Publications
Journal Articles
The Racialized Celebrity Other in Perfume Advertisements
McAllister, M., Beykont, Y., & Forde, S. (2023). The Racialized Celebrity Other in Perfume Advertisements. Communication, Culture and Critique. https://doi.org/10.1093/ccc/tcad002
Despite significant scholarship on the semiotics and ideology of perfume advertising, its racialized nature is underexamined. This is surprising given perfume-ad characteristics that incentivize racialized representations, especially ads using celebrities, and racist constructions of smell and scent. Using critical advertising studies, sensory studies, and bell hooks’ concept of the racialized Other, this article argues that perfume ads are markedly racialized. The racial semiotics of 10 print ads—five with BIPOC celebrities and five with White—are critiqued, with BIPOC celebrities essentialized as inherently exotic, wild, and primitively sexual, while White celebrities symbolize elegance, classic beauty, and uniqueness.
Ontario’s Right-Wing Populism “Will Cost You”: A Propaganda Analysis of Ford’s Sticker Act and Canadian Journalism’s Response
Forde, S. (2022). Ontario’s Right-Wing Populism “Will Cost You”: A Propaganda Analysis of Ford’s Sticker Act and Canadian Journalism’s Response. Canadian Journal of Communication. 47(2), 337–359. https://doi.org/10.22230/cjc.2022v47n2a4231
Political environments shaped by ascendant populism and growing anxieties over globalization have been compared to the early twentieth century, including concerns about the power of state-sponsored propaganda. The revisiting of propaganda analysis as a tool for analyzing government campaigns is thus warranted. This article applies propaganda analysis to populist Ontario Premier Doug Ford’s Federal Carbon Tax Transparency Act. Canadian journalism’s response is then measured through a comparative frequency analysis alongside the premier’s sensationalized “buck-a-beer” campaign. The applicability of a reinstated propaganda analysis is solidified in the current Canadian context, and journalism prioritizing profit over democracy is discussed.
Digital palimpsests: Exploring “ideological correction” in online news updates of Portland protests & police violence.
Forde, S. L., Gutsche, Jr., R. E. & Pinto, J. (2022). Digital palimpsests: Exploring “ideological correction” in online news updates of Portland protests & police violence. Journalism. https://doi.org/10.1177/14648849221100073
This paper critically examines 48 digital news updates to six New York Times online articles collected through 181 captures via the Internet Archive’s Wayback Machine (WBM), a web scraping tool, pertaining to federal military and local police responses to Portland protests published in headlines, sources, quotes, hyperlinks, the order of information presented, and articles’ main thrusts of meaning. Through this analysis, we call for the notion of “ideological correction” to represent an additional element of the liquidity of journalism in this case — shifts in news explanations of single articles that altered the articles’ focus on and characterizations of law enforcement and protesters — sometimes even under the same, original headline and article URL.
GOOD MORNING, COVID!” The inertia of journalistic imaginaries in morning shows’ online comments
Gutsche, Jr., R. E., Forde, S., Pinto, J., & Zhu, Y. (2022). “GOOD MORNING, COVID!” The inertia of journalistic imaginaries in morning shows’ online comments. Journalism. https://doi.org/10.1177/14648849221099265
This textual analysis examines meanings of user comments to Facebook posts of three UK breakfast programs as COVID-19 entered England in 2020. This analysis suggests that during this time of crisis and uncertainty, users’ – even if trolling, interacting through incidental media use, or commenting as regular contributors to the pages – relied on traditional and lasting interpretations of conventional journalistic standards in their discourse surrounding “soft news” content. We argue that such comments represent an “inertia” of longstanding journalistic imaginaries that have survived an increased hybridity of news.
More Than Politics: How Personality Trait and Media Technology Use Affect Vote Likelihood During the 2020 U.S. Presidential Election
Zhong, B., Sun, T., Forde, S., & Payne, G. (2021). More Than Politics: How Personality Trait and Media Technology Use Affect Vote Likelihood During the 2020 U.S. Presidential Election. American Behavioral Scientist. 66(3), 357-375. https://doi.org/10.1177/00027642211003143
Considerable work has been devoted to studying voter behavior in U.S. presidential elections by analyzing their political participation and attitude toward political advertising. Less is known about how other factors may alter voter behavior like personality traits and use of information and communication technology (ICT). This study analyzes vote likelihood among American young voters and their parents (N = 674) after they watched four presidential campaign commercials . It proposes a hierarchical mediation model highlighting the need for cognition (NFC) impact on vote likelihood through the mediation of power use of ICT applications, political participation and trust in negative advertising. This study has revealed both the direct effect of NFC on vote likelihood, and the indirect relationship between NFC and vote likelihood that is mediated by power use of ICT applications. The findings should enrich the literature of vote likelihood by highlighting the effects of need for cognition and ICT usage.
Refereed Book Chapters
UnFoxing Market Failure: Complicating Media Matters for America’s #UnFoxMyCableBox Campaign for Digital Activism After Trump
Forde, S. (2022). UnFoxing Market Failure: Complicating Media Matters for America’s #UnFoxMyCableBox Campaign for Digital Activism After Trump. In R. E. Gutsche, Jr., The future of the presidency, democracy, and journalism: After Trump. Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781003205739-13
bell hooks' “Eating the Other” as a Critical Advertising Framework
McAllister, M., Forde, S., & Beykont, Y. (Forthcoming) bell hooks' “Eating the Other” as a Critical Advertising Framework. In Das, A., Postcolonial Marketing Communication: Images from the Global South. Springer Nature.
Public Scholarship
Canadian trucker protests show how the loudest voices in the room distort democracy
Jordan, M. & Forde, S. (2022). Canadian trucker protests show how the loudest voices in the
room distort democracy. The Conversation. https://theconversation.com/canadian-trucker-protests-show-how-the-loudest-voices-in-the-room-distort-democracy-177022
The Political Economy of Journalistic Objectivity
Forde, S. (2022). The Political Economy of Journalistic Objectivity. The Law and Political
Economy Project (LPE), Yale Law School. https://lpeproject.org/blog/the-political-economy-of-journalistic-objectivity/
Advertising and Promotion
McAllister, M., Nutter, A., Beykont, Y., & Forde, S. (2022). Advertising and Promotion.
In K. Gabbard (Ed.), Oxford Bibliographies Online in Cinema and Media Studies. New York: Oxford University Press. https://doi.org/10.1093/OBO/9780199791286-0002
