajab, s.b. & musa, k.b. (2019). the level of instructional leadership practices among principals of national religious secondary school in malaysia. international journal of scientific research and management, 7(3), 927-939. stronge, j. h., richard, h. b. & catano, n. (2016). qualities of effective principals (2nd ed.). ascd books. sule, m.a., ameh, e. & egbai, m.e. (2015). instructional supervisory practices and teachers’ role effectiveness in public secondary schools in calabar south local government area of cross river state, nigeria. journal of education and practice, 6(23), 43-46. wagbara, c.d. & ukaigwep, c. (2019). principals’ leadership styles and administrative effectiveness in public senior secondary schools in rivers state. international journal of research and innovation in social science, 3(10), 529-535. mailto:topacademicjournals@gmail.com chapter one american journal of arts and communication vol.10, issue 4; july-august 2025; issn: 2994-0540 impact factor: 7.94 1252 columbia rd nw, washington dc, united states https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac; mail: topacademicjournals@gmail.com 30 | a m e r i c a n j o u r n a l o f a r t s a n d c o m m u n i c a t i o n | https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac political communication, rule of law and democratic vigilance: enhancing citizen participation in nigeria’s democratic process eke, chigozi (ph.d) and george, nneoma nora (phd) department of linguistics and communication studies, university of port harcourt, rivers state, nigeria email: chigozi_eke@uniport.edu.ng/ norageorge777@gmail.com doi: https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.16028589 abstract: this study ascertained political communication, rule of law and democratic vigilance: enhancing citizen participation in nigeria’s democratic process. the deliberative democracy theory was anchored in this study. this study adopted a qualitative research methodology anchored on email interviews. the research design was a descriptive exploratory design, suitable for capturing in-depth, context-rich narratives and individual perceptions. the population of the study comprises politically active nigerian citizens, including civil society actors, legal practitioners, journalists and social media influencers, estimated at 5,000 individuals across nigeria’s six geopolitical zones, based on civil society engagement records and professional associations. these individuals were chosen due to their active involvement in political discourse and civic advocacy. from this population, a sample size of 30 respondents was selected using purposive sampling. data were collected through semistructured email interviews. the data were analysed using thematic content analysis, which involved coding responses, identifying recurring themes, and interpreting patterns in relation to the study variables. findings revealed that political communication in nigeria has the potential to influence citizen participation positively, especially, through social media and community engagement but its effectiveness is weakened by mistrust, elite control of narratives and widespread misinformation that often alienate and confuse the public rather than empower them. the study concluded that while political communication holds immense potential to mobilize nigerian citizens and foster democratic participation, its effectiveness remains undermined by elite manipulation, lack of trust and the spread of misinformation revealing an urgent need for more transparent, inclusive, and citizen-centred communication strategies in the democratic process. the study recommended that the national orientation agency (noa), in collaboration with the independent national electoral commission (inec) and media regulatory bodies such as the nigerian broadcasting commission (nbc), develop and implement inclusive political communication frameworks that prioritise civic education, ethical political messaging, and media literacy. these institutions should also monitor and regulate political advertisements and campaign communications to reduce misinformation and promote issue-based engagement that encourages citizen participation mailto:topacademicjournals@gmail.com american journal of arts and communication vol.10, issue 4; july-august 2025; issn: 2994-0540 impact factor: 7.94 1252 columbia rd nw, washington dc, united states https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac; mail: topacademicjournals@gmail.com 31 | a m e r i c a n j o u r n a l o f a r t s a n d c o m m u n i c a t i o n | https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac keywords: political communication, rule of law, democratic vigilance, citizen participation, nigeria’s democratic process introduction political communication remains a cornerstone of democratic development globally, forming the medium through which governments and citizens interact in ways that shape public opinion, guide policy decisions and consolidate democratic institutions. in an era characterised by rapid technological advancement and a shift in communicative practices, political communication has evolved beyond traditional forms such as party rallies, print media and state-controlled broadcasts. it now encompasses social media, digital campaigns and participatory platforms that influence public discourse and citizen engagement. countries with strong political communication strategies, such as the united states, germany and sweden have successfully used it to build inclusive governance structures, hold leaders accountable and ensure effective public participation (chadwick, 2013). the rule of law, on the other hand, functions as the foundational principle upon which democratic societies are built. it ensures that governance is carried out according to established legal frameworks that apply equally to all citizens, regardless of their status. at the global level, the rule of law is emphasised by institutions such as the united nations and the european union as essential for sustainable development, peace and justice (united nations, 2019). in africa, however, the application of the rule of law has remained inconsistent, often undermined by autocratic tendencies, corruption, weak institutions and impunity. the african union’s african governance architecture (aga) has continued to advocate for the integration of rule of law into political governance, although many member states still lag in implementation (african union commission, 2022). democratic vigilance refers to the conscious and active participation of citizens in safeguarding democratic values, processes and institutions. it encompasses civil activism, political participation, media freedom, judicial independence and constant scrutiny of governmental power. in mature democracies like canada and denmark, democratic vigilance is institutionalised through civic education, strong civil society structures and open media systems. in africa, however, democratic vigilance faces challenges such as state repression, voter apathy and political exclusion, although there have been notable improvements through grassroots movements, media activism and increasing youth engagement in political discourse (gyimah-boadi & logan, 2020). in nigeria, the intersection of political communication, rule of law and democratic vigilance plays a critical role in determining the quality of its democracy. since returning to civilian rule in 1999, nigeria has made significant progress in liberalising its political space, enabling vibrant political communication, particularly, through digital media. however, challenges persist, including state-sponsored disinformation, election-related violence, media censorship and inadequate civic education. despite a vibrant press and active social media landscape, the ability of political communication to genuinely enhance citizen participation is limited by elite capture of political discourse and deep-rooted ethno-religious divisions (ojebuyi & salawu, 2020). mailto:topacademicjournals@gmail.com tel:2013 tel:2019 tel:2022 tel:2020 tel:1999 tel:2020 american journal of arts and communication vol.10, issue 4; july-august 2025; issn: 2994-0540 impact factor: 7.94 1252 columbia rd nw, washington dc, united states https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac; mail: topacademicjournals@gmail.com 32 | a m e r i c a n j o u r n a l o f a r t s a n d c o m m u n i c a t i o n | https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac the rule of law in nigeria is often regarded as weak, characterised by selective justice, prolonged judicial processes and institutional decay. though the nigerian constitution upholds the separation of powers, judicial independence is frequently threatened by executive interference, lack of autonomy and political intimidation (okeke, 2021). these challenges erode public trust in legal institutions and hinder the enforcement of citizens’ rights, thereby, weakening the broader democratic framework. without a credible and functional legal system, citizen participation cannot be effectively guaranteed or protected, as democratic rights and responsibilities must be anchored in legal certainty. democratic vigilance in nigeria is a mixed reality. while there is evidence of a politically conscious citizenry, particularly, among the youth and civil society groups, this vigilance is often curtailed by institutional repression, insecurity and socioeconomic hardship. protests such as the #endsars movement in 2020 reflect a growing demand for accountable governance and citizen empowerment. however, the subsequent governmental crackdown on activists, use of surveillance and judicial harassment have illustrated the fragility of nigeria’s democratic vigilance. the lack of institutional support for whistle-blowers, independent journalism, and public dissent further undermines the spirit of democratic oversight (amnesty international, 2021). political communication, when properly harnessed, has the potential to bridge the gap between governance and the governed. in democratic settings, it enables the dissemination of political ideologies, encourages public debate and fosters political accountability. in the nigerian context, however, political communication is often weaponised to polarise electorates, spread propaganda and suppress dissent. the proliferation of fake news and political misinformation on digital platforms further complicates efforts to use political communication as a tool for inclusion and participation (udeze & chukwuere, 2021). this reflects a need for media literacy, ethical communication practices, and regulatory frameworks that protect free speech while curbing harmful content. at the heart of citizen participation lies the concept of civic engagement, which is nurtured by transparent communication, lawful governance and vigilant oversight. globally, countries that prioritise civic education, open government data, and participatory budgeting have seen enhanced citizen trust and policy responsiveness (oecd, 2020). in nigeria, however, civic education remains underfunded and politicised, leading to widespread political ignorance and disillusionment among citizens. electoral processes are often marred by vote-buying, intimidation and low voter turnout, which are indicative of weak political communication strategies and an absence of trust in legal and democratic systems. a robust democratic culture demands a synergy between political communication, adherence to the rule of law and active democratic vigilance. this triadic relationship creates a participatory political environment where citizens not only vote but also engage in ongoing political processes, demand transparency and challenge injustice. in sub-saharan africa, where democratic backsliding is becoming increasingly evident, reinforcing this relationship is vital for democratic consolidation. nigeria, as africa’s largest democracy, holds a strategic position in shaping the continent’s democratic trajectory, making it imperative to address these variables in an integrated manner (freedom house, 2023). mailto:topacademicjournals@gmail.com tel:2021 tel:2020 tel:2021 tel:2021 tel:2020 tel:2023 american journal of arts and communication vol.10, issue 4; july-august 2025; issn: 2994-0540 impact factor: 7.94 1252 columbia rd nw, washington dc, united states https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac; mail: topacademicjournals@gmail.com 33 | a m e r i c a n j o u r n a l o f a r t s a n d c o m m u n i c a t i o n | https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac despite over two decades of democratic rule in nigeria, citizen participation remains weak, inconsistent and largely reactive, raising significant concerns about the effectiveness of political communication, the integrity of the rule of law and the level of democratic vigilance in the country. political communication in nigeria is often top-down, dominated by elites and saturated with propaganda and misinformation, particularly, during election seasons. social media have emerged as a new platform for political engagement, yet, it is frequently unregulated and vulnerable to disinformation, echo chambers and cyber repression. the rule of law, although constitutionally enshrined, is regularly undermined by selective justice, lack of judicial independence and executive overreach, creating a hostile environment for civil rights enforcement. while there have been isolated instances of democratic vigilance, such as the #endsars protests and court advocacy campaigns, the absence of sustained institutional mechanisms for civic activism and legal recourse has rendered such movements fragile. this creates a paradox where the presence of democratic structures does not equate to democratic substance. as a result, citizen participation in governance, policymaking and accountability remains minimal, uninformed or entirely excluded, especially, among rural populations, women and youth. a critical review of existing literature reveals several gaps that this study intends to fill. conceptually, there is a lack of integrated analysis linking political communication, the rule of law and democratic vigilance in a singular framework to explain and enhance citizen participation in nigeria. empirically, most studies have treated these variables in isolation, focusing either on media influence (ojebuyi & salawu, 2020), electoral behaviour or legal constraints without connecting them to systemic civic empowerment outcomes. methodologically, there is a scarcity of mixed-method approaches that combine qualitative insights with quantitative assessments of citizen participation across different demographics and regions. theoretically, there is limited application of intersectional frameworks that address how communication, legal rights and civic behaviour interact under nigeria’s unique socio-political conditions. there also exists a population gap, as much of the research centres on urban elites, neglecting grassroots citizens whose participation is most suppressed. furthermore, the practical gap lies in the absence of actionable policy models that integrate ethical political messaging, accessible legal institutions and community-level democratic education. these interlinked challenges underscore a significant knowledge void in understanding how the triad of political communication, rule of law and democratic vigilance can be harnessed as a unified mechanism to strengthen democratic participation in nigeria’s fragile democracy. this study seeks to investigate how political communication shapes citizen participation in nigeria’s democratic process, particularly, across diverse social and demographic groups. it also assesses the extent to which the rule of law promotes or undermines civic engagement and participation in governance. additionally, the study explores the role of democratic vigilance, expressed through civil society actions, public protests and institutional watchdogs in enhancing or limiting consistent and meaningful citizen involvement in nigeria’s democratic development. citizen participation mailto:topacademicjournals@gmail.com american journal of arts and communication vol.10, issue 4; july-august 2025; issn: 2994-0540 impact factor: 7.94 1252 columbia rd nw, washington dc, united states https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac; mail: topacademicjournals@gmail.com 34 | a m e r i c a n j o u r n a l o f a r t s a n d c o m m u n i c a t i o n | https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac citizen participation refers to the active involvement of individuals and groups in political, civic and governance processes within a democratic setting. this includes voting, engaging in political discussions, attending public meetings, protesting, joining civil society groups and monitoring public institutions. globally, citizen participation is regarded as a central component of a functional democracy, as it helps to ensure accountability, legitimacy, and responsiveness of governance structures (verba et al., 1995). in nigeria, however, participation remains uneven and often episodic, with high voter apathy, limited civic engagement and public distrust in political processes, especially among marginalised populations such as women, youth, and rural dwellers (arowolo & aluko, 2012). the various forms of citizen participation exist, ranging from electoral to non-electoral engagement. electoral participation includes activities such as registering to vote and voting during elections, while non-electoral participation comprises protests, advocacy campaigns, community organising and public commentary on policy issues. in the nigerian context, while electoral participation is relatively measurable, non-electoral participation is less documented and under-researched (omotola, 2010). this limits the ability to evaluate the full scope of democratic engagement and understand the mechanisms that facilitate or hinder it. thus, this study adopts a broader conceptualization of citizen participation that integrates both electoral and non-electoral activities to provide a holistic view of democratic involvement. furthermore, the effectiveness of citizen participation is often mediated by structural and institutional factors such as political education, accessibility of governance, protection of civil liberties and public perception of efficacy. where citizens feel that their voices do not translate into meaningful change, they tend to disengage from the political process (dalton, 2017). in nigeria, issues such as electoral malpractice, police brutality, economic disenfranchisement and judicial inefficiency contribute to low participation. therefore, the study focuses on how political communication, rule of law and democratic vigilance can either enable or impede this vital aspect of democratic life. political communication, rule of law and democratic vigilance political communication entails the exchange of political information among political actors, institutions, media, and the public. it includes campaign messaging, political advertising, debates, social media discourse, press statements, and other forms of public engagement that shape political perceptions and decision-making. effective political communication fosters transparency, trust and civic participation by informing citizens of their rights and responsibilities and enabling informed decision-making (mcnair, 2017). however, in countries like nigeria, political communication is often compromised by misinformation, elite control, and poor media ethics, limiting its effectiveness in enhancing democratic engagement (ojebuyi & salawu, 2020). the rule of law, the second independent variable, refers to the principle that all members of a society, including government officials are equally subject to the law. it encompasses legal transparency, judicial independence, access to justice, and the protection of fundamental rights. a strong rule of law enhances citizen participation by ensuring that democratic rights are enforceable and protected from arbitrary interference (world justice mailto:topacademicjournals@gmail.com tel:1995 tel:2012 tel:2010 tel:2017 tel:2017 tel:2020 american journal of arts and communication vol.10, issue 4; july-august 2025; issn: 2994-0540 impact factor: 7.94 1252 columbia rd nw, washington dc, united states https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac; mail: topacademicjournals@gmail.com 35 | a m e r i c a n j o u r n a l o f a r t s a n d c o m m u n i c a t i o n | https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac project, 2023). in nigeria, however, the rule of law is frequently undermined by political interference, corruption, prolonged judicial processes, and lack of institutional autonomy, which discourages citizens from engaging meaningfully with