Tanner Mirrlees | University of Ontario Institute of Technology (original) (raw)

Books by Tanner Mirrlees

This book is a first-of-its-kind critical interdisciplinary introduction to the economic, politic... more This book is a first-of-its-kind critical interdisciplinary introduction to the economic, political, cultural, and technological dimensions of work in the rapidly growing digital media and entertainment industries (DMEI). Tanner Mirrlees presents a comprehensive guide to understanding the key contexts, theories, methods, debates, and struggles surrounding work in the DMEI. Packed with current examples and accessible research findings, the book highlights the changing conditions and experiences of work in the DMEI. It surveys the DMEI's key sectors and occupations and considers the complex intersections between labor and social power relations of class, gender, and race, as well as tensions between creativity and commerce, freedom and control, meritocracy and hierarchy, and precarity and equity, diversity, and inclusivity. Chapters also explore how work in the DMEI is being reshaped by capitalism and corporations, government and policies, management, globalization, platforms, A.I., and worker collectives such as unions and cooperatives. This book is a critical introduction to this growing area of research, teaching, learning, life, labor, and organizing, with an eye to understanding work in the DMEI and changing it, for the better. Offering a broad overview of the field, this textbook is an indispensable resource for instructors, undergraduates, postgraduates, and scholars.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Introduction
How I Learned to Stop Worrying about “Being Creative” and Love the “Labor Turn”
24 pages

Chapter 1
What Is Work?
Meanings, Matters, Motivations
28 pages

Chapter 2
What Are the Digital Media and Entertainment Industries (DMEI)?
15 Convergent Industry Groups, Central to Work in the Digital Society
22 pages

Chapter 3
What Is Research on Work in the DMEI?
A Toolkit for Labor Theory and Method
24 pages

Chapter 4
What Is Capitalism and How Do Corporations Shape Work in the DMEI?
27 pages

Chapter 5
What Is the State and How Does It Govern Work in the DMEI?
Explicit and Tacit Labor Laws, Policies, and Regulations
20 pages

Chapter 6
What Is the Management of Work in the DMEI?
Putting Leadership Power, Decision-Making Power, Soft Power, Hard Power, and Market Power to Work on Workers
23 pages

Chapter 7
Is Meritocracy at Work in the DMEI?
Intersectionality and Inequality, with Distinction
24 pages

Chapter 8
What Is the Globalization of Work in the DMEI?
Outsourced Hardware, Software, Content, and Service
23 pages

Chapter 9
What Is the Platformization of Work in the DMEI?
Online Creators, Cultural Producers, and Influencers
20 pages

Chapter 10
What Is the Automation of Work in the DMEI?
Generative AI and Labor-Saving Technologies (LSTs)
22 pages

Chapter 11
Is Work in the DMEI “Free?”
Advertising, Audience Commodities, Social Media Users, Brand-Loyal Fans, Crowdsourced Task-Takers, Interns, and Athletes
19 pages

Chapter 12
What Are Workers Doing to Make the DMEI's Future of Work Better for All?
Collective Action!
17 pages

Chapter 13
Postscript
Not “Being Creative”, For a Study of Work in the DMEI, Post-“Creative Exceptionalism”
6 pages

Tanner Mirrlees A critical cultural materialist introduction to the study of global entertainmen... more Tanner Mirrlees

A critical cultural materialist introduction to the study of global entertainment media.

In Global Entertainment Media, Tanner Mirrlees undertakes an analysis of the ownership, production, distribution, marketing, exhibition and consumption of global films and television shows, with an eye to political economy and cultural studies.

Among other topics, Mirrlees examines:

Paradigms of global entertainment media such as cultural imperialism and cultural globalization.

The business of entertainment media: the structure of capitalist culture/creative industries (financers, producers, distributors and exhibitors) and trends in the global political economy of entertainment media.

The "governance" of global entertainment media: state and inter-state media and cultural policies and regulations that govern the production, distribution and exhibition of entertainment media and enable or impede its cross-border flow.

