Emergent Media and Presidential Politics (in the 1890s): A Conversation with Charles Musser (Part II)

Continuing a conversation with Charles Musser regarding his recent book Politicking and Emergent Media: U.S. Presidential Elections of the 1890s (University of California Press, 2016).

While new platforms make possible new communication strategies, different candidates, then as now, make different choices about how to deploy those media towards their own goals. Thus, we have seen Obama and Trump deploy social media in different ways. What differences did you find in the way that the candidates deployed, say, the Stereopticon to reach their desired publics? What different notions of civic participation animated those strategies? 

The Republicans wholeheartedly embraced the stereopticon. Judge John L. Wheeler’s pioneering illustrated lecture The Tariff Illustrated (1888), which advocated for a protective tariff—the Republicans’ central campaign issue, is really the first political or campaign documentary…a direct progenitor of Robert Greenwald’s Uncovered: The War on Iraq (2003) and Michael Moore’s Fahrenheit 9/11 (2004).  Republicans largely credited Wheeler’s lecture for Benjamin Harrison’s defeat of President Grover Cleveland. Targeting the swing state of New York, it was reportedly seen by 174,000 people while Harrison carried the state by 15,000 votes. Four years later Republicans utilized an updated version delivered by at least five different lecturers as a central campaign weapon. While doubling the number of audience members, they much less success as Cleveland won the rematch. Republicans used the stereopticon lecture yet again in 1896 in the Chicago area where it had not previously been used (Illinois was then considerd the key swing state). Moreover, stereopticon lectures proved very effective in the lead up to the 1900 election with appropriately new subject matter—programs on the Spanish-American and Philippine-American wars––advocating for McKinley’s imperialistic stance.   

The Democrats were much less interested because they believed they had the major newspapers on their side—which was true until it wasn’t, specifically in 1896 and 1900.  But in 1892, many of the Democratic newspapers were prepared to counter Republican efforts and offered mocking critiques of the updated The Tariff Illustrated (1892).  Nevertheless, there was no Democratic equivalent.  Democrats like Republicans did use the stereopticon as a form of outdoor advertising.  In the evening they would project slogans onto outdoor screens, for instance, attacking the Republican’s protective tariff with “Protectionism is the art of taxing the many for the benefit of the few.” Political cartoons were also commonly shown. This had the virtue and limitation of reaching city strollers of all political stripes. However, their value was modest–- part of the campaign milieu that included campaign buttons, banners and posters.  

We have watched the role of the Internet deepen with each election cycle as it reaches a broader cross-section of voters, as candidates learn how to use it, and as it gains visibility in relation to more established mass media outlets. Was the same thing happening in the elections of the 1890s in terms of the different roles these media play in subsequent campaign cycles? 

While I would agree with the first part of your statement, “We have watched the role of the internet deepen with each election cycle as it reaches a broader cross-section of voters,” I am not sure that I entirely agree that candidates as a group have learned how to use it more effectively over time. Obama’s campaigns knew how to creatively mobilize YouTube and video steaming but it was so new they had to figure it out for themselves. But YouTube did not play a significant role in 2016. Hillary Clinton and her campaign staff never learned how to use the media of any variety with above average effectiveness. Romney was done in by the iPhone which surreptitiously recorded confidential talk to potential rightwing donors. The early 2020 Democratic presidential primary debates repeat many of the same problems evident in their Republican counterparts four years earlier. I am not sure that future candidates will learn from Trump and become skillful masters of Twitter. Alexandra Octavio Cortez is the only Democrat who seems to have comparable talents though to quite different ends. It’s too early to guess if she will run for president and if that will be her preeminent media weapon. 

Historical perspective can remind us that the more things change the more they stay the same. Tariffs have become as much of an issue today as they were in the 1880s and 1890s. Who knew? Moreover, there was an obvious if painful analogy between 1884 campaign and the 2016 fracas. A damming letter to Republican candidate James Blaine was made public. At the bottom was a note: “Burn this letter.”  His Democratic candidate Grover Cleveland was said to have fathered a child out of wedlock. The Democratic chant was “Burn, Burn, Burn this letter.” The Republican counterpart was “Ma, Ma, where’s my Pa?” The candidate who had mail that needed destruction lost to the person with a problematic sexual history. Could history repeat itself in 2016? Indeed, it did: Hillary’s erased emails outdid Trump’s sexual shenanigans. Snail mail and email seem to have made little difference. 

As a student of political history, I knew about William McKinley’s back porch campaign, but I did not know the various ways he used new communication technology -- not only cinema but the telephone -- to reach out to voters across the country. Tell us more. 

McKinley was the Republican’s premiere orator but he believed he was no match for Democrat William Jennings Bryan. The last thing he wanted to have happen was to go around the country giving speeches with Bryan in his wake. So, he decided to act presidential, stay home and conduct a front porch campaign from his home in Canton, Ohio, even as Bryan toured the country by railroad giving numerous speeches. The difference was striking but also complementary. Bryan used the railroad to get to the people, while the people used the railroad to get to McKinley. They both ended up giving numerous speeches—far, far more than Cleveland or Harrison ever did. Still there were serious drawbacks to McKinley strategy. Presidential candidates were expected to make strategic appearances at key rallies organized in large cities. With Illinois expected to be the crucial swing state in 1896, a huge McKinley rally was organized for Chicago on Chicago Day. Republicans tried to make it an official city holiday. They failed, but employers were encouraged to give their employees the day off if they attended the festivities. McKinley was under immense pressure to make an exception and to attend, but he knew that if he made one exception, he would have to make many more. So, he declined. The techies of 1896 then came up with at least two ingenious solutions. First, with the long-distance phone lines recently installed between New York and Chicago and with McKinley plugged into this new communication system, they installed telephone receivers by the reviewing stand where he should have been located. When loyal Republicans marched by, they were encouraged to shout into the receivers and have their words heard by McKinley in Canton—and his vice-presidential candidate in New York. It was as if McKinley was in Chicago—or more accurately that their voices magically joined McKinley in Canton. The idea was a success and quickly repeated in other major cities such as Pittsburgh and New York. 

Motion pictures did the reverse. Abner McKinley brought the Biograph team to Canton where they filmed McKinley in front of his home apparently receiving a telegram. When McKinley at Home was first shown at Oscar Hammerstein’s Olympia Music Hall on October 12th, it was as if McKinley and his home had been magically transported to a theater filled with prominent Republicans and other supporters. Vice presidential candidate Garett Hobart, was expected to be present and shout out a “Hi, Bill” to his running mate. (The elderly Hobart, however, had apparently had enough with new technology when he listened in on the Chicago rally via telephone and did not bother to appear.) In any case, a virtual McKinley was able to stand in for the candidate himself. Moreover, his virtual-self made regular appearances at the Olympia and then Koster & Bial’s Music Hall, where pro-McKinley rallies continues for the next month. New York City actually went for McKinley. New media didn’t just solve a problem, they added something more. The Republicans evidently knew how to innovate. Surely they would find a way to get the United States out of a protracted four-year depression.   

Early accounts have tended to treat McKinley at Home as an isolated text. But building on your earlier work which looked at exhibitors as constructing an assemblage of short films you make the case that it should be read in relation to other films shown on the same program. Can you speak a bit more here about the way the McKinley film fit within a larger flow of ideas?

Biograph was a fully integrated company (production-distribution-exhibition) that had full control over the programs it produced, and its creative personnel knew how to make use of that centralized control. We somehow have this view that those involved in cinema were naïve and struggling to find their way—that they just assembled films into some kind of random order because they didn’t know better. In short, editing had yet to be invented and cinema of the 1890s was all about the isolated image as a kind of attraction. In fact, when it came to audio-visual programs, post-production was in the hands of the exhibitor and there was plenty of experience in this area. The Biograph company thus presented a carefully calculated and powerful pro-McKinley motion picture program which made a series of calculated and impressive analogies. McKinley’s image was wrapped in a series of quintessential images of America. These included the legendary actor Joseph Jefferson in a scene from Rip Van Winkle and two scenes of Niagara Falls. There was also a good all-American racial “joke” as an African American woman washes her baby, who despite her best efforts does not become any whiter. All this led up to a McKinley parade in Canton and culminated with McKinley at Home. During a press screening, McKinley at Home was shown last but it was upstaged by The Empire State Express. So, in a strategic move Empire State Express was shown last. It showed America’s famed express train—a technological marvel in itself, depicted dynamically as it raced towards and past the camera and so viewers. But the train, like the Empire State (New York) was also racing ahead for McKinley. Thus, a series of associations or substitutions—American grandeur, American railway technology, Biograph’s superior motion picture technology, and McKinley as a future mythic president. I see this as a prescient form of montage of attractions not simply at cinema of attractions. The onrushing express is like the final shot of Potemkin—the prow of an onrushing battleship. 

What did or did not work about William Jennings Bryant’s attempts to expand the reach of his famous oratorical skills using the phonograph? 

If motion pictures were seen as the new media dominated by Republicans, the phonograph was viewed as the new media technology ideally suited for Bryan’s talents. In fact, there were numerous technological problems and limitations to phonographic reproduction and production--as well as the brief playtime of a recording—that belied such an assumption. Because Bryan had achieved a special status as an orator and won the Democratic nomination with his “Cross of Gold” speech, people certainly wanted to hear him and were ready to go to phonograph parlors to do so.  Although many did hear a small selection of Bryan’s speeches in phonograph parlors during the 1896 campaign, the orator was not Bryan. Correspondingly, they could hear a few excerpts of McKinley’s speeches, but they were not spoken by McKinley.  Speakers specifically trained and paid by the phonograph companies provided the voices. Visitors to phonograph parlors often made quick comparisons, sampling recordings for both candidates. Remember, however, that the phonograph companies were generally pro-McKinley. Some reports suggest that Bryan’s speeches may have been subtly burlesqued in their re-presentation. It seems completely credible, though this might have been in the partisan minds of pro-McKinley journalists. 