democratic institutions (okeke, 2021). democratic vigilance, the third independent variable, involves citizens actively monitoring governance, demanding accountability and resisting anti-democratic tendencies. it includes activities such as public protests, social audits, civic education and participation in democratic advocacy. high levels of democratic vigilance signal a politically aware and engaged citizenry and act as a check on government excesses (norris, 2011). in nigeria, moments of democratic vigilance like the #endsars movement have shown the power of collective action. however, such efforts are often met with repression, limiting their sustainability and impact. this study examines how democratic vigilance interacts with political communication and legal frameworks to influence sustained citizen participation. the relationship between citizen participation and political communication, rule of law and democratic vigilance the relationship between citizen participation and political communication, rule of law and democratic vigilance is both dynamic and interdependent. political communication serves as a channel through which citizens receive and exchange information that influences their willingness and ability to participate. where political communication is transparent, inclusive, and participatory, citizens are more likely to engage in democratic processes (chadwick, 2013). however, where it is manipulative or exclusive, it can alienate the public and reduce engagement. in nigeria, the weaponization of media during elections, the spread of political propaganda and the suppression of dissent limit the positive effects of political communication on citizen participation (udeze & chukwuere, 2021). similarly, the rule of law has a significant moderating effect on citizen participation. when citizens trust that the law protects their rights and that justice can be obtained without fear or bias, they are more likely to participate in political activities, challenge government excesses and seek redress through legal channels (carothers, 2006). in contrast, when the rule of law is perceived as weak or biased, citizens become apathetic, disillusioned or even radicalised, opting out of democratic processes altogether. in nigeria, the selective application of justice and government clampdowns on legal protests dissuade citizens from exercising their democratic rights, thereby, weakening overall participation (amnesty international, 2021). finally, democratic vigilance acts as both an outcome and a driver of citizen participation. a vigilant populace holds governments accountable, demands reforms and fosters a culture of civic responsibility. when reinforced by effective political communication and legal protection, democratic vigilance becomes a tool for sustainable participation and democratic deepening. however, without institutional support, democratic vigilance can be easily suppressed or co-opted, leading to democratic fatigue or cynicism (gyimah-boadi & logan, 2020). this study, therefore, explores how the synergy between these variables influences the quality and depth of citizen participation in nigeria’s evolving democratic landscape. mailto:topacademicjournals@gmail.com tel:2023 tel:2021 tel:2011 tel:2013 tel:2021 tel:2006 tel:2021 tel:2020 american journal of arts and communication vol.10, issue 4; july-august 2025; issn: 2994-0540 impact factor: 7.94 1252 columbia rd nw, washington dc, united states https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac; mail: topacademicjournals@gmail.com 36 | a m e r i c a n j o u r n a l o f a r t s a n d c o m m u n i c a t i o n | https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac deliberative democracy theory a suitable theory for this study is deliberative democracy theory, initially articulated by jürgen habermas in 1984. the theory emphasizes the central role of open, rational, and inclusive dialogue in democratic decisionmaking processes. according to habermas, democratic legitimacy arises not merely from voting or representation, but from the extent to which public reasoning, free from coercion, shapes political outcomes. the core tenets of the theory include the public sphere as a space for civic discussion, communicative rationality where participants exchange ideas based on reason rather than power, and inclusive participation where all affected citizens have the opportunity to contribute to debates and decisions (habermas, 1984). the theory assumes that citizens are capable of engaging in rational discourse, that equal access to communication channels is possible, and that democratic systems are strengthened when decisions are informed by deliberation rather than elite dominance. however, critics argue that habermas’s ideal public sphere is often unattainable in real-world contexts where inequalities in access to information, education, media, and institutional power distort deliberative processes (young, 2000). moreover, in pluralistic societies like nigeria, ethno-religious divisions and structural inequalities challenge the possibility of achieving truly rational and inclusive discourse. nonetheless, the theory remains highly relevant to this study as it provides a framework for understanding how political communication, rule of law, and democratic vigilance can collectively shape citizen participation. it highlights the importance of free expression, legal protections, and civic engagement in fostering deliberation, empowering citizens, and enhancing the quality of nigeria’s democratic process empirical review political communication and citizen participation a study by ojebuyi and salawu (2020), titled “political communication in africa: identifying trends and research imperatives”, sought to examine the dynamics of political communication in africa and its influence on democratic participation. the objective was to identify how media and political actors communicate with citizens and the extent to which such communication impacts democratic engagement. the study used a qualitative content analysis of political communication research in selected african countries over a 10-year period. findings revealed that political communication across africa is largely elite-driven, propaganda-oriented, and often fails to empower citizens due to media control and lack of access to information. the similarity with the current study lies in the shared focus on political communication as a determinant of civic engagement. however, while their study provided a continental overview with a strong theoretical focus, the current study is nigeria-specific and adopts an empirical approach with attention to demographic and contextual variations in citizen participation. additionally, the present study expands beyond media systems to include legal and civic structures as intersecting variables. rule of law and civic engagement okeke (2021), in a study titled “the rule of law and democratic consolidation in nigeria”, explored the implications of legal institutions on democratic sustainability in the country. the study aimed to assess how mailto:topacademicjournals@gmail.com american journal of arts and communication vol.10, issue 4; july-august 2025; issn: 2994-0540 impact factor: 7.94 1252 columbia rd nw, washington dc, united states https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac; mail: topacademicjournals@gmail.com 37 | a m e r i c a n j o u r n a l o f a r t s a n d c o m m u n i c a t i o n | https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac judicial processes, legal enforcement, and constitutionalism influence democratic outcomes. using a doctrinal legal research method and supported by key informant interviews with legal experts and civil society actors, the study found that a weak rule of law, manifested in selective justice, executive interference, and delayed adjudication undermines citizen trust and participation. similar to the present study, okeke identifies the rule of law as crucial to democratic development and civic participation. the difference, however, is that while okeke’s work focuses primarily on legal theory and institutional failings, the current research investigates how the rule of law interacts with political communication and democratic vigilance to shape participation. moreover, the current study includes a broader methodological scope by integrating both qualitative and quantitative data to measure citizen responses. democratic vigilance and sustained participation gyimah-boadi and logan (2020) conducted a study titled “vigilance and voice: citizens’ views on democratic governance in africa” under the afrobarometer project. the study’s objective was to examine how citizens across african countries perceive their role in holding governments accountable and how that perception influences their participation. a mixed-method approach was used, drawing on data from over 34 african countries through structured interviews and public opinion surveys. the findings showed that although many africans value democracy and believe in civic responsibility, fear of repression, corruption and lack of institutional support often suppress democratic vigilance and long-term engagement. the study is similar to the current one in its emphasis on democratic vigilance as a factor in participation. however, while gyimah-boadi and logan’s work offers comparative continental insights, the current study narrows the scope to nigeria, allowing for more in-depth analysis of context-specific barriers and enablers of vigilance. also, the current study places democratic vigilance in a three-variable framework alongside political communication and legal structures, providing a more integrated view of participatory democracy. gap identification the reviewed literature underscores the significance of political communication, rule of law, and democratic vigilance as core pillars of democratic participation in africa, particularly in nigeria. studies by ojebuyi and salawu (2020), okeke (2021) and gyimah-boadi and logan (2020) have respectively highlighted the role of media-driven political messaging, legal institutions, and citizen activism in shaping democratic outcomes. while these studies provide valuable insights, they often treat these variables in isolation, lacking a holistic framework that examines their interdependence in influencing citizen participation. additionally, most prior research adopts either a legalistic or media-centric lens, with limited empirical assessment of how citizens themselves perceive and navigate these democratic structures. there is also a methodological gap, as few studies combine both qualitative and quantitative data to capture the diverse experiences of nigerian citizens across regions, age groups, and social classes. furthermore, the literature shows a population bias toward elite or urban perspectives, often neglecting grassroots voices. conceptually, there is limited integration of deliberative democracy theory in understanding the communicative and institutional dynamics of participation. this study fills these gaps by mailto:topacademicjournals@gmail.com american journal of arts and communication vol.10, issue 4; july-august 2025; issn: 2994-0540 impact factor: 7.94 1252 columbia rd nw, washington dc, united states https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac; mail: topacademicjournals@gmail.com 38 | a m e r i c a n j o u r n a l o f a r t s a n d c o m m u n i c a t i o n | https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac adopting an integrated approach to analyse how political communication, rule of law, and democratic vigilance jointly influence citizen participation in nigeria’s democratic process, using both empirical evidence and contextual analysis. methodology this study adopts a qualitative research methodology anchored on email interviews to explore how political communication, rule of law and democratic vigilance influence citizen participation in nigeria’s democratic process. the research design is a descriptive exploratory design, suitable for capturing in-depth, context-rich narratives and individual perceptions. the population of the study comprises politically active nigerian citizens, including civil society actors, legal practitioners, journalists and social media influencers, estimated at 5,000 individuals across nigeria’s six geopolitical zones, based on civil society engagement records and professional associations. these individuals were chosen due to their active involvement in political discourse and civic advocacy. from this population, a sample size of 30 respondents was selected using purposive sampling, targeting those with demonstrated engagement in democratic processes such as protest participation, legal advocacy, political commentary or civic education campaigns. data were collected through semi-structured email interviews, allowing respondents to provide reflective, well-considered responses over time. the data were analysed using thematic content analysis, which involved coding responses, identifying recurring themes, and interpreting patterns in relation to the study variables. the choice of email interviews was justified by its ability to overcome geographical limitations, protect respondent anonymity, and promote thoughtful engagement, especially on politically sensitive topics in a context like nigeria where freedom of expression can be threatened. the qualitative method was further justified for its strength in capturing the depth and complexity of experiences, perspectives, and institutional dynamics that quantitative methods might overlook. data presentation and analysis themes were drawn deductively from research objectives. the themes deduced included: influence of political communication on citizen participation; role of the rule of law in enabling or hindering civic engagement and democratic vigilance as a driver of sustained participation. these were articulated and elaborated below: influence of political communication on citizen participation interviewer: can you describe how political communication influences your participation in nigeria’s democracy? respondent: “political communication plays a vital role in shaping my political awareness. during elections or national debates, i rely heavily on social media, press briefings, and public discussions to form an opinion. these platforms provide access to real-time information, manifestos, and analysis that inform my choices. however, i’ve noticed that the communication is often one-sided, mostly campaign promises with little focus on civic education. it helps, but it also leaves us with more questions than answers.” interviewer: in your experience, how effective is political messaging in mobilizing citizens to act? mailto:topacademicjournals@gmail.com american journal of arts and communication vol.10, issue 4; july-august 2025; issn: 2994-0540 impact factor: 7.94 1252 columbia rd nw, washington dc, united states https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac; mail: topacademicjournals@gmail.com 39 | a m e r i c a n j o u r n a l o f a r t s a n d c o m m u n i c a t i o n | https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac respondent: from what i have observed, “political communication has the power to spark mass action like protests or voting but its effectiveness depends on credibility and tone. for instance, the #endsars protests gained momentum largely due to digital storytelling and widespread sharing of police brutality incidents. that form of communication empowered people. but when political elites dominate the narrative, it quickly shifts from mobilisation to manipulation. so, effectiveness is tied to trust.” interviewer: what challenges do you face in accessing or trusting political messages? respondent: “misinformation is a serious challenge. a lot of fake news circulates, especially close to elections. it is difficult to verify sources when there’s no regulation of online political ads or content. also, media outlets are often biased depending on political affiliation, which makes it hard for people to trust what they hear. we need independent, people-centred platforms that prioritize verified and inclusive communication.” interviewer: how do ordinary nigerians respond to political messages from government or opposition figures? respondent: “most people are sceptical. you will hear people say, “na lie, dem go still do wetin dem wan do.” that cynicism is a result of years of broken promises. the more deceptive or flashy the message, the less likely people are to believe or engage with it. but when messages come from grassroots movements or trusted community leaders, people listen and act. trust is everything.” interviewer: have you personally been influenced to participate in any political process because of communication? respondent: “yes, several times. i have participated in online town halls, signed petitions, and even voted based on clear and consistent communication. one local candidate in 2019 used whatsapp to directly engage constituents. that personal touch made many of us feel seen and heard, and i voted for him even though he was not from a mainstream party. so, yes, communication can drive participation if done right.” interviewer: what changes would you recommend to improve political communication for better engagement? respondent: “i think we need more issue-based discussions and less mudslinging. politicians should be required to have regular media engagements with civil society and not just appear during campaigns. we also need media literacy programs so people can decode propaganda and identify false information. lastly, more youth-friendly platforms should be created like podcasts and youtube dialogues to reach the next generation of voters. role of the rule of law in civic engagement interviewer: how does the rule of law affect your participation in nigeria’s democratic space? respondent: “the rule of law is supposed to guarantee equal access to justice and protection of civil liberties, which in turn encourages participation. but in reality, many people are afraid to participate because they know the legal system rarely protects them. i’ve handled cases where activists were detained unlawfully and courts issued orders that were ignored by the police. that sends the message that the law doesn’t work for everyone, especially not for the average citizen.” interviewer: can you give an example of when legal uncertainty discouraged democratic involvement? mailto:topacademicjournals@gmail.com american journal of arts and communication vol.10, issue 4; july-august 2025; issn: 2994-0540 impact factor: 7.94 1252 columbia rd nw, washington dc, united states https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac; mail: topacademicjournals@gmail.com 40 | a m e r i c a n j o u r n a l o f a r t s a n d c o m m u n i c a t i o n | https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac respondent: “a classic example was after the #endsars protests. many peaceful protesters were arrested, bank accounts frozen and passports seized, all without proper judicial process. that action not only silenced those individuals but also scared others from speaking out or joining future movements. when the law becomes a tool of repression instead of protection, it weakens democracy and silences voices.” interviewer: do you believe the judiciary is independent enough to encourage civic participation? respondent: “no, i do not believe it is fully independent. judges often face pressure from the executive and in some high-profile cases, judgments appear politically motivated. this undermines public confidence. without a strong, neutral judiciary, citizens won’t feel safe challenging authority or demanding accountability. participation becomes a risk, not a right.” interviewer: in your view, how should legal reform support democratic participation? respondent: “legal reform should prioritize judicial autonomy, speedy dispensation of justice, and enforcement of citizens’ rights. for example, public interest cases should be fast-tracked and law enforcement should be held accountable when they disobey court orders. we also need more legal aid services to help ordinary citizens navigate the system. when people believe the law is accessible and fair, they’ll be more likely to engage politically. interviewer: what role do legal institutions play in promoting or stifling civil liberties? respondent: “they play both roles, depending on their independence. institutions like the national human rights commission have tried to defend civil liberties but they lack enforcement powers. meanwhile, institutions like the police and some segments of the judiciary are often used to suppress dissent. a legal system that only favours the powerful cannot sustain democratic participation. interviewer: what would you