Journal articles on the topic 'Marx's theories analysed'

AbstractThe publication last year in New Left Review of Robert Brenner's book-length essay ‘Uneven Development and the Long Downturn: The Advanced Capitalist Economies from Boom to Stagnation, 1950-1998’ has already provoked more discussion and controversy on the socialist Left than any other political-economic analysis in recent memory. Predictably, it has also elicited a number of highly critical response from proponents of Marx's theories of labour value and economic crisis. Amongst other things, Brenner has been charged with a one-sided preoccupation with capital-to-capital (competitive) relations at the expense of the capital-wage labour (class struggle) relation, with misinterpreting and dismissing Marx's law of the falling tendency of the rate of profit, and with ignoring Marx’s value categories entirely.

Karl Marx and Sigmund Freud provided powerful accounts of systematic interested ignorance. Fifty years ago, Anglo-American philosophies of science stigmatized Marx's and Freud's analyses as models of irrationality. They remain disvalued today, at a time when virtually all other humanities and social science disciplines have returned to extract valuable insights from them. Here the argument is that there are reasons distinctive to philosophy why such theories were especially disvalued then and why they remain so today. However, there are even better reasons today for philosophy to break from this history and find more fruitful ways to engage with systematic interested ignorance.

Despite widespread beliefs to the contrary, Marxism is still highly significant in China. Therefore, my paper studies the contemporary usage of one of the key concepts of Marxist theory: ideology. While one can draw on numerous accounts of Western political scientists of the shifting ideology of the CCP leadership, Western scholarship has overlooked critical theories of ideology of Chinese origin that developed in the 1990s in the context of an academic re-evaluation of Karl Marx’s theories. My paper analyses the work of Yu Wujin (俞吾金, 1948–2014), a key representative of this intellectual current. His monograph On Ideology was the first comprehensive treatment of the concept by a Chinese scholar. Clarifying the relation of Yu’s theory of ideology with CCP positions, I will argue that in leaving behind dialectical materialism and in reviving ideology in its critical sense, his work provides a theoretical foundation for a limited pluralization of Marxist discourse in reform era China.

In Marxian economic analysis, especially in the theories of accumulation and crisis, money and a monetary rate of interest are usually introduced as only modifying elements after the dominant tendencies have been derived from real analysis. Contrary to such an interpretation this paper starts from the observation that there is solid ground for monetary analysis in Marx’s economics especially if his theory of value is understood as a monetary theory of value. The role of credit and the relation between the interest rate and the rate of profit in Marx’s theory are discussed and compared to post-keynesian approaches. Finally, the implications of Marx’s monetary analysis for the theory of capital accumulation are analysed and it is shown that no general laws of accumulation can be derived when the independence of accumulation from savings in a credit-money-economy and the effects of an exogenously determined rate of interest are introduced.

The present paper deals with Li Zehou’s contributions to the discussions of Marxism in the second half of the 20th century. In Li’s philosophy, Marx’s theories were reshaped, modified, and upgraded in a theoretical framework that differed from the original. He agreed with Marx’s presumption that the making and using of tools was the basic material practice, which made human evolution possible. Nevertheless, he saw Marx’s further development of this theory as problematic, because he saw it as being one-sided: progress from the means of production to the relations of production, and then on to the superstructure, only concerned the external developments of the relation between the manufacture and use of tools. At this point, Li was more interested in their internal influences, i.e., in the ways in which the making and use of tools has reshaped the human mind. He was highly sceptical of Marxist economic theories and criticized the crucial concepts elaborated by Marx in his Capital through the lens of Kantian “transcendental illusions”. Proceeding from his combination of Marx and Kant, the present paper will critically analyse some crucial differences between the Marxian idea of the class struggle as a driving force of social progress, and Li’s own version of historical materialism.

While no one has yet announced the death of capitalism, reports of its imminent demise have been as numerous as they have been exaggerated. Such reports have usually been bolstered by thoughtful analyses of the fundamental contradictions of capitalism, which was expected to come sliding—if not crashing—down under the weight of its own inconsistencies. Leaving aside Karl Marx's own predictions, twentieth-century analysts as diverse as Joseph Schumpeter, Daniel Bell, and Jurgen Habermas have asserted that the contradictions of capitalism could only mean that its days were numbered. Alas, all that has been established by these analyses is that predictive failure is no impediment to market success: either the consumer's demand for such theories of capitalism's failures is naturally robust, or supply continues to generate its own demand.

Solomon Marcus (1925–2016) was one of the founders of the Romanian theoretical computer science. His pioneering contributions to automata and formal language theories, mathematical linguistics and natural computing have been widely recognised internationally. In this paper we briefly present his publications in theoretical computer science and related areas, which consist in almost ninety papers. Finally we present a selection of ten Marcus books in these areas.

Discussing aspects of Marx's critique of political economy and Foucault's analytic of power, the text seeks to separate the reflexive stance of anti-essetialism from two positions wich are often seen as being part of it: judgmental relativism and the ,anti-depth war'. To recognise the historical and social relativity of knowledge does not necessarily imply the view that all theories are equally true. And to analyse social structures and dispositions as underlying conditions of events and behavior is not tantamount to a search for metaphysical parallel universes. Criticising Badiou, the paper concludes with a plea for a realist politics of truth as an alternative to either relativist or rationalist conceptions of this topic.

Approaches to the critique of the political economy of communication in society belong to the “forgotten theories” in media and communication studies. But in view of the unmistakable structural change of a media industry “unleashed” by deregulation, privatisation, digitalisation, concentration, globalisation, etc., it seems from an academic perspective necessary to analyse the development of the media industry in close connection with the equally unmistakable general development of an “unleashed” capitalism. This article therefore shows that the analysis of the development processes of capitalism as the undoubtedly globally dominant economic and social system from a political economy perspective makes it possible to analyse, explain, and partly forecast the economisation or commercialisation process in the media industry in an academically appropriate way with regard to its causes, forms, consequences, and further development. Theoretical explanations are offered by the further developments of the analysis and critique of contemporary capitalism based on Marx’s critique of the political economy as a historical-materialist analysis of society. In doing so, the permanent fundamental characteristics, modes of functioning and “regularities” of the capitalist mode of production and the capitalist formation of society are analysed in connection with the particularities of the current capitalisation process in the media industry.