Given this assumed affinity between Bryan and the phonograph, it is not entirely surprising that in 1900 when Bryan had more time to prepare a campaign, the Democratic National Committee arranged to have the candidate and a number of high profile Democrats record master cylinders from which 250 duplicates were to be made. It was widely “expected that the Bryan Speech as ground out by the phonograph will play an important part in the campaign.” In fact, the master cylinders were apparently flawed and the duplicates unusable.  A series of lawsuits followed—which the Bryan campaign lost. High hopes came to naught.  

How important do you think these early experiments with mediated communication were to the candidates, their campaigns, and their outcomes? Were the uses of cinema, recorded sound, and these other technologies an interesting side show or did they help to shape the outcomes of these elections? 

That is a good question and of course there are no easy answers. Mediated communication modes—particularly if we include the newspapers—were crucial to the outcome of these elections. Cleveland’s narrow victory in 1884—thanks to New York’s many Democratic newspapers––proved that. He lost some of that support in 1888 and lost New York State. Certainly McKinley lopsided victory in 1896 was partially due to the fact that all the traditionally Democratic newspapers refused to support Bryan and in effect became pro-McKinley. The stereopticon was certainly a factor in 1888 with The Tariff Illustrated and quite possibly in 1900 with the many celebratory accounts of military victory securing an overseas empire. When going into a campaign, political operatives never know the precise layout of the upcoming battlefield and are looking for every possible advantage. Media was always an important part of the equation. On the other hand, Bill Clinton’s tagline that “It’s the economy, stupid” bears weight. Cleveland may have won the 1892 election because the country was beginning to enter a Depression. It was unlikely that any Democrat could have won the 1896 election given the previous four years of economic devastation. And the rebounding economy of 1900 certainly was crucial to McKinley’s fortunes.   

Media, and in the long 1890s particularly new media, shaped the gestalt or, to use Raymond Williams; term, “structures of feeling” of the campaigns. The Republican party’s use of motion pictures and the telephone–-along with the bicycle––gave them a pro-active aura of being up-to-date and if I can use these words––cool and hip. Bryan’s problems with the phonograph did the opposite, calling into question his competence and reinforcing his aura as something of a rube or country hick. This goes beyond immediate cause and effect and takes into account deeper and more subtle influences.  

One person who should not be lost in all of this is Theodore Roosevelt. I don’t think anyone had carefully researched and assessed the ways media played a crucial role in his rise to power, but Politicking and Emergent Media covers that ground in ways that readers should find interesting.

Your book doesn’t just deal with the campaigns, but also how the public learned the outcome of the elections. How Americans would have engaged with unfolding election results during the 1890s? 

Today we often gather around our TV sets—of computer screens--to watch election returns with friends and family.  In the second half of the 19th and first decades of the 20th century, crowds gather at newspaper headquarters to follow the returns since the papers were plugged into the telegraph system that reported the votes in almost real time. In big cities, this reporting of results became competitive. Who could get them first and who could display them in the most entertaining way. At first these returns were posted on bulletin boards. Increasingly they were projected on a screen using the stereopticon. While waiting for a new set of figures to arrive, cartoons, slogans or other miscellaneous materials were projected. Bands might provide music. In 1896 motion pictures were often screened between updates. It was undoubted the first time that many people got to see films for free. 

Across the book, you are also conducting a conversation about the disciplinary shift from Cinema Studies (where you situated your earlier work) and Media Studies, Dare I say Comparative Media Studies (where you situate this current project.) Yet, clearly, earlier writers of film history were interested in film’s relationship with painting, photography and various forms of popular theater. In what ways does the new focus on thinking across media break from that earlier tradition? What do you think your project gained from embracing those conceptual shifts? 

Thank you for that question. I think we have to remember that Film Studies emerged in the context of a great truism or cliché: “cinema is the art form of the 20th century.”  If that was the case, much needed to be done.  Filmmakers—major and minor—needed to be studied and assessed.  Film works needed to be restored and presented to the public. We needed to understand the history of this art form on a level of detail and sophistication which had not really begun to happen. In this context, I realized that beginnings are important and since little was really known in terms of the formative years of motion pictures, that this was in particular need of being studied. Also I quickly discovered that the questions and answers that came out of such investigations were not necessarily the ones that we would have expected. They made me really think about the very different ways cinema had been cinema over the course of its history. At the same time, this pre-Griffith period was a period before film was considered an art—either at the time or by our contemporaries. So in that respect the study of early cinema was already moving in a media studies direction.

The first fifteen years of my sustained, in-depth investigation into American early cinema (1976 to 1991) were focused on mapping out its history on multiple levels. In this, I obviously was not alone but part of a generation of scholars often associated with the 1978 Brighton Conference. We sought to understand the changing nature of film style as well as the dialectics between modes of production and representation. The American motion picture industry was shaped in many ways by a series of legal battles around patents and copyright. I was particularly interested in figuring out the rapid shifts in cinema practices. We certainly attended to the ways cinema interacted with and appropriated elements from various popular cultural forms in terms of subject matter but also in areas such as exhibition (vaudeville, illustrated lectures and more). We were interested in intertextuality and then increasingly in intermediality. Cinema, however, was always the starting point.  Obviously, I wrote about Biograph, McKinley and the way cinema had played an active role in American politics only a few months after commercially successful projected motion pictures appeared in the US.  However, because it was always in terms of a history of cinema, such investigations often stopped short.

When people talk about the death of cinema, it is not that cinema died but it ceased to be this dominant art form. With the fading of art cinema, some might argue that it even became a minor art form produced for a modest group of educated cognoscenti; but even if one wants to include major Hollywood blockbusters, its hegemony was broken. Television, video games, the Internet and social media: media studies was really a necessary engagement with a new and very different cultural realm. Although I came to Politicking and Emergent Media through my interest in early cinema, I wanted to decenter cinema and re-situate it in a much broader media landscape. At the same time, a much broader media landscape created problems of focus and shape. Concentrating on U.S. presidential political campaigns proved a clever and effective solution. It enabled me to ask a whole series of new and interesting questions. One of the fundamental questions I had to pursue: what was the relevant media formation for this undertaking. I realized that newspapers were a central component, which quickly put me somewhat at odds with the Amsterdam model of Thomas Elsaesser. It was also essential to include public oratory and pageantry, which did not depend on technologies of reproducibility which extends the range of media that Lisa Gitelman and others had been investigating. The result was a more open-ended investigation with many surprises. 

One modest example: I had been interested in the stereopticon but again as part of a history of screen practice as a way to understand cinema’s rapid emergence as a sophisticated cultural force after 1896. So, it required a conceptual adjustment to realize that the stereopticon was arguably a more pervasive and politically influential media form than cinema in 1899-1900, at least when it came to presenting narratives of US imperial conquest. Comparing the role of the phonograph to motion pictures was straight forward but the role of the telephone—and in a different way the bicycle—was completely unexpected. For me it produced a richer and more interesting story—a story that resonates with the contemporary moment but always in unexpected ways. There is no question that Republicans were the party of big business and US imperial expansion but they were also generally more progressive on environmental issues and women’s suffrage. What surprised and intrigued me the most in the course of this undertaking was that Republicans, particularly in the decisive 1896 election, presented themselves implicitly and explicitly as the party of technological innovation and hope, conveying an optimism about the future that would reaffirm Republican dominance in the political realm until the Great Depression.

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Charles Musser is a Professor of Film and Media Studies, American Studies and Theater Studies at Yale University where he teaches courses on the history of film and media as well as documentary (both production and critical studies). He recently completed a new feature-length documentary Our Family Album (2018), an essay film on Love, War and the Power of Photography. Its literary counterpart, Our Family Album: Essay-Script-Annotations-images is being published by John Libbey and will be distributed by Indiana University Press in late 2019.

Emergent Media and Presidential Politics (in the 1890s): A Conversation with Charles Musser (Part I)

A Conversation with Charles Musser regarding his recent book Politicking and Emergent Media: U.S. Presidential Elections of the 1890s (University of California Press, 2016).

When we think about presidential candidates ho are innovative in their use of new and emergent media, we might think of the Howard Dean meet ups, we might think about the various ways that the Obama people tapped grassroots video makers, we might think about Donald Trump’s transformative use of Twitter, or now, we might think about the centrality of selfies in the Elizabeth Warren campaign. Each of those candidates (and their team, more likely) realized something about a rapidly changing media environment and deployed these tools to transform the interface between the candidates and their supporters. Each allowed us to feel more connected with the campaign or to feel like we had a more intimate knowledge of who the candidates were.

What we do not think about are William McKinley, Grover Cleveland or Teddy Roosevelt!

Charles Musser is one of the most important historians of the dramatic media changes which took place between the late 19th and early 20th century. His work on the Nickelodeon era has transformed our understanding of early cinema. He has across his career helped to expand our understanding of the media environment into which cinema entered American culture. And he has written knowingly about early African-American filmmakers and about documentary films. I only recently discovered that he had written a book, Politicking and Emergent Media: U.S. Presidential Elections of the 1890s (University of California Press, 2016). which discusses how a range of new media — from magic lanterns to phonograph records — played in shaping electoral politics in the late 19th century. I was struck by the parallels to our current new media moment and as we dig ever deeper into the 2020 presidential campaign, I wanted to insert some of his insights into the conversation.

Your introduction (and to some degree, your title) signal potential parallels between the use of “emergent media” in the 1890s and the role of “new media” in the past few election cycles. What parallels might you draw?  For example, you make an unlikely (yet convincing) comparison between William McKinley and Barack Obama in your coda. Explain what similarities you see between the two candidates and their use of media. 

Yes.  These kinds of comparison are fascinating and can provide us with useful perspectives. Not unlike Obama, McKinley and the Republicans embraced the newest forms of communication technologies.  Specifically, McKinley’s brother Abner, a Wall Street financier of what we would now call technology startups, was one of many Republicans to invest in the American Mutoscope & Biograph Company, which would become the dominant motion picture company—world-wide--in the 1890s. The Biograph’s official debut was basically sponsored by the Republican National Committee. McKinley’s campaign also knew how to use the telephone for campaign purposes in ways that were powerful even if hard to imagine without reading actual accounts in the newspapers. Barrack Obama, of course, was a cosmopolitan figure whose campaign knew how to tap the potential of YouTube and related media technologies.  It was part and parcel of a futurist vision that captured people’s imagination: in some sense it was a key reason why he seemingly deserved to be president. McKinley and Obama shared an optimistic vision of the future where technology could implicitly or explicitly be mobilized to solve serious problems. It was their opponents—William Jennings Bryan on one hand and John McCain or Mitt Romney on the other—who embodied more backwards-looking visions of America. When it came to campaigning, these losers were comparatively awkward users of new media. They also appealed to Evangelicals whose attitude towards modernity was and is fraught.  

