“Without experimentation, a willingness to ask questions and try new things, we shall surely become static, repetitive, and moribund.” ~Anthony Bourdain Anthony Bourdain was an adventurer, creative force, writer, and, most importantly, a chef. It is this last role that he was able to explore cultures through the framing of...
Henry Jenkins (1992) wrote about in his foundational work “Textual Poachers: Television Fan & Participatory Culture" about five levels of activity that fandoms traditional engage in when interacting with core texts essential to their favorite shows, books, movies, or other artifacts of popular culture. Fans of their content will begin...
The first time an outsider enters the realm of a comic convention, they walk through a “garden of earthly delights” that encompasses many of the touchstones of popular and geek culture. Cosplayers, those individuals that celebrate characters from mass media by adopting the dress, behaviors, and communication patterns of their...
One of my favorite classes that I teach yearly is “Communication Research Methods.” The course acts as the perfect balance between the abstract quest for understanding the cultural world that surrounds society and the concrete reality of explaining the communal relationships that currently exist. I try to make the concepts...
“All right, big, big week up at the Lodge this week.”Red Green from "The Red Green Show" This academic year has been hectic for me. I’m typically used to presenting at a few conferences and publishing one or two articles during the school year. It seems that this term has...
Mapping the vital parts of life, much like mapping out the environment of a video game world, involves having a clear understanding of the terrain that is being mapped out. In "Breath of the Wild," a crafted map that a player can find online can be used to show the...
Today theme/topic of study: A Conceptual Framework Opening Musical Playlist: Scott Bradlee’s Postmodern Jukebox Readings: “Chapter 1: A Conceptual Framework” from Paul McLean’s “Culture in Networks.” Encoding and decoding affordances- Stuart Hall and interactive media technologies Theories: Shared Social Experiences Encoding/Decoding Transmission Model of Communication Communities of locus, practice, interest,...
Today's Topic: Memes vs. Tropes Opening Musical Playlist: This is Vulfpeck Readings: Media Lingua Franca: Fixity, Novelty, and Vernacular Creativity in Internet Memes.Download Instagrammatics and digital methods: Studying visual social media, from selfies and GIFs to memes and emojiDownload KnowYourMeme.com TVTropes.com Theories: Gestalt Theory Intertextuality Memetic Artifacts: Spongebob Squarepants is...
Another area of theory that can help a person use the knowledge from maps and guides in video games and apply that knowledge towards evaluating real-world emotional experiences comes from an era before mass-produced video games. Erving Goffman was one of the more recognized and well-respected sociologists in the 20th...
Opening Musical Playlist: First Day Redux Theories: Parasocial Communication Transmission Model of Communication Meta-Media Memetic Artifacts: Homer Simpson hiding in the bushes The Simpsons “The Girl on the Bus” (Season 30, Episode 12) 7:05 to 7:30 Summary: Syllabus day is always a semi-weird experience as it is the combination of...