The new international division of cultural labor (NICL): the cross-border production of entertainment by cultural workers in asymmetrically interdependent media capitals, and economic and cultural concerns surrounding runaway productions and co-productions.

The economic motivations and textual design features of globally popular entertainment forms such as blockbuster event films, TV formats, glocalized lifestyle brands and synergistic media.

The cross-cultural reception and effects of TV shows and films.

The World Wide Web, digitization and convergence culture.

"Mirrlees explains in clear and lively language how the most popular and ubiquitous movies, TV formats, and brands are made and consumed―and he also explains why this matters. In a world where media continue to increase their hold on resources and their place in our lives, Global Entertainment Media is a must-read for media activists and students of culture." ―John McCullough, Associate Professor and Chair, Department of Film, York University

"Comprehensive and tactically plain-spoken, Dr. Mirrlees’s cultural-economic study maps out the complex networks of production, consumption, and regulation that structure today’s culture industry, and offers a key for unlocking its meanings and functions in a neoliberal age dominated by neo-imperial corporations. In the process, this teachable text provides a primer―ideal for undergraduates―on key ‘macro’ concepts in media and cultural studies, like discourse, globalization, intellectual property, and postcolonialism." ―Mark A. McCutcheon, Assistant Professor of Literary Studies, Athabasca University

"Mirrlees presents a meticulously well researched, original, and insightful overview of an expansive field. Global Entertainment Media surveys a complex and ever-changing global media landscape, navigating the terrain with great clarity and authority. Mirrlees’s methodological approach, his deft theoretical analysis, and his wide-ranging and up-to-date use of examples and case studies make this a foundational work that brings global media studies scholarship firmly into the twenty-first century." ―Ian Reilly, Assistant Professor, Department of Communication Studies, Mount Saint Vincent University

Tanner Mirrlees From Katy Perry training alongside US Marines in a music video, to the global... more Tanner Mirrlees

From Katy Perry training alongside US Marines in a music video, to the global box-office mastery of the US military-supported Transformers franchise, to the explosion of war games such as Call of Duty, it's clear that the US security state is a dominant force in media culture. But is the ubiquity of cultural products that glorify the security state a new phenomenon? Or have Uncle Sam and Hollywood been friends for a long time?

Hearts and Mines examines the rise and reach of the US Empire's culture industry -- a nexus between the US's security state and media firms and the source of cultural products that promote American strategic interests around the world. Although the US government and media corporations pursue different interests on the world stage (the former, national security, and the latter, profit), this book documents how structural alliances and the synergistic relationships between them support the production and flow of empire-extolling cultural goods.

Building on and extending Herbert I. Schiller’s classic study of US Empire and communications, Tanner Mirrlees highlights the symbiotic geopolitical and economic relationships between the US state and media firms that drive the production of imperial culture.

Table of Contents

Preface: The Personal is Geopolitical

Acknowledgments

Introduction: The US Empire’s Culture Industry, circa 2012

1. The US Empire and the Culture Industry

2. Public Diplomacy and Selling the American Way to the World

3. The US Culture Industry: Still Number One

4. The DOD--News Media Complex

5. The DOD--Hollywood Complex

6. The DOD--Digital Games Complex

Conclusion: US Empire, Cultural Imperialism, and Cultural Policy, at Large

References

Index

Reviews

"A great achievement and timely contribution to the field, Hearts and Mines will rise to the top of all reading lists on the subject of media and empire, US hegemony, and the political economy of communication."

-- Richard Maxwell, co-author of Greening the Media

"A fascinating, provocative book that invigorates our understanding of the relationship between the culture industries and US empire. Mirrlees detonates prevailing myths about the ‘liberal bias’ of popular culture through a meticulous excavation of how imperial political interests, values, and objectives are woven into the production of news, cinema, and digital gaming. Hearts and Mines will change how you think about the politics of culture."