For those conversant with new media, McKinley and Obama were both inspirational figures. The Obama campaign benefited from the innumerable videos that were made by professionals and semi-professionals who were essentially independent of his campaign. Will.i.am’s Yes We Can video was undoubtedly the most successful campaign song in the nation’s history. It came at a crucial moment in Obama’s campaign; and without it, he might never have won the Democratic nomination and become president. Likewise, Thomas Edison and his Vitascope associates (Raff & Gammon) were Biograph’s chief rival.  Nevertheless, they were pro-McKinley and made pro-McKinley films completely independent of Republican guidance. When the Edison company shot a short film of Bryan, Bryan was delighted, but the Vitascope Company’s ownership and control of the film enabled it to successfully sabotaged its distribution: they delayed the exhibition of Bryan Train Scene until after Biograph had shown McKinley at Home and then screened it in a variety program that surrounded Bryan’s image by short films such as Feeding the Chickens and Wash Day. As coincidence would have it, Norman Raff was from McKinley’s hometown of Canton, Ohio. One might even characterize the Vitascope Company’s treatment Bryan as a “dirty trick.”

Another way to look at this:  The Republican dominated Biograph company was a direct precursor of FOX News.

You were writing the book in the midst of the 2016 campaign with the consequence that you write about Obama but not about Trump. To what degree do Trump's rallies look back to 19th century oratorical traditions? 

Although the publication of Politicking and Emergent Media was unfortunately delayed, it still came out a month before the 2016 election. So its release was timed to offer some historical perspective on the Trump-Clinton contest. Clinton’s defeat by Obama in the 2008 Democratic primaries was not a good sign. She had so many advantages; but if you looked at her YouTube page, she and her campaign were obviously pretty clueless when it came to online media. It did not bode well. Of course, Trump seemed such a problematic figure that we thought she would sneak through. However, it turned out that Trump and his campaign were more media savvy than we recognized—both in ways that were familiar and––if we include the Russians’ mobilization of social media on his behalf––in ways that were highly unorthodox, illegal and certainly in the dirty tricks category. On election eve, I sat and watched a Trump campaign rally televised from Michigan: his performance seemed quite powerful in its appeal to disgruntled voters and I found it quite unnerving. I went to bed hoping the polls favoring Hillary were right.

Campaign rallies have been part of every campaign since the 1890s and well before then. These obviously staged events are designed to energize the faithful and perhaps convert a few of those who were undecided. Media, however, has provided the crucial echo chamber. In the 1890s, it was via the newspapers though three different motion picture companies filmed the final McKinley Parade in New York City, a few days before the election. Trump’s rallies had a raucous political incorrectness that produced extensive television coverage; they were also much commented on in the press. This produced a very successful feedback loop but one that was not as obviously hip as Obama’s. Trump seemed a little old fashion—tied to the older media of television in this way. As a reality TV star, he understood television and how it could work. As it turned out Trump also knew how to use social media. if Obama dominated YouTube, Trump proved a master of Twitter. And he knew how—or learned how––to make them all work together. It was during this campaign that news articles on the Internet began to quote political figures by reproducing and inserting a tweet. If one compared the Clinton campaign’s impersonal tweets to Trump’s twitter page, there is no doubt that his was far more dynamic and effective.

What makes election campaigns a particularly useful benchmark to check in on shifts within the media/ communication landscape?  

There are a number of factors. First, there is the regularity of our presidential elections. This allows for some reflection on the success and failure of the previous presidential campaign and how to correct or improve––and often innovate going forward. A second factor is the nature of the stakes. It’s a binary all or nothing. With the absence of a viable multi-party system, there are no runners-up. IN this context ‘winning is everything, it is the only thing’ and so it calls for maximum effort. A third is just the amount of money and other resources that are available. Perhaps crucially there has been a sense (often justified) that at least since the 1884 election when the “liberal media” (i.e. Joseph Pulitzer’s New York World) was responsible for Grover Cleveland’s victory—that media often makes the crucial difference. Tied to this are the crucial dynamics of a changing media landscape. Pulitzer bought the New York World in 1883 and became the kingmaker the following year. It is worth noting, however, that rematches in which the incumbent is running for a second term–– Cleveland vs Harrison, McKinley vs Bryan or Eisenhower vs. Stevenson and more recently Obama vs Romney—are usually fought on similar media landscapes in which only small adjustments occur. Perhaps one of the Democratic candidates in 2020 will surprise us but it looks like that is likely to be the case again. If so, that will be to Trump’s advantage.  

Can you sketch out a bit the media landscape which would have confronted the candidates for president in the 1890s? How was media change tied to other shifts in the American economy and technological infrastructure? 

The campaign season was an occasion for male sociality as male voters had their evenings momentarily freed from the constraints of domesticity. Elections involved a kind of participatory democracy—even if it might mean heated discussions at a nearby saloon or local Republican club. But there were numerous rallies, meetings and speeches—some literally on the local street corner. Most newspapers were relentless partisan. They featured the speeches and doings of their candidates. They praised them and argued the compelling logic of their programs—of which the debates around high versus low tariffs were paramount in 1888 and 1892, sound money versus free silver in 1896 and American imperialism in 1900. Many papers ran calendars announcing meetings, rallies and speeches by the presidential candidates’ numerous stand-ins. 

One crucial factor in the 1880s and 1890s—and well beyond—was that New York was the crucial swing state.  Whoever won New York State won the presidency. And in this respect the size of the Democratic victory in New York City was crucial to determining the outcome. What New York State Governor and Democrat Grover Cleveland’s victory made clear was that New York’s largest daily newspapers were overwhelming Democratic and seemed to hold the key to electoral triumph. These included the New York World, New York Sun, New York Times, New York Herald and New York Post. The New York Tribune was the only prominent Republican daily—along with a few minor papers like The Mail and Express. Newspapers and a few magazines were the only forms of mass communication in the 19th century and this configuration had suddenly ended 24 years of Republican rule.  

Republicans were furious and have hated the liberal media ever since. They also began a search for new media forms that could counter the Democrats dominance in this arena. In a way, this is what Politicking and Emergent Media is all about—the search for and efforts to exploit new media forms—the stereopticon, the telephone, the phonograph and projected motion pictures. In the process they began to transform the very nature of US electoral politics.  

One parallel that you did not make but which struck me in reading your account of the illustrated lecture: Al Gore’s use of powerpoint as a tool for his public lectures on climate change. What similarities or differences might have existed between these two formats for enhancing public oratory? 

Of course, PowerPoint presentations are the most obvious and direct descendants of the illustrated lecture. Not all 19th century lectures were illustrated. Great orators like William Jennings Bryan didn’t need them. Likewise, not all 21st century orators utilize PowerPoint. Trump would find them far too constraining.  In the 19th century some saw the use of lantern slides as a way to enhance their somewhat limited oratorical talents.  In truth, I identify with that sentiment! So if Gore is at his best when giving an illustrated presentation, perhaps it helps to explain why he did not become our president.   On a more practical level, the illustrated lecture of the 1890s held a prominence in the media landscape that PowerPoint presentations clearly lack in a much expanded media world.  What made Gore’s PowerPoint presentation a powerful weapon was the documentary and its multiple medias platforms.  

The history of environmental audio-visual programs is long if uneven. The illustrated lecture as a practice that utilized lantern slides––the stereopticon lecture if you will—really congealed in the 1870s around an astonishing large number of presentations on Yosemite and Yellowstone National Park. Thinking in terms of dispostifs, these environmental programs were a catalyst for the formation of modern documentary practices. An Inconvenient Truth (2006) not only embeds a PowerPoint lecture within its overall documentary format, it was a catalyst for the environmental documentary to become one of the most prominent documentary genres of the last 14 years--—perhaps the most prominent. Of course, An Inconvenient Truth was also serving a Democratic political agenda and helped Democrats regain control of the Senate. Such an implicit purpose complicated its impact by making the environment a partisan issue—specifically a Democratic issue.  In the 1870s efforts to establish a system of national parks was more bipartisan but also very much a Republican issue. 

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Charles Musser is a Professor of Film and Media Studies, American Studies and Theater Studies at Yale University where he teaches courses on the history of film and media as well as documentary (both production and critical studies). He recently completed a new feature-length documentary Our Family Album (2018), an essay film on Love, War and the Power of Photography. Its literary counterpart, Our Family Album: Essay-Script-Annotations-images is being published by John Libbey and will be distributed by Indiana University Press in late 2019.

Collective Wisdom (Part IV): An Interview with the Open Documentary Lab's William Uricchio and Katerina Cizek

Near the end of the report, you explore the question of whether meaningful co-creation can take place with “non-human agents,” whether natural or digital. You stress here the question of equivalent agency, which has a strong ring given your discussion throughout on the ethical choices involved in the co-creative process. What might we learn about co-creation more generally by drilling into the concept of equivalent agency in discussing human-nonhuman collaborations? 

Co-creating with non-humans is the most speculative part of the report.  Notions like agency and the impulse to consider equivalency as a relevant factor are emphatically human, so it’s difficult to step out of a homo-centric frame.  But that said, as we learn more about other species and larger non-human systems, and the more developments in AI continue to cycle exponentially through their boom-and-bust trajectory, the question of how we will work with these entities is more pressing than ever.  So on the one hand, we can’t avoid grappling with this: it is simply in our face.  And on the other, as your question suggests, there’s also a heuristic value in engaging with these questions, speculative or not, much like world building.  They help to reveal something about our underlying assumptions and relations to the world, and they expose the foundations of the method we’ve been exploring. 

