#access journalism

[odinsblog]

Remember what CBS’s former CEO, Les Moonves, said about giving Trump billions in free airtime?

It’s happening all over again.

CNN is enabling Trump today, and tomorrow they’ll pretend they were always fighting against him.

If selling out America to a rapist traitor who sold secrets to Russia makes them richer, CNN does not give a single fuck.

The media is complicit.

[alanshemper]

[protoslacker]

As Bender himself writes, Vance “excoriates the news media” generally speaking, but “regularly takes questions from news organizations and almost never directly criticizes the reporters who line up to parry with him.” In other words, Vance is nice to Bender. So it would be rude to not be nice to Vance. This is Vance’s reward for granting access.

Dan Froomkin at Press Watch. Vance’s racist attacks are just ‘rabble-rousing’ to the New York Times

[readingsquotes]

I watched these creators work tirelessly to document and cover the convention with more dedication and rigor than I've seen from some legacy journalists. They interviewed surrogates and lawmakers, asking thoughtful questions and demanding accountability on issues like LGBTQ rights, healthcare access, and a ceasefire in Gaza.

....As Edward Wasserman, professor of journalism and former dean of Graduate School of Journalism at UC Berkeley told me last year, national news publications often rely on access journalism and serve primarily wealthy audiences, and that shapes their coverage, making them less likely to hold powerful people to account. "For all its claims about independence and bringing a critical gaze to policy," he said, "there are vast areas where the [traditional] press is in lock step with the people who own and run the country." 

...I also hope that the DNC continues to credential creators who challenge mainstream Democrat policies. I found it concerning that Hasan Piker was unceremoniously kicked out of a room he was streaming from after interviewing uncommitted delegates, allegedly due to a space issue.

[psychhound]

[ID: a banner for a game. it is light tan with a crumpled paper texture, and reads "with breath & sword" in large blue font, and "a solo-journaling game that helps you fight anxiety as you fight monster" below it in smaller font. there is lineart of gauntlets lying over a sword with some flowers at the bottom. end ID]

You find yourself tied to the monsters. The scratchy feeling in your chest. The way your hands tremble. The sweat that dots your upper lip when your senses are telling you a monster is close, again, now, and it’s your job to fight it. To stand up for your ideals and stand up to the threat. Whether you tame it, or this is truly a monster that needs to be slain, only time will tell.

 You know you will succeed. You always have before. But that doesn’t mean it won’t be a challenge.

 Grab your gear. Put on your boots. You know how to find it. You know what to do.

 First, you just need to steady yourself.

[ID: a page spread from the game. it shows "step four" on one side, which goes over the five aspects of the game's oracle. on the other side it shows the first oracle component, where something you can taste determines what your heroic core is. the page is minimally designed, with a blue border and text on a white background, tan accents, and one image of a dragon. end ID]

With Breath & Sword is a solo-journaling TTRPG to help players combat anxiety. 

In the game, you play as a monster-fighter, who is being summoned once again due to the presence of a new monster. Each time a monster appears, you struggle with the emotional effects of the magic: effects that look a lot like anxiety. You must steady yourself before you go off to fight: in the game and in real life.

Over the course of WB&S, players will participate in grounding methods and breathing techniques to calm themselves from an anxiety attack. These methods also serve as the game's oracle in order to determine how the story goes. 

What You'll Need:

A safe space to play 

A method of writing or recording

[ID: a page spread from the game. it is the section called "the science" and goes over the psychology behind the 5-4-3-2-1 grounding technique, the 4-7-8 breathing method, and destroying journaling. it has a few lines about narrative and play therapy, and that the creator of the game used these methods in his social work with neurodivergent teens and adults. end ID]

check out the game on itch now!!

[upennmanuscripts]

Exciting news for people who love reading research about manuscripts but don't have money!

[neat-deadandlive-things]

Having just looked up the submission cost to the journal Ecology, I will be printing out 100 copies of my manuscript and handing it out on street corners instead of traditionally publishing. Much more cost effective and more people will read it that way.

[superlinguo]

Himalayan Linguistics turns 20: Celebrating two decades of Diamond Open Access publish

The publication of Himalayan Linguistics issue 23(1) marks 20 years of the journal. To celebrate this milestone, the current team of editors, including myself, teamed up with two key former editors to write a special editorial about the history of the journal. Below are some excerpts from this history, as well as the article list for HL23(1) and a newly published Archives piece.

