This review offers a critical interpretive synthesis of scholarship on violence in Indian cinema, moving beyond content-cataloguing to explain how cinematic aggression is produced, aestheticised, commodified and legitimised within shifting political-economic conditions. Drawing on social learning theory ( Bandura, 1977 , Social learning theory ), cultivation theory ( Gerbner & Gross, 1976 , Journal of Communication, 26 , 2, 172–199), symbolic violence ( Bourdieu, 1991 , Language and symbolic power ), cultural hegemony ( Gramsci, 1971 , Selections from the prison notebooks ), representation theory ( Hall, 1997 , Representation: Cultural representations and signifying practices ) and moral panic theory ( Cohen, 1972 , Folk devils and moral panics: The creation of the mods and rockers ), the review integrates six decades of scholarship spanning the ‘angry young man’ period, post-liberalisation gangster cinema, the contemporary hyper-masculine blockbuster and the algorithmically curated over-the-top ecosystem. It argues that Indian cinematic violence functions not merely as reflective representation but as a socially constructed cultural institution that manufactures consent for particular arrangements of gender, caste, community and class power. At the same time, commercial incentives continuously reproduce it by rewarding affective intensity over narrative ambiguity. The review identifies significant methodological gaps in existing scholarship. These include an overreliance on textual and content analysis divorced from reception data, sparse longitudinal and cross-regional comparison, thin engagement with caste as an analytic category rather than a plot device and almost no empirical work on the algorithmic curation of violent content on Indian streaming platforms. The review closes by proposing an integrated conceptual model, the Cinematic Violence Institution model, which frames screen aggression as jointly produced by textual convention, industrial economics, regulatory architecture and audience interpretive labour, with implications for sociological theory and media policy.
The kaftan, a historical garment within Maghrebi culture, has become a prominent site of symbolic contestation between Morocco and Algeria. This article examines how Algerian and Moroccan women construct, negotiate and defend cultural and national identities through online discourse surrounding this heritage dispute. Drawing on cultural identity theory ( Hall, 1990 , Identity: Community, Culture, Difference , 222–237), social identity theory ( Tajfel & Turner, 1979 , The Social Psychology of Intergroup Relations , 33–47), soft power theory ( Nye, 2004 , Soft Power: The Means to Success in World Politics ) and cultural heritage theory ( Smith, 2006 , Uses of Heritage ), the study adopts a qualitative approach to analyse the 200 highest-rated user comments on a BBC Arabic YouTube video entitled Morocco and Algeria: The Caftan Reignites the Heritage Battle Between the Two Countries , which attracted over 256,000 views and more than 6,100 comments. The findings show that women mobilise historical narratives, emotional rhetoric and experiential knowledge to legitimise claims to cultural ownership and affirm national distinctiveness. Discursive strategies of pride and nostalgia, as well as rivalry and moralised accusations of appropriation, reveal how digital platforms function as arenas for identity negotiation and symbolic boundary-making. The article also demonstrates that online discourse serves both as a mechanism of cultural continuity and as a space of identity-based struggle, positioning the kaftan as a dynamic, gendered signifier of national identity in postcolonial North Africa. By foregrounding women’s everyday media practices, the study contributes to debates in digital nationalism and heritage politics, highlighting how YouTube comment sections reconfigure who can speak for culture beyond state-centred institutions.
This study draws on the ideal victim framework and narratological theories of emotional arc to examine how victims are portrayed in the globally popular South Korean series Squid Game . Using a quantitative content analysis, it investigates whether the frequency of deserving victims and the level of deservingness follow the inverted-U emotional trajectory commonly associated with classical tragedies. Findings suggest that the convergence towards a single mid-series climax was either statistically nonsignificant or undetectable, which may be explained by the show’s large number of victims, its game-based fragmented structure and its complex moral characterisation. These findings extend the ideal victim framework into fictional storytelling and offer preliminary evidence that emotional arcs in non-Western serial tragedies may diverge from well-established Western models. The study contributes to understanding how fictional narratives frame victimhood and highlights the need for further research on audience sympathy and narrative form.
Meme-based brand communication is a relatively new advertising format in digital spaces because it is culturally resonant, adaptable and viral on social media. While prior meme marketing research has largely examined affective, entertainment-related and broader persuasive characteristics, this study examines whether recognition-oriented cognitive responses—attention, message clarity and brand recall—relate to consumer engagement and purchase intention. By isolating these cognitive responses from broader meme characteristics and behavioural outcomes, the study offers a more specific understanding of cognition’s role in low-involvement digital environments. The study examines the relationship between these cognitive responses and consumer engagement and purchase intention. The study collected 460 responses, of which 400 valid questionnaires were retained after data screening. The study analysed data using descriptive statistics, reliability analysis and regression analysis. The results show that cognitive involvement with meme-based brand communication is moderate, with message clarity scoring higher than attention and brand recall. However, cognitive responses showed weak, statistically non-significant associations with engagement and purchase intention. The findings further develop the cognitive component of the Stimulus–Organism–Response (S–O–R) framework by showing that recognition-oriented cognitive responses can support message recognition and understanding without necessarily translating into stronger behavioural intentions. The results provide theoretical insight into the role of cognition in meme-based persuasion and practical implications for balancing informational clarity and entertainment in digital communication strategies.
This essay illustrates how selfies, as both a technological innovation and an everyday photographic practice, challenge several pictorial conventions—both aesthetically and technologically. The essay offers a theoretical analysis of how selfies, as post-photographic objects, unsettle these premises and overturn representational frameworks in image-making that had been taken for granted since the medium’s inception. It further argues that selfies, as relatively new techno-visual objects, disrupt established visual norms, generate new socio-visual expectations and give rise to a distinct visual vocabulary. Networked publics have transformed how images are produced, consumed and circulated across space and time. The dissemination of image-making practices and the democratisation of the medium have altered the material form, meaning, manipulation, ownership, exchange, flow and accumulation of images. This shift has reshaped attitudes towards personal image-making and influenced how everyday life is viewed, revisited and visually expressed. The simultaneous convergence of posing, performing, composing, shooting and viewing constitutes the visual content of any selfie—making it a unique visual object. In this framework, the image-maker, the image and the referent—as well as the viewer, the act of viewing and the viewed—collapse into one. In a selfie, the photographer becomes the photograph, and the live (re)view of the self becomes the image itself, as will be argued.
