The Good Life
The construction of imagined communities in city magazines
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 7497449 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Joy Jenkins (corresponding author), Joy M Jenkins |
| Year | 2014 |
| Volume | 17 |
| Issue | 3 |
| Pages | 319-336 |
| Publication date | 2014-11-27 |
| Open Access | No |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Journalism Studies (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 1461-670X • E-ISSN: 1469-9699 |
| Publisher | Routledge (PUBLISHER • GB) |
| DOI | 10.1080/1461670x.2014.982942 |
| OpenAlex | W2323574253 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 11 |
| References cited | 23 |
This study examines the discursive strategies used within US city magazines to create imagined communities of readers and idealized versions of cities. Using textual analysis, the author evaluates editorial content in three issues each of five frequently award-nominated city magazines—Los Angeles magazine, Cincinnati magazine, Portland Monthly, Memphis magazine, and Indianapolis Monthly. The findings reveal that these publications directed their content toward highly educated, affluent, engaged readers through emphasizing ways they could experience their cities through consumption and highlighting issues and perspectives important to upper-class “insiders.” The magazines also prioritized lighter content focused on positive aspects of cities, ultimately constructing sanitized depictions that often neglected opportunities to address the challenges of urban life. Overall, the magazines tended to promote meanings that appeal to the powerful, subverting opportunities to educate readers about how to fully experience and contribute to their cities. Therefore, the author suggests means through which these publications can empower their readers to respond to community challenges, including enhanced diversity among sources, incorporating calls to action within coverage, and providing insight and analysis into cities' most pressing problems
Action (physics · Advertising · Appeal · Business · Consumption (sociology · Content analysis · Diversity (politics · Media studies · Memphis · Political science · Public relations · Social science · Sociology · Gender, Feminism, and Media · Media Studies and Communication · Social Media and Politics · Law
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“We Are the Final Cog in the Wheel of Democracy”
Finger on the Pulse of Lifestyle Coverage
Everything Else is Public Relations” How Rural Journalists Draw the Boundary Between Journalism and Public Relations in Rural Communities
How marketing consultants commodify social movements
Elevated Influences
Tracing Connections
Do Improving Conditions Harden Partisan Preferences? Lived Experiences, Imagined Communities, and Polarized Evaluations
Public roles and private negotiations
Visual investigations of urban design in historic cities
Hegemony in a mass‐mediated society
Beyond “Culture”
The Mediated Metropolis as Medium and Message
Magazine Exceptionalism
A Cultural Project Based on Multiple Temporary Consensus
Space Matters
Unassailable Motherhood, Ambivalent Domesticity
Language style and lifestyle
Media Analysis Techniques
Boosterism as Banishment
Community as Interpretive Community
Generational Identity and Memory in American Newsmagazines
Imagined communities
Branding Cities
Media Hegemony
In Defense of Textual Analysis
Imagined Communities. Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism
It Makes Sense to Us
| Citations per year | 1 |
|---|---|
| Citation span | 2015 - 2026 (12) |
| Highly cited | No |