This is from a class paper I wrote for Brenda Dervin in 2006 at Ohio State University. The most efficient and useful way I can conceive of answering this question is by exploring it in relation to my phenomenon of interest, fandom. Fandom has been studied using both quantitative and qualitative methodologies, as a…
Tag: Brenda Dervin
Transjective Media Studies and Reciprocal Determinism
Yep, that’s right — I’m being one of those academics. Engaging in neologisms to make a name for myself. But what I am working through here is an idea for a book project, and I’d love peoples’ comments to help me to do so. Redefining Media Studies A medium is a technology for the storage,…
Trauma and Fractured Fandom
This blog post contains my presentation at MPCA/ACA 2019 from our panel on mental health and fandom. This presentation is the first step in a deeper analysis of my fractured fandom work to understand the traumatic experiences fans expressed in their self-interviews. “fear fearfearfearfear feeling hella unsafe”: The Trauma of Fractured Fandoms As a brief…
Work In Progress: Applying SMM to Fan Studies
This draft comes from a presentation given at the 2018 MPCA/ACA conference in Indianapolis. Introduction Communication scholar Brenda Dervin created the Sense-Making Methodology as a methodological approach for conducting interviews that draws on metatheoretical concepts such as hermeneutics, phenomenology, and the humanistic approach to psychology. Since its formulation, Sense-Making Methodology (SMM) has been utilized across…
Being Methodological in Audience Studies: Applying Brenda Dervin’s Sense-Making Methodology
I’ve shared in previous posts (here and here) thoughts from my PhD candidacy exam. In this post, I share my thoughts on being methodological when it comes to doing audience studies. As with the other posts, this essay was originally written in 2007. 1. What does being methodological mean? To paraphrase myself from an earlier…
Women self-identifying as digital game addicts: Their interpretations of power
[This paper comes from 2007 and was completed for a qualitative methodology course at Ohio State University under the amazing Patti Lather. She encouraged us to try different methods of communication research results; so I did a comic book, which you can see here.] What is digital game addiction? A number of approaches, theories, and…
My Philosophy of Media Reception Studies
Along with my thoughts on the encoding-decoding-recoding model, what follows comes from my dissertation on gendered media engagings and describes how I consider the fundamental elements of media reception and audience studies. What are media products? Media products are the technologies, channels and contents that constitute our understanding of what is ‘the media’. They are…
An Encoding-Decoding-Recoding Model of Media Studies
This blog posts continues the dissection of my dissertation that I began by introducing the topic of gendered media engagings earlier this year. This post focuses on a model I used in my dissertation to understand the array of media studies conducted to investigate the ways in which gender is involved in how people engage…
Situational and gender comparisons of digital game players’ preferences
This three-part post comes from a 2007 International Communication Association conference paper. The research was an attempt to understand if gender was as large of a factor in player’s experiences and preferences as specific situations of playing digital games. INTRODUCTION The digital game industry has become a powerful media and cultural force over the…