If we look at our culture’s default behaviors with nature, with other species, and with AI, we can see unmitigated evidence of the extractive behaviors that we’ve critiqued in other settings.  This begs the question of boundaries.  Are there domains that are free from ethical concerns? Or do we need to think about ethics in a relational manner, where they imbue our every engagement in the world?  In a study of co-creation, the answer is evident, and so we decided to take that relational stance and push it.  We sought out practitioners who thought about AI or biological organisms as more than mere tools, or who were at least open to questioning their relationship.  And we were particularly intrigued by those who interacted with and learned from these non-human systems, rather than simply ‘using ‘ them.   

You asked earlier why so many of our examples of best practices emerged from Indeginous makers, and this is a great example of why.  In the West, we have a simple hierarchy of being in which we humans are important, and everything else is … not.  Whether the question of how our philosophical systems treat non-human life, or how our biological and psychological systems understand animal consciousness, or how we in the aggregate treat the larger ecosystem of which we are a part, our cultural response is shockingly indifferent.  By contrast, those who dominant systems have spent centuries marginalizing and maligning for their otherness and beliefs in many cases have a far more nuanced and open relationship to non-humans.  In the report, we have a quote from Blackfoot philosopher Leroy Little Bear — via Jason Lewis, an Indigenous scholar and artist —  that captures this sentiment beautifully:

[T]he human brain is a station on the radio dial; parked in one spot, it is deaf to all the other stations … the animals, rocks, trees, simultaneously broadcasting across the whole spectrum of sentience) 

It’s a rich insight, and one that resonated with the artists we interviewed who work with cells, bees, or AI systems.  Yes, this is a speculative domain, and it takes significant effort to cast off centuries of assumptions about the nature of the world, of hierarchies of agency, and of our own status.  And the work that we explored and artists we interviewed more often than not interrogated the possibilities of equivalency, even if not necessarily accepting it as a given.  Agency is not uniform, and we are certainly not equating human agency with that of a slime mold.  But acknowledging the possibility of agency of whatever kind, and attempting to work with and learn from other entities (rather than simply using them) seems to be a fundamental part of redefining our relationship to the world.  So yes, we are open to and even share a healthy skepticism even as we share a willingness to explore and consider new relationships with non-human entities. 

 This is an extraordinarily provocative and important area.  As the global climate catastrophe continues to force increasingly difficult ethical choices upon us and and our delegated policy makers, entertaining notions of ‘equivalent agency’ and attempting to co-create with non-human actors takes on an urgent character.  These engagements offer ways to help us to think through our relationship with the world at a make-or-break moment.  Fast accelerating developments in machine learning, on the other hand, offer an equally pressing motivation to consider both the limits of human agency and the potentials and pitfalls of co-creation.  Carrot or stick, this domain offers ample incentive to learn from the creative process as we work with non-human entities.

Can you say a bit about how collaborative processes shaped the development of the report itself?  

This report went through many iterations, and grew and grew… into a study of over 250 pages, ‘authored’ by two people, co-authored by twelve people, based on conversations with 166 people, developed in group discussions with many more, and all subject to an extensive and iterative review process.  We are very aware of the hybrid form of the report’s authorship, on one hand hewing to academic and institutional requirements for attribution, responsibility, and ultimately transparency regarding the choices that a text like the report represents.  It is, ultimately, authored.  On the other hand, we wanted the report to reflect structurally as much of the ethos of co-creativity as possible.   We thought a lot about the process, and did our best to be inclusive, to listen deeply, to create space for autonomy, and to learn.  

We originally intended to produce a short, 50-70 page white paper, based on a few phone interviews with key people in the field. But we realized after our 60th interview that not only did we need many more voices, but that the report might best work as a documentary rather than synthesis. We moved towards a polyvocal approach, with many quotes, less “narration”, and diverse and sometimes even opposing perspectives on any given theme that we identified. We sought to be more democratic in the editorial process, as well. We asked some of our interviewees to develop their interviews into longer chapters. We also organized group conversations at five key events in Europe, Canada and the US, where we presented some of the key findings from our early research (such as the definition, the principles, some of the charts and frameworks). We integrated those ideas, critiques and quotes into the study. We held a symposium in September 2019 at MIT structured around the themes, and had twelve facilitators lead breakout sessions which were also integrated into the study. One main critique that emerged from the symposium was the centering of Artists of Color in the conversation about co-creation. In response, we asked five artists of color to hold a recorded conversation about the history and legacy of co-creation in communities of color. We also had an intense review process, including peer review, and we shared the draft with all interviewees for their comments/suggestions. Finally, the publication itself is a “work-in-progress” both as a series at IMMERSE, and on the new MIT Press PubPub platform, which invites readers for comments and feedback to nurture a living, breathing document.

What do you see as the next steps for your center? How do you plan to address some of the issues your report identifies? 

We identified six key recommendations in the study, all of which are also helping to guide the next steps for our Co-Creation Studio. We are spending the next few months focussing on outreach with the report, in many different settings, such as a celebration of co-creative works in VR at the Venice Film Festival, and in festivals such as Banff, IDFA in Amsterdam, Leipzig, and more. We have organized key strategic events to share the findings, we are in conversation with educators, institutions, foundations and organizations on how to get the word out, but we are also listening deeply to the responses to the report.  

Beyond outreach, we are also committed to the deployment of our findings in the report and to testing and sharing the results.  In this regard, we are thrilled to host a Mozilla Fellow for the first time ever at the Co-Creation Studio, starting this Fall.  And we have developed a number of workshops to enable us to work closely with various creators and questions, and to explore tangible deployments of co-creation in radically different settings. 

The needs identified in the report include creating a hub for co-creation tools, resources, and curriculum modules; working with institutions to support process over product in their funding and evaluation models; researching new business models for collective ownership such as co-operativism. Our biggest next step is the incubation of co-creative projects. In the coming year, we will redouble our efforts to host workshops, develop labs, and support various collections of work with partners, all the while hoping to research and share what we learn along the way.

Katerina Cizek is a two-time Emmy-winning documentarian working across emergent media platforms. She is the Artistic Director of the Co-Creation Studio at MIT’s Open Documentary Lab. Recently, she wrote (with William Uricchio and 12 co-authors) a ground-breaking field study on co-creative practices in the arts, journalism and documentary, entitled Collective Wisdom. As a documentarian for over a decade at the National Film Board of Canada, she helped redefine the organization as one of the world’s leading digital content hubs, with the Filmmaker-in-Residence and HIGHRISE projects. Both community-based and globally recognized, these two ground-breaking serial and digital projects garnered: a Peabody award, a World Press Photo Prize, 3 Canadian Screen Awards, amongst others. Cizek has forged unconventional, co-creative partnerships with such diverse organizations ranging from an inner-city teaching hospital to Mozilla Foundation, to The New York Times. Her projects are also interventionist, and co-creative: they have significantly contributed to conversations about health-care policy, urban planning as well as the health outcomes and living conditions of the participants themselves. Cizek’s earlier human rights documentary film projects have instigated criminal investigations, changed UN policies, and have screened as evidence at an International Criminal Tribunal. Cizek's films include the Hampton-Prize winner Seeing is Believing: Handicams, Human Rights and the News (2002, co-directed with Peter Wintonick), In Search of the African Queen: A People Smuggling Operation (1999, co-director), and The Dead are Alive: Eyewitness in Rwanda (1995 editor, co-writer, narrator). She is frequently invited to travel internationally to teach, advise and share innovative approaches to the documentary genre, emergent media and journalism.

William Uricchio revisits the histories of old media when they were new; explores interactive and participatory documentary; writes about the past and future of television; thinks a lot about algorithms and archives; and researches cultural identities and the question of "Americanization" in the 20th and 21st centuries. He is Professor of Comparative Media Studies, Principal Investigator of the MIT Open Documentary Lab, and faculty director of the MISTI-Netherlands Program. He is also Professor of Comparative Media History at Utrecht University in the Netherlands and has held visiting professorships at the Freie Universität Berlin, Stockholm University, the Georg-August-Universität Göttingen (Lichtenberg-Kolleg), China University of Science and Technology, and in Denmark where he was DREAM professor. He has been awarded Guggenheim, Humboldt and Fulbright fellowships and the Berlin Prize; and was Holtzbrinck Fellow at the American Academy in Berlin. His publications include Reframing Culture; We Europeans? Media, Representations, Identities; Media Cultures; Many More Lives of the Batman; and hundreds of essays and book chapters, including a visual "white paper" on the documentary impulse (momentsofinnovation.mit.edu). He is currently completing a book on the deep history and possible futures of documentary; and another on games and playing with history and historiography after post-structuralism.

Collective Wisdom (Part III): An Interview with the Open Documentary Lab's William Uricchio and Katerina Cizek

You write, “To present co-creation within media as a re-emergent practice without explicitly acknowledging the long-standing co-creative approaches practiced by communities of color, doesn’t simply erase their work, it undermines the very tenets of co-creation.” Explain.

At its core, the idea of co-creation seeks to reconcile systemic power and singular authority. This fundamental principle extends beyond the creative process within media making, compelling all of us to interrogate fundamental ideas of ownership, meaning-making, attribution and—if we optimize the potential of co-creation—realize a more just society.  Context matters, and as we said earlier, we need to be mindful that in co-creating we are part of a long standing human tradition.  However, particularly in the West, co-creation has been occluded by an extractive economic order.  This is embedded in euro-centric legal language and metaphors: consider ‘intellectual property’ in which revenues accrue to the owner, but not necessarily the maker, in the form of ‘royalties’. That extractive economic order was at its most rawest and visible in the experiences of enslaved people, whose lives, labor, and creativity were someone’s property.   

Throughout this, co-creation has thrived at the margins.  But precisely because of this position, dominant cultures have tended to ignore the history of co-creation especially within communities of color.  There are so many unacknowledged keepers of the flame. 

With this larger imperative in mind, we developed a chapter of the report that seeks to provide an introduction of the long-standing co-creative practices within communities of color. The function of this chapter is to begin mapping the history of co-creation within communities of color in the U.S., to explore non-institutional power, innovation, and co-operation amongst media makers of color, and to unpack the un-calculated costs and labor of deep co-creation processes. 

