COMS 930: New Media Audiences
Communication Studies, University of Kansas
Prof. Nancy Baym
Spring 2012

Course Overview

The concept of ‘audience’ has been central to communication theory and practice since its beginnings. After a very brief dalliance with pre-internet approaches to audience, this course turns to the many ways in which new media have disrupted both audience behaviors and the very notion itself. We consider audience practices including community building, sharing and creativity, as well as audience relationships with industries and producers. We address the relationships between “audiences” and “publics” and between “fans” and “citizens.”

Assignments

Reading Responses (15%) : Each day’s reading raises and offers approaches to an issue or set of related issues. Use these response writings to stake out your own perspective. Your response should address (1) a theoretical approach or key concepts in the readings that you found particularly compelling or problematic (2) the key finding(s) that you find particularly interesting or counterintuitive (3) at least one research question that emerges from the readings around which you could build a feasible research project.

Most of the grade will be for a semester-long research project. Grading will be broken down into a Paper Proposal (25%), Final Paper (50%), and a Presentation of the paper to at an end-of-semester symposium (10%). More information on this will be forthcoming.

COMS 930: New Media Audiences
Course Schedule

Wednesday January 18: Hello, this is the class. Let’s get oriented.

Starting Points in Theorizing “Audience”

Monday January 23

Jensen, K. B. & Rosengren, K. E. (1990) Five Traditions in Search of the Audience, European Journal of Communication 5(2): 207-238.

Anderson, J. (1996). The Pragmatics of Audience in Research and Theory. In J. Hay, L. Grossberg & E. Wartella, The Audience and its Landscapes. Boulder, CO: Westview: 75-96.

Goffman. E. (1981) Excerpts IV & V from Footing in Forms of Talk, Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania: 131-140.

Wednesday January 25

Livingstone, L. (2004). The Challenge of Changing Audiences: Or, What is the Audience Researcher to Do in the Age of the Internet? European Journal of Communication 19:75

Gray, J. (2003). New audiences, new textualities: Anti-fans and Non-fans, International Journal of Cultural Studies. 6:64

Participation

Monday January 30

Rosen, J. (2006). “The People Formerly Known as the Audience,” PressThink, June 27, http://journalism.nyu.edu/pubzone/weblogs/pressthink/2006/06/27/ppl_frmr.html.

Jenkins, H., Ford, S. & Green, J. (in press). What Constitutes Meaningful Participation, Chapter 5 in Spreadable Media. New York: NYU

Harrison, T. & Barthel, B. (2009). Wielding New Media in Web 2.0: Exploring the history of engagement with the collaborative construction of media products. New Media & Society 11: 155

Audiences and Publics

Wednesday February 1

Livingstone, Sonia (2005). “On the Relation Between Audiences and Publics,” in Sonia Livingstone (ed.), Audiences and Publics: When Cultural Engagement Matters for the Public Sphere, Bristol, England: Intellect, pp. 17-42.

Dayan, D. (2001). The peculiar public of television, Media, Culture & Society. 23: 743

Monday February 6

Benkler, Y. (2006) Chapter 7 Political Freedom Part 2: Emergence of the Networked Public Sphere in The Wealth of Networks: How social production transforms markets and freedom. New Haven: Yale.

Ito, M. (2008). “Introduction” in K. Varnelis (ed.), Networked Publics, Cambridge, MA: MIT: 1-14.

(Anti)Fan Community

Wednesday February 8

Baym, N. K. (1995). The Emergence of Community in Computer-Mediated Communication. In S. G. Jones (Ed.) Cybersociety: Computer-Mediated Communication and Community. (pp. 138-163). Newbury Park, CA: Sage.

Baym, N. K. (2007). The New Shape of Online Community: The Example of Swedish Independent Music Fandom. First Monday, Vol. 12 (8), http://firstmonday.org/issues/issue12_8/baym/index.html.

Monday February 13: Guest Visitor: Bob Moczydlowsky from Top Spin (topspinmedia.com)

Wednesday February 15

Bennett, L. (2011). Delegitimizing strategic power: Normative identity and governance in online R.E.M. fandom. Transformative Works and Cultures. http://journal.transformativeworks.org/index.php/twc/article/view/281

Pinkowitz, J. M. (2011) "The rabid fans that take [Twilight] much too seriously": The construction and rejection of excess in Twilight antifandom, Transformative Works and Cultures http://journal.transformativeworks.org/index.php/twc/article/view/247

Monday February 20

Reagin, N. & Rubenstein, A. (2011) "I'm Buffy, and you're history": Putting fan studies into history. Transformative Works and Cultures http://journal.transformativeworks.org/index.php/twc/article/view/272/200

Soukup, C. (2006) Hitching a Ride on a Star: Celebrity, Fandom, and Identification on the World Wide Web. Southern Communication Journal, 71(4): 319-337

Sharing

Wednesday February 22

Condry, I. (2004). Cultures of Music Piracy: An Ethnographic Comparison of the US and Japan, International Journal of Cultural Studies 7(3), pp. 343-363.

Scott, S. (2009). Repackaging Fan Culture: The Regifting Economy of Ancillary Content Models, Transformative Works and Cultures 3, http://journal.transformativeworks.org/index.php/twc/article/view/150/122.

Monday February 27

Jenkins, H., Ford, S. & Green, J. (in press). Chapter 1: Why Media Spreads & Chapter 6: Random Acts of Circulation in Spreadable Media. New York: NYU

Wednesday February 29: PROPOSALS!