Esse artigo aborda os testemunhos no Evangelho de Marcos recorrendo à Epistemologia do Testemunho, campo de estudos da Teoria do Conhecimento. Apresenta as principais teorias: reducionista e não-reducionista, e as duas dimensões do testemunho: individual e social. A seguir, usa esses conceitos para verificar as qualidades dos testemunhos no Evangelho de Marcos. Como caso exemplar, analisa o testemunho do geraseno. EPISTEMOLOGY OF TESTIMONY IN THE GOSPEL OF MARK This article approaches the testimony in the Gospel of Mark to turn to Epistemology of testimony, area of interest of the Theory of Knowledge. Introduces the principal theories: reductionist and no-reductionist, and the two dimensions of testimony: individual and social. Following, use this concept for examines the qualities of testimonies in the Gospel of Mark. As an exemplar case, analyses the testimony of Gerasene.

Literature and film that are relevant to a concept of land and immigration that promotes ecologically sustainable and anti-racist visions are analyzed here to create an assemblage, based on Deleuze and Guattari’s theories. This is done to accomplish three tasks. The first is to disrupt misconceptions of a dichotomy between ecological activism and immigrant rights activism. The second task is to address the connections between ecologies and immigration and diaspora communities while taking into account issues of control over land that have often been important to people who immigrate from Central America and Mexico to the United States. As a third task, the idea of assemblage is modified to integrate Marx’s theory of primitive accumulation and Laclau and Mouffe’s idea of discourses of positive and negative activation in discourse to explore Deleuze and Guattari’s theory through a more specific application to situations of political economy that have been so intertwined with immigration, land, and ecology in Central America, Mexico, and the U.S. Southwest. Accordingly, the aim is to illuminate ecological points of view that are from immigrant and diaspora communities, rather than hostile to or imposed upon them.

Extreme endurance sporting events and participation in these events have grown exponentially since the 1970s. Events such as Iron-distance triathlons, marathons, ultramarathons, ultradistance cycling, and military-style obstacle courses now attract millions of participants in the United States annually. Although many studies have analyzed this late 20th and early 21st century phenomenon from a microsociological perspective, looking at individual characteristics of participants, its broader relationship to class-based changes in nature of work during the neoliberal period has not been thoroughly investigated. This article theorizes the rise of extreme endurance sports by uniting Marx’s conception of estranged labor under capital in the Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts of 1844 with Pierre Bourdieu’s concept of habitus particularly as articulated within Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgment of Taste. While injecting macro-level socioeconomic concerns into the exploration of extreme endurance sports, the author concludes that investigations into the lived experience of participants must continue, but should be united with explorations into the connection between the phenomenology of play and its relationship to class and the changing economic structure.

This study examined the resources vital for the survival of the Samburu pastoral people in pre-colonial Kenya and their use. The study covers the period from 1895 to 1961. The study discussed the Samburu traditional land tenures systems and exploitation of resources. It examined Samburu subsistence production. This study used two theories to achieve the set objectives. It utilized Carl Marx’s theory of political economy, which postulates that it is common ends that governs human relations. It is economic structure also referred to as substructure that provides the basis for the society on which the superstructure is built upon. The constituents of the superstructure are found on the analysis to reflect the interest of the dominant class. The study also uses Articulation theory of producing modes of production as advanced by Lonsdale and Bruce. Articulation theory is relevant to the study as it links the Samburu pastoralist pre-capitalist subsistence system of production to British Colonial State capitalist system of production. This study used both primary and secondary sources. The method selected to carry out this study was qualitative research method. The semi-structured questions were used in the interview. Data was analysed, categorized according to topics and subtopics. It was interpreted, written down and finally presented. The research findings will contribute to the historiography of pastoralism in Kenya.

This article, based on fieldwork, explores the main economic categories of the Nzema, matrilineal farmers of South West Ghana, with the aim of reconstructing a local economic theory. The starting point is that any economic theory is logically founded in its own principles and that the internal coherence of a theory depends on its ability to represent the interests of the society to which it is applied. The work of ancestors appears as a founding idea in relation to other ideas like that of profit engendered by the work of the living.The author, however, analyses these categories, particularly emphasising the use of terminology in various contexts of daily life and in the economic lexicon as a whole, in order to trace an unitary space in which the logic of a system of thought could be considered. In order to verify the coherence of this system the author conducts a comparative analysis between the Nzema categories and the corresponding western categories organised as different theories such as neo-classical marginalism, Marx's value of work and, finally, Chayanov's theory founded on an utility concept.The central core of the Nzema's theory concerning work and profit is that the work of ancestors, first conceived as the ideological and juridical basis for the rights of their descendants over cultivable land, turns as well into a profit producer to the advantage of the living under the condition that it should be materialised as a means of production like, for example, the coconut trees, which were planted by the ancestors, and now produce a profit for their descendants.

