This research critiques Western approaches to social media by using an Indigenous theoretical too... more This research critiques Western approaches to social media by using an Indigenous theoretical tool/concept, the Moanan (Pacific Islander) conception of t a and v a, to center Indigenous knowledge through an analysis of the Ku Kiaʻi Kahuku community movement (an Indigenous and ecological stand for environmental justice to protect native species and push back against colonial development in the form of giant wind turbines (568 feet high) placed over schools and the homes of community members and Kanaka Maoli in Kahuku, Hawaiʻi). We argue that Ku Kiaʻi Kahuku's livestreaming inspired movement within the space of digital connectivity, a civic rhythm, forging symmetry and reciprocity within sociospatial ties. Moanan peoples inscribed within social media a distinct Moanan rhythm. In this case, the vibrations of the protecting, an affectively charged t a, engaged the community and diaspora in a moment of rupture-opening up a space for symmetry within the dissymmetry of colonial capitalism.
With the popularity and success of food-related social media content, food marketers have begun u... more With the popularity and success of food-related social media content, food marketers have begun utilizing social media influencers to promote their food brands. In particular, mukbang—video broadcasts of individuals eating copious amounts of food—is a prominent genre of public social media food exhibition that can provide opportunities for food-related social media influencer marketing. The present study examines how parasocial interaction (i.e. nonreciprocal interpersonal relation-ships formed with media personalities) with a mukbang social media influencer impacts advertising effectiveness and information credibility. A total of 404 U.S. participants completed an online survey. Structural equation modeling found that partici-pants’ parasocial interactions with mukbang social media influencers predicted perceived source trustworthiness, perceived source expertise, and credibility of the information regarding the food content posted. Furthermore, influencer source credibility and information credibility positively impacted consumer brand and video attitudes, as well as behavioral intentions to consume the foods featured in the social media content. Study results provide evidence-based implications for food-related social media influencer marketing strategies and insight into the important role of information credibility on eating behaviors of social media consumers.
This study examines Tom Rinaldi’s work for ESPN and College Gameday and the discursive framing of... more This study examines Tom Rinaldi’s work for ESPN and College Gameday and the discursive framing of NCAA ‘student-athletes’, primarily Black athletes. The research unpacks what constitutes this ‘Rinaldi Frame’ and the implications of the frame on college sports. At the core of this frame are the familiar ‘bootstrap’ stories and the overcoming of hardship or economically depressed situations at a young age. This is part of the commodification of Black athletes–their labor and pain. To achieve the objectives of this work, the authors evaluate several seasons of ESPN’s College Gameday programming, with a specific focus on the Tom Rinaldi short story pieces. Findings suggest that there is indeed a formulaic frame and portrayal applied all too often to Black college football players in the service of sports and media institutions such as the NCAA and ESPN. Furthermore, the profiteering from these storytelling modes perpetuates misguided narratives regarding Black college football players and all college athletes.
Chris Claremont, primary author of the X-Men from 1975 to 1991, introduced Judaism into the X-Men... more Chris Claremont, primary author of the X-Men from 1975 to 1991, introduced Judaism into the X-Men metaphor, in large part by making the series’ primary antagonist, Magneto, a Holocaust survivor working to prevent mutants from suffering the same plight. In 2003, Grant Morrison pushed Magneto back towards the origins of the character as a charismatic terrorist (later overruled by Claremont and others). The 2008 work X-Men: Magneto Testament rooted the character’s history in the Holocaust. Through a deep reading of these texts, we use an analogy related to Maus author Art Spiegelman depicting the ‘tug of war’ between the vulgar and the genteel in comics. Magneto embodies this struggle–the trauma of the Holocaust and the desire for reprisal by its victims. The interplay between the vulgar and the genteel, told through Magneto as a cultural icon, opens up a space for thinking through the Holocaust.
The Routledge Companion to Digital Media and Children, 2021
The profitability of content created for and by children on social media platforms such as YouTub... more The profitability of content created for and by children on social media platforms such as YouTube has sparked an entire sector of content catering to young children. The research looks at the cultivation of child ‘influencers’ as a part of the emergent digital media landscape and children’s media industries. Child-created content is also the site for discursively codifying particular articulations of concepts such as family to reinforce purchasing and marketing norms within these sites.
