Category: Internet Studies
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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…
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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…
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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…
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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…
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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…
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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…
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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…
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The Pop Culture Lens: Episode on the Good, the Bad, and the Ugly of Fandom
On a special episode of The Pop Culture Lens podcast, Christopher Olson and I discuss a subject that has been one we have debated numerous times in our private lives and has become one that I have been focusing on as a research project: fandom, is it good or bad? We begin the conversation with…
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Ghost Whisperer’s Ghost in the Machine
This essay was originally posted as part of my work for the Virtual Worlds Research Group at Roskilde University. This essay reflects my interest in how pop culture represents new media technologies, such as virtual worlds, as part of the process whereby a society / culture comes to determine what will be the acceptable and…
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Categorizing Fractured Fandom
Defining Fractured Fandom According to the discipline of fan studies, at this point in history, being a fan is considered a positive for any individual. Being a fan helps people discover their identities, and to determine what they like and do not like. Being a fan helps people find friends, establish communities, and develop a…
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