suggest to improve the rule of law for civic engagement in nigeria? respondent: first, “insulate the judiciary from political interference through independent funding and appointment processes. second, enforce consequences for disobedience of court orders. third, educate citizens about their rights and how to use legal mechanisms for redress. a well-informed population and a responsive legal system are the cornerstones of any functioning democracy.” democratic vigilance as a driver of participation interviewer: welcome. how would you define democratic vigilance in your own words, based on your experience? respondent: “democratic vigilance, to me, means staying alert and active in defending democratic values not just during elections but every day. it is about questioning government decisions, demanding accountability, protesting injustice, and using every civic tool to ensure the system works for everyone. it is not a one-off action; it’s a continuous mind-set. interviewer: how have you participated in or witnessed democratic vigilance in nigeria? respondent: “i was part of the #endsars movement in abuja and also helped organise community dialogues after the protests. we didn’t just protest; we created platforms to discuss police reform, justice and citizen mailto:topacademicjournals@gmail.com american journal of arts and communication vol.10, issue 4; july-august 2025; issn: 2994-0540 impact factor: 7.94 1252 columbia rd nw, washington dc, united states https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac; mail: topacademicjournals@gmail.com 41 | a m e r i c a n j o u r n a l o f a r t s a n d c o m m u n i c a t i o n | https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac empowerment. i have also participated in monitoring budget allocations in my local government and writing petitions. these small acts add up when people stay consistent.” interviewer: what barriers do you face in sustaining that kind of vigilance? respondent: “the biggest barrier is fear, fear of arrest, fear of losing your job, fear of being followed. government surveillance is real. another issue is fatigue. people get discouraged when they do not see results or when leaders make promises and fail to deliver. there’s also the problem of division, ethnic and political divisions make it hard for people to unite around causes.” interviewer: what makes people give up on being vigilant in democratic processes? respondent: “people give up when they feel powerless. when your voice does not lead to change, or when justice is delayed indefinitely, people retreat into survival mode. they say, “let me just face my hustle.” the government counts on this silence, and that’s dangerous. we need to constantly renew our energy and support each other as citizens.” interviewer: do you think institutions support or hinder democratic vigilance? respondent: “most institutions hinder it, unfortunately. whistle-blowers are not protected. independent journalists are harassed. even civil society organisations are sometimes branded as threats. instead of being a partner in democracy, many government institutions see vigilant citizens as enemies. that mind-set needs to change for democracy to thrive. interviewer: what do you think needs to happen to strengthen democratic vigilance in nigeria? respondent: “we need civic education in schools and communities, digital safety training for activists, and better collaboration between civil society and media. citizens must be equipped with knowledge and tools to organise effectively and safely. also, laws that protect free speech and protest must be enforced. a vigilant society is a resilient democracy.” discussion of findings the findings showed that, political communication in nigeria has the potential to influence citizen participation positively, especially, through social media and community engagement but its effectiveness is weakened by mistrust, elite control of narratives and widespread misinformation that often alienate and confuse the public rather than empower them. ojebuyi and salawu (2020) supported this finding by asserting that political communication in africa, including nigeria, is heavily dominated by political elites who use media channels to promote self-serving narratives rather than facilitate informed citizen engagement. ojebuyi and salawu argued that the manipulation of political messages, coupled with media partisanship and a lack of civic-focused communication strategies, often results in public distrust and disengagement, thus, weakening the democratic value of political discourse. deliberative democracy theory validated this finding by emphasising that meaningful citizen participation depends on open, inclusive and rational communication in the public sphere. the finding that elite-dominated and manipulative political messaging in nigeria weakens trust and participation mailto:topacademicjournals@gmail.com american journal of arts and communication vol.10, issue 4; july-august 2025; issn: 2994-0540 impact factor: 7.94 1252 columbia rd nw, washington dc, united states https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac; mail: topacademicjournals@gmail.com 42 | a m e r i c a n j o u r n a l o f a r t s a n d c o m m u n i c a t i o n | https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac aligns with habermas’s argument that, democratic legitimacy cannot thrive where communication is distorted, inaccessible or exclusionary. the study revealed that, the rule of law in nigeria is inconsistently applied and often undermined by political interference and weak enforcement, which discourages civic engagement, especially, when citizens see that legal protections and court decisions are routinely ignored by state actors. okeke (2021) reinforced this observation by highlighting how nigeria’s rule of law is frequently compromised by executive interference, selective application of justice, and a sluggish judicial process. okeke emphasised that the failure of the legal system to enforce court orders and protect citizens’ rights undermines public confidence in legal institutions, leading many nigerians to withdraw from civic participation due to perceived legal futility and fear of state repression. the theory reinforced the finding by asserting that the rule of law is essential to ensure that deliberation occurs in an environment of fairness, equal rights and legal protection. when judicial systems are compromised, as found in nigeria, it undermines the safe space needed for public discourse and civic action, thereby disrupting the core conditions required for democratic deliberation to flourish. findings indicated that, while democratic vigilance exists among nigerian citizens, particularly, through protests, youth activism and watchdog efforts, it is often unsustainable due to fear of repression, lack of institutional support and public fatigue from unresponsive governance systems. gyimah-boadi and logan (2020) aligned with this finding noting that, while african citizens increasingly value democratic participation and accountability, their efforts at democratic vigilance are often hampered by institutional resistance, fear of retaliation, and systemic governance failures. gyimah-boadi and logan afrobarometer research demonstrated that without sustained support from legal and political systems, civic activism and public scrutiny tend to wane, even in politically conscious populations. deliberative democracy theory supports this finding by recognising that democratic vigilance expressed through protests, advocacy and citizen oversight is a critical form of participatory discourse that holds power accountable. however, the theory also acknowledged that, such vigilance must be supported by institutional openness and respect for dissent, without which public deliberation becomes unsustainable, as reflected in the nigerian experience. conclusion the research concluded that while political communication holds immense potential to mobilize nigerian citizens and foster democratic participation, its effectiveness remains undermined by elite manipulation, lack of trust and the spread of misinformation revealing an urgent need for more transparent, inclusive, and citizen-centred communication strategies in the democratic process. the research validated that without a credible and consistently applied rule of law, citizen participation in nigeria’s democracy is weakened, as many citizens lack confidence in legal protections and perceive the justice system as selectively enforced, discouraging them from engaging with governance structures meaningfully. the research established that while democratic vigilance exists and has proven effective in sparking civic consciousness, its impact is limited by fear, institutional resistance and a lack of sustained support highlighting mailto:topacademicjournals@gmail.com american journal of arts and communication vol.10, issue 4; july-august 2025; issn: 2994-0540 impact factor: 7.94 1252 columbia rd nw, washington dc, united states https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac; mail: topacademicjournals@gmail.com 43 | a m e r i c a n j o u r n a l o f a r t s a n d c o m m u n i c a t i o n | https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac the need for systemic reforms that protect activists, empower civic voices and promote long-term democratic accountability. this study makes several important contributions to knowledge by offering an original and integrated perspective on how political communication, rule of law, and democratic vigilance collectively influence citizen participation in nigeria’s democratic process, an approach that has been largely overlooked in existing literature. through the use of qualitative email interviews, it creatively captures first-hand civic experiences and perspectives across different sectors of nigerian society, breaking away from the often-quantitative, urban-elite-focused models that dominate similar studies. innovatively, the study develops a triadic conceptual model that connects communication, legal institutions, and civic activism as mutually reinforcing elements in participatory democracy. this offers a new pathway for understanding democratic engagement in fragile democracies. the research also contributes to theory by validating and extending deliberative democracy theory within the nigerian context, showing how distorted communication, legal inequality and institutional repression hinder rational public discourse and democratic participation. in terms of practical outcomes, the study informs policy and civic education product development by recommending institutional communication reforms, legal safeguards for activists, and grassroots civic training programs that can be adapted for public agencies, ngos, and educational curricula. these contributions help bridge the gap between academic theory and real-world democratic practice in nigeria and other developing democracies. recommendations based on the results of the work, the following has been proposed. 1) the national orientation agency (noa), in collaboration with the independent national electoral commission (inec) and media regulatory bodies such as the nigerian broadcasting commission (nbc), develop and implement inclusive political communication frameworks that prioritise civic education, ethical political messaging, and media literacy. these institutions should also monitor and regulate political advertisements and campaign communications to reduce misinformation and promote issue-based engagement that encourages citizen participation. 2) to strengthen the rule of law and restore public confidence in legal institutions, the national judicial council (njc) and the federal ministry of justice should prioritize reforms that guarantee judicial independence, expedite legal processes and ensure strict enforcement of court judgments. the national assembly should also enact legislation that provides legal safeguards for civic actors and penalizes government agencies that violate constitutional rights, thereby creating a legal environment that supports active and fearless civic engagement. 3) to sustain democratic vigilance, civil society organizations in partnership with the national human rights commission (nhrc) and the federal ministry of education should invest in continuous civic education, grassroots mobilization, and advocacy training, especially targeting youths and marginalized communities. institutions should also push for protective policies that shield civic activists and whistle-blowers from repression, ensuring that democratic watchdog efforts are both safe and effective in holding power accountable. mailto:topacademicjournals@gmail.com american journal of arts and communication vol.10, issue 4; july-august 2025; issn: 2994-0540 impact factor: 7.94 1252 columbia rd nw, washington dc, united states https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac; mail: topacademicjournals@gmail.com 44 | a m e r i c a n j o u r n a l o f a r t s a n d c o m m u n i c a t i o n | https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac references african union commission. (2022). african governance report: promoting constitutionalism and the rule of law in africa. african union. amnesty international. (2021). nigeria: crackdown on #endsars protesters continues. https://www.amnesty.org arowolo, d. e., & aluko, f. s. (2012). democracy, political participation and good governance in nigeria. international journal of development and sustainability, 1(3), 797–809. blumler, j. g., & kavanagh, d. (2000). the third age of political communication: influences and features. political communication, 16(3), 209–230. carothers, t. (2006). promoting the rule of law abroad: in search of knowledge. carnegie endowment for international peace. chadwick, a. (2013). the hybrid media system: politics and power. oxford university press. dalton, r. j. (2017). the participation gap: social status and political inequality. oxford university press. freedom house. (2023). freedom in the world 2023: marking 50 years in the struggle for democracy. https://freedomhouse.org gyimah-boadi, e., & logan, c. (2020). vigilance and voice: citizens’ views on democratic governance in africa. afrobarometer dispatch no. 443. habermas, j. (1984). the theory of communicative action: reason and the rationalization of society. beacon press. mcnair, b. (2017). an introduction to political communication (6th ed.). routledge. norris, p. (2011). democratic deficit: critical citizens revisited. cambridge university press. oecd. (2020). innovative citizen participation and new democratic institutions: catching the deliberative wave. oecd publishing. https://doi.org/10.1787/339306da-en ojebuyi, b. r., & salawu, a. (2020). political communication in africa: identifying trends and research imperatives. journal of african media studies, 12(2), 191–205. mailto:topacademicjournals@gmail.com tel:2022 tel:2021 https://www.amnesty.org/ tel:2012 tel:797 tel:809 tel:2000 tel:209 tel:230 tel:2006 tel:2013 tel:2017 tel:2023 tel:2023 https://freedomhouse.org/ tel:2020 tel:443 tel:1984 tel:2017 tel:2011 tel:2020 https://doi.org/10.1787/339306da-en tel:2020 tel:191 tel:205 american journal of arts and communication vol.10, issue 4; july-august 2025; issn: 2994-0540 impact factor: 7.94 1252 columbia rd nw, washington dc, united states https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac; mail: topacademicjournals@gmail.com 45 | a m e r i c a n j o u r n a l o f a r t s a n d c o m m u n i c a t i o n | https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac okeke, v. o. (2021). the rule of law and democratic consolidation in nigeria. african journal of law and human rights, 5(1), 87–101. udeze, s., & chukwuere, j. e. (2021). social media and the spread of political misinformation in nigeria: implications for political participation. journal of african elections, 20(1), 76–93. united nations. (2019). report of the secretary-general on the rule of law and transitional justice in conflict and post-conflict societies. united nations. verba, s., schlozman, k. l., & brady, h. e. (1995). voice and equality: civic voluntarism in american politics. harvard university press. world justice project. (2023). rule of law index 2023. https://worldjusticeproject.org young, i. m. (2000). inclusion and democracy. oxford university press. mailto:topacademicjournals@gmail.com tel:2021 tel:101 tel:2021 tel:2019 tel:1995 tel:2023 tel:2023 https://worldjusticeproject.org/ tel:2000 60 | a m e r i c a n j o u r n a l o f a r t s a n d c o m m u n i c a t i o n | https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac american journal of arts and communication vol.10, issue 4 ; july august 2025 ; issn: 2994 0540 impact factor: 7.94 1252 columbia rd nw, washington dc, united states https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac; mail : topacademicjournals@gmail.com comparing the preferences and use patterns of television and new media among youths in anambra state: a convergence and deconvergence perspective ugwu, ogechukwu serah, ph.d. department of mass communication, faculty of management sciences, enugu state university of science and technology (esut) enugu doi: https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.16762107 abstract: this study explores the patterns of television and new media use among youths in anambra state, nigeria, with particular focus on how demographic factors influence their media preferences. against the backdrop of converging media technologies, the study examines whether media consumption is characterised by integration (convergence) or functional separation (deconvergence). a qualitative approach was adopted, involving two focus group discussions (fgds) composed of twelve participants six males and six females aged 18–30 years. the participants, purposively selected using a snowball technique, were university students and graduates residing in awka, the state capital. the discussions were recorded, transcribed, and thematically analysed. findings revealed that while the participants exhibited a linear and selective use of television often for specific programmes such as sports, news, or family bonding they formed complex new media repertoires for work, entertainment, and social interaction. these include using smartphones and laptops for messaging, computing, browsing, and streaming. a negative correlation was observed between time spent on television and new media, suggesting that the platforms are not used concurrently but for distinct purposes. socio-economic factors such as income, education level, and age were significant in shaping access and usage patterns. the study concludes that new media has not entirely replaced television among youths. rather, both platforms coexist with differentiated functions, indicating a simultaneous process of media convergence and deconvergence. these insights offer implications for media producers and content strategists seeking to engage youth audiences across multiple platforms. keywords: media convergence, deconvergence, youth, television, new media, anambra state, nigeria. 1.1 background to the study media convergence has become a defining feature of the digital communication era, describing the process by which different media forms text, video, audio, and graphics—are increasingly integrated and accessed across digital platforms. the idea, first conceptualised as the “convergence of modes” by pool (1983), highlights the blurring of boundaries between media once treated as distinct. this development, driven by digitisation, allows 61 | a m e r i c a n j o u r n a l o f a r t s a n d c o m m u n i c a t i o n | https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac american journal of arts and communication vol.10, issue 4 ; july august 2025 ; issn: 2994 0540 impact factor: 7.94 1252 columbia rd nw, washington dc, united states https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac; mail : topacademicjournals@gmail.com formerly separate media technologies to deliver diverse content on shared platforms, enhancing interactivity and user flexibility (jenkins, 2006; meikle & young, 2011). digitisation is central to this shift, as it enables the decoupling of content from specific hardware, allowing voice, sound, text, and video to be stored and transferred in standardised formats. this shift has created an ecosystem where smartphones, tablets, laptops, and smart tvs can perform overlapping media functions, marking what miller (2011) called the "technological core" of convergence. however, scholars caution that convergence is not a fixed end-state but a process marked by constant evolution, overlapping developments, and user-driven adaptations (storsul & stuedahl, 2007; piel & sparviero, 2017). while convergence highlights integration, the concept of media deconvergence has emerged to account for fragmentation within convergent environments. deconvergence refers to the selective or independent use of certain media platforms or content by users, despite technological convergence. users may still prefer traditional television for specific content while relying on digital platforms for others, a phenomenon that suggests that convergence and deconvergence coexist and interact (jin, 2013; lugmayr & dal zotto, 2016). piel and sparviero (2017) describe this interplay as overlooked but crucial in understanding modern media use patterns. in nigeria, and particularly among youths, media access is expanding due to increased internet penetration and smartphone usage. however, local research has largely focused on usage patterns of individual media forms, such as television or the internet, without examining how these platforms are used together or separately in daily life. there remains a research gap on how nigerian youths navigate converged environments and whether they engage in convergence (integrating use across platforms) or deconvergence (separating usage for specific purposes). this study responds to that gap by examining how youths in anambra state use television and new media. it investigates the extent to which these media are integrated or used distinctly, exploring user preferences, behaviours, and influencing factors within a framework of convergence and deconvergence. 