As COVID-19 has led to the politicization of masks and the donning of masks, the prescient commen... more As COVID-19 has led to the politicization of masks and the donning of masks, the prescient commentary that emerges from HBO's Watchmen speaks to our contemporary moment, replete with animosity, distrust, and wounding. Race, the legacy of racial injustice, and anonymity are major themes found throughout the series, which highlight the complicated nature of social control and the infrastructural legacy of racism. The mask itself is a site of struggle with polarizing calls for freedom from the mask as tyranny and freedom through the mask as safety, all during a public health crisis. In Watchmen, the deployment of infrastructural control and the implications of masking and unmasking are enacted through racist ideologies and promises of safety through anonymity.
This paper analyzes emerging shifts in YouTube, advertising, and children's digital media industr... more This paper analyzes emerging shifts in YouTube, advertising, and children's digital media industries through a case study of Pocket Watch, a digital-first production and distribution studio built exclusively for YouTube child stars. Our analysis reveals the company's strategic use of legacy media industry power, networks, and expertise to transform YouTube stars into global brands through the creation of toy, clothing, and lifestyle product lines across several industries. We further argue that Pocket Watch's newly formed advertising division, Clock Work, exploits its child partners through problematic native advertising and host selling practices. The strategies implemented by Pocket Watch and other similar emerging companies may therefore act as a litmus test for how governmental regulation and platform policy changes will impact the evolving landscape of children's digital media as commercial forces increasingly groom a growing number of young children to shift from YouTube stars to global brands.
Esports, and their accompanying livestreams, continue their rapid expansion globally. This resear... more Esports, and their accompanying livestreams, continue their rapid expansion globally. This research considers the importance of physical space and the demarcation of place in esports. Specifically, this paper draws from a history of video games and place to understand what it means for an Esports Arena to exist as a dedicated place for esports inside a casino. From early arcades to local area network (LAN) parties, the “place” of video games operates as an orienting concept for video game culture. The popularity of livestreaming of events and digital gameplay challenges the need for physical proximity, however, the rearticulation of place in esports through casinos and the proximity to gaming and gambling, warrants further attention. The establishment of a dedicated physical space for esports has opened up the possibility for esports events to become a fixture in Las Vegas and other gaming markets. Casinos in Las Vegas are in a unique position to be frontrunners for the esports and esports gambling industry. Ultimately, the business interests of casinos will be instrumental in the future of esports, influencing gamers, gambling, and potentially the entire esports industry.
Fake News : Understanding Media and Misinformation in the Digital Age, MIT Press, 2020
Memes were once the stuff of 4chan /b/ boards and insider internet culture and humor, 1 but they ... more Memes were once the stuff of 4chan /b/ boards and insider internet culture and humor, 1 but they now occupy an emergent space within political communication and the dissemination of political imagery. Memes operate as stitching devices, which meld platforms, ideology, and geopolitics within social networks and political campaigns, making them an important site of study for the weaving of fake news and misinformation into the fabric of political discourse and, ultimately, political deliberation.
International Review for the Sociology of Sport, 2021
Studies have found that media coverage of women's sports is inadequate when compared with coverag... more Studies have found that media coverage of women's sports is inadequate when compared with coverage of men's sports with regards to the amount of coverage as well as the type of coverage across men's and women's sports. With few exceptions, past research has found inequitable coverage of female and male athletes in every media form studied, from print and television to the internet. Some exceptions to the findings include not-for-profit media, such as the National Collegiate Athletic Association News, and internet-based publications. The current study combined the two media types to determine if athletic departments that are affiliated with the National Collegiate Athletic Association offer more balanced coverage of female and male athletes on their official websites than has been found in past research. The results revealed that although the type of coverage the athletes received was similar, the amount was not. In articles and photographs on
Under the federally mandated Title IX, NCAA athletic departments are directed to offer balanced p... more Under the federally mandated Title IX, NCAA athletic departments are directed to offer balanced promotional and informational coverage between men's and women's sports. This study examines how gender is represented in photographs on the Instagram accounts of prominent NCAA athletic departments. Findings indicate mixed results: female athletes, when showcased, receive similar promotional efforts to their male peers; their athleticism is highlighted; and fan engagement metrics are as high as male sports. However, female athletic achievements are overwhelmingly underrepresented, suggesting equality is still deficient.