Fan Creativity

Monday March 5

Coppa, F. (2008). “Women, Star Trek and the Early Development of Fannish Vidding,” Transformative Works and Cultures 1, http://journal.transformativeworks.org/index.php/twc/article/view/44/64.

Stein, L & Busse, K. (2009) Limit Play: Fan Authorship between Source Text, Intertext, and Context. Popular Communication, 7: 192-207.

Wednesday March 7

Mittell, J, (2009). “Sites of Participation: Wiki Fandom and the Case of Lostpedia,” Transformative Works and Cultures 3, http://journal.transformativeworks.org/index.php/twc/article/view/118/117.

Postigo, H. (2007) Of Mods and Modders : Chasing Down the Value of Fan-Based Digital Game Modifications. Games and culture 2: 300

Audience Labor

Monday March 12

Terranova, T. (2000). Free Labor: Producing culture for the digital economy. Social text, 18(2).

Andrejevic, M. (2008). “Watching Television Without Pity: The Productivity of Online Fans,” Television and New Media 9(24), pp. 24-46.

Yang, L. (2009). All for love: The Corn fandom, prosumers, and the Chinese way of creating a superstar, International Journal of Cultural Studies, 12:527

Wednesday March 14

Jenkins, H., Ford, S. & Green, J. (in press). Chapter 2: Where Web 2.0 Went Wrong in Spreadable Media. New York: NYU

Baym, N. & Burnett, R. (2009) Amateur experts: International fan labor in Swedish independent music. International Journal of Cultural Studies. 12(5): 433–449.

Monday March 26

Banks, J. & and Humphreys, S. (2008). “The Labour of User Co-Creators,” Convergence: The International Journal of Research into New Media Technologies 14(4), pp. 401-418.

Milner, R. M. (2009). Working for the text: Fan labor and the New Organization. International Journal of Cultural Studies, 12(5), 491-508.

Audiences, Corporations and Law

Wednesday March 28

Consalvo, M. (2003). Cyberslaying Media Fans: Code, digital poaching and corporate control of the internet. Journal of Communication Inquiry 27: 67

Tushnet, R. (1997). Legal Fictions: Copyright, fan fiction, and a new common law. Layola of Los Angeles Entertainment Law Review 651. Available at: http://digitalcommons.lmu.edu/elr/vol17/iss3/8

Monday April 2

Wallis, J. (2010) Fan filmmaking and copyright in a global world: Warhammer 40,000 fan films and the case of Damnatus, Transformative Works and Cultures. http://journal.transformativeworks.org/index.php/twc/article/view/178/180

Denison, R. (2011). Anime fandom and the liminal spaces between fan creativity and piracy. International Journal of Cultural Studies 14: 449.

Audiences and Performers

Wednesday April 4

Marwick, A. & boyd, d. (2011). To see and be seen: Celebrity practice on Twitter. Convergence 17: 139.

Baym, N. (under review). Fans or Friends: Seeing Social Media Audiences as Musicians Do. Under review at Participations

Global Flows

Monday April 9

Jenkins, H., Ford, S. & Green, J. (in press). Thinking Transnationally, Chapter 8 in Spreadable Media. New York: NYU

Fung, A. Y. H. (2009) Fandom, youth and consumption in China, European Journal of Cultural Studies 12: 285

Wednesday April 11

Jung, S. (2011) K-pop, Indonesian fandom, and social media, Transformative Works and Cultures, http://journal.transformativeworks.org/index.php/twc/article/view/289

Darling-Wolf, F. (2004). Virtually Multicultural: Trans-Asian Identity and Gender in an International Fan Community of a Japanese Star. New Media & Society 6:507.

News Audiences

Monday April 16

Ruiz, C., , Domingo, D., Micó, J. L., Díaz-Noci, J., Masip, P. & Meso, K. (2011). Public Sphere 2.0? The Democratic Qualities of Citizen Debates in Online Newspapers. The International Journal of Press/Politics. http://hij.sagepub.com/content/early/2011/09/08/1940161211415849

McCluskey, M. & Hmielowski, J. (2011). Opinion expression during social conflict: Comparing online reader comments and letters to the editor. Journalism, http://jou.sagepub.com/content/early/2011/09/09/1464884911421696

Wednesday April 18: Workshop Day

Politics and Fandom

Monday April 23

van Zoonen, L. (2004). Imagining the Fan Democracy. European Journal of Communication. 19:39.

De Kosnik, A. (2008). Participatory democracy and Hillary Clinton's marginalized fandom. Transformative Works and Cultures. http://journal.transformativeworks.org/index.php/twc/article/view/47/59

Activism

Wednesday April 25

Rauch, J. (2007). Activists as interpretive communities. Media Culture & Society. 29: 994

Baym, G. & Shah, C. (2011) Circulating Struggle, Information, Communication & Society, First published on: 23 March 2011 (iFirst)

Monday April 30

Slack, A. (2011), The Strength of A Story (video). TedX Transmedia, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rq5NbWmyGWk

Lopez, L. K. (2011). “Fan-Activists and the Politics of Race in The Last Airbender,” International Journal of Cultural Studies.

Wednesday May 2 : Final Discussion Day

Saturday May 5: RESEARCH SYMPOSIUM - ALL PAPER PRESENTATIONS