In early 2004, the first issue of Himalayan Linguistics was published. This first issue contained a single article: “An Analysis of Syntax and Prosody Interactions in a Dolakhā Newar: Rendition of The Mahābhārata”, by Carol Genetti and Keith Slater. In 2024, with the publication of Issue 23.1, Himalayan Linguistics celebrates twenty years of publishing fee-free Open Access research scholarship on the languages of the Himalayas. In these twenty years, Himalayan Linguistics has published almost 200 pieces of scholarship, all freely available online. In this special introductory article, we chart the history of the journal and look to its future. In its twenty years of publication, Himalayan Linguistics has published 144 original research articles, 18 review articles, and 14 Archive and Field Reports. The Archive publications include grammars, dictionaries, text collections and extended descriptive works. Himalayan Linguistics is well-placed to continue into the next twenty years. Indeed, the need for accessible online journals, which do not gatekeep with article processing charges, is even greater. The rise of digital-first research publication has seen an even contraction and concentration in the publishing market, which is now predominantly an oligopoly of a few giant commercial publishers (Larivière et al. 2015). This landscape creates a barrier, particularly for scholars who cannot afford processing fees.

Himalayan Linguistics, Volume 23, Issue 1, 2024

Editorial: Twenty years of Himalayan Linguistics Lauren Gawne, Gregory Anderson, You-Jing Lin,  Kristine A. Hildebrandt, Carol Genetti,

Spoken and sung vowels produced by bilingual Nepali speakers: A brief comparison Arnav Darnal,

A corpus-based study of cassifiers and measure words in Khortha Netra P. Paudyal

The grammar and meaning of atemporal complement clauses in Assamese: A cognitive linguistics approach Bisalakshi Sawarni, Gautam K. Borah

Possessive prefixes in Proto-Kusunda Augie Spendley

Expressing inner sensations in Denjongke: A contrast with the general Tibetic pattern Juha Sakari Yliniemi

New in Archives and Field Reports

Facts and attitudes: on the so-called ‘factual’ markers of the modern Tibetic languages [HL ARCHIVE 14] Bettina Zeisler

You can read all of Himalayan Linguistics, always Open Access at: https://escholarship.org/uc/himalayanlinguistics

[icicleteeth]

You know a non insignificant reason for dragging my feet on taking the computer back to the store for repairs Again is that every time ive done it, i have to rip all my stickers off before taking it in… Like sure half of them are normal cute stickers but the other half is candygore and a moogle with a glock, like im stressed enough being back there for pc problems again, i dont want to have to answer questions about my immaculate taste in stickers too 🙅

[falsenote]

have been instinctively skipping the popular reviews on letterboxd no matter the movie for ages which is why i am just now seeing that in a review for la notte brava someone referred to bolognini as a closeted homosexual

[jstor]

We're taking a little break from posting about Frankenstein to remind you that, in addition to offering the ability to read 100 articles online for free every month, JSTOR also has TONS of OA and free downloadable content, and we even have this little not-so-secret search bar you can use to find it.

[field-guide-to-mud]

let the rain fall and bring life

[transformativeworksandcultures]

CFP: Disability

 Special Issue CFP for TWC: Disability

Robert McRuer writes in Crip Theory that at some point in every person’s life, if they live long enough, they will be disabled. Yet, while disablement is an extremely common experience and ableism a hegemonic form of marginalization, disability is largely understudied across fields (Minich 2016, Ellcessor 2018). Fan studies has neglected to consistently explore disability or acknowledge the presence of ableism, resulting in a dearth of peer-reviewed publications on this intersection and a silencing of crip critique from disabled fans and scholars.