In her contribution to the Quarterly Journal of Speech’s centennial issue, “Pathologia,” Jenny Ri... more In her contribution to the Quarterly Journal of Speech’s centennial issue, “Pathologia,” Jenny Rice suggests, “pathology does not only or always reveal something broken. Rather, the experience of pathology also reminds us that rhetoric’s sensorium is working—really working” (p. 35). Yes, and in a time of pandemic turbulence, we are reminded that the sensorium of civic life works in ways that shape, even threaten, our collective modes of engagement and relationality. Rice offers “the wound” as a response to pathological publicness, noting, “I propose that we begin to theorize the wound itself as the beginning of dialogue. Only the wound can stand as pathology’s counterpart” (p. 40). Wounds focalize and materialize the pathogenic, opening up possibilities for redress while also remediating their own contaminants. Accordingly, our special issue aims to grapple with the ways contemporary publicness affects, and is affected by, civic wounds: how they are discursively produced, and productively discursive. What emergent forms of expression or composition do wounds make possible or foreclose? And, how might critical communication scholarship ad/dress the pathogenic constitution of civic wounds? Each of the essays in “Ad/Dressing Civic Wounds” thus situates particular ways in which wounds are “really working” to produce the conditions that open or foreclose possibilities in the never-finished work of finding shared grounds of togetherness we might call civic life.
Black Mirror combines sensation and critique in an affective formalism that, we argue, yields a p... more Black Mirror combines sensation and critique in an affective formalism that, we argue, yields a proliferation of possible viewer responses. Our analysis focuses on this unique combination of affect and form, in order to examine the relations between mediated affect and the question of the political. Through its refrain of mediated publicity as the tragedy of the viewing commons, Black Mirror offers a pointed social critique realised through narrative strategies of inoculation and traumatised witnessing. We argue that Black Mirror’s signature narrative tactic, the traumatic twist, yields a proliferation of possible viewer responses that exceed the easy parameters of acceptance and rejection; and we suggest that the question of the political is addressed through Black Mirror’s multiplication of ‘maybe’.
This article examines the response to the 1 October, 2017, mass shooting in Las Vegas by both the... more This article examines the response to the 1 October, 2017, mass shooting in Las Vegas by both the city and its National Hockey League team, the Golden Knights. In analyzing these responses, we argue that the Golden Knights' memorialization efforts, while operating within a familiar public relations script of the sporting commercialization of memorial, productively turned T-Mobile Arena into a space, however sanitized, for the enactment of rituals and a discourse of renewal. This space was otherwise absent from the rest of the tourist-oriented confines of the Strip. Further, the rhetorical conjoining of the hashtags #VegasStrong, which emerged shortly after the shooting, and #VegasBorn, which was originally used to market the team, operated as simultaneous symbols for both the team and its community. This allowed the sporting franchise to move between commercial and civic uses, operating as both branding for the team and as an embodied act of remembrance for local residents.
Black Mirror combines sensation and critique in an affective
formalism that, we argue, yields a p... more Black Mirror combines sensation and critique in an affective formalism that, we argue, yields a proliferation of possible viewer responses. Our analysis focuses on this unique combination of affect and form, in order to examine the relations between mediated affect and the question of the political. Through its refrain of mediated publicity as the tragedy of the viewing commons, Black Mirror offers a pointed social critique realised through narrative strategies of inoculation and traumatised witnessing. We argue that Black Mirror’s signature narrative tactic, the traumatic twist, yields a proliferation of possible viewer responses that exceed the easy parameters of acceptance and rejection; and we suggest that the question of the political is addressed through Black Mirror’s multiplication of ‘maybe’.
Internet Histories: Digital Technology, Culture, and Society, 2019
This research traces a cultural lineage of streaming technology,
moments of streams and counterst... more This research traces a cultural lineage of streaming technology, moments of streams and counterstreams in the history of radio, video and internet broadcasting. By making contact with a number of points of innovation, it is possible to realize not only a technological genealogy of streaming, and its antecedents, but also an account of accompanying cultural meanings and practices. In this cultural lineage of streaming, I point to moments of audience participation in the flow of media and technology where these flows organize and order as infrastructure, with particular attention paid to moments of rupture and negotiation within the control of media and media industries. Building from Altman’s (2004) “crisis historiography,” technologies never reach equilibrium and are always unsettled in a struggle of strategies and tactics.