-- Shane Gunster, author of Capitalizing on Culture: Critical Theory for Cultural Studies

Tanner Mirrlees and Shahid Alvi This book advances a critical political economy approach to EdTe... more Tanner Mirrlees and Shahid Alvi

This book advances a critical political economy approach to EdTech and analyses the economic, political and ideological structures and social power relations that shape the EdTech industries and drive EdTech’s development and diffusion.

Particular attention is paid to the integration of EdTech with some of the most contentious developments of our time, including platformization and data-veillance, the automation of work and labor, and globalization-imperialism.

By using a political economy of communication approach, this book will be of value to anyone interested in a neo-Marxist analysis of the current transformations of capitalism, the State, higher education, and online learning in the digital age.

Table of Contents

Preface

1. For a Political Economy of EdTech
2. Higher Education in a Digital Age: Capitalism, Neoliberalism, and the University, Inc.
3. Profiting on Higher Education: Platform Capitalism is the Classroom
4. Automating Higher Education: Taylorism and the Teaching Machines
5. Globalizing Higher Education: Platform Imperialism
6. Conclusion - A Pedagogy for Technological Citizenship, a Pedagogy for the Precariat Working Class

Reviews
"The progressive application of digital technologies have played a central role in redefining teaching and learning. Based on a very clear political economy of communications framework, the authors of this book demonstrate in detail how innovations have served the wider neo-liberal reorganisation of contemporary capitalism. Anyone concerned with the construction of the future needs to read it and respond." – Graham Murdock, Loughborough University and Vice President of the International Association of Communication and Media Research (IAMCR)

"This book offers a unique and timely study of the interrelationships between digital platform industries and higher education. It breaks new ground by providing a critical analysis of the latest information-communication technological trends in higher education from a political economy approach" -- Marko Ampuja, Tampere University and University of Helsinki

Co-edited Books by Tanner Mirrlees

Media Imperialism: Continuity and Change advances applied theoretical research on 21st century me... more Media Imperialism: Continuity and Change advances applied theoretical research on 21st century media imperialism. The volume includes established and emerging researchers in international communications who examine the geopolitical, economic, technological and cultural dimensions of 21st century media imperialism. The volume highlights and challenges how news, entertainment and social media uphold unequal power relations in the world. Written in an accessible style, this volume marries conceptual, theoretical sophistication, and concrete illustration with rich case studies and global examples. Chapters cover the complete media spectrum, from social media to Hollywood, to news and national propaganda in national and transnational analyses. Readers will find discussions that range from the US’s empire of the internet to the rise of China in a post-American media world. The volume is essential reading for upper-level undergraduate, postgraduate and research communities across a wide range of disciplines in the social science and the humanities.

"Here readers can encounter the variety and vigor of media/cultural imperialism approaches to the ever-evolving global mediascape. In a single reference work, seasoned researchers from across the planet sharply challenge the enduring myopias of much conventional media research. A vital contribution to debate and analysis." -- John D.H. Downing, Director Emeritus, Global Media Research Center, Southern Illinois University Carbondale

Media Imperialism: Continuity and Change, an Introduction
Oliver Boyd-Barrett and Tanner Mirrlees

Part 1 – Contextualizing and Conceptualizing Empire and Media imperialism

Chapter 1 - Media and Cultural Imperialism: Genealogy of an Idea
Oliver Boyd-Barrett

Chapter 2 - Historicizing and Theorizing Media and Cultural Imperialism
Kaarle Nordenstreng, Marko Ampuja & Juha Koivisto

Chapter 3 – The US Empire and Cultural Imperialism: A Reconceptualization and 20th Century Retrospective
Tanner Mirrlees

Part 2 –The News, War and Propaganda

Chapter 4 - Western News Media, Propaganda and Pretexts for Neoliberal War
Oliver Boyd-Barrett

Chapter 5 – “RussiaGate”: The Construction of the Enemy
Gerald Sussman

Chapter 6 – The Great Game for EurAsia and the Skripal Affair
Oliver Boyd-Barrett

Chapter 7 - Propaganda, Manipulation and the Exercise of Imperial Power: From Media Imperialism to Informational Imperialism
Piers Robinson