Los adolescentes son un grupo de riesgo para desarrollar trastornos depresivos y que se enfrentan a una multitud de circunstancias psicosociales y a los recursos disponibles para satisfacer sus necesidades vitales. El riesgo de depresión está asociado con una alta evitación de daños, una baja autodirección y una baja persistencia. El objetivo de la labor fue explorar las diferencias entre los diferentes perfiles de personalidad entre los elementos del proceso depresivo (presencia de angustia y ausencia de eustrés) en los adolescentes. La presencia de depresión se evaluó a través del Inventario Multicultural de Depresión y la personalidad a través del Cuestionario de Temperamento y Carácter en un total de 229 participantes, (n=121 varones) (edad M = 14,79; SD = 1,61). Los análisis exploratorios por conglomerados mostraron la existencia de 3 perfiles de adolescentes basados en el temperamento y el carácter, siendo aquellos adolescentes con baja persistencia y auto-trascendencia, con alta auto-dirección, evitación de daños y dependencia de las recompensas quienes mostraron los más altos indicadores de depresión. Específicamente, se encontraron diferencias significativas en las puntuaciones de angustia con los adolescentes del perfil 3 que tenían los indicadores más altos de angustia de estado (F(224.4) = 21.73; p < .01) y rasgo (F(224.4) = 23.00; p < .01) con respecto a los adolescentes del grupo 1 y del grupo 2. Además, también tuvieron puntuaciones significativamente más bajas en los indicadores de estado eustrés (F(224.4) = 11,59; p < .01) y rasgo (F(224.4) = 12,31; p < .01). La discusión se centra en la utilidad de las teorías de Moscoso y Coninger como marcos para comprender los procesos de adquisición y el riesgo de depresión en los adolescentes. Adolescents are a group at risk of developing depressive disorders, faced with a multitude of psychosocial circumstances and the resources available to meet vital needs. The risk of depression is associated with high avoidance of harm, low self-direction, and low persistence. The aim of the work was to explore the differences between different personality profiles between elements of the depressive process (presence of distress and absence of eustress) in adolescents. The presence of depression was evaluated through the Multicultural Inventory of Depression and personality through the Temperament and Character Questionnaire in a total of 229 participants, (n=121 males) (M age = 14.79; SD = 1.61). The exploratory cluster analyses showed the existence of 3 adolescent profiles based on temperament and character, being those adolescents with low persistence and self-transcendence, with high self-directedness, harm avoidance and rewards dependency who showed the highest indicators of depression. Specifically, significant differences were found in distress scores with adolescents in profile 3 having the highest indicators of state distress (F(224.4) = 21.73; p < .01) and trait (F(224.4) = 23.00; p < .01) with respect to adolescents in cluster 1 and cluster 2. In addition, they also had significantly lower scores on the indicators of eustrés state (F(224.4) = 11.59; p < .01) and trait (F(224.4) = 12.31; p < .01). The discussion focuses on the usefulness of Moscoso and Coninger's theories as frameworks for understanding the processes of acquisition, and risk of depression in adolescents.

Abstract: The purpose of this paper is to help reclaim McLuhan's media and social / historical theories for critical theory, arguing that McLuhan employed a form of dialectical theory containing basic elements of dialectics developed by Hegel, Marx, and, later, his contemporaries of the Frankfurt School. This essay will examine McLuhan's published writings for analysis of his dialectical methodology and compare his work closely with the work of Walter Benjamin, and the work of Max Horkheimer and Theodor Adorno, lines of inquiry paralleling Judith Stamps's Unthinking Modernity. The central argument is that McLuhan's method, like Marx's radical dialectical method, was not a mechanistic, technological determinism. Instead, McLuhan was mining the interstices of media interaction for openings that allow human awareness and autonomy. This study attempts to reclaim McLuhan by showing that his method was open-ended and processual, not only in his early work, but in the later and posthumous work as well. Résumé: Cet essai cherche à ramener au sein de la théorie critique les théories médiatiques et socio-historiques de McLuhan, en insistant sur le fait que la forme de la théorie dialectique qu'il emploie est basée sur les dialectiques élaborées par Hegel, Marx et plus tard par les contemporains de McLuhan, à savoir les membres de l'Ecole de Francfort. En se penchant sur les écrits publiés de McLuhan, cet essai analyse sa théorie dialectique et procède à une comparaison approfondie de ses oeuvres à celles de Walter Benjamin, Max Horkheimer et Theodor Adorno--une recherche qui nous rappelle Unthinking Modernity de Judith Stamps. L'argument principal est que la méthode de McLuhan, de même que la méthode dialectique radicale de Marx, ne représentait en aucun cas un déterminisme mécaniste et technologique. McLuhan examine plutôt les interstices de l'interaction des médias pour y trouver les ouvertures qui permettraient une conscience humaine et une autonomie plus grandes. Cette étude essaye de revendiquer l'importance des écrits de McLuhan en montrant que sa méthode était sans limites fixes et suivait un processus précis, non seulement dans ses premiers ouvrages, mais également dans son oeuvre mûre et dans ses publications posthumes.

Resumo A presente comunicação tem por base os resultados preliminares da discussão no campo da sociologia feitas para a pesquisa “Nanotecnologias aplicadas aos alimentos e aos biocombustíveis: reconhecendo os elementos essenciais para o desenvolvimento de indicadores de riscos e de marcos regulatórios que resguardem a saúde e o meio ambiente” (Edital o4/CII – 2008 – Nanobiotecnologia - CAPES). Parte-se da premissa de que ao analisar as diferentes dimensões da vida social afetadas pelas nanotecnologias, é preciso refletir sobre os novos valores sociais que decorrem deste avanço tecnológico e das inúmeras possibilidades que são apresentadas à sociedade como decorrentes desta chamada “nova revolução” científica. Os desafios no campo das ciências sociais, em especial no campo da sociologia da ciência e tecnologia, aumentarão proporcionalmente na medida em que conhecimentos científicos e tecnológicos de áreas de fronteira aceleram sua entrada no mundo da vida através de inovações tecnológicas e organizacionais. As novas configurações sociais decorrentes de um mundo em mudança constante, marcado pela liquidez, como afirma Bauman (2001), são cada vez mais prementes. Este processo tem efeitos sobre as estruturas psicossociais dos indivíduos, pressionando a capacidade explicativa das teorias e ferramentas conceituais tradicionais das ciências sociais.Palavras chave Sociologia, nanotecnologia, Ciências Sociais, transumanismoAbstract This communication is based on the preliminary results of the discussion in the field of Sociology made to the survey "Nanotechnologies applied to food and biofuels, recognizing the essential elements for the development of risk indicators and regulatory frameworks that protect health and the environment" (Edital o4/CII – 2008 – Nanobiotecnologia - CAPES). It starts with the premise that when analyzing the different dimensions of social life affected by nanotechnology, we must think about the new social values stemming from this technological advance and the numerous possibilities that are presented to society as a consequence of this "new scientific revolution". The challenges in the social sciences, especially in the field of sociology of science and technology, will increase proportionally to the extent that scientific and technological frontier areas accelerate their entry into the world of life through technological and organizational innovations. The new social settings due to a constantly changing world, marked by liquidity, as stated by Bauman (2001), are becoming increasingly prominent. This process has effects on the psychosocial structures of individuals, pressing the explanatory power of traditional theories and conceptual tools of social science.Keywords Sociology, nanotechnology, Social Science, transhumanism