Disability studies formed in critique of the medical model of disability, which views disability as a problem to be solved. Most of the field’s critical work historically centers the social model, which frames disability not as a medical condition but as a social process discursively situated in histories of power (Siebers 2008). Contemporary disability scholarship more frequently works from Kafer’s (2013) political-relational model of disability, which clarifies that disability and impairment are both socially constructed, while also making explicit room for material realities of disablement, such as chronic pain and fatigue, and the inextricable mental-physical experiences of the bodymind, such as aging and neurodivergence (Price 2015). Approaching disability across the humanities has produced diverse modes of analyzing disability as identity (Shakespeare 1997), community (Clare 2017), and mediated representation (Garland-Thomson 1997), leading to crip theories exploring disability intersectionality to critique the ideology of ability (Samuels 2003, McRuer 2006). Disability studies especially draws from queer theory, building on the concept of compulsory heterosexuality—the hegemonic framework which renders heterosexuality the only thinkable option—to propose compulsory able-bodiedness, the requirement that disabled bodies perform as able and desire ability, highlighting homophobia and ableism as intersecting oppressions (McRuer 2006, Clare 2017). Further intersectional crip critique comes from Puar (2017) and other postcolonial and antiracist scholars (Schalk 2018), who describe how the violence of ableism is inequitably applied across multiply marginalized populations, illustrating how disability is not only missing from many intersectional theories of identity, but intersectionality has been lacking in disability theories.

We, as the editors of this issue, understand disability within the framework of the intersectional political-relational model, and believe that fan studies is well situated to contribute to discussions of disability. For example, Sterne and Mills (2017) propose “dismediation” as one mode of aligning media and disability studies’ often divergent goals through recognizing disability and media as co-constitutive—media concepts are awash with metaphors of disablement, and disabilities are so often figured against the cultural narratives and technological specifications of media. Further, fan studies’ continued claims to fandom’s transformative capacity and attention to “bodies in space” (Coppa 2014) desperately require the incorporation of disability critique. Fan studies has not entirely neglected disability as a marginalized identity, as fan scholars have begun to explore the accessibility of online fandom (Ellcessor 2018), examine the disability implications of fanfic as care labor (Leetal 2019), and advocate for thinking with disability to become a “default setting” in our field (Howell 2019). However, the disciplinary lacuna between these two fields has made it difficult for these conversations to develop a strong institutional foothold. By centering disability in fan studies’ discussions, this special issue can foster an encouraging environment for emerging dialogue between the fields to develop, as well as a supportive space for marginalized scholars and fans who do not see themselves represented in media, fan communities, or scholarship spaces.

We encourage submissions from scholars writing about disability from a fan studies perspective, as well as disability scholars writing about topics intersecting with fans/audiences/reception practices. We especially welcome intersectional perspectives that engage with disability as it operates in relation to intersecting identities such as race, gender, sexuality, class, and nationality (Bell 2016). Pieces for this special issue may explore questions of disability and fandom from an embodied, textual, or discursive perspective, for instance: What are the experiences of various disabled fans in fandom? What discourses of disability are circulated, perpetuated, and/or critiqued in fan spaces? How do fans negotiate portrayals of disability in their subjects of fandom, from movies to podcasts to celebrities? How has disability accessibility figured in various fandoms and fan spaces? How do rhetorics of disability, illness, and health affect fan communities and discussions? How does disability identity intersect with fan identity, and/or other marginalized identities?

Submissions may involve but are not limited to:

Fans/fandom and…

Dis/ability

Impairment

Neurodivergence

Chronic pain and/or illness

Mental illness and/or Mad perspectives

Bodyminds

Health

Bodily norms/Normativity

Discourses/narratives/representations of any of the above topics

Accessibility, in digital spaces (Tumblr, Dreamwidth, etc.) and/or physical spaces (conventions, industry, etc.)

Fan mediums with particular relationships to disability, such as cosplay or podfic

Submission Guidelines

Transformative Works and Cultures (TWC, http://journal.transformativeworks.org/) is an international peer-reviewed online Diamond Open Access publication of the nonprofit Organization for Transformative Works, copyrighted under a Creative Commons License. TWC aims to provide a publishing outlet that welcomes fan-related topics and promotes dialogue between academic and fan communities. TWC accommodates academic articles of varying scope as well as other forms, such as multimedia, that embrace the technical possibilities of the internet and test the limits of the genre of academic writing.

Submit final papers directly to Transformative Works and Cultures by January 1, 2025.

Articles: Peer review. Maximum 8,000 words.

Symposium: Editorial review. Maximum 4,000 words.