Part 3 – Hollywood, War and Militainment

Chapter 8 - Socialism by Stealth? Governmental Subvention and Hollywood
Toby Miller

Chapter 9 - The US Embassy-Hollywood Complex: The Sony Pictures Hack and 21st century media Imperialism
Paul Moody

Chapter 10 – Dispatches from the Militainment Empire
Roger Stahl

Chapter 11 - Global Executioner: Legitimizing Drone Warfare through Hollywood Movies
Erin Steuter and Geoff Martin

Part 4 –The Internet, Social Media and Platform Imperialism

Chapter 12 – Guarding Public Values in a Connective World: Challenges for Europe.
José van Dijck

Chapter 13 - Facebook’s Platform Imperialism: The Economics and Geopolitics of Social Media
Dal Yong Jin

Chapter 14 - New Global Music Distribution System, Same Old Linguistic Hegemony? Analyzing English on Spotify
Christof Demont-Heinrich

Chapter 15 – “Weaponizing” the Internet and World Wide Web, for Empire: Platforming Capitalism, Data-Veillance, Public Diplomacy and Cyber-Warfare
Tanner Mirrlees

Part 5 – Development Communication, Global Divides and Cultural Imperialism

Chapter 16 - Cultural Autonomy in the 1970s and Beyond: Toward Cultural Justice
Cees Hamelink

Chapter 17 - Cultural Imperialism and Development Communication for Social Change
Mohan Dutta

Chapter 18 - Mapping Power in Women’s Empowerment Projects in Global Development
Karin Gwinn Wilkins

Part 6 - Rising Media Empires: The Case of China

Chapter 19 – China: An Emerging Cultural Imperialist
Colin Sparks

Chapter 20 – The Empire’s New Clothes: Political Priorities and Corporate Ambitions in China’s Drive for Global Ascendency
Graham Murdoch

Chapter 21 – Not (yet) The Chinese Century: The Endurance of the US Empire and its Cultural Industries
Tanner Mirrlees

The Television Reader: Critical Perspectives in Canadian and American Television Studies, 2013

Filled with exciting, contemporary readings from top Canadian and American scholars, this compreh... more Filled with exciting, contemporary readings from top Canadian and American scholars, this comprehensive overview of critical perspectives in television studies tunes students in to the many economic, social, political, and technological influences that shape television production and consumption on both sides of the border.

"This text is the best example I've seen of combining Canadian and American perspectives. . . . It accurately shows the complex interplay between the two nations."
-- Kevin Schut, Trinity Western University

"This text covers Canadian and US material in a fair and balanced fashion and does not fall into a pattern of nationalist fervour. . . . I especially appreciate the fact that it includes an analysis of specific shows as well as broad theoretical and technical studies."
-- Stan Beeler, University of Northern British Columbia

Table of Contents
Preface

Introduction: Making Critical TV Studies 'Visible'

Part I: Theorizing Television

1. Tanner Mirrlees and Joseph Kispal-Kovacs: Critical Approaches to the Study of 'TV': An Introduction

Part II: History and Characteristics of TV Broadcasting in Canada and the United States: A Political-Economy

Introduction: A Political Economy of TV Broadcasting in Canada and the United States

2. Mark Goodman and Mark Gring: The Radio Act of 1927: Progressive Ideology, Epistemology, and Praxis
3. Lynn Spigel: Women's Work
4. Marc Raboy: Canada
5. Paul Attallah: A Usable History for the Study of Television

Part III: TV Genre: Contexts and Textual Analysis

Sitcoms

6. Dean Defino: From Trailer Trash to Trailer Park Boys
7. Sandra Cañas: Little Mosque on the Prairie: Examining Multicultural Spaces of Nation and Religion

Science Fiction
8. Mark McCutcheon: Downloading Doppelgängers: New Media Anxieties and Transnational Ironies in Battlestar Galactica

Cop/Crime shows

9. Gray Cavender and Sarah K. Deutsch: CSI and Moral Authority: The Police and Science
10. Marsha Kinder: Rewriting Baltimore: The Emotive Power of Systemics, Seriality, and the City