Introduction Media and gender are intricately linked in our society. Every day we see representations of women and men on the screen, read about politicians in the press, watch influencers on YouTube or go to the cinema where we meet screen heroes. Our images and notions of gender draw on these media narratives and role models. Children and young people are socialised with these views and cultivate their own identity and gender roles accordingly. Ideas of gender are not static. They are produced discursively in an ongoing process. Gender is understood as a social category, and this perspective is interwoven with an observation of people’s social behaviour, their “doing gender” (West and Zimmerman). From a social constructivist, the focus lies on the production processes connected with the construction of gender representations through the media. The question of how masculinity and femininity, concepts of “being a man” or “being a woman”, represented on a platform such as YouTube become relevant. Our research interest lies exactly in this: How gender inclusive is the video platform YouTube? Are male and female representations equally visible—or do we find exclusion mechanisms that hinder this? Literature Review Europe-wide studies show that children and adolescents are online for an average of 2.4 hours a day (Hasebrink et al.). Eighty-seven per cent of young people report watching videos (e.g. on YouTube) at least once a week (ibid., 11). This applies for Germany as well (MPFS). Considering the relevance YouTube has for adolescents, the question arises as to which role models are portrayed through YouTube and how diverse the representations of gender are depicted there. Initial analyses, primarily for the English-language YouTube platform, see its potential to counteract gender stereotypes (Maloney et al.), but generally show an unequal visibility of the genders on YouTube. These studies find that women are underrepresented, receive more hostile feedback and present themselves in stereotypical forms (Wotanis and McMillan; Döring; Molyneaux et al.). Döring and Mohseni showed in their current nine-country comparative analysis that men dominate the popular YouTube across countries and women are more likely to give up after hostility. The existing research usually examined the English-language, mainly US YouTube, it analysed gender performance, stereotypes in selected genres such as advertising or gaming, the stigmatisation of obesity, the representation and experiences of black women on YouTube, and the staging of alternative images of masculinity (see Hussin et al.; Kataria and Pandey; Wotanis and McMillan; Casabianca; Maloney et al.; Sobande). Molyneaux et al. noted in their landmark study gender-specific differences: female YouTubers tend to focus on private matters and interact more frequently with their users. Male YouTubers, on the other hand, share opinions and information and avoid emotions (Pedersen and Macafee). In addition, female vloggers are more often criticised for their appearance than for the content of their videos (Molyneaux et al.). Even though YouTube is an international medium, its use remains limited to language and nation. For example, the most popular YouTube stars among German children and young people are predominantly German-speaking influencers or sportsmen and women. In 2019, girls between the ages of 6 and 13 most often name Bibi, Dagi Bee, Shirin David, Lisa & Lena, and Miley; boys at the same age Julien Bam, Gronkh, Die Lochis, LeFloid and Manuel Neuer (IZI). All these are German YouTube or sports stars. YouTube itself shows in its recommendations under the heading “most popular videos in Germany” exclusively German-language videos, music videos, or sporting events (YouTube). Therefore, YouTube also needs to be examined in national contexts, as well as in cross-national context. Our study will focus on the national German context to examine whether there are similar gender differences in the German-speaking YouTube as have been identified for the English-speaking YouTube. For German-speaking YouTube, few studies are available. Döring and Mohseni examined male and female operators of the top 100 YouTube channels in nine different countries. The results show that women make up 25 per cent of the top 100 German YouTube channel operators, a distribution which is similarly uneven in other countries. Usage data shows that the German-speaking YouTube appears to have a greater relevance among boys than girls. Boys (93%) use YouTube more often on a regular basis, than girls (86%), and rank it higher as their favourite app (MPFS). Other than for traditional media such as television or film, where intensive research has for decades shown a wide gender gap in the visibility of women (Prommer and Linke; Linke and Prommer), research on German-speaking YouTube is rare (Döring and Mohseni). Hypotheses In reflection of the research outlined above on representations of gender in media and the stereotypical portrayals of men and women in film and television, we assume that these gender role depictions are carried over into online videos on social media platforms. The fact that girls use YouTube somewhat less often, consider themselves less competent in the necessary Internet skills, and anticipate greater risks related to communicative aspects suggests that female operators might have been held back and that the female perspective might be marginalised in public (self-)portrayals. The following hypotheses will therefore guide our study: H1: Fewer women are channel operators of Germany’s most popular YouTube channels, and they are more limited in their choice of genres. H2: Women are less visible than men in popular YouTube videos. H3: Women portray themselves more often as connected to stereotypically female topics or are depicted as such in videos. H4: Men stage themselves as professionals. Methods and Sample Following these hypotheses, we conducted a two-step research. The first research step was to analyse to what extent women and men produce popular content. For this, we looked at the ratio of female to male YouTubers among the 1,000 most successful German channels. These YouTubers are called either creators or channel operators by the industry. Both terms are used synonymously here. To identify the most popular YouTube channels, we acquired the viewing and ranking data from the market research company Social Blade, which is one of the very few sources for these data. We measured the popularity of the channels by the number of subscribers to a channel. The success of individual videos was measured by