Thomas Allen Harris, filmmaker, and co-author of the chapter states: “This benign neglect, often due to the work’s resistance to certain stereotypical narratives, resulted in its marginalization so that today some can speak about co-creation as something new, without feeling the responsibility to find and cite precedence within media makers of color that have long been ignored by the mainstream. The result is a kind of a painful double negation. So as we revisit or re-package the concept of co-creation, it’s important for us to interrogate our power relationships and our motivations vis-à-vis process, community as well as outcomes.” 

I was struck by how many of the examples illustrating your best practices come from indigeneous media makers around the world. Are some cultures more accepting and accommodating of co-creation than others? What does this suggest about larger social shifts which might be needed for the full potentials of co-creation to emerge in industrialized western cultures? 

We argue that western, eurocentric, and extractive media-making practices have dominated the scholarship, the institutions, and the models of the way we understand media-making.  Identifiable authorship and intellectual property ownership have been joined at the hip since the advent of capitalism and the industrialization of culture.  These notions are not only embedded as norms, but they are systematically enforced through things like education, the promotion and tenure process at universities, the pathway to careers in the arts, and of course the legal system.  Paradoxically, the very conditions that have marginalized Indigenous peoples in this system have also to some extent exempted them from this trap.  

The global Indigenous Renaissance (expressed in film, arts, literature and scholarship) is a guiding inspiration to funding alternative structures and models to singular authorship. It has a rich tradition of co-creation to fall back on, and that legacy is now being recognized and finding support.  In Canada, where I am based, a recent (2015) Truth and Reconciliation Commission into the century-long Indigenous Residential School system has recommended a reframing of the relationships between Indigenous communities and government as “nation to nation.” The 94 recommendations and models to de-colonize institutions, epistemologies, and methods of creating provide important models for fulfilling the potential of co-creation. 

So yes, some cultures -- especially those most marginalized within the current order of things -- offer uninterrupted legacies of  alternatives such as co-creation.  As noted earlier, co-creation has even served as a survival and resistance strategy for many communities.  And our field study makes amply clear that it can provide a robust alternative to exploitative and extractive behaviors, offering the rest of us a survival strategy as well. 

You are right to point to the need for larger social shifts in the Western industrialized world if the real power of co-creation is to be unlocked.  Casting a glance across the planet at the start of the third decade of the 21st Century, amidst the climate crisis, with tensions between globalization and nationalism, between governance and sovereignty, between fascistic authority and radical self determination, and the myriad contestations of identity, suggests that dramatic social shifts are already underway.  It’s a frightening moment, because those shifts are earthquake-like in their power and capable of destroying much of the civilizational infrastructure that sits atop deep fault-lines.  But it’s also an opportune moment if we are alert enough to mitigate disaster, to rethink the way -- to extend the metaphor -- that we build, and distribute resources, and live.  So the changes that are disrupting some of our industries, that have led to anxieties and intolerance in our populations, and indeed, that have degraded the very ecosystem that we all inhabit may well expose the frailties and limits of the Western industrialized world sooner than we think.  The critique of late capitalism is a familiar one.  We hope that the tremors snap us out of the same old extractive and exploitative behaviors, and incentivize us to be more thoughtful about our interdependencies with the greater world.  In this sense, we see co-creation as a methodology that offers hope and meaningful ways to build trust and a common future.

Over the 20th century, the art world has been organized around individual, “personal” expression and community-based projects often get treated as “crafts” rather than “art.” What work needs to take place as collaborative artists seek more recognition for their collective accomplishments? 

Work needs to take place at several levels. We spoke earlier about the debate over process and product, and said that the nature of the process bears heavily on the product, especially now that tools and access are within reach of more people than ever before.  And we noted the growing insistence, especially within community media groups, to make sure that the work gets out.  There are a couple of strategies that might be deployed in tandem.   

We might consider ways of tapping the status quo evident in existing hierarchies of taste, in the traditional mechanisms that give it form (galleries, cinemas, museums, festivals, etc) and offer long-accepted ways to have work valorized.  So let’s press for more inclusivity, but with a twist. 

Hank Willis Thomas suggested in our interview that we need to build a canon for co-creative work. We need to recognize that co-creation can produce high quality art, film, media and journalism. We need to acknowledge and recognize this work, this canon. Then we need to support the funding and evaluating process rather than concentrating merely on product. We need to create pathways for funding development, and relationship building.  If you consider the work of organizations like the Ford Foundation, such work is already afoot.  And Ford’s president, Darren Walker, has been quite explicit about using the ample residues of 20th Century industry to support these new -- and one might even say, post-industrial -- criteria, pathways, and opportunities.  Another encouraging sign in this regard is the growth of art museums that specialize in non-attributed and non-canonical forms, whether ‘outsider’ or Indigenous; and encouraging as well is the growth in existing museums of collections of the same.   

Another strategy involves re-envisioning our place in the world.  We mentioned earlier that history sometimes seems more concerned with retrofitting the present onto the past, than exploring the past for new insights about the present.  Until recently, much the same thing could be said about a discipline like anthropology: it often seemed more concerned with investigating the Other as a way of confirming our own position, than as an opportunity to challenge our assumptions about ourselves.  Fortunately, change has been afoot here as well, and with it, much greater openness to learn from the experiences and lives of those long relegated to the margins.  With this recentering will necessarily come a reappraisal of the norms (like single authorship) that we too often take for granted.  In museums around the world, paintings that were once asserted as acts of individual genius (Rembrandt, Reubens, Caravaggio, take your pick) have slowly become ‘complicated’ by the fact that the master’s hand may only have painted a face or two, while his minions did the rest.  This acknowledgement is important, and although still contained by the old aesthetic regime, it is moving in a direction increasingly compatible with collective work. 

Institutions, schools, foundations, organizations, broadcasters, media production companies, and non-profits all need to invest in development and understand that it pays off in the quality not just of the art, but the larger social implications. We need to give people a chance to become better co-creators, by sharing skills and resources on how to listen, collaborate, and move away from ego-driven methods to collective ones. 

As you note, co-creation can and has been “misused for profit and power.” How can people identify which relationships are exploitative before they decide whether or not to participate? 

We inhabit a moment when some of our fastest-growing media organizations rely on user-generated content (think YouTube or FaceBook).  Like massively multi-player games or social media, without ‘us’ -- our content and our data -- there would be no business.  So it’s not surprising that these organizations and platforms like them invest considerable energy into making their users feel like part of the community.  Yet for all of the emphasis on the social, on collaboration, and even, increasingly, terms like co-creation, the user base is ultimately harvested and rendered into a source of profit for stockholders.  These developments have been muddying the waters, making it difficult to discern exactly what these terms entail. 

So yours is a great question, and fortunately there is a pretty simple answer.  When we see a project that identifies itself as “co-creation”, it’s important to examine who has governance of the project and who benefits from the project. What are the terms of agreement? If these issues are not clear, not transparent, then we need to interrogate and ask deeper questions about why they’re not transparent. The keys to co-creation are the relationships, and the overt discussion, articulation, and identification of  power, ownership, finances, decision-making and creative control in a project. If those discussions are absent, or not available, then it’s probably not co-creation.

You drew some interesting parallels between world-building as a process in science fiction and in documentary. My readers will likely be much more familiar with world-building in science fiction. What are some of the ways that world-building is influencing documentary production?  

As the old certainties of what’s real and what’s not (or in the jargon du jour, what’s ‘fake’) fade into a dim memory, people in the ‘reality business’ have been a lot more attentive to crafting and articulating their vision of the world, not just assuming that it will be accepted.  Journalists and documentary makers have been using a battery of tactics to demarcate their space, including world-building strategies borrowed from fiction.  In fact, historians (also chroniclers of the real) have routinely reveled in world-building, and their endeavors show how crucial such scenography is to the particular historiographic spin that they put on the past. World-building enables their project, supports it, renders it obvious.  So, too, with documentarians.  The days of building an argument on the basis of an assumed understanding of the world are fast fading.  And particularly at a moment of hyper mediatization, creating a fabric of cross references to other media representations and working with the narrative conventions of the moment are essential ways to construct a frame of reference that audiences can comprehend and navigate.   

World-building is relevant in a different way for documentarians working in the immersive space, where entire environments or “worlds” are literally created, whether in the form of VR, games, AR, mixed reality, theatre or other spatial experiences.   And we are slowly figuring out how argument, narrative, and representation operate in these worlds.  In a VR experience, where the user is free to look pretty much anywhere and explore the depicted world, should we fall back on storytelling techniques derived from film, that is, a directed vision? Or are we better off encouraging the user to explore, find the dots, and connect them in their own way, much as they would in the real world?  The answer has important implications for what, precisely, gets communicated.  And this emergent situation resonates with some of the issues we have addressed with co-creation.  Should master storytellers ‘tell’ and audiences ‘listen’? Or should world-builders working in these media collaborate with world-explorers to ‘enable’ various possibilities, paths, and experiences?  

Worlds are colliding, so to speak, as genres intertwine in these new contexts, as they are enabled by new modes of production, and as they are targeted to audiences / collaborators with new frames of reference.

Katerina Cizek is a Canadian documentary director and a pioneer in digital documentaries. From 2008-2015,Cizek directed the National Film Board of Canada's Highrise series on life in residential skyscrapers, including the 2010 world's first 360 degree web documentary Out My Window, winner of the inaugural IDFA DocLab Award for Digital Storytelling at the International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam and an International Digital Emmy for best digital program: non-fiction, and the 2011 webdoc One Millionth Tower, which lets users explore a highrise complex in 3D virtual space, as Toronto residents re-imagine their neighborhood. Cizek collaborated with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology's OpenDocLab unit to develop the final production in the Highrise project called Universe Within. As part of MIT’s Visiting Artists Program, she worked with scholars and apartment residents to ask how new technological forms are reshaping personal lives in suburban high-rise communities. She is currently heading up a new research and production initiative at MIT Open Documentary Lab.