Reality-TV
11. Sue Collins: Making the Most of 15 Minutes: Reality TV's Dispensable Celebrity
12. Doris Baltruschat: Reality TV Formats: The Case of Canadian Idol

News Production and News Parody
13. Zoë Druick: Laughing at Authority or Authorized Laughter? : Canadian News Parodies
14. Geoffrey Baym: The Daily Show: Discursive Integration and Reinvention of Political Journalism

TV War
15. Lynn Spigel: Entertainment Wars: Television Culture after 9/11
16. Elspeth Van Veeren: Interrogating 24: Making Sense of US Counterterrorism in the Global War on Terrorism

TV Sports
17. Daniel Mason: 'Get the Puck Outta Here!': Media Transnationalism and Canadian Identity
18. Joseph Kispal-Kovacs: Some Notes on Televised Team Sports in North America

Part IV: Emerging Trends in TV Studies: Interactive Audiences, Advertising, Globalization, and Post-Network TV

Commercialism: Audience Commodities, Interactive Audiences, and Advertising
19. Eileen R. Meehan: Understanding How the Popular Becomes Popular: The Role of Political Economy in the Study of Popular Communication
20. Lucas Hilderbrand: YouTube: Where Cultural Memory and Copyright Converge
21. Mark Andrejevic: Watching Television without Pity: The Productivity of Online Fans
22. Matthew P. McAllister and J. Matt Giglio: The Commodity Flow of U.S. Children's Television

Global Television: Media Imperialism and Media Globalization
23. Silvio Waisbord: McTV: Understanding the Global Popularity of Television Formats
24. Elana Levine: National Television, Global Market: Canada's Degrassi: The Next Generation
25. Jonathan Gray: Imagining America: The Simpsons Go Global
26. Serra Tinic: Walking a Tightrope: The Global Cultural Economy of Canadian Television

Post-Network TV
27. Tanner Mirrlees: The Future of Television: Revolution Paused, Media Conglomeration Continued

Glossary

Articles by Tanner Mirrlees

South Atlantic Quarterly, 2023

This article is a self‐reflexive case study of the Socialist Project's (SP) tactical uses of Meta... more This article is a self‐reflexive case study of the Socialist Project's (SP) tactical uses of Meta's Facebook and Google's YouTube platforms. Formed in early 2003 by Leo Panitch (1945–2020), Greg Albo, Sam Gindin, Herman Rosenfeld, and others, the SP is a small Toronto‐based democratic socialist organization that for nearly two decades has contributed to wider efforts to build and sustain an anticapitalist “infrastructure of dissent” and “radical imagination.” While Facebook's and YouTube's ownership structures, business models, and datafication and commodification mechanisms limit the SP's tactical uses of these platforms, the SP's agency to use these to try to make history in digital conditions not of its own choosing is significant. This article argues that the SP's tactical use of social media platforms exists between structure and agency, at the interface of top‐down platform capitalist business models, mechanisms, and logics and bottom‐up anti-capitalist organization building, public pedagogy, and alternative media making.

Global Media and China, 2023

This article considers the growing media power and influence of China in the global South through... more This article considers the growing media power and influence of China in the global South through the lens of a critical media imperialism framework derived from the geopolitical economy of communications research tradition. While extensive research exists on US media imperialism and the challenge to it posed by China's global media rise, the idea of China as a media imperialist in its own right has received limited attention. This article addresses this gap in the field by summarizing ten key postulates of a media imperialism framework for critical research on China's media power and influence in the global South. This article study does not seek to prove China's status as a new media imperialist power or provide a detailed case study of China's media imperialism in a specific country. Instead, it synthesizes the ten postulates of a media imperialism framework, examines China's corporate and state media organizations in relation to these, and draws from relevant scholarship, evidence, and anecdotes. The article argues that each postulate can serve as a foundation for future case studies of different facets of China's media power and influence in countries across the global South. These postulates can be refined, disproven, or expanded through further research. By considering China's media power and influence through the lens of the media imperialism framework, this article aims to stimulate further meta-theory, empirical research, and scholarly debates on this pivotal topic, which while contentious, is significant to the future of the global South, and the wider world system.