individual views. We coded the 1,000 most successful German YouTube channels, with a standardised quantitative content analysis. This method is frequently applied in existing studies on gender representations in YouTube (Döring; Döring and Mohensi). Different to existing research, we looked at a larger number of channels. This quantified analysis was combined with a more qualitative, but still standardised analysis of visibility of gender and concrete content and presentation forms (Prommer and Linke). For the second step we used the Audio-Visual Character Analysis (ACIS) developed by Prommer and Linke as a method that is able to code any audio-visual content in order to describe visibility and diversity of the depicted people. Here, the analysis considered the individual video as the unit of analysis. For 20 videos from each of the top 100 YouTube creators, we chose the 10 of most recent videos plus the 10 videos with the most views to be analysed. In total, 2,000 videos were analysed. For the qualitative analysis, looking at the visibility of gender, we excluded channels operated by institutions, such as radio and TV broadcasters, music labels, and other commercial entities. These were not considered since there is no individual person responsible. We also excluded “Let’s Play” videos, since these often do not show the operator, but only show game play from video games. Results H1: Fewer women are operators of Germany’s most popular YouTube channels, and they are more limited in their choice of genres. As the analyses show, if the non-individual channel operators are included in the statistics, we see that 27 per cent of the top popular channels in Germany are hosted by institutions (270); this leaves 172 channels operated by women (17%), 525 channels by men (53%), and 25 (3%) by mixed-gender teams. Further on, we will only consider the top 1,000 channels produced by one or more individuals; of these, one quarter (24%) of channel operators are female (fig. 1). This shows that, for every channel in the list produced by a woman, three are produced by men. Only three per cent of the channels are produced by men and women together, constituting a mixed-gender team. The YouTube genres, according to the YouTube classification, also show significant gender differences. Women can be seen first and foremost in tutorial channels (women: 61; men: 9). However, because only 24 per cent of channels in which an individual operator could be identified are contributed by women, all other genres except for tutorial channels are produced disproportionally more often by men. Gaming videos are solid male territory, as almost all "Let’s Play" channels are operated by men (women: 6; men: 150). Here, there are 25 men for every one woman who operates a gaming channel. This is particularly remarkable, as women make up 46 per cent of gamers (ISFE), and their underrepresentation can generally not be explained by lack of interest. Men operate channels in a wide variety of other genres, such as music (women: 9; men: 80) and sports (women: 4; men: 20). The genres of comedy, film, and education show only one female operator each—outnumbered from 10 to 1 to as much as 20 to 1. Examining the statistics for men and women separately reveals that men do not only operate the majority of the top 1,000 channels, but they are also visible in a wider variety of genres. Female YouTubers have primarily limited themselves to entertainment channels (50% of all women) and how-to channels (35% of all women). Male channels are more diverse and include entertainment (38% of all men), games (29% of all men), and music (15% of all men), as well as all other genres. Only in tutorial channels men are rarely seen (2%). The genre definitions of the YouTube channels used here are derived from YouTube itself, and these definitions are not in line with other genre theories and are overly broad. Nevertheless, these results confirm the first hypothesis that fewer women are operators of popular YouTube channels, and that women are more limited in their genre diversity. Fig. 1: Gender distribution of the top 1,000 YouTube channel creators—individuals only (n=722) H2: Women are less visible than men in popular YouTube videos. From the list of the top 1,000 channels, the top 100 most successful channels produced by individuals were analysed in more depth. Of these top 100 channels we analysed 20 videos each, for a total of 2,000 videos, for the visibility and appearance of men, women, and non-binary persons. If we count the main protagonists appearing in these 2,000 videos, we see for every woman (979; 29%) more than two men (2,343; 69%). Only two per cent (54) of the people appearing in these videos had a non-binary gender (intersexual, transsexual, or other). Interestingly, this is a similar imbalance as we can detect in television as well (Prommer and Linke). In other categories, there is more diversity than in television: in total, 44 per cent of channel operators have a recognisable “migration background”, which is more commonly seen in men (49%) than in women (32%). “Migration background” is the official German definition of people with a foreign nationality, people not born in Germany, or having parents with these criteria. This confirms the second hypothesis, according to which women are visible in popular Web videos less often than men. H3: Women portray themselves more often in connection to stereotypically female topics or are depicted as such in videos. In the 2,000 videos from the top 100 channels, female YouTubers are primarily visible in service-oriented tutorial channels (on topics like beauty, food, and the household). Female YouTubers are predominantly represented in video blogs (vlogs: 17%), battles/challenges (16%), sketches/parodies (14%), and tutorials (11%). The haul/unboxing format, in which presenters unpack acquired products or gifts, is almost exclusively female. Men are visible in a wide array of formats such as battles/challenges (21%), sketches (17%), and vlogs (14%), including music (9%), opinions/positions (6%), interviews (2%), music parodies (3%), and question-answer formats (2%). The wide range of content produced by male YouTubers, compared to the limited range of female YouTubers, becomes even more obvious when we consider the topics of the individual videos. The results show that men engage with a variety of themes. Women’s topics, on the other hand, are limited: female YouTubers address beauty (30%), food (23%), relationships (23%), fashion and family, as well as household topics (15%). As fig. 2 shows, men present a bigger variety of topics