Baseball is a rich mélange of tradition, spectatorship, evaluation, and fandom. Statistical fando... more Baseball is a rich mélange of tradition, spectatorship, evaluation, and fandom. Statistical fandom is presented as a cultural infrastructure, which influences how all fans perceive the game including what is valued in the game, how the game itself is played, and Major League Baseball as an industry. In building off of Halverson's conception of a fantasy plane of baseball fandom, this research theorizes an additional statistical plane. Saber-metrics serve as a microcosm for a larger statistical turn in sports and reporting. The labor of saberfans builds a cultural algorithm through statistical analysis that shapes all fan engagement. Sabermetric inputs become an infrastructure of expertise through which the larger sporting public understands and evaluates baseball and culture.
This article focuses on the emergence of a nascent streaming industry.
The media industry studies... more This article focuses on the emergence of a nascent streaming industry. The media industry studies conceptualization of “industry lore” can be read during times of transition for media industries. Streaming lore is a re-articulation of existing industry lore accompanying the advent of streaming technology and distribution. Contemporary streaming acts as a site of rupture, wherein industry discourses related to digital media are rendered visible. The article proposes three categories of emergent streaming lore and analyzes their relation to a growing streaming media industry. These categories include (a) Netflix as “quality” streams, (b) the algorithmic audience, and (c) cord-cutters and cord-nevers.
Internet Research Ethics for the Social Age: New Challenges, Cases, and Contexts, 2017
This chapter is a critical analysis of virtual reality (VR) technology in ethnographic fieldwork,... more This chapter is a critical analysis of virtual reality (VR) technology in ethnographic fieldwork, specifically the use of VR recording and playback apparatuses such as prosumer multi-camera arrays and Oculus video headsets. Although VR is not a new medium, our purpose is to start a conversation about VR fieldwork and its potential to relay and replay ethnographic findings/recordings within a growing field of digital and sensory ethnography. We begin the process of unpacking what it means for ethnographers to engage with a field site through contemporary VR technology, and how VR transcription and representation of real-time events impact traditional ethnomethodology – in particular, we examine popular claims that VR operates as an empathy machine that shrinks proximity and distance between users and recorded fields of distant suffering.
This research critiques Western approaches to social media by using an Indigenous theoretical too... more This research critiques Western approaches to social media by using an Indigenous theoretical tool/concept, the Moanan (Pacific Islander) conception of t a and v a, to center Indigenous knowledge through an analysis of the Ku Kiaʻi Kahuku community movement (an Indigenous and ecological stand for environmental justice to protect native species and push back against colonial development in the form of giant wind turbines (568 feet high) placed over schools and the homes of community members and Kanaka Maoli in Kahuku, Hawaiʻi). We argue that Ku Kiaʻi Kahuku's livestreaming inspired movement within the space of digital connectivity, a civic rhythm, forging symmetry and reciprocity within sociospatial ties. Moanan peoples inscribed within social media a distinct Moanan rhythm. In this case, the vibrations of the protecting, an affectively charged t a, engaged the community and diaspora in a moment of rupture-opening up a space for symmetry within the dissymmetry of colonial capitalism.
With the popularity and success of food-related social media content, food marketers have begun u... more With the popularity and success of food-related social media content, food marketers have begun utilizing social media influencers to promote their food brands. In particular, mukbang—video broadcasts of individuals eating copious amounts of food—is a prominent genre of public social media food exhibition that can provide opportunities for food-related social media influencer marketing. The present study examines how parasocial interaction (i.e. nonreciprocal interpersonal relation-ships formed with media personalities) with a mukbang social media influencer impacts advertising effectiveness and information credibility. A total of 404 U.S. participants completed an online survey. Structural equation modeling found that partici-pants’ parasocial interactions with mukbang social media influencers predicted perceived source trustworthiness, perceived source expertise, and credibility of the information regarding the food content posted. Furthermore, influencer source credibility and information credibility positively impacted consumer brand and video attitudes, as well as behavioral intentions to consume the foods featured in the social media content. Study results provide evidence-based implications for food-related social media influencer marketing strategies and insight into the important role of information credibility on eating behaviors of social media consumers.