1.2 statement of the problem studies on media use patterns in nigeria have focused mostly on use patterns of standalone media or single media platforms and generally on single media uses. the media use patterns of media consumers in convergent media environments seem to have been underexplored in nigeria just like in other african climes. stated differently, there is a paucity of nigerian studies that have attempted to find out what have converged or deconverged (regarding media uses) in media environments marked by the coming together of media formats, as well as the place of traditional media such as television in such environments. 1.3 purpose/ objectives of the study the purpose of this study is to determine television and new media use patterns among youths in anambra state, in addition to influencing factors. in precise terms, the study aimed at the following: 1. to find out the patterns of new media use among youths in anambra state; 2. to explore the patterns of television use among youths in anambra state; 3. to determine factors that influence patterns of media use among youths in anambra state. 62 | a m e r i c a n j o u r n a l o f a r t s a n d c o m m u n i c a t i o n | https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac american journal of arts and communication vol.10, issue 4 ; july august 2025 ; issn: 2994 0540 impact factor: 7.94 1252 columbia rd nw, washington dc, united states https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac; mail : topacademicjournals@gmail.com 1.4 research questions in order to achieve the above research objectives, the following research questions guided the inquiry: 1. what are the patterns new media uses among youths in anambra state? 2. what are patterns of television uses among youths in anambra state? 3. what are the factors that influence patterns of media use among youths in anambra state? literature review media convergence the concept of media convergence emerged as a response to the evolution of digital technologies and their capacity to integrate formerly distinct media forms. ithiel de sola pool (1983) was one of the earliest scholars to conceptualise this phenomenon, describing it as a “convergence of modes” where communication tools like telephone, radio, and television were no longer distinct but increasingly intertwined. jenkins (2006) expanded this idea by arguing that convergence is not merely a technological shift but a cultural and participatory process involving content, platforms, industries, and audiences. meikle and young (2011) similarly describe convergence as a networked integration of digital media into everyday life, where technological, industrial, and user-driven changes converge. in practical terms, convergence has allowed devices like smartphones and smart tvs to serve multiple media functions, ranging from streaming to gaming to online communication. this integration is rooted in digitisation, which has standardised content formats, enabling them to flow seamlessly across platforms (miller, 2011). yet, convergence is not always linear. scholars such as storsul and stuedahl (2007) argue that convergence is a process marked by contradictory developments, including resistance, fragmentation, and adaptation. media deconvergence while convergence describes integration, deconvergence accounts for fragmentation in user behaviour and platform differentiation. jin (2013) introduced the term to describe a counter-trend in which previously merged media or companies separate or become specialised again. applied more broadly, deconvergence highlights how users may choose distinct platforms for specific functions, such as using television for entertainment and mobile apps for social interaction. piel and sparviero (2017) stress that deconvergence is not the opposite of convergence but a coexisting process that reflects increasing complexity in media consumption. they describe three dimensions of this tension: proliferation of media devices, transmedia content flow, and the management of digital infrastructures, all of which contribute to both integration and disintegration in media use. media use patterns among youths youth media use has evolved in response to the dual dynamics of convergence and deconvergence. empirical studies have documented the creation of personal “media repertoires,” where users combine multiple platforms to meet their communication, entertainment, and information needs (hasebrink & domeyer, 2012). schuurman et al. (2015), in a study of flemish youths, identified diverse user profiles shaped by age, gender, and interest, indicating that media use is neither uniform nor monolithic. similarly, kim (2014) found that media use among 63 | a m e r i c a n j o u r n a l o f a r t s a n d c o m m u n i c a t i o n | https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac american journal of arts and communication vol.10, issue 4 ; july august 2025 ; issn: 2994 0540 impact factor: 7.94 1252 columbia rd nw, washington dc, united states https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac; mail : topacademicjournals@gmail.com youths often reflects personal preferences, situational contexts, and varying degrees of political or informational engagement. in nigeria, research into youth media habits has focused largely on individual platforms rather than converged patterns. ibrahim et al. (2018) explored youth media preferences but did not investigate how users navigate convergent or deconvergent environments. eke and ukozor (2020) took a step forward by examining cross-media patterns in lagos, but similar research in other states, particularly anambra, remains sparse. convergence and deconvergence in the nigerian context in the nigerian media landscape, the co-existence of television and new media presents a fertile ground for studying convergence and deconvergence. while internet penetration and smartphone usage have increased dramatically (ncc, 2020), television remains a widely used medium, especially for communal and passive consumption. youths may prefer new media for personalised, on-demand content but still rely on television for news, family bonding, or scheduled programmes. this dual usage reflects convergent access but potentially deconvergent functions. despite these developments, literature from nigeria rarely explores how media users navigate converged environments or make deconvergent choices. most studies have treated media as standalone platforms, ignoring the hybrid patterns of media engagement that increasingly define youth behaviour. thus, this study seeks to address this gap by comparing the preferences and usage patterns of television and new media among youths in anambra state, focusing on both convergent and deconvergent dynamics. 2.2 theoretical framework this study is anchored on the convergence culture theory developed by henry jenkins (2006). the theory provides a conceptual foundation for understanding how media technologies, content, industries, and audiences intersect in a digital environment. jenkins defines convergence as not just the merging of technological platforms but also the cultural shift where consumers actively participate in content production, distribution, and circulation across multiple media systems. according to the theory, convergence is both a top-down and bottom-up process. media companies seek to exploit the economic advantages of integrated content delivery, while users engage in participatory practices by selecting, remixing, and navigating content across platforms. for instance, a user may watch a television programme and continue the engagement via social media or a mobile app, demonstrating how content flows across channels in a converged media environment. however, convergence culture theory also recognises that convergence does not eliminate the distinct roles of media platforms. instead, it highlights a user-driven logic where audiences choose specific media for particular purposes. this interpretive flexibility aligns with the emerging notion of deconvergence, where users fragment their media habits based on content type, accessibility, or social context. applying this framework to the study, the theory helps explain how nigerian youths may simultaneously embrace both television and new media without necessarily abandoning one for the other. it provides a lens for examining how users participate in a media environment where convergence enables access, but user preference drives 64 | a m e r i c a n j o u r n a l o f a r t s a n d c o m m u n i c a t i o n | https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac american journal of arts and communication vol.10, issue 4 ; july august 2025 ; issn: 2994 0540 impact factor: 7.94 1252 columbia rd nw, washington dc, united states https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac; mail : topacademicjournals@gmail.com differentiation. the theory is thus appropriate for analysing the dynamics of media preference, dual-platform usage, and the broader cultural implications of media choice among youths in anambra state. 2.3 empirical review schuurman, de marez, baccarne, & ballon, (2015). conducted a comprehensive study on new media usage among flemish youths using latent class analysis. their research identified four distinct user profiles: the entertainment-oriented, the communication-driven, the information-seekers, and the low-engagement users. this segmentation revealed that youth media behaviour is not homogenous but varies significantly based on interest, motivation, and demographic characteristics such as education and gender. this study challenges the notion of uniform youth adoption of digital media and reinforces the need for audience-specific media strategies. it also supports the idea that convergence does not lead to identical usage patterns but rather fosters diversified media engagement. kim (2014) examined how personal media repertoires differ across age, education, and media type in a crosssectional study. the research showed that older individuals leaned more heavily toward traditional media like television and newspapers, whereas younger, more educated respondents demonstrated a preference for digital platforms. the study provided empirical evidence that media usage is shaped by demographic variables and individual contexts, suggesting that convergence is subject to selective appropriation. this aligns with the concept of deconvergence, where different media platforms serve specific roles in a user's daily life. hasebrink and domeyer (2012) explored the concept of media repertoires using qualitative methods such as diary writing and card sorting. their study found that young germans developed personalised media habits that combined both traditional and digital media in dynamic and context-dependent ways. for example, participants consumed news across both television and online platforms, but chose particular channels depending on convenience, urgency, or type of content. this evidence underscores that while technological convergence offers integrated access, audience behaviour often reflects deliberate deconvergent usage patterns based on need, setting, or social environment. eke and ukozor (2020) studied cross-media consumption among youths in lagos and found that although access to both television and mobile devices was widespread, users demonstrated platform-specific preferences. television was largely favoured for live broadcasts, local news, and family viewing, whereas mobile devices and social media were preferred for entertainment, personal interaction, and on-demand information. the study highlighted that new media do not necessarily replace traditional platforms but instead coexist, with users switching between them based on content relevance and immediacy. these findings support the coexistence of convergence (access across platforms) and deconvergence (functional separation in use). krogager, povlsen, and degn (2015) investigated media use patterns among danish adolescents, focusing on how media preferences are influenced by gender, social habits, and context. the research showed that while both boys and girls engaged in digital media, their usage patterns differed boys leaned toward gaming and video streaming, while girls preferred social media and interpersonal communication. despite the availability of converged devices, television retained a specific role, often used during communal family time or for structured 65 | a m e r i c a n j o u r n a l o f a r t s a n d c o m m u n i c a t i o n | https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac american journal of arts and communication vol.10, issue 4 ; july august 2025 ; issn: 2994 0540 impact factor: 7.94 1252 columbia rd nw, washington dc, united states https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac; mail : topacademicjournals@gmail.com programming. this supports the notion that user agency and cultural practices shape media choices, resulting in differentiated, deconvergent patterns of media consumption. hasebrink, schulz, and livingstone (2015) conducted a comparative study on media use across europe. they found that although digital devices and platforms had become dominant, traditional media especially television retained cultural and generational significance. their findings suggested that while convergence facilitates access to a wide array of content across devices, audience preferences are shaped by institutional, national, and individual contexts. media deconvergence, as seen in their study, occurred when users allocated different roles to various platforms for example, using television for structured news consumption and mobile devices for casual or interactive content. methodology 3.1 research design this study adopted a qualitative research method which creswell (2014) describes as appropriate for exploring and making sense of the meaning individuals or groups ascribe to a social or human problem. it was guided by a constructionist worldview which suggests that individuals are able to make varied, as well as multiple meanings of their lived experiences (their preferences and use patterns of television and new media as in the present study), making the researcher seek to explore all their personal views rather than constructing restrictive categories (as would have been in a quantitative research method). as creswell (2014) notes, the goal of any research guided by constructionist worldview is to rely mostly on the views of participants. for this reason, the research questions were broad to allow the participants make their own meaning. the researcher’s choice of qualitative research approach instead of the quantitative was informed by her aim to explore the participants’ media use in-depth. the researcher understands that their views on their media use patterns can be varied and multiple and may, therefore, not be completed explored with the predetermined measurement categories synonymous with quantitative research methods such as survey. 3.2 population the population for this study was the total number of men and women in anambra state. according to data from the national population commission this is 4, 177, 828 (npc, 2016). 3.3 sampling technique the study participants were selected purposively. they were six (6) male and six (6) females aged 18-30 who are resident in awka, anambra state capital. the participants were selected using the snowball technique, where one contact generated further contact. the participants all admitted to owning and or having access to smart televisions sets and new media devices such as smartphones and tablets which enables them to connect to the internet. also, all the discussants were made up of both university undergraduates and graduates. 3.4 data collection the study adopted focus groups for data collection. the choice of focus group discussion was informed by the knowledge that it allows respondents to express opinions and ideas that would yield relevant discussions and analytical expositions which may not be possible using other methods. the researcher chose focus group because 66 | a m e r i c a n j o u r n a l o f a r t s a n d c o m m u n i c a t i o n | https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac american journal of arts and communication vol.10, issue 4 ; july august 2025 ; issn: 2994 0540 impact factor: 7.94 1252 columbia rd nw, washington dc, united states https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac; mail : topacademicjournals@gmail.com of the success recorded in previous studies of similar nature as well as scholarly postulations. such scholars as lunt & livingstone, (1996) observed that focus groups are a valuable way to explore socially constructed meanings and interpretations because working with a small group provides opportunities for feedback and discussion empowering an audience. similarly, berry and shelton (1999) maintain that focus groups are an excellent way to investigate interpretation because they allow for a diversity of individual responses. wimmer and dominick (2003) added that focus groups are advantageous since individuals feel less inhibited than in individual interviews, and that makes the results more complete. according to the scholars, in focus groups, “one respondent’s remarks tend to stimulate others to pursue lines of thinking that might not have been elicited in a situation involving just one individual” (p. 125). two focus groups (one male and one female) consisting of six (6) discussants each were held in awka, anambra state capital. the discussions were guided by a focus group discussion guide and recorded with an audio midget and later transcribed into written text. the data were then analyzed thematically. 3.5 framework for data analysis a 6-step approach to qualitative data analysis and interpretation highlighted by creswell (2014) was adopted in this study: 1. data transcription. 2. reading of data for the understanding of the general ideas and tones of the participants. 3. data coding which involves organizing or compressing the data into an easily understandable manner. at this stage, tesch’s eight-step coding process highlighted in creswell (2014) was considered. this involved: reading all manuscripts carefully. picking and going through one particular document to find what it is all about. making a cluster of similar topics. abbreviating the topics as codes and writing the codes next to the appropriate segments of the text. finding the most descriptive words for the topics and turning them to categories. making a final decision on the abbreviations made for each category. assembling the data belonging to each category recoding existing data if necessary. 4. generating themes for analysis. 5. representing themes by using narrative passages to present the findings. 6. interpretation of data. results and discussion this chapter is for presentation, analysis and interpretation of results gathered from the focus groups. the data generated were analysed under three dominant themes observed to run through the responses of the respondents – linear television uses; multiple new media uses; and determinants of media use patterns. 