such as music, relationships, family and fashion, and they also address politics (7%), gaming, and much more. The men’s list is significantly more comprehensive (21 topic areas instead of 15). The data thus confirm the third hypothesis, according to which female YouTubers are more often represented in popular videos with stereotypically female themes. It also becomes clear that their spectrum of topics is significantly more limited than that of male actors. Fig. 2: Topic and subject areas of main actors by gender (3,322), statistics for all women and all men; multiple answers possible H4: Men stage themselves as professionals The following results reveal selected characteristics of the staging with which the main female protagonists portray themselves in the 2,000 videos analysed, and which we understand as an expression of professional versus non-professional ability. Female YouTubers appear predominantly in private settings, and their relationships to (almost exclusively male) partners and to their families play a larger role in their appearances than with the male protagonists. Their activities in the videos are described more frequently by the women themselves as personal passions and hobbies, and they rarely discuss their activities as connected to a career. Women talk about their passions, while men thematise their professional abilities. While fewer than a quarter of female YouTubers (22%) address their careers, almost two thirds of men (61%) do so. When looking at hobbies and passions the reverse is true: while only a third of male YouTubers (32%) mention these themes, two thirds of women (64%) create this context in their videos. Also, public spaces and professional contexts are predominantly reserved for male protagonist on YouTube. This means that women shoot their videos in what appears to be their homes or other private environments, while men are also visible in offices or other professional environments (e.g. fitness studios). The settings in which most people are visible on YouTube are private houses and apartments, where most women (71%) and more than half of male actors (57%) are shown. Settings in the public sphere, in contrast, are chosen by male YouTubers twice as often (34%) as by females. This confirms the fourth hypothesis, which states that men communicate and stage themselves as professionals in their videos, measured by the choice of public settings, references to professional activity, and thematisation of emotions. Limitations This study represents a first step toward a quantified analysis of gender portrayals on YouTube. Although a large number of channels and videos were included in the analysis, it is not a comprehensive assessment of all of the most popular videos, nor a random sampling. Limiting the scope to the most popular content necessarily excludes videos that may show alternative content but receive fewer clicks and subscribers. The content analysis does not allow conclusions to be drawn regarding the videos’ actual reception among adolescents. Even though the data prove the platform’s popularity among children and young adults, the audience groups for the individual videos we analysed could not be broken down by sociodemographics. The gender-typical depictions can thus only be understood as an offering; no statements can be made as to their actual acceptance. Discussion The results show that Web videos favourited by children and young adults on the YouTube platform adopt and propagate similar role models to those that previously existed in television and film (Götz et al.). Female channel operators are significantly underrepresented in the most popular videos, they are more limited in their range of topics, and they appear predominantly in and with topics with a stereotypically female connotation. Further, most of women’s (self-)portrayals take place in private settings. Here, the new Web formats have not created a change from classical depictions on television, where women are also predominantly shown in their personal and private lives. Web videos emphasise this aspect, as female actors refer often to their hobbies rather than to their careers, thus characterising their actions as less socially legitimised. This shows that in their favourite new media, too, adolescents encounter traditional gender stereotypes that steer the engagement with gender onto traditional tracks. The actual variety of gender identities and gender roles in real life is not presented in the popular YouTube videos and therefore excluded from the mainstream audience. Clearly, the interplay of the structure of YouTube, the market, and audience demand does not lead to the inclusion and visibility of alternative role models. References Casabianca, Barbara. "YouTube as a Net'Work': A Media Analysis of the YouTube Beauty Community." 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Linke, Christine, and Elizabeth Prommer. “From Fade-Out into Spotlight: An Audio-Visual Character Analysis (ACIS) on the Diversity of Media Representation and Production Culture.” Studies in Communication Sciences (SComS), forthcoming 2021. Maloney, Marcus, et al. “‘Mmm … I Love It, Bro!’: Performances of Masculinity in YouTube Gaming.” New Media & Society 20.5 (2018): 1697–714. DOI: 10.1177/1461444817703368. Medienpädagogischer Forschungsverbund Südwest (MPFS). JIM Studie 2018: Jugend, Information, Medien: Basisuntersuchung zum Medienumgang 12- bis 19-Jähriger. 1 Jan. 2019. 5 Oct. 2020 <https://www.mpfs.de/fileadmin/files/Studien/JIM/2018/Studie/JIM2018_Gesamt.pdfZ>. Molyneaux, Heather, et al. “Exploring the Gender Divide on YouTube: An Analysis of the Creation and Reception of Vlogs.” American Communication Journal 10.2 (2008). <https://www.it.uu.se/edu/course/homepage/avint/vt09/1.pdf>. Pedersen, Sarah, and Caroline Macafee. “Gender Differences in British Blogging.” Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication 12.4 (2007): 1472–92. DOI: 10.1111/j.1083-6101.2007.00382.x. Prommer, Elizabeth, and Christine Linke. Ausgeblendet: Frauen im deutschen Film und Fernsehen. Herbert von Halem Verlag, 2019. Sobande, Francesca. “Watching Me Watching You: Black Women in Britain on YouTube.” European Journal of Cultural Studies 20.6 (2017): 655–71. DOI: 10.1177/1367549417733001. West, Candice, and D. H. Zimmerman. “Doing Gender.” Gender and Society 1.2 (1987): 125–51. Wotanis, Lindsey, and Laurie McMillan. “Performing Gender on YouTube.” Feminist Media Studies 14.6 (2014): 912–28. DOI: 10.1080/14680777.2014.882373. YouTube. 23 Oct. 2019 <https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=beliebteste+videos+deutschland>.