This study examines Tom Rinaldi’s work for ESPN and College Gameday and the discursive framing of... more This study examines Tom Rinaldi’s work for ESPN and College Gameday and the discursive framing of NCAA ‘student-athletes’, primarily Black athletes. The research unpacks what constitutes this ‘Rinaldi Frame’ and the implications of the frame on college sports. At the core of this frame are the familiar ‘bootstrap’ stories and the overcoming of hardship or economically depressed situations at a young age. This is part of the commodification of Black athletes–their labor and pain. To achieve the objectives of this work, the authors evaluate several seasons of ESPN’s College Gameday programming, with a specific focus on the Tom Rinaldi short story pieces. Findings suggest that there is indeed a formulaic frame and portrayal applied all too often to Black college football players in the service of sports and media institutions such as the NCAA and ESPN. Furthermore, the profiteering from these storytelling modes perpetuates misguided narratives regarding Black college football players and all college athletes.
Chris Claremont, primary author of the X-Men from 1975 to 1991, introduced Judaism into the X-Men... more Chris Claremont, primary author of the X-Men from 1975 to 1991, introduced Judaism into the X-Men metaphor, in large part by making the series’ primary antagonist, Magneto, a Holocaust survivor working to prevent mutants from suffering the same plight. In 2003, Grant Morrison pushed Magneto back towards the origins of the character as a charismatic terrorist (later overruled by Claremont and others). The 2008 work X-Men: Magneto Testament rooted the character’s history in the Holocaust. Through a deep reading of these texts, we use an analogy related to Maus author Art Spiegelman depicting the ‘tug of war’ between the vulgar and the genteel in comics. Magneto embodies this struggle–the trauma of the Holocaust and the desire for reprisal by its victims. The interplay between the vulgar and the genteel, told through Magneto as a cultural icon, opens up a space for thinking through the Holocaust.
The Routledge Companion to Digital Media and Children, 2021
The profitability of content created for and by children on social media platforms such as YouTub... more The profitability of content created for and by children on social media platforms such as YouTube has sparked an entire sector of content catering to young children. The research looks at the cultivation of child ‘influencers’ as a part of the emergent digital media landscape and children’s media industries. Child-created content is also the site for discursively codifying particular articulations of concepts such as family to reinforce purchasing and marketing norms within these sites.
As COVID-19 has led to the politicization of masks and the donning of masks, the prescient commen... more As COVID-19 has led to the politicization of masks and the donning of masks, the prescient commentary that emerges from HBO's Watchmen speaks to our contemporary moment, replete with animosity, distrust, and wounding. Race, the legacy of racial injustice, and anonymity are major themes found throughout the series, which highlight the complicated nature of social control and the infrastructural legacy of racism. The mask itself is a site of struggle with polarizing calls for freedom from the mask as tyranny and freedom through the mask as safety, all during a public health crisis. In Watchmen, the deployment of infrastructural control and the implications of masking and unmasking are enacted through racist ideologies and promises of safety through anonymity.
This paper analyzes emerging shifts in YouTube, advertising, and children's digital media industr... more This paper analyzes emerging shifts in YouTube, advertising, and children's digital media industries through a case study of Pocket Watch, a digital-first production and distribution studio built exclusively for YouTube child stars. Our analysis reveals the company's strategic use of legacy media industry power, networks, and expertise to transform YouTube stars into global brands through the creation of toy, clothing, and lifestyle product lines across several industries. We further argue that Pocket Watch's newly formed advertising division, Clock Work, exploits its child partners through problematic native advertising and host selling practices. The strategies implemented by Pocket Watch and other similar emerging companies may therefore act as a litmus test for how governmental regulation and platform policy changes will impact the evolving landscape of children's digital media as commercial forces increasingly groom a growing number of young children to shift from YouTube stars to global brands.