4.1 linear television uses 67 | a m e r i c a n j o u r n a l o f a r t s a n d c o m m u n i c a t i o n | https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac american journal of arts and communication vol.10, issue 4 ; july august 2025 ; issn: 2994 0540 impact factor: 7.94 1252 columbia rd nw, washington dc, united states https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac; mail : topacademicjournals@gmail.com the participants admitted that they had linear uses of the traditional television. this is to say that their use of the traditional television mostly swung toward a particular content. some excerpts from the responses of the discussants are instructive: i prefer to use the television for news. it is where i can get credible news, especially on cnn (discussant 2, male, 25, fg 1) i watch television for channels tv news at 10 to get information about the latest happenings in nigeria… (discussant 5, male, 28, fg 1) for me, i watch television mostly for sports entertainment, especially football… anytime you see me watching television, it is football i am watching… (discussant 3, male, 21, fg 1) …premier league and champions league football are the main things i watch on television, and i prefer watching in a television viewing centre. even if i have data on my phone to watch online, it does not just feel as good as watching in a viewing centre where i can banter and discuss with other football lovers… (discussant 6, male, 22, fg 1) i watch television for zee world and telemundo. these are the only things i watch on television. i like to watch la casa de los famosos with my sisters. if i want any other thing, i go online or social media… (discussant 5, female, 28, fg 2) i like to watch rok and africa magic urban on television. they air current nollywood movies in the evening which i like to watch as a way of relaxing after a hard day (discussant 1, female, 28, fg 2) i seldom watch tv these days. television viewing has now become a family thing. i only watch those programmes we like to watch as a family. after that, everybody goes back to his or her phone and other electronic devices… (discussant 6, female, 28, fg 2) regarding frequency of use of television, the discussants agreed that they watched television at the particular airing time of the programme they needed to tune in to: do i say i watch television regularly? i watch television for channels news at 10. apart from that, i am not really a regular television user (discussant 5, male, 28, fg 1) the foregoing suggests that the discussants do not have multiple uses of the television but choose to use it for specific purposes even in today’s world where a plethora of television channels, as made available by cable tv, can make random channel surfing and viewership characteristics of tv viewing. the discussants are therefore not avid television users, considering that they expose themselves to the television at particular times, for particular programmes. 4.2 multiple new media uses results from the focus group discussions showed that the discussants admitted having multiple uses of the new media. some of the uses ranged from watching video stored on the computer’s hard drive, emailing, uploading and downloading files, searching the internet, streaming videos to accessing news and sports websites. similarly for smartphones, tasks like talking, text messaging, accessing the internet, viewing videos and listening to audio were reported separately. 68 | a m e r i c a n j o u r n a l o f a r t s a n d c o m m u n i c a t i o n | https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac american journal of arts and communication vol.10, issue 4 ; july august 2025 ; issn: 2994 0540 impact factor: 7.94 1252 columbia rd nw, washington dc, united states https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac; mail : topacademicjournals@gmail.com findings on the discussants’ new media preferences and use patterns showed that they formed robust new media repertoires (a combination of different new media and routines of use for a particular purpose). the new media repertoires include ‘computing for work’; ‘mobile messaging’; ‘entertainment online’; and ‘information online’. regarding ‘computing for work’ as a new media repertoire, emailing was the most dominant use, followed by the use of work-related software (e.g., ms office and adobe photoshop) the second largest. internet use in this repertoire was found to be for information search rather than entertainment. excerpts from some of the discussants who used the new media for work purposes are presented thus: i have several uses of the new media or the internet. i use the new media to do my work and i also use it for entertainment purposes. regarding work, i use software like adobe photoshop and so on (discussant 6, female, 28, fg 2). i use different new media platforms for different purposes. for work, i use emailing platforms, google drive and so on… i also use ebooks for information i need at work (discussant 1, female, 28, fg 2) i use many new media devices. for work, i use my smartphone because i find it easier to type with my phone using microsoft office. i also find it easier accessing the internet with my phone (discussant 5, male, 28, fg 1). in the second new media repertoire, ‘mobile messaging’, the discussants combined a variety of new media platforms, especially social media, for exchange of text, images, and videos. apart from work, i combine different social media platforms for chatting. i use facebook, telegram, and whatsapp. i use whatsapp mostly for my business because it allows me to display what i sell (discussant 6, female, 28, fg 2). regarding the ‘information online’ repertoire, the discussants combined a plethora of new media platforms for their information needs. the discussants presented their views thus: for online news, i go to different online versions of newspapers such as punch and vanguard, especially when i am at work… but whenever, i am at home, i watch channels on television… (discussant 5, male, 28, fg 1) i get my information on facebook. i also get my information on some blogs and then on twitter… these are the platforms where i get entertainment news… (discussant 2, female, 25, fg 2) regarding the ‘entertainment online’ repertoire, results showed that the discussants, especially the females, combined various online platforms to enhance their entertainment experiences. finding also showed that web search was as dominant in searching for information as it was for searching for entertainment. everything. the internet avails me everything i need, from entertainment to messaging and so on. for my entertainment, i subscribe to netflix and iroko tv. with netflix, i can watch hollywood seasonal movies, and with iroko tv, i can watch the latest nollywood movies. i connect with my smartphone… (discussant 5, female, 28, fg 2) the foregoing shows that the discussants had multiple uses of the new media, unlike on the television where they narrowed down to specific uses. for this reason, the use of new media can be said to negatively correlate with ‘television viewing’. stated differently, spending a lot of time of new media, especially for affordances the television could also offer (entertainment, information, and education) meant the foregoing of television viewing. 69 | a m e r i c a n j o u r n a l o f a r t s a n d c o m m u n i c a t i o n | https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac american journal of arts and communication vol.10, issue 4 ; july august 2025 ; issn: 2994 0540 impact factor: 7.94 1252 columbia rd nw, washington dc, united states https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac; mail : topacademicjournals@gmail.com 4.3 determinants of media use patterns various determinants of media use patterns are observable. the reason for limited use of the television was lack of time because of being fully occupied with work for university and several jobs, therefore, they relied on new media devices such as smartphones, laptops, and tablets. an interesting observation with regard to the respondents’ television viewing, as findings from the study show, is that some participants mentioned specific social contexts as one component of their media repertoire, e.g. media use television with others, for instance, the discussants who noted: …i like to watch la casa de los famosos with my sisters. if i want any other thing, i go online or social media… (discussant 5, female, 28, fg 2) …premier league and champions league football are the main things i watch on television, and i prefer watching in a television viewing centre. even if i have data on my phone to watch online, it does not just feel as good as watching in a viewing centre where i can banter and discuss with other football lovers… (discussant 6, male, 22, fg 1) the foregoing indicates that television viewing is not directly related to the television as a medium, but to a specific social function which includes bonding with family and interacting in social groups. here, the television does only serve as a tool for content dissemination but as medium for socialization or social bonding, much like the ‘social media’ albeit fostering physical/interpersonal human contact instead of communication over the internet. findings from the study also showed that age, income, and education levels, play significant roles in predicting the discussants’ media use patterns. the discussants who are graduates tended to use the new media for workrelated activities, compared to the undergraduates. this, as they noted, seems natural as most offices have new media devices that are connected to the internet. in addition, findings from the study showed that the older discussants (from aged 28-30 year) are more likely to watch television than the younger discussants (18-27 years). additionally, findings showed that income, especially on the side of the undergraduates, determined use pattern of television. some of them noted that due to limited income, they were unable to subscribe for cable television regularly, but instead preferred to subscribe for internet data to use their new media devices. 4.4 discussion of findings findings from this study buttresses findings (taneja, webster, malthouse & ksiazek, 2012; kim, 2014; kõutsklemm & brites, 2017) that stress the fact that individual patterns of media use include a composition of different media and that the way and how the components of these repertoires are interrelated is a key to understanding audience media use. this, according to the researcher, suggests that people’s choice of media repertoires is a complicated process in which people’s orientation toward medium and preference for content types work together during media selection process. regarding preferences, as the findings from the study conducted by kim (2014) also shows, audiences in the present study appear to have a preceding orientation toward medium over content preferences when it comes to the new media and the internet specifically. in other words, the audience first choose to go online and then search 70 | a m e r i c a n j o u r n a l o f a r t s a n d c o m m u n i c a t i o n | https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac american journal of arts and communication vol.10, issue 4 ; july august 2025 ; issn: 2994 0540 impact factor: 7.94 1252 columbia rd nw, washington dc, united states https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac; mail : topacademicjournals@gmail.com for content that satisfies their needs. contrastingly, however, regarding television use, audience have a preceding orientation toward content, in the sense that they resort to the television for specific content which they feel is better assessed on television than internet-enabled devices such smartphones, tablets, and laptops. some of the reasons include perception that television can provide credible news and to the socialization need of bounding with family members and interacting with like-minds during television viewing. findings from this study shows what can be described as negative correlation between the time spent on using the television and new media platforms much like findings from the study conducted by hasebrink et al (2015). one new media is used at the expense of the television, and the respondents did not seem to be able to combine heavy use of both. stated differently, the television is typically consumed as background media or second choice media. the discussants limited use of the television is a matter of choice, and perhaps a cultural perception of the television and not that the television necessarily offers less. elsewhere in the united states, findings from a study conducted by taneja, webster, malthouse and ksiazek (2012) showed that audience made multiple use of the television, including connecting to the internet; watching of news, entertainment, or sports, and where also characterized by regular, random channel surfing. a plausible explanation, as the research noted, could be that those who work tend to use computers and mobile phones more, because of their jobs and commutes, while those who do not work stay more at home and consume more traditional media. at first sight, this finding, as the researchers assert, might be read in line with public concerns about the impact of online media on traditional media such as the television– the more people use the internet, the less they will watch television. however, it can be asserted that the television in its traditional or typical form as a device which is stationed in a particular corner of the house, still maintains it place as a ‘legacy’ media. in contrast with findings other studies (hasebrink et al., 2015; global wed index, 2017), findings from the present study showed that the audience do not watch television with other device order than the traditional television. this is to say that even when the television as a media and as an affordance has converged into the new media and can be accessed with devices such as smartphones, laptops, and tablets, the audience still choose to watch the traditional television when they have the need to do so. findings from the study also showed that age, income, and education levels, play significant roles in predicting the discussants’ media use patterns. the discussants who are graduates tended to use the new media for workrelated activities, compared to the undergraduates. this, as they noted, seems natural as most offices have new media devices that are connected to the internet. in addition, findings from the study showed that the older discussants (from aged 28-30 year) are more likely to watch television than the younger discussants (18-27 years). additionally, findings showed that income, especially on the side of the undergraduates, determined use pattern of television. some of them noted that due to limited income, they were unable to subscribe for cable television regularly, but instead preferred to subscribe for internet data to use their new media devices. these results corroborate findings from the study conducted by kim (2014) which showed a correlation between media use pattern, age, as well as education. 5.1 summary 71 | a m e r i c a n j o u r n a l o f a r t s a n d c o m m u n i c a t i o n | https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac american journal of arts and communication vol.10, issue 4 ; july august 2025 ; issn: 2994 0540 impact factor: 7.94 1252 columbia rd nw, washington dc, united states https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac; mail : topacademicjournals@gmail.com this study was embarked upon to explore television and new media use patterns among youths in anambra state, in addition to influencing factors. the study adopted a qualitative research method involving two (2) focus groups of six (6) participants each. the study participants who were selected purposively were resident in awka, anambra state capital, and were aged between 18-30 years. the participants admitted that they had linear uses of the traditional television. this is to say that their use of the traditional television mostly swung toward a particular content. conversely, however, findings on the discussants’ new media preferences and use patterns showed that they formed robust new media repertoires (a combination of different new media and routines of use for certain purposes). the new media repertoires include ‘computing for work’; ‘mobile messaging’; ‘entertainment online’; and ‘information online’. findings from this study shows what can be described as negative correlation between the time spent on using the television and new media platforms. one new media is used at the expense of the television, and the respondents did not seem to be able to combine heavy use of both. stated differently, the television is typically consumed as background media or second choice media. also, findings showed that age, income, and education levels, play significant roles in predicting the discussants’ media use patterns. the discussants who are graduates tended to use the new media for work-related activities, compared to the undergraduates. additionally, findings showed that income, especially on the side of the undergraduates, determined use pattern of television. some of them noted that due to limited income, they were unable to subscribe for cable television regularly, but instead preferred to subscribe for internet data to use their new media devices. these results corroborate findings from the study conducted by kim (2014) which showed a correlation between media use pattern, age, as well as education. 5.2 conclusion the convergence and deconvergence of media and their uses is observable in the audience media use patterns. while their use patterns of the media which shows them forming complex media repertoires points to a convergence, their use of television of as a standalone device indicates a deconvergence in which the television serves as a tool for socialization. the major assumptions of the audience perception theory are that the audience are active users of the media and that audience member discerns which medium will best gratify his or her needs for a given use. this theory is found relevant to this study which has provided evidence that the audience select certain media to meet certain needs, for instance, online news platforms for information needs. validating the uses and gratifications theory further, findings from this study show that the audience uses of media have become more complex as they have gone beyond merely using a media to forming media use repertoires where several media (both new and traditional) are combined to meet certain needs). the audience have also become so active that in an increasingly digitalized media environment, they have singled out the television as a tool for offline socialization, to ensure that their interpersonal/human-to-human relationships are sustained. a general conclusion of this study is that media use patterns cannot be understood just on the basis of the frequency and duration of use, as well as the content searched for. other indicators such as the embeddedness 72 | a m e r i c a n j o u r n a l o f a r t s a n d c o m m u n i c a t i o n | https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac american journal of arts and communication vol.10, issue 4 ; july august 2025 ; issn: 2994 0540 impact factor: 7.94 1252 columbia rd nw, washington dc, united states https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac; mail : topacademicjournals@gmail.com into everyday routines or individual preferences for and attitudes towards certain kinds of media content are also highly important factors, sometimes even more important than the behavioural indicators. references berry, g. l., & shelton, j. e. 