“What's the brief?” is an everyday question within the graphic design process. Moreover, the concept and importance of a design brief is overtly understood well beyond design practice itself—especially among stakeholders who work with designers and clients who commission design services. Indeed, a design brief is often an assumed and expected physical or metaphoric artefact for guiding the creative process. When a brief is lacking, incomplete or unclear, it can render an already ambiguous graphic design process and discipline even more fraught with misinterpretation. Nevertheless, even in wider design discourse, there appears to be little research on design briefs and the briefing process (Jones and Askland; Paton and Dorst). It seems astonishing that, even in Peter Phillips’s 2014 edition of Creating the Perfect Design Brief, he feels compelled to comment that “there are still no books available about design briefs” and that the topic is only “vaguely” covered within design education (21). While Phillips’s assertion is debatable if one draws purely from online vernacular sources or professional guides, it is supported by the lack of scholarly attention paid to the design brief. Graphic design briefs are often mentioned within design books, journals, and online sources. However, this article argues that the format, function and use of such briefs are largely assumed and rarely identified and studied. Even within the broader field of design research, the tendency appears to be to default to “the design brief” as an assumed shorthand, supporting Phillips’s argument about the nebulous nature of the topic. As this article contextualises, this is further problematised by insufficient attention cast on graphic design itself as a specific discipline. This article emerges from a wider, multi-stage creative practice study into graphic design practice, that used experimental performative design research methods to investigate graphic designers’ professional relationships with stakeholders (Meron, Strangely). The article engages with specific outcomes from that study that relate to the design brief. The article also explores existing literature and research and argues for academics, the design industry, and educationalists, to focus closer attention on the design brief. It concludes by suggesting that experimental and collaborative design methods offers potential for future research into the design brief. Contextualising the Design Brief It is critical to differentiate the graphic design brief from the operational briefs of architectural design (Blyth and Worthington; Khan) or those used in technical practices such as software development or IT systems design, which have extensive industry-formalised briefing practices and models such as the waterfall system (Petersen et al.) or more modern processes such as Agile (Martin). Software development and other technical design briefs are necessarily more formulaically structured than graphic design briefs. Their requirements are generally empirically and mechanistically located, and often mission-critical. In contrast, the conceptual nature of creative briefs in graphic design creates the potential for them to be arbitrarily interpreted. Even in wider design discourse, there appears to be little consistency about the form that a brief takes. Some sources indicate that a brief only requires one page (Elebute; Nov and Jones) or even a single line of text (Jones and Askland). At other times briefs are described as complex, high-level documents embedded within processes which designers respond to with the aim of producing end products to satisfy clients’ requirements (Ambrose; Patterson and Saville). Ashby and Johnson (40) refer to the design brief as a “solution neutral” statement, the aim being to avoid preconceptions or the narrowing of the creative possibilities of a project. Others describe a consultative (Walsh), collaborative and stakeholder-inclusive process (Phillips). The Scholarly Brief Within scholarly design research, briefs inevitably manifest as an assumed artefact or process within each project; but the reason for their use or antecedents for chosen formats are rarely addressed. For example, in “Creativity in the Design Process” (Dorst and Cross) some elements of the design brief are described. The authors also describe at what stage of the investigation the brief is introduced and present a partial example of the brief. However, there is no explanation of the form of the brief or the reasons behind it. They simply describe it as being typical for the design medium, adding that its use was considered a critical part of addressing the design problem. In a separate study within advertising (Johar et al.), researchers even admit that the omission of crucial elements from the brief—normally present in professional practice—had a detrimental effect on their results. Such examples indicate the importance of briefs for the design process, yet further illustrating the omission of direct engagement with the brief within the research design, methodology, and methods. One exception comes from a study amongst business students (Sadowska and Laffy) that used the design brief as a pedagogical tool and indicates that interaction with, and changes to, elements of a design brief impact the overall learning process of participants, with the brief functioning as a trigger for that process. Such acknowledgement of the agency of a design brief affirms its importance for professional designers (Koslow et al.; Phillips). This use of a brief as a research device informed my use of it as a reflective and motivational conduit when studying graphic designers’ perceptions of stakeholders, and this will be discussed shortly. The Professional Brief Professionally, the brief is a key method of communication between designers and stakeholders, serving numerous functions including: outlining creative requirements, audience, and project scope; confirming project requirements; and assigning and documenting roles, procedures, methods, and approval processes. The format of design briefs varies from complex multi-page procedural documents (Patterson and Saville; Ambrose) produced by marketing departments and sent to graphic design agencies, to simple statements (Jones and Askland; Elebute) from small to medium-sized businesses. These can be described as the initial proposition of the design brief, with the following interactions comprising the ongoing briefing process. However, research points to many concerns about the lack of adequate briefing information (Koslow, Sasser and Riordan). It has been noted (Murray) that, despite its centrality to graphic design, the briefing process rarely lives up to designers’ expectations or requirements, with the approach itself often haphazard. This reinforces the necessarily adaptive, flexible, and compromise-requiring nature of professional graphic design practice, referred to by design researchers (Cross; Paton and Dorst). However, rather than lauding these adaptive and flexible designer abilities as design attributes, such traits are often perceived by professional practitioners as unequal (Benson and Dresdow), having evolved by the imposition by stakeholders, rather than being embraced by graphic designers as positive designer skill-sets. The Indeterminate Brief With insufficient attention cast on graphic design as a specific scholarly discipline (Walker; Jacobs; Heller, Education), there is even less research on the briefing process within graphic design practice (Cumming). Literature from professional practice on the creation and function of graphic design briefs is often formulaic (Phillips) and fractured. It spans professional design bodies, to templates from mass-market printers (Kwik Kopy), to marketing-driven and brand-development approaches, in-house style guides, and instructional YouTube videos (David). A particularly clear summary comes from Britain’s Design Council. This example describes the importance of a good design brief, its requirements, and carries a broad checklist that includes the company background, project aims, and target audience. It even includes stylistic tips such as “don’t be afraid to use emotive language in a brief if you think it will generate a shared passion about the project” (Design Council). From a subjective perspective, these sources appear to contain sensible professional advice. However, with little scholarly research on the topic, how can we know that, for example, using emotive language best informs the design process? Why might this be helpful and desirable (or otherwise) for designers? These varied approaches highlight the indeterminate treatment of the design brief. Nevertheless, the very existence of such diverse methods communicates a pattern of acknowledgement of the criticality of the brief, as well as the desire, by professional bodies, commentators, and suppliers, to ensure that both designers and stakeholders engage effectively with the briefing process. Thus, with such a pedagogic gap in graphic design discourse, scholarly research into the design brief has the potential to inform vernacular and formal educational resources. Researching the Design Brief The research study from which this article emerges (Meron, Strangely) yielded outcomes from face-to-face interviews with eleven (deidentified) graphic designers about their perceptions of design practice, with particular regard to their professional relationships with other creative stakeholders. The study also surveyed online discussions from graphic design forums and blog posts. This first stage of research uncovered feelings of lacking organisational gravitas, creative ownership, professional confidence, and design legitimacy among the designers in relation to stakeholders. A significant causal factor pointed to practitioners’ perceptions of lacking direct access to and involvement with key sources of creative inspiration and information; one specific area being the design brief. It was a discovery that was reproduced thematically during the second stage of the research. This stage repurposed performative design research methods to intervene in graphic