Esports, and their accompanying livestreams, continue their rapid expansion globally. This resear... more Esports, and their accompanying livestreams, continue their rapid expansion globally. This research considers the importance of physical space and the demarcation of place in esports. Specifically, this paper draws from a history of video games and place to understand what it means for an Esports Arena to exist as a dedicated place for esports inside a casino. From early arcades to local area network (LAN) parties, the “place” of video games operates as an orienting concept for video game culture. The popularity of livestreaming of events and digital gameplay challenges the need for physical proximity, however, the rearticulation of place in esports through casinos and the proximity to gaming and gambling, warrants further attention. The establishment of a dedicated physical space for esports has opened up the possibility for esports events to become a fixture in Las Vegas and other gaming markets. Casinos in Las Vegas are in a unique position to be frontrunners for the esports and esports gambling industry. Ultimately, the business interests of casinos will be instrumental in the future of esports, influencing gamers, gambling, and potentially the entire esports industry.
Fake News : Understanding Media and Misinformation in the Digital Age, MIT Press, 2020
Memes were once the stuff of 4chan /b/ boards and insider internet culture and humor, 1 but they ... more Memes were once the stuff of 4chan /b/ boards and insider internet culture and humor, 1 but they now occupy an emergent space within political communication and the dissemination of political imagery. Memes operate as stitching devices, which meld platforms, ideology, and geopolitics within social networks and political campaigns, making them an important site of study for the weaving of fake news and misinformation into the fabric of political discourse and, ultimately, political deliberation.
International Review for the Sociology of Sport, 2021
Studies have found that media coverage of women's sports is inadequate when compared with coverag... more Studies have found that media coverage of women's sports is inadequate when compared with coverage of men's sports with regards to the amount of coverage as well as the type of coverage across men's and women's sports. With few exceptions, past research has found inequitable coverage of female and male athletes in every media form studied, from print and television to the internet. Some exceptions to the findings include not-for-profit media, such as the National Collegiate Athletic Association News, and internet-based publications. The current study combined the two media types to determine if athletic departments that are affiliated with the National Collegiate Athletic Association offer more balanced coverage of female and male athletes on their official websites than has been found in past research. The results revealed that although the type of coverage the athletes received was similar, the amount was not. In articles and photographs on
Under the federally mandated Title IX, NCAA athletic departments are directed to offer balanced p... more Under the federally mandated Title IX, NCAA athletic departments are directed to offer balanced promotional and informational coverage between men's and women's sports. This study examines how gender is represented in photographs on the Instagram accounts of prominent NCAA athletic departments. Findings indicate mixed results: female athletes, when showcased, receive similar promotional efforts to their male peers; their athleticism is highlighted; and fan engagement metrics are as high as male sports. However, female athletic achievements are overwhelmingly underrepresented, suggesting equality is still deficient.
In her contribution to the Quarterly Journal of Speech’s centennial issue, “Pathologia,” Jenny Ri... more In her contribution to the Quarterly Journal of Speech’s centennial issue, “Pathologia,” Jenny Rice suggests, “pathology does not only or always reveal something broken. Rather, the experience of pathology also reminds us that rhetoric’s sensorium is working—really working” (p. 35). Yes, and in a time of pandemic turbulence, we are reminded that the sensorium of civic life works in ways that shape, even threaten, our collective modes of engagement and relationality. Rice offers “the wound” as a response to pathological publicness, noting, “I propose that we begin to theorize the wound itself as the beginning of dialogue. Only the wound can stand as pathology’s counterpart” (p. 40). Wounds focalize and materialize the pathogenic, opening up possibilities for redress while also remediating their own contaminants. Accordingly, our special issue aims to grapple with the ways contemporary publicness affects, and is affected by, civic wounds: how they are discursively produced, and productively discursive. What emergent forms of expression or composition do wounds make possible or foreclose? And, how might critical communication scholarship ad/dress the pathogenic constitution of civic wounds? Each of the essays in “Ad/Dressing Civic Wounds” thus situates particular ways in which wounds are “really working” to produce the conditions that open or foreclose possibilities in the never-finished work of finding shared grounds of togetherness we might call civic life.
