Author: CarrieLynn D. Reinhard
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Whose Voices?: The elite versus the public in the game of merger mania
(I wrote this back in 1999, as part of my consternation about the rise of media mergers after the 1996 Telecommunications Act. Unfortunately, such consternation has not abated: in fact, they might have gotten worse with the rise of predominance of the Internet.) Forget Pokémon. Merger mania is the real game sweeping the nation. In…
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Virtual Worlds – Sense-making and Innovation
The team from the Virtual Worlds Research Group at Roskilde University in Denmark were filmed giving talks about their varied and unique research projects — about the major findings that came out of their participation in the group. You can view each by following this link. Unfortunately, unless you understand Danish, only mine and Ates’…
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For the Love of Zombies
My latest article at Clearance Bin Review delves into the psychological and sociocultural reasons for why we seem to be so obsessed with zombies lately. They are everywhere in our pop culture and mass media, and their fans organize charity events and protests. Speaking with a fellow fan of zombies (who organizes events like the…
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Variations on Theme: Boudu, Toni, and Mother Nature
[Film analysis paper from 1999] In ancient times, many cultures conceived of the world as a snake devouring itself, creating a continuous circle. In modern times, film critic Andre Bazin had a similar conception. He believed everything in reality was connected to everything else. The world, reality, is continuous, circular. Before the rules of chaos…
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The Rise of Hentai in America, Part 3
[This is the final part of the women studies paper I wrote on hentai. You can find Part 1, on the definition of hentai, here, and Part 2, on the comparison of hentai to live action pornography, here.] While it may not be as prevalent or have the same tradition in our society that live…
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How People Make Sense of Virtual Worlds — and Why It Matters
This video was produced by Roskilde University, with assistance from Dominican University, to summarize and even illustrate some of the findings from my research study, Virtual Worlds Entertainment. In this video I discuss what I had done, what I had learned, and perhaps what others can learn from it all.
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The Rise of Hentai in America, Part 2
[In part 1 of this 2006 women studies paper, I discussed what hentai is and how it has grown in consumption in the United States; so if you are first entering this report via this part, you should pop on over there first. In this part of the report, I compare hentai to live action…
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The Rise of Hentai in America, Part 1
(This paper was done in 2006 for a women’s studies course at Ohio State University. Some of the facts may be a bit outdated, some have been updated, but I still stand by the interpretation of the texts. Part 1 here discusses the subject matter; Part 2 compares hentai to live action pornography; Part 3…
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The Culture of The Fail
As a society, as a civilization, even as a species, we like to celebrate success. With the Summer Olympics under way in Ye Olde London Towne, we have one of the great examples of how much we humans celebrate success. We give people medals, trophies, money, cereal endorsements, all for outrunning, outgunning, outswimming, outsynchronizing their…
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