Menu Close

Television & New Media

Journal Description

Television & New Media

Television & New Media is an international journal showcasing key intellectual developments in television and new media studies.

The journal focuses on critical and cultural studies approaches to media and their application across social science and humanities disciplines. TVNM is particularly focused on scholarship that addresses the power dynamics of media cultures, industries, networks, and audiences.

Topics of interest include (but are not limited to):
• the past, present, and future of television and the televisual
• critical analysis of genres, programs, and content
• digitalization, digital media, and theories of convergence
• broadcast and post-broadcast technologies, infrastructures, and platforms
• creative, cultural, aesthetic, affective, and digital labor
• transnational media, identity and global culture
• media audiences and fandom
• production and industry studies
• surveillance technologies and cultures
• media policy, ownership, and intellectual property
• social movements, activism, and media power
• citizenship and media
• datafication, gamification and algorithmic governance

Article submissions can address any aspect of television and new media, but should take up questions that point to both the specificities of the object of study and the broader implications of historical conjunctures, cultural formations, political regimes, geopolitics, and/or economic forces.

Recent Special Issues include:
• Genre After Media
• Gender and Sexuality in Live Streaming
• Nationalisms and Racisms on Digital Media
• Contemporary Irish Television
• Digital Politics in Millennial India
• Reactionary Fandom

Questions about submissions can be directed to Laurie Ouellette at ouell031@umn.edu

Please direct correspondence regarding book reviews to the editor listed below:

Hollis Griffin
University of Michigan
Department of Communication and Media
North Quad, Room 5370
105 South State Street
Ann Arbor, MI 48109-1285
hollisg@umich.edu