Black Mirror combines sensation and critique in an affective formalism that, we argue, yields a p... more Black Mirror combines sensation and critique in an affective formalism that, we argue, yields a proliferation of possible viewer responses. Our analysis focuses on this unique combination of affect and form, in order to examine the relations between mediated affect and the question of the political. Through its refrain of mediated publicity as the tragedy of the viewing commons, Black Mirror offers a pointed social critique realised through narrative strategies of inoculation and traumatised witnessing. We argue that Black Mirror’s signature narrative tactic, the traumatic twist, yields a proliferation of possible viewer responses that exceed the easy parameters of acceptance and rejection; and we suggest that the question of the political is addressed through Black Mirror’s multiplication of ‘maybe’.
This article examines the response to the 1 October, 2017, mass shooting in Las Vegas by both the... more This article examines the response to the 1 October, 2017, mass shooting in Las Vegas by both the city and its National Hockey League team, the Golden Knights. In analyzing these responses, we argue that the Golden Knights' memorialization efforts, while operating within a familiar public relations script of the sporting commercialization of memorial, productively turned T-Mobile Arena into a space, however sanitized, for the enactment of rituals and a discourse of renewal. This space was otherwise absent from the rest of the tourist-oriented confines of the Strip. Further, the rhetorical conjoining of the hashtags #VegasStrong, which emerged shortly after the shooting, and #VegasBorn, which was originally used to market the team, operated as simultaneous symbols for both the team and its community. This allowed the sporting franchise to move between commercial and civic uses, operating as both branding for the team and as an embodied act of remembrance for local residents.
Black Mirror combines sensation and critique in an affective
formalism that, we argue, yields a p... more Black Mirror combines sensation and critique in an affective formalism that, we argue, yields a proliferation of possible viewer responses. Our analysis focuses on this unique combination of affect and form, in order to examine the relations between mediated affect and the question of the political. Through its refrain of mediated publicity as the tragedy of the viewing commons, Black Mirror offers a pointed social critique realised through narrative strategies of inoculation and traumatised witnessing. We argue that Black Mirror’s signature narrative tactic, the traumatic twist, yields a proliferation of possible viewer responses that exceed the easy parameters of acceptance and rejection; and we suggest that the question of the political is addressed through Black Mirror’s multiplication of ‘maybe’.
Internet Histories: Digital Technology, Culture, and Society, 2019
This research traces a cultural lineage of streaming technology,
moments of streams and counterst... more This research traces a cultural lineage of streaming technology, moments of streams and counterstreams in the history of radio, video and internet broadcasting. By making contact with a number of points of innovation, it is possible to realize not only a technological genealogy of streaming, and its antecedents, but also an account of accompanying cultural meanings and practices. In this cultural lineage of streaming, I point to moments of audience participation in the flow of media and technology where these flows organize and order as infrastructure, with particular attention paid to moments of rupture and negotiation within the control of media and media industries. Building from Altman’s (2004) “crisis historiography,” technologies never reach equilibrium and are always unsettled in a struggle of strategies and tactics.
Baseball is a rich mélange of tradition, spectatorship, evaluation, and fandom. Statistical fando... more Baseball is a rich mélange of tradition, spectatorship, evaluation, and fandom. Statistical fandom is presented as a cultural infrastructure, which influences how all fans perceive the game including what is valued in the game, how the game itself is played, and Major League Baseball as an industry. In building off of Halverson's conception of a fantasy plane of baseball fandom, this research theorizes an additional statistical plane. Saber-metrics serve as a microcosm for a larger statistical turn in sports and reporting. The labor of saberfans builds a cultural algorithm through statistical analysis that shapes all fan engagement. Sabermetric inputs become an infrastructure of expertise through which the larger sporting public understands and evaluates baseball and culture.
This article focuses on the emergence of a nascent streaming industry.
The media industry studies... more This article focuses on the emergence of a nascent streaming industry. The media industry studies conceptualization of “industry lore” can be read during times of transition for media industries. Streaming lore is a re-articulation of existing industry lore accompanying the advent of streaming technology and distribution. Contemporary streaming acts as a site of rupture, wherein industry discourses related to digital media are rendered visible. The article proposes three categories of emergent streaming lore and analyzes their relation to a growing streaming media industry. These categories include (a) Netflix as “quality” streams, (b) the algorithmic audience, and (c) cord-cutters and cord-nevers.