Energy Humanities, 2022

This essay argues that the so-called "Freedom Convoy" communicated an “energy politics”, and one ... more This essay argues that the so-called "Freedom Convoy" communicated an “energy politics”, and one materially intertwined with and biased to the infrastructures and industries, petro-populist parties and politicians, and digital media-cultures of “carbon capitalism.” The essay probes how the convoy intersected with the interests of oil and gas industry elites, right-wing authoritarian politicians and influencers, and petro-cultural imaginaries that prop up an old way of life, exacerbate the planetary climate emergency and block the transition to a sustainable energy future.

Heliotrope, 2021

Over the past decade, a discourse about the power of Google, Amazon, Facebook, Apple and Microsof... more Over the past decade, a discourse about the power of Google, Amazon, Facebook, Apple and Microsoft (or, the “GAFAM”) has grown in North America and around the world. While much is regularly said about GAFAM’s power, what often goes without saying is what is meant by it. GAFAM is surely omnipresent and perhaps even omnipotent, but what is “power” and how does GAFAM possess or operationalize it? To clarify the extent and quality of GAFAM’s power, I conceptualize power and illustrate GAFAM’s power with some current data and exempla. To this end, I build upon my first book’s structural-relational framework for probing the economic, political and cultural “power” of the world’s biggest media conglomerates (e.g., Walt Disney Company, Comcast, and News Corporation). This framework conceptualizes and analyzes GAFAM’s: 1) structural power (ownership and control of capital resources and resource allocation, and influence on State decisions about public law, policy and regulation); and, 2) relational power (governing with tactics of persuasion and coercion to get subjects to act in concordance with preferred ends). While this framework for getting at GAFAM’s power in society is not prescriptive or comprehensive, it aims to provide communication and digital media studies researchers with a useful entry point for understanding and analyzing the Big Five’s power. This framework also suggests that neo-Marxian and neo-Foucauldian conceptualizations of power, though different, can be brought together in a complimentary way when interrogating GAFAM’s power in society.

The Monitor (Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives) , 2019

A primer on the political economy of digital capitalism. Argues that capitalism has usurped the r... more A primer on the political economy of digital capitalism. Argues that capitalism has usurped the revolutionary potential of internet-based technology. As usual, if we want a different, more democratic future, we will need to fight for it.

ATLANTIS, 2018

This article analyzes the history, production, circulation, and political uses of the alt-right's... more This article analyzes the history, production, circulation, and political uses of the alt-right's discourse about cultural Marxism in the context of the right-wing populist Trump presidency, the rise of fascist movements in the United States and worldwide, and the politics of intersectional hate.

Canadian Journal of Communication, 2022

Background: To contribute to research on the transnational far right, Islamophobia, and social me... more Background: To contribute to research on the transnational far right, Islamophobia, and social media platforms, this article interrogates the far right's practice of using Twitter to produce and circulate a #removekebab hashtag. Analysis: The accounts behind the words and images of 100 #removekebab tweets are analyzed to show how they communicate the transnational far right's hateful Islamophobic discourse. Conclusion and implications: The far right's #removekebab tweets dehumanize Muslims, tacitly call for genocide against Muslims, and rationalize this violence by stereotyping Muslims as a collective threat to the West.