Please visit TWC's website (https://journal.transformativeworks.org/) for complete submission guidelines, or email the TWC Editor (editor@transformativeworks.org). 

Contact—Contact guest editors Olivia Johnston Riley and Lauren Rouse with any questions before or after the due date DisabilityFandomTWC@gmail.com. 

Works Cited

Bell, Chris. 2016. “Is Disability Studies Actually White Disability Studies?” In The Disability Studies Reader edited by Lennard Davis, 406-425. New York: Routledge.

Clare, Eli. 2017. Brilliant Imperfection: Grappling with Cure. Durham: Duke University Press.

Coppa, Francesca. 2014. “Writing Bodies in Space: Media Fan Fiction as Theatrical Performance.” In The Fan Fiction Studies Reader, edited by Karen Hellekson and Kristina Busse, 218-238. Iowa City: University of Iowa Press.

Davis, Lennard. 1995. “Introduction: Disability, the Missing Term in the Race, Class, Gender Triad.” In Enforcing Normalcy: Disability, Deafness, and the Body, 23-49. London and New York: Verso.

Ellcessor, Elizabeth. 2018. “Accessing Fan Cultures: Disability, Digital Media, and Dreamwidth” in The Routledge Companion to Media Fandom, edited by Melissa A. Click and Suzanne Scott, 202-211. New York: Routledge.

Garland-Thomson, Rosemarie. 1997. Extraordinary Bodies: Figuring Physical Disability in American Culture and Literature. New York: Columbia University Press.

Howell, Katherine Anderson. 2019. “Human Activity: Fan Studies, Fandom, Disability and the Classroom.” Journal of Fandom Studies 7(1). https://doi.org/10.1386/jfs.7.1.3_2 

Kafer, Alison. 2013. Feminist, Queer, Crip. Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press.

Leetal, Dean Barnes. 2019. “Those Crazy Fangirls on the Internet: Activism of Care, Disability and Fan Fiction.” Canadian Journal of Disability Studies 8 (2). https://cjds.uwaterloo.ca/index.php/cjds/article/view/491  

McRuer, Robert. 2006. Crip Theory: Cultural Signs of Queerness and Disability. New York and London: New York University Press.

Minich, Julie Avril. 2016. “Enabling Whom? Critical Disability Studies Now.” Lateral: Journal of the Cultural Studies Association, 5.1. https://csalateral.org/issue/5-1/forum-alt-humanities-critical-disability-studies-now-minich/.

Price, Margaret. 2015. "The Bodymind Problem and the Possibilities of Pain." Hypatia 30, no. 1: 268-284.

Puar, Jasbir. 2017. The Right to Maim: Debility, Capacity, Disability. Durham and London: Duke University Press.

Samuels, Ellen. 2003. “My Body, My Closet: Invisible Disability and the Limits of Coming Out Discourse.” GLQ 9, no.1-2: 233-255.

Schalk, Sami. 2018. Bodyminds Reimagined. Durham and London: Duke University Press.

Shakespeare, Tom. 1996. “Disability, Identity and Difference.” Exploring the Divide, edited by Colin Barnes and Geof Mercer:  94-113.

Siebers, Tobin. 2008. Disability Theory. Ann Arbor: The University of Michigan Press.

Sterne, Jonathan and Mara Mills. 2017. “Dismediation: Three Proposals, Six Tactics.” In Disability Media Studies, edited by Elizabeth Ellcessor and Bill Kirkpatrick. New York: NYU Press.

[airyairyaucontraire]

Within months of Craven’s introduction of Banks, Craven claimed Banks had been hospitalized after dropping a KitchenAid mixer on her foot, according to both an anonymous former business associate of Craven's I spoke to, and my own past conversations with Craven. Several hours later, her leg was allegedly amputated, and nearly 48 hours after the first operation, her other leg was amputated as well. The anonymous source mentioned above claims they then contacted West Suburban Medical Center in Oak Park, Illinois where Banks was said to be recovering according to the source who saw this information on social media. When they contacted the hospital to send flowers, the hospital said there was no patient by that name. This resulted in the source seeking a third-party opinion due to fears of Craven allegedly misrepresenting himself and taking advantage of clients through sympathy.

