Peruvian Infotainment: From Fujimori's Media Dictatorship to Democracy's Satire

This article explores how Peruvian sensational and spectacular media served the authoritarian discourse of Alberto Fujimori's government (1990–2000), and how TV infotainment evolved under democracy after 2000. Through interviews with producers and hosts of the TV shows and by reviewing specific episodes and media events, this article analyses five of the most representative Peruvian infotainment TV shows of the last two decades in Peru. Building upon a theory on media spectacle, infotainment and tabloidisation, this research shows how an increasing process of media hybridity–the blending of journalism, entertainment, politics, and popular culture–has challenged traditional notions of journalism and has become a prevalent strategy of new political communication forms in Peru, connecting with the global trend towards political infotainment in the media.     

Breaking Bad News: Penal Populism,Tabloid Adversarialism and Brexit

This article analyses the role that British conservative tabloid newspapers play in promoting penal populism and delegitimising liberal prison reform initiatives. Principally, we consider how different sections of the British press reacted to the then Prime Minister David Cameron's prison reform speech of 8 February 2016. The analysis illustrates how different newspapers cohered around two diametrically opposing interpretations of the scandalous state of the prison system, reflecting distinctive penal philosophies and moral positions. In the context of penal populism and the populist furies unleashed by the Brexit campaign, the central research finding is that the comparatively passive and equivocal support offered by the broadsheets was no match for the vitriolic attack mounted by the conservative tabloids on the ‘soft justice’ parts of Cameron's prison reform agenda. We conclude by arguing that the stark lesson to be learned is that the scandal‐ridden prison is a particularly toxic issue marked by serial policy failure. Consequently, in a febrile, intermediatised penal populist context, why would any political leader take on the manifest risks associated with embarking on liberal prison reform?     

Regulate Yourself

The Leveson Inquiry recommended that a new press regulator be created, with a statutory backing—which the government and opposition agreed should be a Royal Charter. Presently, a Press Recognition Panel, backed by the Charter, has been created, but has attracted no requests for recognition. Only one regulator has been set up—IPSO: it has a membership of most of the newspaper and magazine groups in the UK, but will not ask for recognition, since it does not wish to have any formal link with the state. Though the campaign against the Royal Charter has been grossly overblown, the press is right to refuse to join an institution which is guaranteed by the state. State‐backed regulation, in any form, will not in the UK lead to tyranny, censorship or any more than occasional meddling. But a link to the state is a bad idea for an independent press. Not only does this set a bad precedent, opening up a temptation for behind‐the‐scenes pressure, but more importantly it misses the point. Bad and abusive journalism is not improved by regulation. It is improved by journalists understanding the main task of journalism is to report and analyse accurately and neutrally. This complements robust debate and opinion and contributes greatly to a well‐informed citizenry.     

What a girl's gotta do: the labor of the biopolitical celebrity in austerity Britain

This article debunks the widespread view that young female celebrities, especially those who rise to fame through reality shows and other forms of media-orchestrated self-exposure, dodge “real” work out of laziness, fatalism, and a misguided sense of entitlement. Instead, the authors argue that becoming a celebrity in a neoliberal economy such as that of the United Kingdom, where austerity measures disproportionately disadvantage the young, women, and the poor, is not as irregular or exceptional a choice as previously thought, especially since the precariousness of celebrity earning power adheres to the current demands of the neoliberal economy on its workforce. What is more, becoming a celebrity involves different forms of labor that are best described as biopolitical, since such labor fully involves and consumes the human body and its capacities as a living organism. Weight gain and weight loss, pregnancy, physical transformation through plastic surgery, physical symptoms of emotional distress, and even illness and death are all photographically documented and supplemented by extended textual commentary, usually with direct input from the celebrity, reinforcing and expanding on the visual content. As well as casting celebrity work as labor, the authors also maintain that the workings of celebrity should always be examined in the context of wider cultural, social and real economies.     

Popular art,the image,the subject and subverting hegemony

ABSTRACT

One of the most disturbing paradoxes of modern times is that an acute sense of expanding moral responsibility goes hand in hand with a growing inability to bear such responsibility. This article demonstrates how modern technology, in particular information technology, has contributed to both the expansion of moral responsibility and the development of the responsibility gap. In order to deal adequately with the challenges modern technology poses in respect of moral responsibility, it has become necessary to supplement the classical notion of retrospective moral responsibility with the new notion of prospective moral responsibility. In the case of retrospective responsibility some or other negative outcome of the past is ascribed to a particular person or persons. In the case of prospective responsibility, the responsibility of preventing humans and nature from being actively harmed or to realise desirable future conditions by taking the necessary measures in the present, is ascribed to a particular person or persons, or, more likely, to a particular institution or institutions.