Welcome to the Culture Wars

Note: I will update this post periodically as I see people using terms they may not understand, and appreciate anyone’s help to make certain I am properly translating, defining, and contextualizing terms. EDITED: Here is a great rundown of terms from The New York Times: https://www.nytimes.com/2017/08/15/us/politics/alt-left-alt-right-glossary.html?_r=0 Feature image comes from http://www.full-stop.net/2011/08/29/features/essays/michael-schapira/how-to-master-the-culture-wars-in-two-weeks/ which shows just how long the culture […]

Podcasts as Public Intellectualism

In the thirty-eighth episode of The Pop Culture Lens podcast, Christopher Olson and CarrieLynn Reinhard present an academic panel from the 2017 Central States Communication Association Conference. On this panel, CarrieLynn is joined by Melody Hoffmann of the podcast Femnist Killjoys, PhD and Molly Turner of the podcast Swipe Right on Molly & Thomas. W. […]

Fractured Fandom in Online Spaces

Fractured Fandom in Online Spaces: Problematic Communication in Communication-Inscribed Places This blog post represents a presentation I gave at the 2017 Central States Communication Association Conference, and is based on research I am doing on my Fractured Fandom project. This project is an online self-interview study conducted in 2015. The larger project is being written […]

Updating the Obstinate Audience

[This post comes from my candidacy exam, in which I was asked to respond to a classic article: Bauer, Raymond. 1964. “The obstinate audience: The influence process from the point of view of social communication.” American Psychologist 19: 319-328] Which, if any, issues have been dealt with and/or resolved within the field of communication? Bauer’s […]

ECW on The Pop Culture Lens

In the thirty-fourth episode of The Pop Culture Lens podcast, Christopher Olson (Seems Obvious to Me) and I welcome friend of the podcast Ryan Schriml to discuss the innovative nature and legacy of Extreme Championship Wrestling — or, ECW! ECW! ECW! In this episode, our discussion focuses on how the innovations of Paul Heyman and […]

The Pop Culture Lens Discusses Videodrome

In the twenty-ninth episode of The Pop Culture Lens podcast, Christopher Olson (Seems Obvious to Me) and myself welcome the Halloween season and friend of the podcast Salvatore DiSalvatore to discuss the body horror film from David Cronenberg, Videodrome (1983). In this episode, the conversation considers how prescient and thus still relevant this thirty-three year-old […]

Convergent Wrestling: Call for Chapters

Official Call for Chapter Proposals Title: Colliding Inside the Squared Circle: The Convergent Nature of Professional Wrestling Editors: CarrieLynn D. Reinhard (Dominican University) & Christopher J. Olson (Dominican University) Purpose: The concept of convergence represents one of the most pervasive buzzwords in media studies, but with good reason. In essence, convergence concerns how the boundaries […]

Online Learning Communities with a Dominican Flair

Online Learning Communities with a Dominican Flair: Arguing for applying the Dominican ethos to online higher education CarrieLynn D. Reinhard and Claire Noonan (Dominican University) Introduction It seems that everywhere one looks in the world of contemporary higher education, someone is making an argument for the elimination of faculty in favor of technology as the […]

Professional Wrestling, Smarks, and Convergent Media

As part of the project on understanding professional wrestling through the theoretical lens of convergence (i.e. convergent wrestling), I recently wrote out an explanation for how Christopher Olson (Seems Obvious to Me) and I see this concept of convergence being able to describe various aspects of professional wrestling. Now, being that we are academics, one […]

Advice for Children on Social Media

My first piece of advice is to focus on teaching your children how to be respectful when they communicate and engage with people, online but also in person. This means being aware of not just what you are saying but how you are saying it, and that how is immensely important in social media with […]