William Uricchio revisits the histories of old media when they were new; explores interactive and participatory documentary; writes about the past and future of television; thinks a lot about algorithms and archives; and researches cultural identities and the question of "Americanization" in the 20th and 21st centuries. He is Professor of Comparative Media Studies, Principal Investigator of the MIT Open Documentary Lab, and faculty director of the MISTI-Netherlands Program. He is also Professor of Comparative Media History at Utrecht University in the Netherlands and has held visiting professorships at the Freie Universität Berlin, Stockholm University, the Georg-August-Universität Göttingen (Lichtenberg-Kolleg), China University of Science and Technology, and in Denmark where he was DREAM professor. He has been awarded Guggenheim, Humboldt and Fulbright fellowships and the Berlin Prize; and was Holtzbrinck Fellow at the American Academy in Berlin. His publications include Reframing Culture; We Europeans? Media, Representations, Identities; Media Cultures; Many More Lives of the Batman; and hundreds of essays and book chapters, including a visual "white paper" on the documentary impulse (momentsofinnovation.mit.edu). He is currently completing a book on the deep history and possible futures of documentary; and another on games and playing with history and historiography after post-structuralism.

Collective Wisdom (Part II) An Interview with the Open Documentary Lab's William Uricchio & Katerina Cizek

What do you see as the core ethical commitments that need to shape co-creative media-making? What happens to co-creation when those ethical commitments are not in place

The people that we heard from in the field offered numerous lessons to help ensure that ethical commitments shape creative work and working relationships. They range from deep listening and dialogue, to building specific contracts such as “Community Benefit Agreements,” to focussing on project sustainability, to healing from trauma at individual and community levels rather than just focussing on media as an end-product, to plain old transparency.  In the report, we’ve distilled them down to ten lessons. 

While co-creation has a proven track record of negotiating and helping to suture divides, and while the results generally emerge as greater than the sum of their parts, it’s also important to note that co-creation can also be abused, and certainly, as you pose it, when its ethical commitments are not in place. Participants in the study warned that co-creation could:

●     Threaten editorial integrity and artistic independence.

●     Heighten expectations of trust, commitment, and time on all sides.

●     Marginalize makers and their work by categorizing them into the sub-genre of community media, especially artists of color.

●     Have unintended consequences, especially online and with AI.

●     Exploit labor, steal ideas and profit from them.

●     Be co-opted for the marketing of projects that reproduce power inequities.

These are not insignificant dangers.   Tools, alas, can be used properly or improperly; they can do good or ill; and while the collective nature of co-creation gives it a strong inclination to serve many needs rather than the desires of a few, we nevertheless need to stay alert to the possibilities of exploitation and abuse.

From the start, you make the case that co-creation is not a new idea, that it dates back to pre-historical petroglyphs, so what factors give a discussion of co-creation a new urgency today? What makes this a “new” or “emergent” (or at some points, re-emergent) space, as you also suggest many times here? 

To the extent that Google’s ngram viewer offers an insight into trends, the term ‘co-creation’ has grown exponentially over the past twenty or so years. There’s more than enough hype to go around, but, indeed, the practice is not new. Throughout history, we have evidence of co-creation as the norm.  As we noted earlier, it was the cultural operating system behind the development of our languages, religions, music, stories and more. But like undergrowth in a forest, it was overshadowed by the trees of single-authorship, which prospered in the West during the Enlightenment and emerged as a privileged form with the institutionalization of intellectual property.  Eager to envelop single authorship in precedent, its proponents retrofitted the model onto the co-creative work of the past, casting about for attribution and searching for individuals to credit and in the process overwriting alternative modes of creation.  History sometimes seems more concerned with retrofitting the present onto the past, than exploring the past for new insights about the present.   Nevertheless, co-creation practices, even if described by industrial era cultural arbiters as ‘folkish’ or ‘amateuristic’ or ‘craft’, have continued to offer alternatives to projects sparked by single-authored visions.  One of our goals in this report was to discover and learn from this long-marginalized cultural work. 

Today, we face the perfect storm of a pervasively mediated culture, a new generation of networked technologies, deep fissures in the social order, and an increasingly urgent search for alternatives.  Re-enter co-creation.  Co-creation has been newly enabled by the very same technologies and behaviors that intellectual property holders lament as eroding their business models.  Long present in marginalized communities where it offered a means of survival, it is moving into the mainstream where today it offers the hope that we can work together, build trust, and minimize exploitation.  OK - we have seen some of that potential deflected into the pseudo-social media as a new business model. But conditions are also ripe for more equitable co-creative practices. 

Co-creation is increasingly recognized in such areas as education, healthcare, technology and urban design. And although each of these and other fields have distinct approaches, fundamentally co-creation is an alternative to—and often a contestation of— a singular voice, authority, and/or process. Further, within digital infrastructures, the lines between audiences, subjects, and makers are blurred, and often erased. 

So the new-found relevance of co-creation might be argued technologically, through the pervasive spread of networked media; it might be framed economically and politically, with the weakening of legacy center-to-periphery models and the rise of distributed alternatives; and it might be positioned socially, with the weakening of traditional centers of cultural authority, the amplification of long-suppressed identities and epistemologies, and the ensuing tensions in the social fabric.  There is plenty of evidence in the form of today’s platform industries to suggest that those with an interest in power have found ways to harvest our collective impulses on both technological and political-economic fronts, using them for profits and control.  We need to critique that, and embrace more robust, equitable, and relevant alternatives such as co-creativity.  But our study also revealed significant progress and promise on the social front, as an enabler of trust through creative collaboration, but also as a resource and site of strength particularly for marginalized communities. 

What are the strengths of a co-creative approach for dealing with “the complex problems we face in the 21st century”, such as climate change? 

Well, one thing is for sure: the complex problems we face in the 21st century are too big for the narrow perspective of our top-down, discipline-bound, and often mutually-exclusive legacy systems! Overwhelmingly, co-creative veterans name the climate crisis as a top priority, to be tackled from the ground up. Complex problems need large teams, diverse and wide-ranging perspectives; and solutions are often found in the communities that are impacted most by the problems. Julia Kumari Drapkin of ISeeChange connects dots of data with stories, from the ground up to the sky, using NASA’s satellite images.

She states:

“Climate change is so large and big and coming at us from such large amounts of time and space. We need to be drilling down into the specifics of how a community is experiencing it and what's causing it. It's that tangible community context that allows solutions to happen, that allows the journalism to happen.” 

“The world is so complex now,” said Patricia Zimmermann, adding:

It's so interconnected, the problems of the Anthropocene and global climate disruption, the problems of poverty, the problems of racism, immigration, the problems of nuclear disaster, the problems of underfunding health care around the world, the problems of clean water. The majority of the world does not have clean water. One person cannot make a film about any of that, it's impossible. It's too complicated to do alone. When I look at these individualistic models, I don't see a lot of energy in these projects at all. They feel formulaic to me. 

“Will it really matter what we create, whether it's a project or an initiative, if we don't have clean air to breathe?” asked Opeyemi Olukemi, further stating:

If we don't have water to drink? If we have a series of superbugs that start to kill off entire populations? Not just to create, but to be responsible and have people realize that we are entering new territory and that this is a possible way to help address and stem the damage of what is coming down the pipeline. 

The anthropologist Anna Tsing has developed the concept of collaborative survival. Co-creation can likewise provide a set of methods and techniques to pursue that hope, and to distribute resources and governance more widely.  Precisely through its embrace of multiplicity, its attention to the experiences of people, and its concern all of us rather than special interests, co-creation offers broad-spectrum approaches to complex problems.  

You seem to suggest that with co-creation, the process may be more important than the outcome. In what sense? 

This is a big debate amongst those we interviewed, and our discussions have evolved over time.  Process, of course, can be transformative.  It’s where the dynamics of collaboration and co-creation play out.  It’s the space where people reveal themselves, where relationships can be built, where learning and skills are exchanged, and where trust can grow.  Process is the enactment of the social, the generator of the legitimacy that we spoke of earlier.  And we’ve placed great emphasis on process in the report because, just as we are trying to recover co-creation from the taken-for-grantedness of the single author, so too ‘process’, which we are trying to recover from a culture preoccupied with ‘product’.  And just as this by no means entails a rejection of single authorship and attribution (it’s the dominant, we’re just trying to give some attention to an urgently needed alternative), so too product.   Outcomes obviously matter as well, and not just in the sense of the “product” of the media, but also the “product” of its impact.  Indeed, it’s fair to say that many media makers are frustrated with the weight placed on deliverables over outcomes in conventional funding and evaluative models. Co-creators suggest that when we place more emphasis on process, on the dynamics of conception through execution through impact, we end up making better, more relevant and thoughtful work.  

In the 20th century, some co-creative projects, such as the National Film Board of Canada’s Challenge for Change program, insisted on the primacy of process over product.  An organization famed for its high-quality products, the NFB could occasionally afford to be indulgent about process, and be celebrated for it.  But for many other groups, especially community media organizations, the situation was historically different.  For decades, community-based media work was associated with low-quality aesthetics and unrefined narrative structures.  Makers were confronted with difficult issues of access to expensive equipment, processing, training, and more.  And while the experiences of media-making and the process of working across a community were often transformative, the outcomes tended to stay at a very local level.  In some cases, community media ‘products’ even conjured up derogatory associations.  

That sentiment seems to have changed, and thus the ‘big debate’ that we mentioned.  Now that media tools are more accessible, and high-quality visuals and narratives are more ubiquitous, and now that alternate distribution networks have enabled near-global reach, co-creators have become far more insistent about creating attractive and engrossing products.  They want to be heard and make a difference beyond their communities, in addition to enjoying the transformational benefits of process.  As paige watkins of DNA commented during a group discussion:

If you want the product to actually have impact past the choir, past the people who already understand what we're talking about and are agreeing with our values […] it has to be competitive up against the harmful things that are getting maybe more money or more resources. 

“Projects emerge from the process,” is how Heather Croall, director of the Adelaide Fringe Festival, summed up co-creation in the 21st century. For most co-creative teams, it’s not one or the other.  Product and process are complementary.