Democratic Communique, 2019

Platforms constitute a political communications battlespace in which a plurality of social actors... more Platforms constitute a political communications battlespace in which a plurality of social actors-from Left to Right-struggle for recognition and attention, try to organize consent to their ideologies, and seek to influence how people think and behave. In the spirit of this special issue's investigation of the tactical political uses of new media to bring about social change, this article demonstrates how contemporary platforms are a space of battle, fought over by the alt-right's white nationalist fascists and a new Left's "digital united front." Drawing upon numerous examples of fascist and antifascist tactical interventions across the platforms, this article is optimistic that the power of the alt-right to win hearts and minds may be waning due to the growth and widespread support for the Left's digital united front. To this end, this article's first section contextualizes the revival of the hard Right's "authoritarian populism" under the auspices of the US Trump presidency and defines the contemporary "alt-right." The article's second section surveys the alt-right's political uses of platforms, and highlights some of these platforms' affordances to the alt-right's reach and ideological influence. The third section conceptualizes the Left's "digital united front," and catalogues some of its tactics for countering platform fascists: no-platforming, doxing, video ideology critique, and memes. This article's overview of the alt-right's platformization of fascism and the Left's digital united front is not comprehensive, but aims to highlight some salient instances of "what's being done" by the alt-right to platform fascism, and "what's being done" by the Left to disrupt this threat. By scrutinizing the alt-right's platformization of fascism and championing the Left's digital united front, this article aims to contribute to knowledge about the politics of tactical media in the age of platforms, and be a praxiological primer for battling the alt-right. The conclusion critically assesses the notion that the US has become a "fascist" country.

Journal of Hate Studies, 2019

Donald J. Trump's journey to the White House signaled the resurgence of right-wing populism in th... more Donald J. Trump's journey to the White House signaled the resurgence of right-wing populism in the United States. His campaign and his surprising electoral victory rode a wave of anti-elitism and xenophobia. He masterfully exploited the economic and cultural anxieties of white working class and petite bourgeois Americans by deflecting blame for their woes onto the "usual suspects," among them minorities, liberals, Muslims, professionals and immigrants. His rhetoric touched a chord, and in fact emboldened and energized white supremacist ideologies, identities, movements and practices in the United States and around the world. Indeed, the Trump Effect touched Canada as well. This paper explores how the American politics of hate unleashed by Trump's right-wing populist posturing galvanized Canadian white supremacist ideologies, identities, movements and practices. Following Trump's win, posters plastered on telephone poles in Canadian cities invited "white people" to visit alt-right websites. Neo-Nazis spray painted swastikas on a mosque, a synagogue and a church with a black pastor. Online, a reactionary white supremacist subculture violated hate speech laws with impunity while stereotyping and demonizing non-white people. Most strikingly, in January 2017, Canada witnessed its most deadly homegrown terrorist incident: Alexandre Bissonnete, a right-wing extremist and Trump supporter, murdered six men at the Islamic cultural centre of Quebec City. Our paper provides an overview of the manifestations of the Trump Effect in Canada. We also contextualize the antecedents of Trump's resonance in Canada, highlighting the conditions for and currents and characteristics of right-wing extremism in Canada.

Communication + 1, 2017

In pursuit of this Special Issue’s goal to “push the traditional boundaries of cultural policy st... more In pursuit of this Special Issue’s goal to “push the traditional boundaries of cultural policy studies,” this article conceptualizes the US Department of Defense (DoD) as a cultural policy agency. All cultural policy is goal oriented and aims to act within and have effects upon “the cultural.” Cultural policy scholars examine how State agencies, policies, and regulations act upon to influence: the cultural industries; cultural texts; and, national identities and citizen-subjects. Although the US Federal government has no official cultural policy agency like Canada (the Department of Heritage) or France (the Ministry of Culture), this article conceptualizes the DoD—one of the largest US Federal government agencies—as a cultural policy agency and explores how it uses cultural policy to act within and upon the cultural field. It presents a study of one important DoD cultural policy agency (the Public Affairs Office’s Special Assistant for Entertainment Media) and one significant DoD cultural policy doctrine (DoD Instruction 5410.16 DoD Assistance to Non Government, Entertainment-Oriented Media Productions). This particular DoD cultural policy formation acts upon the cultural field, and in effect, supports and legitimizes the current and ongoing militarization of the cultural industries, popular culture and national identity.

