Plenary session

November 30, 7.00 PM   room 103

1. Dr.Larisa Mikhaylova

Journalism Department, Lomonosov Moscow State University

RSACS Academic Secretary

Introduction of the Plenary Speakers and the schedule of the conference

2. Dr. Carolyn Calloway-Thomas

Past President, World Communication Association

Professor and Director of Graduate Studies

Department of African American and African Diaspora Studies

Indiana University, Bloomington, U.S. A.

 Portrayals of the American Family in Print  Media:  ‘Cells of Consciousness and Quilts of Reality’

“Each member of the family in his own cell of consciousness, each making his own patchwork quilt of reality—collecting fragments of experience, here, pieces of information there.”

—Toni Morrison

Once upon a time,  over fifty years ago, it was easy for Americans to define what is a family. Today, however, technology, educational attainment,  and shifting values and attitudes have profoundly  changed  the definition (s)  of  family,  leading to more diverse views of what constitutes an American family.  But what are some social  and cultural trends that intersect to promote changes in family life? Why do such trends matter?   And what are the implications  of such trendlines for the larger society and our place in it?  Although the reasons are complex and various, part of the answer lies in the way newspapers and magazines frame the nature, structure,  and idea  of the American family.

This presentation examines the way select newspapers and magazines frame trends and patterns of American family life through the specific lens of a thematic cluster analysis.  An analysis  of articles and editorials have much to recommend, because they can  reveal perceptions of  what  diverse  families share in common,  as well as suggest what is strategically significant in holding American society together and sustaining citizenship and  collective familial bonds. Newspaper articles and editorials  in the New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, the Washington Post, and the New York Post form the basis of the analysis,  augmented by literature from the Pew Research Center.  My major emphasis is on the words authors and editors  use to talk about the American family and how the words work. The end  goal is to see how editors and writers view the American family  in the twenty-first century.

3. Dr. Maria Zolotukhina

Associate Professor

Sociocultural Practices Chair,Department of Culture Studies

Russian State University for the Humanities, Moscow, Russia

The New American Dream: changing values of parenting and parenthood

To launch a child into adulthood right at the time of entering college (and via doing that) has been one of the fundamental values of American middle class – vague as this category may appear. It served as the criteria for successful parental efforts of upbringing and its tangible result – an independent person, already focused on his or her own future success, separated from the family of origin. What seems to have changed quite significantly over the past decades are both the time frame of growing up and the criteria for achieving adulthood thus calling into question the very philosophy of life for Americans. The good old formula – “leave your home, become independent, live the American dream” – that served so well as a universal cultural imperative, while remaining recognizable, has lost its immutable character. Therefore parenthood and parenting as a project changed their rather substantiative qualities: in what constitutes being child-centered now, how is independence and autonomy taught and – most of all – what is the new understanding of affection and its manifestations. Such profound changes can not but influence the core elements of American childhood – an ideal space for a child at home, means of learning financial independence and charity, the notion of privacy and self-esteem and achievement. New types of parenting having become media mems (helicopter parenting. Tiger moms, bulldozer parenting etc ) create both moral panics (boomerang children never leaving home once they are back) and bring about condescending smiles. Emerging adultdood – a term coined by Jeffrey Arnett as a phenomenon even made insurance companies extend their policies up to age 24-25. Covid pandemic of 2020 and 2021 seems only to have reinforced the already existing new patterns without fully doing away with the old ones creating a new version of the American dream.

The presentation is based on long time included observation, media sources and interviews.

Section 1. Journalism

Coordinator Dr.Andrei Ruskin (Journalism Department, Lomonosov Moscow State University, Russia)

December 1, Thursday  3 PM – 4.30 PM room 103

1. Andrei Ruskin

Journalism Department

Lomonosov Moscow State University, Russia

The Family Subject Coverage by the US Local Media: a comparative analysis based on the 2022 daily newspapers publications

Publications in regional newspaper-type dailies on family topics in the broad sense of this issue have been constantly presented. Even in local newspapers, which began to be published in the XIX century and even earlier, the topics of family culture and relations between spouses, approaches to raising children, principles of household management, family property and inheritance of fortunes have always been raised. Invariably, newspapers reflected all sorts of intra-family conflicts when they became public, and even more so if it affected famous people. Another topic that American journalists dealt with thoroughly was related to the study of family unions that arose at the junction of different races, religions, cultures, traditions, estates and social classes. In recent years, publications about single-parent families and their problems, marriages between representatives of both the same sex and without gender indication, social support for low-income and disadvantaged families, families of new immigrants and migrants, refugees have increasingly appeared in the materials of local publications. The aim of the study was to determine whether there are pointed differences in the coverage of the family topic in newspapers of different states and, if so, which ones and how it is presented, whether or not it is related to the geographical factor, or the economic situation of a certain region of the USA. To conduct the study, a sample of 50 local publications was selected (one for each state). As criteria for the sample, factors such as publication in traditional paper and electronic form, daily frequency (at least five issues per week), the universal nature of newspapers (non-specialized) were taken into account. Only those publications were searched where the topic of family (or its derivatives) was not just mentioned, but also considered in detail (thus, the predominant genres of the selected publications were articles, reviews, interviews, sometimes reports and editorial columns). As a result of the conducted research on the coverage of the family topic by local newspapers, it was not possible to identify significant differences on a geographical basis. Almost all newspapers paid equal attention to the most significant and topical aspects of this subject. One of the explanations for this conclusion can be considered as the «publisher factor». Many local newspapers are still controlled by large publishing and media holdings, which «recommend» the same approaches to all «their» publications.

2. Fedor Serdotetsky

Journalism Department

Lomonosov Moscow State University, Russia

Genre and Thematic Features of the American Media Platform Twitch.Tv and Family Image On This Service

American platform Twitch.tv as a youth media platform  The topic of the report is the genre and thematic features of journalistic content on the American streaming platform Twitch.tv and the policy of this service regarding statements about new types of families in the United States.  The problem of the study is due to the difference between traditional media, which are used mainly by the older audience, and youth media, whose main consumers are young people under 35 years old, as well as the promotion of new ethical standards. The idea behind this study is to argue that streaming platforms and Twitch.tv in particular are extremely popular media sources among young people. For the report, foreign and Russian Twitch channels were selected, which are divided into the following categories: official media accounts, accounts of political journalists and accounts of video gaming magazines. The random sampling method was used for selection. On the example of these channels, genre diffuseness and hybridization of classical genres were revealed. Such genre specificity and format are unique to media content intended for a young audience. In addition, censorship of statements against the new type of families in the United States was revealed. Moreover, the study of Twitch channels revealed the existence of a complex hypermedia genre, which, thanks to new technological capabilities, combines the properties of all classical media at once, as well as the modified interactive property of new media, and promotes the speech culture inherent in youth into the digital space. The American platform Twitch.tv is a platform with great potential for journalism, as this service is an example of a fundamentally new type of content distribution, as well as interaction with the audience. However, at the same time, there is censorship on the platform aimed at the creators and consumers of content.

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