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(2015). users as innovators in the market for smart city services: the case of city of things. info, 17(4), 35–50. https://doi.org/10.1108/info-03-2015-001 stafford, t. f., & schkade, l. l. (2004). determining uses and gratifications for the internet. decision sciences, 35(2), 259–280. storsul, t., & stuedahl, d. (2007). ambivalence towards convergence: digitalization and media change. gothenburg: nordicom. taneja, h., webster, j. g., malthouse, e. c., & ksiazek, t. b. (2012). media consumption across platforms: identifying user-defined repertoires. new media & society. https://doi.org/10.1177/1461444811436146 wimmer, r., & dominick, j. (2003). mass media research: an introduction. belmont, ca: wadsworth. winner, l. (1993). upon opening the black box and finding it empty: social constructivism and the philosophy of technology. science, technology, and human values, 18(3), 362–378. american journal of arts and communication vol. 9, issue 1; january-february 2024; issn: 2994-0540 impact factor: 6.9 11252 columbia rd nw, washington dc, united states https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac; mail: topacademicjournals@gmail.com 42 | american journal of art and communication | https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac adapting to musical trends: a comparative analysis of love fm, cool fm, and wazobia fm in the evolving landscape of music preferences enyindah stella chinyere rivers state university, nkpolu-oroworukwo, port harcourt, nigeria department of mass communication email: stella.enyindah1@ust.edu.ng doi: https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.10639865 abstract: this study examines adapting to musical trends: a comparative analysis of love fm, cool fm, and wazobia fm in the evolving landscape of music preferences. the study was guided by two research questions and two hypotheses. the design used in the study was a focus group discussion, and the researcher were the instrument for data collection. the sampling was done in two groups, with one focusing on selected staff members from the three different radio stations, while the other focused on residents of the port harcourt metropolis, out of which a sample size of 15 was chosen with the purposive sampling technique. the three radio stations that were evaluated had audience engineering programs through music, such as the drivetime show on cool 96.5 fm, the one nigeria radio show on love97.7 fm, and the lunch hour drive on wazobia 94.1 fm. overall, the study found that radio listeners were generally satisfied with their listening experience and that their loyalty was influenced by a variety of factors, such as the station's programing or technical quality. the study concluded that music radio listeners are generally satisfied with their radio listening experience and that their loyalty is strongly influenced by the amount of time they spend listening to a particular station. based on the findings of the study, it was recommended that radio stations should focus on creating engaging and high-quality programing to build a loyal audience. in addition, radio stations should consider how to create emotional connections with their listeners. keywords: musical trends, comparative analysis, love fm, cool fm, wazobia fm. introduction in the dynamic world of radio broadcasting, adapting to changing musical trends is paramount for maintaining audience relevance and satisfaction (macfarland, 2013). this comparative analysis delves into the strategies employed by three prominent nigerian radio stations, love fm, cool fm, and wazobia fm, as they navigate the ever-evolving landscape of music preferences. by examining their programing choices, audience engagement tactics, and overall adaptability, we gain insights into how these stations strategically position themselves in response to the shifting musical tastes of their listeners. love fm, cool fm, and wazobia fm represent distinct facets of the nigerian radio spectrum, each catering to diverse demographics and musical inclinations. love fm, mailto:topacademicjournals@gmail.com mailto:stella.enyindah1@ust.edu.ng american journal of arts and communication vol. 9, issue 1; january-february 2024; issn: 2994-0540 impact factor: 6.9 11252 columbia rd nw, washington dc, united states https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac; mail: topacademicjournals@gmail.com 43 | american journal of art and communication | https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac with its tagline "your love, your music," positions itself as a station dedicated to romantic and soulful genres. cool fm, on the other hand, projects a more contemporary and urban image, branding itself as a station for the "young, sexy, and cool." meanwhile, wazobia fm stands out by embracing a unique blend of indigenous and international sounds, often characterized by its tagline "the people’s station." the world of music is in a perpetual state of flux, influenced by technological advancements, cultural shifts, and global trends. radio stations, as purveyors of auditory content, play a crucial role in shaping and reflecting these musical landscapes (briain, 2022). the ability to anticipate, embrace, and leverage emerging trends is essential for radio stations seeking sustained audience engagement. love fm, which focuses on love-themed music, occupies a niche transcending mere entertainment. the station is a curator of emotions, providing a sonic backdrop for romantic moments, introspection, and shared experiences. as love songs span various genres, from soulful ballads to upbeat pop tunes, love fm has the flexibility to adapt to evolving musical trends while maintaining a cohesive thematic identity. cool fm, with its emphasis on being "young, sexy, and cool," caters to a demographic characterized by dynamic preferences and a penchant for the latest trends. the station positions itself as a trendsetter, not only in terms of music but also in lifestyle and pop culture. its adaptability lies in its ability to seamlessly incorporate new sounds, emerging artists, and contemporary hits, ensuring that it remains a go-to destination for the youth demographic. wazobia fm, with its unique blend of indigenous and international sounds, embodies the rich cultural diversity of nigeria. the station’s adaptability is rooted in its fusion of traditional and modern music, creating a space where listeners can connect with their roots while embracing global influences. wazobia fm’s commitment to inclusivity is reflected in its programing which features a wide array of musical genres, including highlife, afrobeat, hip-hop, and reggae. as technology continues to reshape the music industry, radio stations face the challenge of engaging audiences across various platforms. the rise of streaming services, podcasts, and social media has transformed how people discover and consume music. love fm, cool fm, and wazobia fm, cognizant of these changes, have embraced digital platforms to extend their reach and interact with listeners beyond traditional airwaves (durodola, 2013).in the following sections, we will delve deeper into the programming strategies of each radio station, exploring how they curate playlists, feature artists, and leverage audience feedback to stay attuned to the ever-shifting landscape of musical preferences. by examining these aspects, we aim to uncover the nuances of adaptation within each station’s approach and shed light on the broader trends influencing the radio industry in nigeria. statement of the problem the evolving landscape of music preferences poses a significant challenge for radio stations seeking to maintain relevance and effectively engage their audiences. love fm, cool fm, and wazobia fm, as prominent players in the nigerian radio industry, confront a dynamic and competitive environment in which musical trends shift rapidly. the statement of the problem centers on the need for these radio stations to strategically adapt to changing listener preferences to sustain audience loyalty and uphold their positions as influential cultural gatekeepers. the rapid diversification of musical tastes among audiences demands a nuanced understanding of emerging genres mailto:topacademicjournals@gmail.com american journal of arts and communication vol. 9, issue 1; january-february 2024; issn: 2994-0540 impact factor: 6.9 11252 columbia rd nw, washington dc, united states https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac; mail: topacademicjournals@gmail.com 44 | american journal of art and communication | https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac and artists. technological advancements have transformed how people access and consume music, with streaming services and digital platforms becoming increasingly popular and the influence of global trends on local music scenes adding another layer of complexity. love fm, cool fm, and wazobia fm operate within the broader context of the global music industry, where international hits often shape local tastes. the problem at hand revolves around the intricate task of adapting to the multifaceted nature of evolving music preferences in nigeria. love fm, cool fm, and wazobia fm must navigate the complexities of changing genres, technological shifts, and global influences to ensure that their programing remains not only current but also resonant with the diverse musical sensibilities of their audiences. this analysis explores how these radio stations strategically address these challenges and navigate the evershifting landscape of musical preferences. objectives of the study this study examines adapting to musical trends: a comparative analysis of lovefm, cool fm, and wazobia fm in the evolving landscape of music preferences in rivers state. the specific objectives were as follows: 1. determine if the music used by love fm, cool fm, and wazobia fm maximally influenced audience members to be loyal to the station. 2. identify the possible constraints encountered by love fm, cool fm, and wazobia fm on the use of music for audience engineering. research questions the following research questions were raised to guide this study. 1. how did the music being utilized by love fm, cool fm, and wazobia fm in rivers state enhance audience engineering? 2. possible constraints encountered by love fm, cool fm, and wazobia fm in the use of music for audience engineering? theoretical framework the theoretical framework of this study is anchored on the uses and gratifications theory uses and gratifications theory the uses and gratifications theory, propounded by elihu katz, jay g. blumler, and michael gurevitch in the late 1960s and early 1970s, is a communication theory that shifts the focus from the traditional approach of studying media effects on audiences to examining how audiences actively use media for their purposes and gratifications (egede & chuks-nwosu, 2013). this theory marks a departure from the notion of media as a oneway influencer, emphasizing instead the active role of the audience in selecting, interpreting, and deriving satisfaction from media content. at its core, the uses and gratifications theory posits that individuals proactively choose media outlets and content based on their psychological and social needs (ifinedo, 2016). the theory recognizes that people are not passive consumers but active agents who actively engage with media to fulfill specific needs and desires. the choice of media consumption is driven by the expectation that certain media content will provide gratification and meet an individual’s needs or wants. mailto:topacademicjournals@gmail.com american journal of arts and communication vol. 9, issue 1; january-february 2024; issn: 2994-0540 impact factor: 6.9 11252 columbia rd nw, washington dc, united states https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac; mail: topacademicjournals@gmail.com 45 | american journal of art and communication | https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac the four core attributes of the uses and gratifications theory (rui&stefanone, 2016) areas follows: intentionality: individuals are intentional in their media choices. they actively seek media content that aligns with their specific needs, interests, or goals. this intentional selection process implies a level of control and agency on the part of the audience, as they decide what media to consume based on their perceived gratifications. selectivity: audiences exhibit selectivity in their media choices, opting for content that aligns with their preferences and satisfies their needs. this selectivity is influenced by factors such as personal preferences, demographic characteristics, and individual values. people tend to choose media that resonates with their existing beliefs, interests, and lifestyles. expectancy and gratification: this theory posits that individuals have specific expectations regarding the gratifications they seek from media content. these expectations guide their media choices, and the gratifications obtained contribute to their overall satisfaction. the theory identifies various gratifications, including information, entertainment, personal identity reinforcement, social integration, and escapism. individual differences: the uses and gratifications theory acknowledges that individuals vary in their media use patterns because of differences in psychological and social characteristics. these differences can include demographics, personality traits, and socioeconomic status. the theory emphasizes understanding how individual variations influence media consumption behaviors. the uses and gratifications theory has been applied across various media platforms, including television, radio, newspapers, and digital media. for instance, individuals may watch television news to stay informed (informational gratification), listen to music for emotional relaxation (affective gratification), or engage in social media to connect with friends and family (social integrative gratification).this theory has practical applications in media research and audience analysis, helping media practitioners and researchers understand why audiences choose specific media outlets and content. by recognizing the active role of audiences in the media consumption process, the uses and gratifications theory provides insights into the diverse motivations that drive individuals to engage with media in specific ways, shaping our understanding of the dynamic relationship between media and audiences (dolan et al., 2016) the uses and gratifications theory holds significant relevance to the study of "adapting to musical trends: a comparative analysis of love fm, cool fm, and wazobia fm in the evolving landscape of music preferences." this theoretical framework provides a lens through which to understand the active role of radio audiences in selecting and engaging with specific stations based on their unique needs and preferences. in the context of this study, the theory illuminates why listeners opt for particular radio stations like love fm, cool fm, or wazobia fm. by examining the gratifications sought by audiences, whether it be the desire for entertainment, cultural connection, or the exploration of specific music genres, the uses and gratifications theory helps unravel the intentional choices made by individuals in their media consumption. understanding the motivations behind the selection of these stations aids in deciphering how they adapt to changing musical trends to meet the diverse gratification needs of their audiences. moreover, the theory sheds light on how these radio stations strategically cater to distinct demographics, aligning their programing with the mailto:topacademicjournals@gmail.com american journal of arts and communication vol. 9, issue 1; january-february 2024; issn: 2994-0540 impact factor: 6.9 11252 columbia rd nw, washington dc, united states https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac; mail: topacademicjournals@gmail.com 46 | american journal of art and communication | https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac expectations and preferences of their listeners. this insight enhances the comparative analysis, providing a theoretical foundation for exploring how love fm, cool fm, and wazobia fm navigate the evolving landscape of music preferences to fulfill the diverse gratification needs of their respective audiences. conceptual clarification music music is a universal and abstract form of art that employs organized sound elements, such as melody, harmony, rhythm, and timbre, to convey emotion, express ideas, and communicate cultural values. it is a deeply ingrained aspect of human culture, with roots tracing back to prehistoric times. the essence of music lies in its ability to evoke emotions, create atmospheres, and provide a means of human expression beyond the limitations of language. music is an auditory experience that engages the human sense of hearing. it encompasses various styles, genres, and forms, including classical, folk, jazz, rock, pop, electronic, and many more (cornelius &natvig, 2022). each genre carries its unique characteristics, cultural influences, and historical context, reflecting the diverse and dynamic nature of human societies. melody, often considered the heart of music, is a sequence of single pitches that create a recognizable tune. harmony involves the simultaneous combination of different melodies or pitches, contributing to the overall richness of the sound. rhythm, the arrangement of sounds in time, provides the structure and pulse that guide the listener through the musical experience. timbre refers to the unique quality or color of a sound, allowing us to distinguish between different instruments or voices. music serves various functions in society. it can be a form of entertainment, as seen in concerts, festivals, and other live performances. in addition, music plays a crucial role in religious rituals, ceremonies, and cultural celebrations, fostering a sense of community and shared identity. it has therapeutic effects, influencing mood, emotions, and even physical well-being (hmala& el fahli, 2023). in educational settings, music education enhances cognitive abilities, creativity, and social skills. the creation of music involves skilled individuals known as composers, songwriters, and performers. composers craft musical compositions by determining the structure, harmony, and instrumentation (zager, 2021). songwriters focus on creating lyrics that complement the musical elements. performers, including instrumentalists and vocalists, bring the music to life through their interpretation and expression. advancements in technology have significantly impacted the production, distribution, and consumption of music. recording techniques allow for the preservation of performances, enabling a wide audience to experience the work of musicians. the rise of digital platforms and streaming services has transformed the music industry, altering how people discover, share, and interact with music. music transcends cultural and linguistic barriers and serves as a powerful medium for global communication. it can evoke nostalgia, trigger memories, and create a sense of connection among people from different backgrounds (van der hoeven, 2018). the diversity of musical traditions around the world highlights the richness of human creativity and the capacity of music to express the complexities of human experience. in essence, music is a multifaceted art form that enriches human life in numerous ways. it encompasses a vast array of styles, genres, and cultural influences, making it a dynamic and ever-evolving aspect of human expression. from its historical mailto:topacademicjournals@gmail.com american journal of arts and communication vol. 9, issue 1; january-february 2024; issn: 2994-0540 impact factor: 6.9 11252 columbia rd nw, washington dc, united states https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac; mail: topacademicjournals@gmail.com 47 | american journal of art and communication | https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac roots to its contemporary forms, music continues to play a central role in shaping societies, fostering emotional connections, and providing a universal language that transcends borders. how music used by love fm, cool fm, and wazobia fm maximally influenced audience members to be loyal to the station. in terms of how these three radio stations utilize music to maximize loyalty among listeners, there are a few key factors to consider. love fm, for example, uses a personalized approach to music selection, allowing listeners to feel like they are part of a community with shared interests. cool fm, on the other hand, uses its social media presence and interactive features to build a strong connection with listeners. wazobia fm uses a mix of local and international music to appeal to various listeners and its unique brand of humor to keep listeners engaged. love fm, cool fm, and wazobia fm employ distinct musical strategies to maximize audience loyalty, strategically tapping into the preferences and gratifications of their listeners. love fm, with its thematic focus on love and romance, uses music as a powerful emotional catalyst. the station curates playlists that resonate with the sentimental inclinations of its audience, creating a sonic atmosphere conducive to love and intimacy (banerjee-datta, 2022). by consistently delivering a mix of soulful ballads, romantic classics, and contemporary love songs, love fm establishes a unique emotional connection with its listeners. this deliberate alignment with the audience’s emotional need foster loyalty, as listeners associate the station with a personalized and intimate musical experience that enhances their emotional well-being. cool fm takes a dynamic approach by catering to the youthful and trendy demographics. the station strategically integrates the latest and most popular music across genres, reflecting the contemporary tastes of its audience (saquilayan, 2015). by staying ahead of musical trends and featuring emerging artists, cool fm positions itself as a