Islamophobia Studies, 2021

This article argues that digital war games communicate misleading stereotypes about Muslims that ... more This article argues that digital war games communicate misleading stereotypes about Muslims that prop up patriarchal militarism and Islamophobia in the context of the US-led Global War on Terror. The article’s first section establishes the relevance of the study of digital war games to feminist games studies, feminist international relations, and post-colonial feminism. The second section contextualizes the contemporary production and consumption of digital war games with regard to the “military-digital-games complex” and real and simulated military violence against Muslims, focusing especially on the US military deployment of digital war games to train soldiers to kill in real wars across Muslim majority countries. The third section probes “mythical Muslim” stereotypes in ten popular digital war games released between 2001 and 2012: Conflict: Desert Storm (2002), Conflict: Desert Storm 2 (2003), SOCOM U.S. Navy SEALs (2002), Full Spectrum Warrior (2004), Close Combat: First to Fight (2005),
Battlefield 3 (2011), Army of Two (2008), Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare (2007), Medal of Honor (2010), and Medal of Honor: Warfighter (2012). These games immerse players in patriarchal fantasies of “militarized masculinity” and place a “mythical Muslim” before their weaponized gaze to be virtually killed in the name of US and global security. The conclusion discusses the stakes of the stereotyping and othering of Muslims by digital war games, and highlights some challenges to Islamophobia in the digital games industry.

Democratic Communiqué, 2014

This article examines the confluence of the U.S. military and digital capitalism in Medal of Hono... more This article examines the confluence of the U.S. military and digital capitalism in Medal of Honor: Operation Anaconda (MOHOA), a U.S. war-on-Afghanistan game released for play to the world in 2010. MOHOA’s convergent support for the DOD and digital capitalism’s interests are analyzed in two contexts: industry (ownership, development and marketing) and interactive narrative/play (the game’s war simulation, story and interactive play experience). Following a brief discussion of the military-industrial-communications-entertainment complex and video games, I analyze MOHOA as digital militainment that supports digital capitalism’s profit-interests and DOD promotional goals. The first section claims MOHOA is a digital militainment commodity forged by the DOD-digital games complex and shows how the game’s ownership, development and advertisements support a symbiotic cross-promotional relationship between Electronic Arts (EA) and the DOD. The second section analyzes how MOHOA’s single player mode simulates the “reality” of Operation Anaconda and immerses “virtual-citizen-soldiers” in an interactive story about warfare.

IEEE Technology and Society Magazine, 2017

Arecent trend in blockbuster science fiction film is the depiction of characters wearing exoskele... more Arecent trend in blockbuster science fiction film is the depiction of characters wearing exoskeletons<sup>1</sup that enable them to perform superhuman feats.<sup>2</sup> Exoskeletons have proven a popular mainstay of the genre over the past decade through franchises such as the Marvel Cinematic Universe, with recurring characters such as Iron Man (Figure 1). However, the popularity of exoskeletons reaches beyond film. They also appear as Halloween costumes, in learn-to-read books, and in television commercials. They have become recognizable through the everyday texts that celebrate and profit from their depiction.

International Journal of Media and Cultural Politics, 2009

This article examines the nexus of global digital capitalism and US militarism intwo popular war ... more This article examines the nexus of global digital capitalism and US militarism intwo popular war games: SOCOM I: Navy SEALs (SOCOM I) and SOCOM II:U.S. Navy SEALs (SOCOM II). SOCOM supports digital capitalism’s economicinterests and the US military’s promotional goals in four related contexts. In its production context, SOCOM is ‘glocalized digital militainment’ that was syner-gistically co-produced by Sony Corporation (a media corporation, based in Tokyo, Japan), Zipper Interactive (a US game design firm based in Redmond, Washing-ton) and US Naval Special Warfare (an elite branch of the US Navy). In its devel-opment context, SOCOM is a ‘hyperreal’ war game that was ‘digitally designed’to simulate Network Centric Warfare (NCW) and cyborg soldiering; it serves PS2 branding functions and US Navy SEALs promotion and recruitment functions. In its publishing/circulation context, SOCOM’s marketing messages visually merge the home front and battle front and promote militarized play ashyper-masculine identity affirmation. In the context of play, SOCOM ’s design structures virtual cyborg-soldiering.