A Prominent Accessibility Advocate Worked With Studios and Inspired Change. But She Never Actually Existed. - IGN

This reminds me of “The Strange Case of the Electronic Lover,” which details a very similar fraud committed by a man on CompuServe’s CB Simulator in the early 1980s.  Like, this kind of thing is pretty much as old as the social use of the Internet.

And of course the HIV+ high school AU/cannibal mermaid Hamilton fanfiction incident.

[itsyveinthesky]

Edit: There is now an official English translation of the whole article by Meduza themselves: https://meduza.io/en/feature/2023/06/03/the-only-thing-worse-than-war-is-losing-one

Meduza is a Russian- and English-language independent news website, headquartered in Riga, Latvia. It was founded in 2014 by a group of former employees of the then-independent Lenta.ru news website.

It asked the readers that supported the war to explalin why.

Sadly the answers paint a very bleak pictures of even young Russians reading independent media.

Some translated statements (feel free to correct if translated wrongly)

Andrey

35 years old, Volgograd

War ends when one side wins. Russia's defeat would mean national humiliation, which cannot be allowed. Consequently, one must win - there is no choice anymore.

Alexei

24 years old, Yakutsk

I do not support the war, but I do not want Russia to lose either.

Pavel

30 years old, Germany

I am angry at both sides of the conflict.

Anonymous reader

38 years old, city not specified

The only thing worse than a war is a lost war. It was an insane mistake to start it, but now it must be won, or else we will have the woe of the defeated. I don't support Putin, damn him.

Anonymous reader

36 years old, Tyumen

I'm not going to pay reparations for the mistakes of others for the next 20 years. No one talks to the losing side.

Nikolai

27 years old, Austria

I think the Western point of view is not quite right and agree with Putin's terminology of a unipolar world with double standards.

Artem

40 years old, Berlin

I have lived in Germany for 20 years and have never seen such propaganda. Western politicians and media have taken an absolutely one-sided position: Russia is the aggressor, Ukraine is a heroic state, Putin is always wrong, everyone looks into Zelensky's mouth.

Ruslan

28 years old, Kazan

I neither support nor condemn Russia for the war. I believe that since Russia started the war, it showed the weakness of its diplomacy and its inability to negotiate with a neighbouring state. However, I also do not support the point of view of those who compare Russia almost to Nazi Germany.

First of all, Ukraine had a choice; it could have reached an agreement with us in the early days of the war before things went too far and met our demands. It would have lost territories, but would have kept itself as a state. Is land more important than human lives? Therefore, Ukraine also bears some of the blame for the lives of those people who died. I am sure that people living in the territories that would have been handed over to Russia would certainly not have made their lives worse. Perhaps somewhere even better.

Sergey

27 years old, Perm

I support the actions of my president and my country. Yes, initially I didn't quite understand the point of this whole "operation", but after a while I saw the Russophobic statements both from Ukraine and from the European Union and the United States. Anyone with critical thinking and at least some common sense understands: Russia is not a "terrorist state", we are only defending our interests and sovereignty. That is why I, like most Russian citizens, fully support the UAS, and if I have to go to war, then I will go.

My personal favourite

Anonymous reader

30 years old, Astana

In a year and a half, [my] authority figures and moral compasses have turned into traitors (who wish harm to the citizens of their country, call for sanctions and do not try to lift them), shameful people (who offer to surrender to mercy and blame themselves), infirmities and liars.

I still believe that Russia got into this war for nothing, very much for nothing. But the way out offered by those [politicians] I [used to] hope for is shameful, painful, humiliating and deceitful. It is better to wait for those who will replace Putin: Russia is full of smart people.

Repenting for three [next] lives, giving up nuclear weapons and paying reparations - thanks, no thanks. I hope that the war will end as soon as possible and that as few people as possible will die in it, both Russian citizens in the first place and citizens of Ukraine, and if I have to go to war, then I will.

[thishazeleyeddemon]

Survey Announcement!

Translation:

"Hello, my name is Moth. I am a college student studying research. For my class, I picked information access for the d/Deaf community. Below this video is a link to my survey. If you could complete my survey, I'd be happy. Thank you."

Specifically, I'm interested in accessibility of American news organizations. For more information and to take the survey, please follow the link below. I would appreciate the help so much!

If you have any questions, please reach out to me!

This survey will close April 9th, 2023.