trendsetter and cultural influencer. the station’s ability to consistently provide a cutting-edge and diverse musical experience foster loyalty among younger listeners who seek a connection with the pulse of current music culture. wazobia fm, with its fusion of indigenous and international sounds, maximizes audience loyalty by celebrating cultural diversity. the station carefully selects music representing the rich tapestry of nigerian and global musical traditions (kerrigan &preece, 2022). this approach resonates with listeners who appreciate the blend of traditional and modern sounds. wazobia fm becomes a cultural bridge, catering to the pride of identity and a sense of belonging for its audience. by embracing the cultural roots of its listeners, wazobia fm cultivates loyalty through music that not only entertains but also reinforces a shared cultural identity. in summary, love fm, cool fm, and wazobia fm strategically use music to maximize audience loyalty by aligning with the emotional, contemporary, and cultural needs of their respective listeners. love fm’s focus on romance creates an intimate connection, cool fm’s trendsetting approach resonates with the youth, and wazobia fm’s cultural fusion fosters a sense of identity. through these tailored musical strategies, each station effectively solidifies its position as a go-to source for a specific audience demographic, thereby enhancing listener loyalty in the competitive landscape of radio broadcasting. mailto:topacademicjournals@gmail.com american journal of arts and communication vol. 9, issue 1; january-february 2024; issn: 2994-0540 impact factor: 6.9 11252 columbia rd nw, washington dc, united states https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac; mail: topacademicjournals@gmail.com 48 | american journal of art and communication | https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac various possible constraints encountered by love fm, cool fm, and wazobia fm on the use of music for audience engineering love fm, cool fm, and wazobia fm, despite their strategic use of music for audience engineering, face several constraints that can impact their ability to fully shape and control the audience’s experience (durodola, 2013; elega, 2018). competitive landscape: in a highly competitive radio industry, stations like love fm, cool fm, and wazobia fm must navigate a crowded space where audience preferences are diverse. the competition for listener attention poses a constraint that requires these stations to continuously adapt their musical programing to stand out and retain their audiences. changing music trends: the dynamic nature of music trends poses a challenge for these stations. staying abreast of rapidly evolving musical preferences requires constant vigilance and adaptability. what is popular today may not be popular tomorrow, and stations must invest resources in research and analysis to predict and respond to these shifts effectively. demographic diversity: nigeria’s diverse demographic landscape means that love fm, cool fm, and wazobia fm cater to audiences with varying tastes, age groups, and cultural backgrounds. striking a balance. review of related empirical studies simeon-oka, e., ortún-sánchez a, aguila-vallina a, aledo-garcía, f. (2017). measuring loyalty in music radio: an empirical study on the moderating role of listening level. for this study, the researchers used a survey-based approach and conducted an online survey of 400 spanish radio listeners. the survey asked respondents about their listening habits, loyalty to specific radio stations, and demographic information. the researchers also conducted a focus group of 16 radio listeners and asked them about their listening habits and perceptions of radio stations. the results of the survey and focus group were then analyzed using statistical methods to identify patterns and relationships. the study found that music is an important factor in building loyalty among listeners, with higher levels of listening leading to greater loyalty. additionally, the study found that other factors, such as age, gender, and listening habits, can also influence loyalty. the study was conducted in spain and focused on spanish radio listeners because they wanted to examine the differences in listening habits and loyalty among spanish radio listeners. additionally, the researchers felt that spain’s radio market was an interesting case study due to its diversity and competitiveness. the results of this study may not be generalizable to other countries, but they can provide insights into how loyalty is formed in a radio market. niemann and hoffmann (2016) conducted a study to examine music radio audience gratification: an empirical investigation. for this study, the researchers used a combination of quantitative and qualitative methods. first, they conducted an online survey of 692 german radio listeners, asking questions about their listening habits, how they felt about different radio stations, and their overall satisfaction with radio. then, they conducted 12 in-depth interviews with participants from the survey, asking more detailed questions about their radio listening habits. finally, they analyzed the results of the survey and interviews to identify patterns and draw conclusions about music radio audience gratification. the study found that financial constraints were the most significant obstacle mailto:topacademicjournals@gmail.com american journal of arts and communication vol. 9, issue 1; january-february 2024; issn: 2994-0540 impact factor: 6.9 11252 columbia rd nw, washington dc, united states https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac; mail: topacademicjournals@gmail.com 49 | american journal of art and communication | https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac to radio stations when it came to use music for audience engineering. the study also found that legal constraints, such as copyright restrictions, were also significant. social and cultural constraints were found to be less significant although they still pose challenges. the study found that logistical constraints were rarely an issue for radio stations. methodology research design the study framework was the focus group discussion (fgd), a technique of the qualitative research method that thrives on the use of open-ended questions to provide a small group of participants. in the focus group discussion, questions asked to participants were filtered to elicit responses relating to the participant’s beliefs, opinions, reactions, and perceptions of the musical concept. in this particular method of research applied as here , the focus group discussion was chosen to enable the researcher to capture participants’ views and disposition toward the use of music for audience engineering and how these radio stations, love fm, cool fm, and wazobia fm, inspired or engaged the audience through their musical content. sample size the sample for this study could have been identified using the checkmarket.com online sample size calculator, or even taro yamane or krejcie and morgan, which is an online table determinant for sample sizes, but due to the qualitative approach involved, and aided with the purposive sampling technique, the sample size for this research involved only 15 fifteen chosen participants, who have undergone a prior relationship of communication with the researcher and given the creative space of this research, as it involves music and a loyal listenership as well as an experienced understanding of the administration that goes on in that area of audio journalism, it was of dire necessity because the population itself without being sampled was enormously vast and would lead to a lot of incorrect data which would misinterpret the data got. as aforementioned earlier, participants themselves were selected using the purposive sampling technique to obtain persons relevant to the study. details of the selection process are included in the sampling technique. these respondents/participants included 9 loyal listeners, 3 each from the 3 radio stations. these respondents had communication with the researcher before this research, and the researcher had a level of experience with music being regulated on the radio for audience satisfaction. it also included six (6) radio staff members, two (2) each from each of the three (3) radio stations, with whom the researcher had a communicative and direct contact relationship before this research, enabling the researcher to gain further insight into concrete details. these six (6) staff members included both top-level administrative staff and on-air personalities, and this is in consideration of the aims and study inquiries that were sought out in the research of this work. sampling technique the qualitative sample is sampled in a manner that operates within the frame of meaning that the researcher has in mind. with the study employing the purposive sampling technique, the frames of the researcher were more detailed and valid criteria were put in place to determine the individuals that were selected. qualitative research does not pretend to discover context in dependent knowledge but aims at a deep understanding of phenomena in mailto:topacademicjournals@gmail.com american journal of arts and communication vol. 9, issue 1; january-february 2024; issn: 2994-0540 impact factor: 6.9 11252 columbia rd nw, washington dc, united states https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac; mail: topacademicjournals@gmail.com 50 | american journal of art and communication | https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac a specific context. tracy (2013) observed that in qualitative research purposive sampling, the evidence chosen explains a particular issue within the existing parameters of research questions, goals, and other important details to be sought after. the first group of participants who are loyal or ardent listeners of the given radio stations were chosen from specific areas in and around port harcourt and other communal areas of rivers state, with the researcher keeping with activities of the ardent listeners through call logs into programs on the radio stations, contributions to these said programs and aiming to create a balance amongst the demography of the given participants. the sampling technique being purposive was evoked so while discussing as a group, the focus of the research could be easily and better understood, as in contrast to bringing in a random group of participants who have little or no inclination towards the programs on the given radio platforms. the first group of individuals is drawn from the three senatorial zones, which comprise rivers east, rivers south-east, and rivers west,. with regard to the scope of this dissertation, an even spread was carried out for these listeners with age consents from eighteen (18) and above, as well as an almost even share of the different genders, which included eight (8) females and seven (7) males. the second group of respondents of this group discussion included individuals who were staff members of the given radio stations, while still involving the purposive sampling technique. these individuals were selected based on their prior relationship with the researcher and were selected based on their years of experience on these radio platforms and activities or line of work they handled as responsibilities in these radio stations. this is because some objectives of this given research required the experience and technical know how of certain activities on the radio stations mentioned. with these particular respondents consisting of four (4) males and two (2) females, these respondents were chosen purposively and specifically because they are staff members of these radio stations who are in charge of radio programing and what is approved or rejected on the radio space. in particular, the researcher evoked the purposive sampling technique to work within a frame of meaning and to obtain the most credible data from and for the research work itself. description of the data gathering instrument qualitative research requires the researcher to be in the field and participate in the process. according to tracy (2013) qualitative research methodsin a research work as thus, when describing who the data gathering instrument is, it must be first applied herein that the researcher carrying out such work is the data gathering instrument, and as such the researcher of this work is one well-disciplined in communication and media studies, with a wide knowledge of this study, the researcher has a bachelor degree in international relations and diplomacy, the researcher is well seasoned with the research work and all it has to entail, backed up alongside teachings and guidelines from his supervisor’s pool of knowledge, the researcher brings to light, data gathering through the qualitative method with a detailed approach. validity of the study validity concerns in qualitative research refer to how truthful an account represents a social phenomenon, whereas reliability refers to its dependability. the foregoing shows that in qualitative research, the place of validity and mailto:topacademicjournals@gmail.com american journal of arts and communication vol. 9, issue 1; january-february 2024; issn: 2994-0540 impact factor: 6.9 11252 columbia rd nw, washington dc, united states https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac; mail: topacademicjournals@gmail.com 51 | american journal of art and communication | https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac reliability is recognized. this work carried out by the researcher expressed validity because the research design employed the use of a focus group discussion that implored the use of open-ended questions to evoke answers expressing truth and details, with three ardent and loyal listeners each from the three selected radio stations cut across the three senatorial zones of the state. statements put into account for this research work carry truth because these listeners have remained loyal to the radio station. alongside these listeners, two selected staff members each from the radio station with solid years of experience put statements into account through open-ended questions determining why music plays a big part in drawing the audience to their station. method of data presentation and analysis the empirical evidence that came from this study was analyzed using a summary of what participants said during the focus group discussion concerning the genres of music played, the policies put in place to aid engineering of audience through music, and to know if music being utilized by these radio stations drew more listeners to the work. the design focused on a group discussion involving a topic on music was shown or represented using illustrative quotes that were paramount to the course of this research work. anderson (2010) stated that qualitative data are raw data and should be compiled and analyzed, not just listed. there should be an explanation of how the quotes were chosen and not just labeled. with this correspondence, the research work was detailed through quotes such as ‘genre of songs’, ‘type of policies’, ‘influence audience members’, ‘possible constraints’ and more, because they bordered on details concrete to the objectives and questions sought out to solve the statement of the problem in this research work. alongside these given details, important interaction in the focus group discussion for data discovery was obtained through open-ended questions that bordered on the objectives of the study in the discussion itself. the staff of the three radio stations alongside audience members as aforementioned were selected through a purposive sampling technique that bordered or hinged on the scope of the study, demographically and geographically. however, the participants lasted for a short while and commented freely due to the research design put in place for this study. results presentation of the focus group discussion how does music being utilized by love fm, cool fm, and wazobia fm in rivers state enhance audience engineering? the following questions concerning these radio stations using music and how these songs were able to draw listeners toward their different radio stations were asked in the discussion. the responses were evoked easily because they were open-ended questions. the participants answering this question were ardent listeners of the different radio stations because it involved a response on their part to how the music being played on these stations had kept them glued and loyal to the radio station itself. in reacting to the above question, an ardent listener of love fm, who was recruited because of his listenership value and his expressive comments on other programs of the show, stated that the music played on the radio station kept him glued to the station and its other content, because for him in particular, he was able to exercise his body system through dancing and burning out fat, and he was also able to revitalize his psychological and mailto:topacademicjournals@gmail.com american journal of arts and communication vol. 9, issue 1; january-february 2024; issn: 2994-0540 impact factor: 6.9 11252 columbia rd nw, washington dc, united states https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac; mail: topacademicjournals@gmail.com 52 | american journal of art and communication | https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac neurological activities by these exercises, which were good for his brain and other parts of his body systems. he further stated that music played on the radio kept him loyal to the radio platform through increased coordination in expression and served as a fun learning process because such activities imbibed goals like dancin, as previously stated, to exercise the body and helped him develop a routine and practice self-discipline. a female listener from cool fm, who had been an ardent listener of the station from time to time, responded to this question by saying that the music that was played on this station enhanced her love for the radio platform because of the particular genre of songs that were played on the radio. this genre, afro-fusio, which is a trending genre, kept her glued because of the language skills and the different tones of urban melody reverberated through the radio speakers. according to her, even her young children, who in some cases listened to the songs on the radio with her, had begun to relate musically in class to heighten their grammatical growth and to understand how to recite with ease. the second loyal listener from cool fm, a lady as well, likewise stated that music played on the radio station kept her tune in to the station platform because aside from the fact they played trending songs, it kept her mindset multitasked through memory attention and concentration development. she-having a prior love for music generally before being an ardent listener to the show-stated that she had perceived better working memory skills, as she was able to remember things and get multi engaged even while she had her mind busy on other matters. she also maintained that due to the songs being played on the station, she was able to interact more socially and communicate generally with her friends and family alike as social topics like music brought for better social engagements, which in turn improved her social skills as well. the first responding participant, who was an ardent and loyal listener of wazobia fm, stated in his response that music could evoke in him strong emotions and create a connection with him. by playing music that resonated with his emotions, the radio station established a deep connection and as such kept him engaged for a long duration. he further stated that by the radio station playing different and varied genres of songs, they were able to meet up his different choices, as in some cases oldies were played, making it possible for him to reminisce on the good old times, and in some other cases, new songs were introduced, keeping his body pumped and connecting a bond to the urban song choices that circulated the social space. the first female responding participant, who was a loyal listener of love fm, stated that she loved listening to songs generally as it was part of her life. she then stated that she got engaged more frequently with the songs being played on the radio platform because the radio station itself was able to put together meaningful programs and communicative radio operas that included song requests, song of the week tag and plays, radio drive time shows, noon music shows, debates or even audio performances and interviews with artists who had these songs played on the radio station. she claimed that by tuning in and listening to songs that were blended in through programs