Internet Research Ethics for the Social Age: New Challenges, Cases, and Contexts, 2017
This chapter is a critical analysis of virtual reality (VR) technology in ethnographic fieldwork,... more This chapter is a critical analysis of virtual reality (VR) technology in ethnographic fieldwork, specifically the use of VR recording and playback apparatuses such as prosumer multi-camera arrays and Oculus video headsets. Although VR is not a new medium, our purpose is to start a conversation about VR fieldwork and its potential to relay and replay ethnographic findings/recordings within a growing field of digital and sensory ethnography. We begin the process of unpacking what it means for ethnographers to engage with a field site through contemporary VR technology, and how VR transcription and representation of real-time events impact traditional ethnomethodology – in particular, we examine popular claims that VR operates as an empathy machine that shrinks proximity and distance between users and recorded fields of distant suffering.
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Papers by Benjamin Burroughs
formalism that, we argue, yields a proliferation of possible viewer
responses. Our analysis focuses on this unique combination of
affect and form, in order to examine the relations between
mediated affect and the question of the political. Through its
refrain of mediated publicity as the tragedy of the viewing
commons, Black Mirror offers a pointed social critique realised
through narrative strategies of inoculation and traumatised
witnessing. We argue that Black Mirror’s signature narrative tactic,
the traumatic twist, yields a proliferation of possible viewer
responses that exceed the easy parameters of acceptance and
rejection; and we suggest that the question of the political is
addressed through Black Mirror’s multiplication of ‘maybe’.
moments of streams and counterstreams in the history of radio,
video and internet broadcasting. By making contact with a number
of points of innovation, it is possible to realize not only a technological
genealogy of streaming, and its antecedents, but also an
account of accompanying cultural meanings and practices. In this
cultural lineage of streaming, I point to moments of audience participation
in the flow of media and technology where these flows
organize and order as infrastructure, with particular attention paid
to moments of rupture and negotiation within the control of
media and media industries. Building from Altman’s (2004) “crisis
historiography,” technologies never reach equilibrium and are
always unsettled in a struggle of strategies and tactics.
The media industry studies conceptualization of “industry lore”
can be read during times of transition for media industries. Streaming
lore is a re-articulation of existing industry lore accompanying the
advent of streaming technology and distribution. Contemporary
streaming acts as a site of rupture, wherein industry discourses
related to digital media are rendered visible. The article proposes
three categories of emergent streaming lore and analyzes their relation
to a growing streaming media industry. These categories include
(a) Netflix as “quality” streams, (b) the algorithmic audience, and (c)
cord-cutters and cord-nevers.
formalism that, we argue, yields a proliferation of possible viewer
responses. Our analysis focuses on this unique combination of
affect and form, in order to examine the relations between
mediated affect and the question of the political. Through its
refrain of mediated publicity as the tragedy of the viewing
commons, Black Mirror offers a pointed social critique realised
through narrative strategies of inoculation and traumatised
witnessing. We argue that Black Mirror’s signature narrative tactic,
the traumatic twist, yields a proliferation of possible viewer
responses that exceed the easy parameters of acceptance and
rejection; and we suggest that the question of the political is
addressed through Black Mirror’s multiplication of ‘maybe’.
moments of streams and counterstreams in the history of radio,
video and internet broadcasting. By making contact with a number
of points of innovation, it is possible to realize not only a technological
genealogy of streaming, and its antecedents, but also an
account of accompanying cultural meanings and practices. In this
cultural lineage of streaming, I point to moments of audience participation
in the flow of media and technology where these flows
organize and order as infrastructure, with particular attention paid
to moments of rupture and negotiation within the control of
media and media industries. Building from Altman’s (2004) “crisis
historiography,” technologies never reach equilibrium and are
always unsettled in a struggle of strategies and tactics.
The media industry studies conceptualization of “industry lore”
can be read during times of transition for media industries. Streaming
lore is a re-articulation of existing industry lore accompanying the
advent of streaming technology and distribution. Contemporary
streaming acts as a site of rupture, wherein industry discourses
related to digital media are rendered visible. The article proposes
three categories of emergent streaming lore and analyzes their relation
to a growing streaming media industry. These categories include
(a) Netflix as “quality” streams, (b) the algorithmic audience, and (c)
cord-cutters and cord-nevers.