Katerina Cizek is a two-time Emmy-winning documentarian working across emergent media platforms. She is the Artistic Director of the Co-Creation Studio at MIT’s Open Documentary Lab. Recently, she wrote (with William Uricchio and 12 co-authors) a ground-breaking field study on co-creative practices in the arts, journalism and documentary, entitled Collective Wisdom. As a documentarian for over a decade at the National Film Board of Canada, she helped redefine the organization as one of the world’s leading digital content hubs, with the Filmmaker-in-Residence and HIGHRISE projects. Both community-based and globally recognized, these two ground-breaking serial and digital projects garnered: a Peabody award, a World Press Photo Prize, 3 Canadian Screen Awards, amongst others. Cizek has forged unconventional, co-creative partnerships with such diverse organizations ranging from an inner-city teaching hospital to Mozilla Foundation, to The New York Times. Her projects are also interventionist, and co-creative: they have significantly contributed to conversations about health-care policy, urban planning as well as the health outcomes and living conditions of the participants themselves. Cizek’s earlier human rights documentary film projects have instigated criminal investigations, changed UN policies, and have screened as evidence at an International Criminal Tribunal. Cizek's films include the Hampton-Prize winner Seeing is Believing: Handicams, Human Rights and the News (2002, co-directed with Peter Wintonick), In Search of the African Queen: A People Smuggling Operation (1999, co-director), and The Dead are Alive: Eyewitness in Rwanda (1995 editor, co-writer, narrator). She is frequently invited to travel internationally to teach, advise and share innovative approaches to the documentary genre, emergent media and journalism.

William Uricchio revisits the histories of old media when they were new; explores interactive and participatory documentary; writes about the past and future of television; thinks a lot about algorithms and archives; and researches cultural identities and the question of "Americanization" in the 20th and 21st centuries. He is Professor of Comparative Media Studies, Principal Investigator of the MIT Open Documentary Lab, and faculty director of the MISTI-Netherlands Program. He is also Professor of Comparative Media History at Utrecht University in the Netherlands and has held visiting professorships at the Freie Universität Berlin, Stockholm University, the Georg-August-Universität Göttingen (Lichtenberg-Kolleg), China University of Science and Technology, and in Denmark where he was DREAM professor. He has been awarded Guggenheim, Humboldt and Fulbright fellowships and the Berlin Prize; and was Holtzbrinck Fellow at the American Academy in Berlin. His publications include Reframing Culture; We Europeans? Media, Representations, Identities; Media Cultures; Many More Lives of the Batman; and hundreds of essays and book chapters, including a visual "white paper" on the documentary impulse (momentsofinnovation.mit.edu). He is currently completing a book on the deep history and possible futures of documentary; and another on games and playing with history and historiography after post-structuralism.

Collective Wisdom (Part 1): An Interview with the Open Documentary Lab's William Uricchio and Katerina Cizek

Several years ago, I conducted an interview here with William Uricchio, my old MIT colleague, who now oversees the Open Documentary Lab at MIT. The wide-ranging interview was selected for inclusion in my newly released book, Participatory Culture: Interviews, which includes samples from more than 15 years of discussions here about participatory culture, learning, and politics.

When I spoke with William and his colleagues this spring at the Media in Transition conference, they referenced a new white paper, Collective Wisdom: Co-Creating With Communities Across Disciplines and With Algorithms, which the Lab’s website describes as “a first-of-its-kind field study of the media industry that highlights trends, opportunities, and challenges to help advance the understanding and recognition of co-created works and practices—efforts that function outside the limits of singular authorship." We decided we would showcase the launch of this important study with an extended interview on this blog featuring Uricchio and his co-author, the documentary filmmaker Katerina Cizek (Highrise). For those who want to know more about the project, the Open Docs lab shared with me this trailer about their efforts.

The report is being published online via the MIT Press’s new Works in Progress series. They spoke to a massive number of experts — scholars and practitioners who shared with them core insights and best practices that are sure to generation further discussions and inspire future projects.

What do you mean by co-creation and what are some of the forms it is taking at the current moment?

 Co-creation is a complex concept, and we worked hard to pin it down to a precise formulation.  For a documentary maker, it can mean something as simple -- or profound -- as making documentaries with people, rather than for them or about them.  Our report is actually a field study, and in order to move beyond our own experiences, we interviewed some 166 people, discussed our findings with more, and convened in small groups and large.  The more we explored other uses of the concept, the more we discovered. This led us to develop a sharper formulation, which we’ll quote from the report: “Co-creation offers alternatives to a single-author vision, and involves a constellation of media production methods, frameworks, and feedback systems. In co-creation, projects emerge from a process, and evolve from within communities and with people, rather than for or about them. Co-creation spans across and beyond disciplines and organizations, and can also involve non-human or beyond human systems. The concept of co-creation reframes the ethics of who creates, how, and why. Our research shows that co-creation interprets the world, and seeks to change it, through a lens of equity and justice.” 

 As we designed our field study on co-creation particularly with regard to media-making, four main types emerged: within both real-world and online communities, across disciplines, and with humans working with non-human systems. These types of co-creation each have distinct qualities and concerns.

Co-creation within communities is the most commonly identified protocol in the study. While we have separated in-person and online co-creation in order to highlight unique conditions and challenges, most contemporary community projects intertwine both practices. To get a good sense of the report’s scope, it’s worth unpacking each of the categories that we investigated along with the major issues that we considered. 

With face-to-face community based co-creation, central discussions in our interviews revolved around power dynamics and relationships, i.e., who decides the terms of engagement, what media is made and by whom, and why, and who benefits from this type of project. Key concerns included the hidden, unfunded work of co-creation. Artists of color and other historically marginalized groups are often burdened with additional responsibilities not recognized in formal media-making. 

With on-line community co-creation, the blurred boundaries among makers, subjects, and audiences afford new opportunities, but also open up new risks vis-à-vis questions of ownership, governance, and authority. Distinct questions regarding issues of accountability and trust arose with journalism in particular. Additionally, in projects involving emergent media, co-creators often prioritized training, literacy, and community access to expensive and complex technologies, which are considered crucial for inclusion and equity. 

With cross-disciplinary co-creation, teams cross disciplinary lines, institutions, and organizations; and scholars and makers embark on parallel paths of discovery rather than privileging one discipline’s priorities over the other. This often requires comparatively long timelines and shared spaces. Importantly, these projects are frequently partnered with communities outside the academy. Many people interviewed in our report consider that co-creation resides beyond inter-disciplinary space, and prefer the terms trans-disciplinary, or even anti-disciplinary to describe their practices. 

Finally, in a more speculative mode, we interviewed artists, scientists, and provocateurs who are examining the possibilities of co-creation with non-human living systems, artificial intelligence (AI) as well as technological infrastructures. These processes too, de-centralize single authorship, and force us to consider questions about the definition of agency and singularity that ask what co-creating with non-human systems looks like as humans increasingly become entangled within larger systems and infrastructures.

How does the concept of Collective Wisdom relate to other concepts such as collective intelligence and “wisdom of crowds”?

 We share a site of inspiration!  Pierre Levy -- so important to your work in Convergence Culture -- coined the term ‘collective intelligence’ to refer to the shared, group intelligence emerging from the collaboration, collective efforts, and sometimes competition of many individuals, often appearing in consensual decision making. The concept has been applied to bacteria and animals, especially hived insects. Recently, it has been used to characterize crowdsourcing and the potential of computer systems, as explored by MIT’s Center for Collective Intelligence. In our study, we are interested in collective intelligence because it provides us with a system of tools and an established body of thinking. But we’ve chosen to frontload the phrase ‘collective wisdom’ because it goes further, evoking spiritual and philosophical dimensions of course, as well as the very practical questions of how to co-create? why? and why now? 

At its core, the idea of co-creation seeks to reconcile systemic power and singular authority. OK -- it’s pretty far reaching.  This fundamental principle extends beyond media making and compels us to interrogate ideas of ownership, meaning-making, attribution and—if we optimize the potential of co-creation—to do something more: to realize a more just society. And that’s where collectivity and wisdom enter the picture. 

For us, media co-creation is defined by methodologies that offer alternatives to the singular-authored vision, and that seek collaborative routes to discovery.  ‘Collaborative’ and ‘collective’ imply a shared vision and implementation process, rather than simply ceding to the views of the most empowered person in the room.  And for that reason, co-creation offers greater odds of achieving a balanced vision, and even justice.  Our study focuses on things like process, rather than simply privileging product; on changing the world, not simply observing it; and on decolonizing the all-too-familiar top down systems of production.  This shift from ‘business as usual’ emerges directly from the collectivity at the heart of co-creation; and work in this vein is already evidence of the method’s ability to change the world, not just interpret it.   Many of our interviews and case studies on the topic of co-creation revealed the elegance of collective wisdom, that is, a shared and decentralized understanding that, when intentionally channeled, can lead to transformative shifts in people, and with them, culture.#

You suggest many times here a need to “shed old legacy models that have become irrelevant.” Which “legacy models” should we “shed” and in what senses have they lost their relevancy and legitimacy? 

We heard over and over again in our interviews that many of the existing systems for media education, media development, funding, production and distribution are outdated. We heard that these programs reflect the way that media was created or believed to be created in the 20th century, when siloed, center-to-periphery media industries predominated.  People specifically noted the persistence of these models at film schools, journalism programs, museums, technology and science streams at universities, media institutions such as broadcasters, and funding and distribution agencies.  The loss in relevance of this model, and the organizations that continue to hold fast to it, is not news.  Ironically, it is evident even to the industry, as traditional notions of and business models for journalism erode, as new technologies and use patterns pressure ‘content industries’, and as those industries that have figured out how to scratch the itch of collaboration (albeit in a self-serving manner) rise to prominence.  The loss of relevance seems widely acknowledged, even if it is not always acted upon.  But the loss of legitimacy is another story.  Legitimacy serves as the last refuge of imperiled legacy systems, their raison d’etre even when the bottom begins to fall out.  And fortunately for them, the emerging order has yet to sort out its ethical priorities and frames of reference, so the legitimacy of legacy still hangs in the room.   