as such aforementioned, these essentials kept her involved in the radio station, making her feel a deeper connection to the station which in turn made her experience all the more enjoyable. the last responding participant from cool fm, who was an ardent male listener and had a deep passion for being a dj, stated in his reaction that the personality and entertaining storytelling and hyping engagement skill of the mailto:topacademicjournals@gmail.com american journal of arts and communication vol. 9, issue 1; january-february 2024; issn: 2994-0540 impact factor: 6.9 11252 columbia rd nw, washington dc, united states https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac; mail: topacademicjournals@gmail.com 53 | american journal of art and communication | https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac djs that usually played on set were what majorly influenced his listenership and his tuning in more frequently on the radio platform. apart from the fact that he also had the passion of a dj, he was able to infuse and relate with the intellectual creativity of the dj, who liked microphone narratives and hype phrases, which made the music listen all the more exciting. aside from that, they were able to professionally provide information on news concerning music and musical artists, which were in turn beneficial as they kept him further glued even for a long period, significantly impacting listener engagement. the last responding participant of love fm, who was a female loyal listener of the station, reacted in her response, saying that she remained glued to the content on the radio station because of particular arranged songs as playlists, and also the way the radio station rolled out its programs in a thematic pattern. the last respondent, who had fallen in love with just the particular genre of gospel music, stated that she was glued to the station because at a particular timeframe of each day, they played her favorite songs in a playlist-patterned output and it kept her solemn, focused, and consistent glued to the station. also, aside from the gospel playlist that was curated and arranged, the method and approach radio stations put out its programs in a thematic yet creative approach like the one senate-assembly show being played alongside politically conscious songs, which kept her mind engaged and excited because it showed and affirmed that the radio station kept her glued because it put out excellent programs and show roll-outs that matched her needs and interests, thereby making her satisfied. the next responding participant was a female loyal listener of wazobia fm, who engaged fairly in broadcast entertainment like shows and performances. she said she was drawn to the radio platform through the songs because of the fair passion she had for performances and live shows by artists in the music scene. the station putting out broadcasts of live shows and performances carried out by these artistsfurther ignited her passion and caused her to stick to songs being played by the radio station. she further said that through these live performances and shows that he had attended, she was able to discover and learn more things that would push her passion to greater heights. she also stated that the station made it possible for listeners to come through to these shows and performances, she felt included in these broadcast performances and further caused her to remain glued to the station so she would not miss out on any notification or package that would be beneficial to her. the last responding participant, who was a male listener of wazobia fm as well, stated that through the music that was used on the radio platform, he discovered that the radio station itself was able to impact his local community, as listeners of the station began to have a base of their own in his area. being a communal man, he stated that through the songs that were played and the fan base that was created, the station was able to pull through local events in his community, even support local indigenous acts by giving them platforms for interviews, live shows, and performances, as well as donating charitably to courses that involved entertainment and radio promotion. all these factors strengthened the fan base and loyalty to the station, thereby building a relationship between the radio station, himself, and members of his community. mailto:topacademicjournals@gmail.com american journal of arts and communication vol. 9, issue 1; january-february 2024; issn: 2994-0540 impact factor: 6.9 11252 columbia rd nw, washington dc, united states https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac; mail: topacademicjournals@gmail.com 54 | american journal of art and communication | https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac possible constraints encountered by love fm, cool fm, and wazobia fm in the use of music for audience engineering the following questions concerning the possible constraints that these radio stations encountered to musically draw the audience toward their different radio stations were asked in the discussion. the responses were evoked easily as they were open-ended questions asked. staff participants, both those that held top managerial positions and the creative on-air personalities responded to this particular question as it focused on the issues that would hinder these radio stations from using music to draw more audience toward their radio platform. reacting to the above question, the staff member from love fm, who was a veteran oap, indicated that the radio stations encountered such constraints as in some cases, the wrong music being a distraction depending on the listener and it could make the mind get overly excited leading up to forgetfulness. he further stated that sometimes music may also trigger bad memories due to the effect it has on the listener and it could be that some individuals are not just passionate about music and as such they switch off to another radio station for another form of content because when the right music is not played it becomes noise pollution and a lot of people do not want that. he concluded that upholding content importance was critical for radio stations because they needed to understand their audience’s benefits, likings, and requests. failure to bring about content that keeps the audience engaged and happy will ultimately lead to a slip in audience engineering. the next respondent, who was a managerial personnel at the same station, love fm, stated in his reaction that one of the constraints faced by the radio station while trying to use music to draw a lot of audience towards their radio station was the fact that there was strict competition amongst the radio stations battling for supremacy and large audience quantity. the fact alone that so many radio stations, including wazobia and cool fm, have dayto-day musical plays on their airwaves alone is enough to draw the audience away from their radio station to the next in an instant, so hence there must be a quality of uniqueness in the song output on the radio platform that would draw in a lot of listeners and keep them loyal to the station. the female vibrant and young oap from coolfm reacted in her response to the question that aside from the competition being faced by different radio stations using music to draw an audience to their programmes, the fact that there is already a divide amongst the audience makes it even more difficult for listeners to remain glued to the station. the divide amongst this audience arises from the fact that due to the introduction of new media and the social space, there are now more varied options for a music listener or broadcast enthusiast to choose from, ranging from podcast platforms to social musical applications, to the advent of online radio as well, it has made the radio platform seem a bit archaic and as such caused a divide and fragmentation amongst the audience. the fourth responding participant, a female, who held a managerial position with years of experience in wazobia fm, reacted in her response to the given question that there had been noticeable changes over time in the way we take in, consume, and apply media as a society in these modern times. the fact that there are platforms now that instantly meet the needs and uses of the individual music is very inclusive. instead of tuning in to the radio station to meet up with new songs or oldies, with the swipe or press of a button, the demands of the individual are met with no hassles like radio wave frequency or poor sound output. hence, it makes the radio system as a whole even mailto:topacademicjournals@gmail.com american journal of arts and communication vol. 9, issue 1; january-february 2024; issn: 2994-0540 impact factor: 6.9 11252 columbia rd nw, washington dc, united states https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac; mail: topacademicjournals@gmail.com 55 | american journal of art and communication | https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac more difficult to hold down their listeners and attract new ones. she further added that a change in the demography of the listeners can cause the radio station to lose more listeners as there will need to be a shift in its musical content to appeal to a new audience. the managerial personnel who also doubles as an oap at wazobia fm stated that a few constraints that the radio station will have while trying to use songs to keep an audience engineered towards a station will be the fact that with the advancement of technology, listeners have a variety of choices while listening to songs with the most vital point being that the listener is in full control of his creative experience and not as opposed to an oap controlling the creative flow in radio, thanks to gadgets of different, makes and sizes, entertainment systems have made it an easy outlook for people to control their music listening experience and as such caused a massive reduction in keeping the audience glued to their station. he further stated that aside from the advent of technology constraining the use of music for engineering audiences toward the station, financial revenues allocated to advertise content on the radio station may be stifled in most cases and will as such limit the operation of the station. this will diminish the number of the engaged audience because without attracting revenue through the self-channel of the radio or externally as with companies promoting their content, puts out a dull persona to the station and this will make the listener tune off to another station because it lacks excitement and creativity. the last responding participant, also a male staff who worked as an oap for cool fm in his reaction stated that a major hindrance as to why music was not fully utilized to draw audience to their station is because of issues like a limited signal coverage for putting out their content, due to weak or poor signals in different situations, the listener has difficulty in keeping up with the song playing and in a situation where the listener is in a remote part of the city or state, makes it even harder to keep such a listener glued to the station, he further stated that keeping up with the regulatory bodies and their compliances is also what hinders music from keeping their loyal listeners, due to heavy attraction of fines that will be inclusive if these compliances are not met, he stated that some trending songs have to be limited in their play so as not to tract such fines. ironically, it is these songs that push a lot of audience-especially the youth driven-to other platforms of a listening experience. he concluded in his reaction to the question posed that lack of good promotion and sustainable marketing was another major reason why there was a hindrance in using music to draw audience toward the radio station. due to limited budgeting and unsustainable musical promotion on the radio station, many plans to musically keep the audience connected will be rendered ineffective. discussion of the findings objective 1: determine if the music used by love fm, cool fm, and wazobia fm influences audience members to be loyal to the station. during findings during this research work, it was also determined that music that was played and used on the radio stations was influential in drawing their audience and keeping them loyal and glued to the programs that were played on the radio waves. this corroborates with the tenets of the active audience theory according to a profounder of the theory, hall (1973), who connotes that responders to broadcast will not respond to facts and figures without keenly listening but will be intricately divulged and influenced by it, often subconsciously, as mailto:topacademicjournals@gmail.com american journal of arts and communication vol. 9, issue 1; january-february 2024; issn: 2994-0540 impact factor: 6.9 11252 columbia rd nw, washington dc, united states https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac; mail: topacademicjournals@gmail.com 56 | american journal of art and communication | https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac such listeners were influenced by these songs played on the radio and with such influence the radio station was able to hold down their loyal audience and create more listenership in the process, this further added ground to the findings of the study as the responses from the participants, that music could evoke in them strong emotions and to create a connection with him, thereby by playing music that resonated with their emotions, the radio station had established a deep connection and as such kept them keep engaged for a long duration. they further stated that by the radio station playing different and varied genres of songs, they were able to meet up to their different choices, as in some cases oldies were played making it possible for them to reminisce on the good old times and in some other cases where new songs were introduced keeping his body pumped and connecting a bond to the urban song choices that circulated the social space, it went as far to show that audience growth was evident and feedback of song requests and dance routine videos spread across can be spread across digital streaming platforms, these impacts enabled the growth of the radio listening as well as growth on their social media channels. the findings of the study also led to the discovery that music had an impact in fostering communicative relationships among individuals in a given workplace or living condition. to further affirm this, a listener said these songs played on the radio station improved her relationship. she also maintained that due to the songs being played on the station, she was able to interact more socially and communicate generally with her friends and family alike as social topics like music brought for better social engagements, which in turn improved her social skills as well, as they shared affinities over particular songs, and it led to a broader length of communication among them. this further shows the theoretical opinion of mvquail (1972), a founder of the uses and gratification theory, who points out that there are several needs and gratifications for why individuals refer to components of the media for these activities. in that particular case, the music used, influenced, and further explored a social-integrative need of the listener and her platonic relationships. the findings of this study corroborate with earlier studies by mcadams (2015), whose studies in the empirical review showed that more of the participants indicated that music for audience engineering by a community radio is ideal because it helps to entertain the audience and thus proves a method of using music to do so. the findings of this study are also in agreement with earlier studies carried out by ndalu (2020), whose studies, as earlier revealed in the empirical review, showed that modern media and traditional media can affect and engineer a positive response in a rural audience setting through the utilization of music through singing of folklore by children in a rural environment while being streamed by thousands of listeners of a media platform as regards to a radio station. this is also in close context as regards the response of a participant who was a listener of wazobia fm, who stated that he discovered that the radio station was able to impact in his local community, as listeners of the station began to have a base of its own in his area through these songs that were played, the station was able to pull through for local events in his community, even support local indigenous acts by giving them platforms for interviews, live shows and performances, as well as donating charitably to courses that involved entertainment and radio promotion, this is further proven in the journal by learned scholar, nsereka (2021) in his published article titled, music as a communication tool for rural development in rivers state. all these factors mailto:topacademicjournals@gmail.com american journal of arts and communication vol. 9, issue 1; january-february 2024; issn: 2994-0540 impact factor: 6.9 11252 columbia rd nw, washington dc, united states https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac; mail: topacademicjournals@gmail.com 57 | american journal of art and communication | https://topjournals.org/index.php/ajac strengthened the fan base and loyalty to the station, thereby building a relationship between the radio station, himself, and members of his community. objective 2: determine the possible constraints encountered by love fm, coolfm, and wazobia fm on music for audience engineering within the discovery of this dissertation, its study also questioned if there were any constraints that radio stations faced while using music to draw more audience to their radio airwaves. objectively, on the course for constraints that the radio station may have faced while using music as a tool for audience engineering, it was found that the content of a particular song, stiff financial fines for failing to adhere to guidelines of regulatory bodies of the broadcasting company, or even a technological failure on radio frequency all pose a constraint in hindering music from engineering audience toward the radio station. stated accounts of power outages and poor connectivity to media ports by the respondents all caused a strain when putting out music or content in general on the airwaves. this hindered the audience from sticking to their content and reduced listenership on the radio. issues like limited signal coverage for putting out their content due to weak or poor signals in different situations hindered the listener in keeping up with the song playing and in a situation where the listener was in a remote part of the city or state, made it even harder to keep such a listener glued to the station. also adding to the statement, was the response from the staff member of the cool fm who stated that due to the content of music that was being put out now and judging from the creative direction of musical acts these days, due to explicit content and similar reasons, it was hard to adhere to the standard guidelines as set by the broadcasting body. this is due to the vivid content growing on the music scene and this is because these content styles are catchy and up the trend of songs in vogue right now. the most they could do as staff is to request a censored, societally appropriate version of the song and play within a time frame to avoid financial penalties by the regulatory body like the nbc on the radio station. these were a few of the constraints that the radio stations faced when using music to draw audiences to their stations, as responded to by the participants in the group discussion. conclusion the study concluded that music radio listeners are generally satisfied with their radio listening experience and that their loyalty is strongly influenced by the amount of time they spend listening to a particular station. the study also found that the factors that lead to loyalty differ across listeners, with some being more influenced by emotional factors, such as liking the djs or feeling that the station is a part of their identity, and others being more influenced by more practical factors, such as the station’s programing or technical quality. recommendation based on the findings of the study, the researchers recommend the following:  radio stations should focus on creating a loyal audience by providing high-quality programing and engaging with listeners meaningfully.  radio stations should consider tailoring their programing and marketing to the different factors that influence loyalty in their target audience. mailto:topacademicjournals@gmail.com american journal of arts and communication vol. 9, issue 1; 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