Journal Feed

  • Building the Netflix Brand: Franchise Logic, Authorship, and Distinction in the Promotion of Stranger Things
    by Filipa Antunes
    Television & New Media, Ahead of Print. The article explores how Netflix uses the promotional narratives of its content, specifically Stranger Things, to pursue control of its wider brand associations. The study applies thematic and discourse analysis to demonstrate how the brand narrative articulated in interviews with the Duffer Brothers (a set of key promotional paratexts) enforces strict interpretation boundaries for Stranger Things, its creators, and Netflix. Specifically, the promotional discourse (1) draws on the commercial structures and reception patterns of genre franchises and auteurism to produce alignment with the value systems of different audience markets, and (2) capitalizes on […]
  • Audiovisual Self-Confrontation: Psychiatric and Psychotherapeutic Uses of Television and Video in (West) Germany 1970s–1990s
    by Renée Winter
    Television & New Media, Ahead of Print. The history of television and video therapy in the Federal Republic of Germany is strongly linked to the working group IAAPP (Internationaler Arbeitskreis für Audiovision in Psychiatrie und Psychotherapie/International Working Group for Audiovision in Psychiatry and Psychotherapy), which was founded 1977 in West Berlin. Although a mainly German-speaking group, the IAAPP also regularly referred to studies from the U.S., but only selectively adopted their approaches concerning audiovisual practices in psychiatry. Technological and legal conditions for the implementation of television systems in psychiatric clinics were debated and elaborated by the working group and formed […]
  • Contesting Captions: Netflix, Fan Campaigns, and the Labor of Access
    by Kelsey Cameron
    Television & New Media, Ahead of Print. This article theorizes the work of deaf fans and audiences in securing streaming video captions, which it names the labor of access. While prior scholarship on captions tends to emphasize policy and regulation, streaming video lacks the legislative framework for disability access seen with televisual captions in the United States. Drawing on disability studies and fan studies, this article shifts focus to fan campaigns, which become a central site for renegotiating industry accessibility practices in the absence of regulatory oversight. Using Netflix as a case study, it chronicles how audience campaigns contribute to […]
  • Getting NIL for Unpaid Labor: Self-Branding U.S. “Student-Athletes” in the Influencer Marketplace
    by Michael Serazio
    Television & New Media, Ahead of Print. For decades, the NCAA and its member schools profited richly from sports while denying student-athletes “employee” status and a direct compensation share in generating that value. Since 2019, state-level reforms pertaining to student-athletes’ use of their own name, image, and likeness, alongside a landmark Supreme Court decision, radically transformed the collegiate commercial landscape and burgeoned influencer-style, social media endorsement opportunities. Examining nearly 400 news articles published during that time, this qualitative textual analysis tracks and critiques the media coverage and stakeholder discourse around this issue as key policy events (both legislative and judicial) […]
  • Book Review: Not My Type: Automating Sexual Racism in Online Dating, by Williams
    by Sarah Florini
    Television & New Media, Ahead of Print.
  • Book Review: Art vs. TV, A Brief History of Contemporary Artists’ Response to Television, by Francesco Spampinato
    by Pierre J. Pernuit
    Television & New Media, Ahead of Print.
  • “I Love My Kids, This Abortion is not Because I Don’t”: The Meanings of Motherhood and Abortion on U.S. Television, 2013—2023
    by Stephanie Herold
    Television & New Media, Ahead of Print. Over the last decade, depictions of characters who obtain abortions onscreen have come closer to representing the reality of abortion seekers, addressing, though not eliminating, documented discrepancies across race, class, and barriers to abortion care. Yet year after year, portrayals of characters parenting at the time of their abortions represent less than 10% of the total characters who have abortions, a striking departure from reality, where most people who have abortions are raising children. This paper is a qualitative content analysis of the twenty-three characters onscreen from 2013 to 2023 shown parenting at […]
  • Francesco Spampinato, Art vs. TV: A Brief History of Contemporary Artists’ Responses to Television (Bloomsbury Publishing, New York-London-Dublin, 2022, pp. 352)
    by Lorenzo Lazzari
    Television & New Media, Ahead of Print. In “Art vs. TV: A Brief History of Contemporary Artists’ Responses to Television,” Francesco Spampinato examines how contemporary artists from the 1950s to the 2010s challenged the unidirectional communication of television by creating works that critique its hegemonic structures. The book explores various artists, highlighting the political dimension of their works and allows the reader to view them within the contextualised history of conflict between artistic innovation and mass communication, in this case specifically with television.
  • Book Review: Comedy Book: How Comedy Conquered Culture—And the Magic that Makes it Work, by Jesse David Fox
    by Madison Barnes-Nelson
    Television & New Media, Ahead of Print.
  • Invisible Roots: Re-examining Soap Opera’s Influence on the Narrative Complexity of Contemporary Television Drama
    by Glen Creeber
    Television & New Media, Ahead of Print. This paper examines the notion that contemporary television is more “complex” than programming made in the past, arguing that such an approach can risk denigrating earlier TV and erasing its impact on current practice. Focusing on the role soap opera has played in influencing recent narrative trends, it will particularly examine the genre’s tendency toward “paradigmatic complexity” and its increasing presence in contemporary long-form drama. Explaining how this esthetic trend has helped to produce increased levels of narrative depth and expansion, it will also show how this is no longer sacrificed at the […]
  • The Lure of Cultural Authenticity: Netflix and Speculative Koreanness in the Global Media Market
    by Benjamin M. Han
    Television & New Media, Ahead of Print. Despite Netflix’s status as a dominant global streaming service, it is irrefutable that the platform has facilitated the circulation of media content from different national markets to its subscribers around the world. This increased circulation has been accompanied by the platforms’ exploration of local cultures for global audiences. Specifically, Netflix has sought to represent and repackage local cultures in allegedly “authentic” ways. Drawing on a critical analysis of Netflix’s industry discourses, interviews with Korean content creators, and a textual analysis of the original Korean series Squid Game (2021–present), the article explores how Netflix […]
  • Tencent’s Road to a Gaming Giant: Chinese Video Game Companies’ Development Trajectory in the Reconfiguration of Transnational Capitalism
    by Menglu Lyu
    Television & New Media, Ahead of Print. This study analyzes the growth trajectory of Chinese video game companies, with Tencent as the main focus. It draws on the framework of political economy regarding transnational capitalism and its reconfiguration, employing document analysis and informant interviews as research methods. This study argues that Chinese video game companies have taken a distinctive development path within the transnational capitalist system. Initially, they accumulated experience, technology, and capital at lower tiers of the global industry hierarchy. They then entered the emerging mobile game market and eventually ascended to prominent positions. On the one hand, their […]
  • Book Review: Pandemics in the Age of Social Media: Information and Misinformation in Developing Nations, Vikas Kumar and Mohit Rewari
    by Jie Guo
    Television & New Media, Ahead of Print.
  • Automated Parasociality: From Personalization to Personification
    by Mark Andrejevic
    Television & New Media, Ahead of Print. Recent developments in AI promise to further enact the shift from personalization to personification in automated digital interfaces. We have already seen the rise of virtual influencers and, more recently, of chatbots that adopt the personas of celebrities. Drawing on the intertwined history of the relationship between parasociality and personal influence, we frame the shift toward personification as a strategy for re-centralizing control over the online media environment. The shift is likely to extend beyond the realm of social media influencers to characterize our interactions with a range of services, platforms, and media […]
  • Book Review: Machine Vision: How Algorithms are Changing the Way We See the World, by Jill Walker Rettberg
    by Yifei Zhao
    Television & New Media, Ahead of Print.
  • Netflix and the Transnationalisation of Teen Television
    by Axelle Asmar
    Television & New Media, Ahead of Print. With the renewed popularity of teen television, SVOD services such as Netflix are increasingly investing in the production and distribution of teen series. Netflix is one of the first SVOD service to have adapted the genre outside of the western world. This transnationalisation of teen television is, we argue, infused with the streamer increasing emphasis on diversity. Based on a qualitative analysis of Netflix’s teen series trailers, this contribution explores how the streamer (a) challenges existing televisual conventions and (b) establishes its cultural authority through distinct negotiations of the global and the local. […]
  • Book Review: Producing Feminism: Television Work in the Age of Women’s Liberation, by Jennifer S. Clark
    by Elizabeth Nathanson
    Television & New Media, Ahead of Print.
  • The Netflix Paradox in the Middle East: Diversity, Inclusivity, and Authenticity?
    by Joe F. Khalil
    Television & New Media, Ahead of Print. This article rethinks Netflix productions beyond Western dominance, exploring their development in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA). Drawing from industry reports and expert insights, it uncovers emerging patterns in the creation and marketing of Netflix Originals in Arabic. The first section examines regional television and streaming industries, identifying competitors, genres, and production structures. Case studies in the second section reveal insights into series revival and movie remaking. The second section presents two case studies of Netflix Arabic Originals. These case studies offer insights into the revival of a series with popular […]
  • Book Review: Translation Studies on Chinese Films and TV Shows, by Feng Yue
    by Jingyuan Yan
    Television & New Media, Ahead of Print.
  • Book Review: The Authenticity Industries: Keeping It “Real” in Media, Culture, and Politics
    by Ellie Homant
    Television & New Media, Ahead of Print. In The Authenticity Industries: Keeping It “Real” in Media, Culture, and Politics, journalist-turned-media studies professor Michael Serazio helps us understand how authenticity gets constructed, by whom, and to what ends. Serazio argues that authenticity is “nothing short of the central moral framework of our time”: on a quest to alleviate the anxieties and pressures of modern life, we pursue an inner sense of self—one purportedly unaffected by contemporary economic and social forces (p. 2). However, a careful choreography goes into authentic performance, professionalized by what Serazio dubs the “authenticity industries”: a subset of […]