designers’ resistance to research (Roberts, et al), with the goal of bypassing practitioners’ tendency to portray their everyday practices using formulaic professionalised answers (Dorland, View). In aiming to understand graphic designers’ underlying motivations, this method replaced the graphic designer participants with trained actors, who re-performed narratives from the online discussions and designer interviews during a series of performance workshops. Performative methodologies were used as design thinking methods to defamiliarise the graphic design process, thereby enabling previously unacknowledged aspects of the design process to be unveiled, identified and analysed. Such defamiliarisation repurposes methods used in creative practice, including design thinking (Bell, Blythe, and Sengers), with performative elements drawing on ethnography (Eisner) and experimental design (Seago and Dunne). Binding these two stages of research study together was a Performative Design Brief—a physical document combining narratives from the online discussions and the designer interviews. For the second stage, this brief was given to a professional theatre director to use as material for a “script” to motivate the actors. In addition to identifying unequal access to the creative process as a potential point of friction, this study yielded outcomes suggesting that designers were especially frustrated when the design brief was unclear, insufficiently detailed, or even missing completely. The performative methodology enabled a refractive approach, using performative metaphor and theatre to defamiliarise graphic design practice, portraying the process through a third-party theatrical prism. This intervened in graphic designers’ habitual communication patterns (Dorland, The View). Thus, combining traditional design research methods with experimental interdisciplinary ones, enabled outcomes that might not otherwise have emerged. It is an example of engaging with the fluid, hybrid (Heller, Teaching), and often elusive practices (van der Waarde) of graphic design. Format, Function, and Use A study (Paton and Dorst) among professional graphic designers attempts to dissect practitioners’ perceptions of different aspects of briefing as a process of ‘framing’. Building on the broader theories of design researchers such as Nigel Cross, Bryan Lawson, and Donald Schön, Paton and Dorst suggest that most of the designers preferred a collaborative briefing process where both they and client stakeholders were directly involved, without intermediaries. This concurs with the desire, from many graphic designers that I interviewed, for unobstructed engagement with the brief. Moreover, narratives from the online discussions that I investigated suggest that the lack of clear frameworks for graphic design briefs is a hotly debated topic, as are perceptions of stakeholder belligerence or misunderstanding. For example, in a discussion from Graphic Design Forums designer experiences range from only ever receiving informal verbal instructions—“basically, we’ve been handed design work and they tell us ‘We need this by EOD’” (VFernandes)—to feeling obliged to pressure stakeholders to provide a brief—“put the burden on them to flesh out the details of a real brief and provide comprehensive material input” (HotButton) —to resignation to an apparent futility of gaining adequate design briefs from stakeholders because— “they will most likely never change” (KitchWitch). Such negative assumptions support Koslow et al.’s assertion that the absence of a comprehensive brief is the most “terrifying” thing for practitioners (9). Thus, practitioners’ frustrations with stakeholders can become unproductive when there is an inadequate design brief, or if the creative requirements of a brief are otherwise removed from the direct orbit of graphic designers. This further informs a narrative of graphic designers perceiving some stakeholders as gatekeepers of the design brief. For example, one interviewed designer believed that stakeholders ‘don’t really understand the process’ (Patricia). Another interviewee suggested that disorganised briefs could be avoided by involving designers early in the process, ensuring that practitioners had direct access to the client as a creative source, rather than having to circumnavigate stakeholders (Marcus). Such perceptions appeared to reinforce beliefs among these practitioners that they lack design capital within the creative process. These perceptions of gatekeeping of the design brief support suggestions of designers responding negatively when stakeholders approach the design process from a different perspective (Wall and Callister), if stakeholders assume a managerial position (Jacobs) and, in particular, if stakeholders are inexperienced in working with designers (Banks et al.; Holzmann and Golan). With such little clarity in the design briefing process, future research may consider comparisons with industries with more formalised briefing processes, established professional statuses, or more linear histories. Indeed, the uneven historical development of graphic design (Frascara; Julier and Narotzky) may influence the inconsistency of its briefing process. Inconsistency as Research Opportunity The inconsistent state of the graphic design brief is reflective of the broader profession that it resides within. Graphic design as a profession remains fluid and inconsistent (Dorland, Tell Me; Jacobs), with even its own practitioners unable to agree on its parameters or even what to call the practice (Meron, Terminology). Pedagogically, graphic design is still emerging as an independent discipline (Cabianca; Davis), struggling to gain capital outside of existing and broader creative practices (Poynor; Triggs). The inherent interdisciplinarity (Harland) and intangibility of graphic design also impact the difficulty of engaging with the briefing process. Indeed, graphic design’s practices have been described as “somewhere between science and superstition (or fact and anecdote)” (Heller, Teaching par. 3). With such obstacles rendering the discipline fractured (Ambrose et al.), it is understandable that stakeholders might find engaging productively with graphic design briefs challenging. This can become problematic, with inadequate stakeholder affinity or understanding of design issues potentially leading to creative discord (Banks et al.; Holzmann and Golan). Identifying potentially problematic and haphazard aspects of the design brief and process also presents opportunities to add value to research into broader relationships between graphic designers and stakeholders. It suggests a practical area of study with which scholarly research on collaborative design approaches might intersect with professional graphic design practice. Indeed, recent research suggests that collaborative approaches offer both process and educational advantages, particularly in the area of persona development, having the ability to discover the “real” brief (Taffe 394). Thus, framing the brief as a collaborative, educative, and negotiative process may allow creative professionals to elucidate and manage the disparate parts of a design process, such as timeframes, stakeholders, and task responsibilities, as well as the cost implications of stakeholder actions such as unscheduled amendments. It can encourage the formalisation of incomplete vernacular briefs, as well as allow for the influence of diverse briefing methods, such as the one-page creative brief of advertising agencies, or more formal project management practices while allowing for some of the fluidity of more agile approaches: acknowledging that changes may be required while keeping all parties informed and involved. In turn, collaborative approaches may contribute towards enabling the value of contributions from both graphic designers and stakeholders and it seems beneficial to look towards design research methodologies that promote collaborative pathways. Mark Steen, for example, argues for co-design as a form of design thinking for enabling stakeholders to combine knowledge with negotiation to implement change (27). Collaborative design methods have also been advocated for use between designers and users, with stakeholders on shared projects, and with external collaborators (Binder and Brandt). Others have argued that co-design methods facilitate stakeholder collaboration “across and within institutional structures” while challenging existing power relations, albeit leaving structural changes largely unaffected (Farr 637). The challenge for collaborative design research is to seek opportunities and methodologies to conduct design brief research within a graphic design process that often appears amorphous, while also manifesting complex designer–stakeholder dynamics. Doubly so, when the research focus—the graphic design brief—often appears as nebulous an entity as the practice it emerges from. Conclusion The research discussed in this article suggests that graphic designers distrust a creative process that itself symbolises an inconsistent, reactive, and often accidental historical development of their profession and pedagogy. Reflecting this, the graphic design brief emerges almost as a metaphor for this process. The lack of overt discussion about the format, scope, and process of the brief feeds into the wider framework of graphic design’s struggle to become an independent scholarly discipline. This, in turn, potentially undermines the professional authority of graphic design practice that some of its practitioners believe is deficient. Ultimately, the brief and its processes must become research-informed parts of graphic design pedagogy. Embracing the brief as a pedagogical, generative, and inseparable part of the design process can inform the discourse within education, adding scholarly value to practice and potentially resulting in increased agency for practitioners. The chameleon-like nature of graphic design’s constant adaptation to ever-changing industry requirements makes research into the role and influences of its briefing process challenging. 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