Simon Order

American Movie Classics’ (AMC) popular television series The Walking Dead (2010–present) transports viewers into an apocalyptic zombie dystopia where the lines between safety and precarity, being governed and governing, or being alive and/or dead slip and change. Utilizing Achille Mbembe’s term “necropolitics”, the article explores The Walking Dead’s representation of governance and power in terms of individual and group security. While the zombie has been understood as the liminal figure par excellence, The Walking Dead’s non-zombie characters illustrate diasporic liminality as refugees, hovering on or near the threshold of death. The scale of suffering or prosperity is determined by who leads or governs. Frequently, those deemed “in charge” exercise power and control to discipline, to punish, and to provide security. The series offers a metaphor for the potential uses of power in biological, environmental, or natural disaster situations where survivors grapple with scarce resources and the constant presence of death.

This chapter draws upon existing approaches to screen violence to explore The Walking Dead’s challenging representations of death including controversial episodes where child characters die from fatal violence. We explore how the show positions viewers to interpret extreme violence, especially how violence is accepted or rejected within the narrative context. At times, the show’s narrative works to justify and/or legitimise an aggressor’s conduct, thereby minimising the likelihood of audience rejection of the narrative and/or backlash against the show. We draw upon key analytical tools from Revilla et al. (Communications 46(1):4–26, 2021) and Riddle and Martins (J Commun 72:33–58, 2021) to explore the context of fatal violence, punishment for violent acts, consequences, seriousness, graphicness and explicitness as well as justification and legitimation, particularly relating to child characters. How audience members are positioned in relation to violence may impact their views or understandings of violence or even how they may model certain behaviours in real life (Revilla et al., Communications 46(1):4–26, 2021; Riddle and Martins, J Commun 72:33–58, 2021). In this chapter we argue that violence leading to the death of child characters on The Walking Dead tends to contain low levels of graphicness and explicitness and is often combined with careful narrative justification or legitimation to explain the reasons for that death.

At the time of writing, the global pandemic COVID-19 is an ongoing world health crisis. One of the many ramifications of the pandemic is the impact on universities and colleges worldwide (Leung et al. 2020; UNESCO 2020; WHO Regional Office for Europe 2020). The disruption to classes that would usually involve face-to-face learning, the discontinuation of exchange programmes, and the spread of the virus, in general, has led to alternative methods of education using distance or online learning…

The early days of radio were fraught for women who wanted to get their voice heard. Anne McKay (2000) has documented some of the struggles would-be female announcers faced. Mrs. Giles Borrett, the first ever female presenter at the BBC, was highly praised by managers during her three-month trial in 1933 but was abruptly removed from her position amid alleged listeners’ complaints about the unsuitability of the female voice for radio. In addition, one suggestion stood out: that she was, as a married woman, taking a man’s job (Kamarae, 1984). Similarly, across the Atlantic in the United States in 1935,...

Community radio in Australia is well established and an important part of the radio sector. Yet in today's economically driven world, it sits at the bottom of the media money pile. In order to argue for community radio's continuing existence and funding in a competitive media landscape, a way of capturing its value is essential. This paper summarises the development of a theoretical framework of value for community radio from the existing literature and the testing of that framework at three community radio stations in Perth, Western Australia. Volunteer participation by the wider community in the operation of community radio has been a normative value for the sector. In particular, this chapter discusses the importance of one key finding around that value of participation in the research. Study participants at all stations frankly asserted that often, their motivation to participate in community radio sprang from a purely selfish motivation. If participants in this study perceived the value of community radio from a purely selfish motivational standpoint, the wider community benefits could potentially be considered as pure side effects. Subsequently, any attempt to argue for the wider community benefits of community radio, and thus support and funding, could become much harder to substantiate.