As legacy media organizations try to figure out what to do in an ecosystem dominated by upstarts like Alphabet and FaceBook, they’re simultaneously scrambling to make sense of, contain, and make use of networked digital culture. The problem is that they attend a little too much to the siren call of SEO, ROI, and whatever’s cooking on the algorithmic front, and underestimate the social dynamics of the changes we are experiencing.  And the social is ultimately the source of legitimacy.   

So at this juncture, legacy organizations are doing their best to grapple with changing conditions, but neither they (who direct their content to the social world) nor the digital upstarts (who make their profits by harvesting the social world) have empowered people (who constitute the social world!).  And that’s where we see the added value of co-creation: its power emerges from its social character, and its fundamental sociality highlights the current crisis in legitimacy.  We’ve argued that co-creation has a long history. It’s intrinsic to the development of our languages, belief systems, and great narratives.  Its current resurgence owes much to the affordances of digital networks as well as the disruption of the status quo.  But at heart, it remains profoundly social.  And its legitimacy ensues from the social dynamics of creativity, from the methods by which vision and power are structured.   

In the report, we’ve taken care to state that our embrace of co-creation does not constitute an attack on authorship (although some of those we interviewed do), or in the context of this question, legacy organizations and their legitimacy.  They occupy an important place in our social encounters with the world, and have values such as attribution that are increasingly important as noise fills the system.   But we are saying that the potentials of co-creation have been for too long occluded by economic and legal systems that privilege concentrations of power.  And especially now that we are seeing an undermining of legacy systems by the distributed logics of social data harvesters, now that things are in flux and uncertain and polarized, we are saying that deeply collaborative modes like co-creation are more important than ever. 

Katerina Cizek is a two-time Emmy-winning documentarian working across emergent media platforms. She is the Artistic Director of the Co-Creation Studio at MIT’s Open Documentary Lab. Recently, she wrote (with William Uricchio and 12 co-authors) a ground-breaking field study on co-creative practices in the arts, journalism and documentary, entitled Collective Wisdom. As a documentarian for over a decade at the National Film Board of Canada, she helped redefine the organization as one of the world’s leading digital content hubs, with the Filmmaker-in-Residence and HIGHRISE projects. Both community-based and globally recognized, these two ground-breaking serial and digital projects garnered: a Peabody award, a World Press Photo Prize, 3 Canadian Screen Awards, amongst others. Cizek has forged unconventional, co-creative partnerships with such diverse organizations ranging from an inner-city teaching hospital to Mozilla Foundation, to The New York Times. Her projects are also interventionist, and co-creative: they have significantly contributed to conversations about health-care policy, urban planning as well as the health outcomes and living conditions of the participants themselves. Cizek’s earlier human rights documentary film projects have instigated criminal investigations, changed UN policies, and have screened as evidence at an International Criminal Tribunal. Cizek's films include the Hampton-Prize winner Seeing is Believing: Handicams, Human Rights and the News (2002, co-directed with Peter Wintonick), In Search of the African Queen: A People Smuggling Operation (1999, co-director), and The Dead are Alive: Eyewitness in Rwanda (1995 editor, co-writer, narrator). She is frequently invited to travel internationally to teach, advise and share innovative approaches to the documentary genre, emergent media and journalism.

William Uricchio revisits the histories of old media when they were new; explores interactive and participatory documentary; writes about the past and future of television; thinks a lot about algorithms and archives; and researches cultural identities and the question of "Americanization" in the 20th and 21st centuries. He is Professor of Comparative Media Studies, Principal Investigator of the MIT Open Documentary Lab, and faculty director of the MISTI-Netherlands Program. He is also Professor of Comparative Media History at Utrecht University in the Netherlands and has held visiting professorships at the Freie Universität Berlin, Stockholm University, the Georg-August-Universität Göttingen (Lichtenberg-Kolleg), China University of Science and Technology, and in Denmark where he was DREAM professor. He has been awarded Guggenheim, Humboldt and Fulbright fellowships and the Berlin Prize; and was Holtzbrinck Fellow at the American Academy in Berlin. His publications include Reframing Culture; We Europeans? Media, Representations, Identities; Media Cultures; Many More Lives of the Batman; and hundreds of essays and book chapters, including a visual "white paper" on the documentary impulse (momentsofinnovation.mit.edu). He is currently completing a book on the deep history and possible futures of documentary; and another on games and playing with history and historiography after post-structuralism.

Fan Materiality and Affect: Interview with Nicolle Lamerichs (Part 4)

Henry

Going back to our discussion earlier of the affective turn in fandom studies, you place a strong focus in the book on the “affective process” of cosplay. For you, this process includes the factors that shape the selection of a character and the ways this choice brings to the surface issues surrounding the body, the social community, and in particular, notions of gender and sexuality. You describe the spaces surrounding cosplay as “restructured around pride and generosity as well as shame and jealousy.” How would you describe the ways that these spaces have evolved to help participants work through some of the affects they are experiencing? 

Nicolle

This is a very relevant question and yes, intervention is sometimes needed. Conventions had to do active work the past years to protect cosplayers and create an inclusive environment. After several incidents, like the “cosplay is not harassment” incidents, conventions started to put up posters with instructions on how to treat cosplayers. Different conventions that I volunteered for myself, such as YaYCon, strengthened their code of conduct and policies. Some conventions have introduced listeners by now to help fans feel protected and safe when incidents emerge. 

The community was also self-regulating to some degree the past years. We held different panels discussed inclusivity and cosplay in Europe. I even sat in with some, for instance a panel on cosplay and age at Animecon moderated by my fellow-cosplay researcher Karen Heinrich. In open conversations and panels, people addressed problematic aspects of fandom.  

Fan conventions can still be problematic spaces, though. That’s why conventions and fans need to make a fist and strive for inclusivity together.    

Henry

Does cosplay necessarily involve identification with the character being constructed? What are some of the other ways that fans might relate to these characters? 

Nicolle

Cosplayers relate to the characters in numerous ways, as my informants showed me. Some choose a character design, rather than a character, because they are looking for a creative challenge. Others cosplay in a group, and choose the character that most befits them or is not taken. Again others make a choice in terms of identity – age, body type. Though you can play with age and size in cosplay, as many do, some want their cosplays to be aligned with their appearance.  

Cosplay is a very versatile hobby, and it’s amazing to see that fans really explore different characters as they continue to cosplay. Some professionalize and engage in competitions, and they also have a very different approach to their cosplay choice. They look for something that can tell a story, be an interesting performance or skit, and the costume should also impress. People often don’t see the share amounts of creativity goes into a cosplay. That is one of the parts that I find most attractive about it, really. There is such a strong creative drive in this community.    

Henry

Cosplay is a rich example of transcultural exchange within an increasingly globalized fan culture. What has changed within cosplay as these practices move back and forth between Japan and the United States? 

Nicolle

I can’t speak for the United States at all, but here are some small insights. Some changes that I observed in Europe the past years is that there is a strong global cosplay community emerging around many different international competitions, such as World Cosplay Summit in Nagoya. There is a tendency to standardize skits more in local competitions, to prime them for bigger, international events. Whether I’m in The Netherlands, Belgium or Germany, I see similar cosplay skits in terms of content and pacing. That used to be very different.  

Furthermore, the fan economy of cosplay is booming. Cosplay and other fan practices are increasingly an economy in their own right. Fan fashion is sold on Etsy, eBay and elsewhere. Some of it is fan-driven, other objects are official cosplays sold by companies. Many online shops have emerged in Europe that sell to cosplayers specifically with specific fabrics and crafting supplies.  

Actual fashion is becoming a lot like cosplay, with high-level brands launching collections inspired by popular culture. This fashion sometimes caters to a very privileged audience and may exclude the fans, which I write about in the edited collection Sartorial Fandom which will come out next year. I look forward to that book a lot since it will offer different perspectives on costumes, accessories and fashion, and their significance in fandom.  

Henry

Throughout the book, you offer accounts of different fan conventions you have attended -- each of which represents a somewhat different set of practices, a range of fan identities and materials. What continuities do you see across these fan gatherings, despite the differences you identify? What do these case studies help us to understand about the local particulars of fandom? 

Nicolle

I have learned much about these cultures, but what continues to surprise me most is that all over the world - ranging from the United States to Japan, Germany and the Netherlands - fans find a common ground and expression. Although fan practices emerge in particular local contexts, fans around the world share these creative and social practices. At fan gatherings across the world I see a love for characters, stories and play. But they also mean business, even if the events are fan-driven.  

While these communities are meaningful for many fans, we always need to ask: ‘For which fans?’ I just came back from Worldcon, where Archive of Our Own won a Hugo. The ceremony ended with a “loser party” for those that didn’t get a Hugo, and because the party was full, several authors (including non-binary ones and authors of color) could not attend their own party.  

These communities are not perfect and they draw a specific group that can afford to meet up offline. When I was in Atlanta for DiGRA and Dragon Con, I had a really good chat with the waiter at my hotel. He had spotted my membership, and was a huge geek who had lived in Atlanta all of his life. He was excited to share his favorite films, shows and comics with me. But he also admitted that he had never been to Dragon Con. He simply could not afford it. Hierarchy and privilege are very real in these spaces.  

Henry

You begin the book by saying that you are refusing to create “essentialized” fan identities around issues of race and ethnicity. But this perspective flies in the face of contemporary trends to focus more attention on the ways race and racism shapes the social dynamics of fandom. Can these two approaches be reconciled?

 Nicolle

That’s a very difficult question I’ve been grappling with it a lot this year, believe me. I absolutely think we can find a common ground, for instance through interdisciplinary work and an intersectional approach. I am a social constructivist, and that is also where the argument that you refer to came through, and what’s explained in that section. Again, essentialism is about reduction but I am in favor of looking at all the axes of someone’s identity, including race, gender, sexuality and age. I like to look at each person in an audience as an individual. I want to give a voice to them. This is a big drive in my work.

You are right that we should emphasize race more. Fandom studies is increasingly critiqued for its cultural assumptions, and rightly so. Many fandom studies present an imaginary fan, and hardly spell out what cultures these fans come from. What is presented as a kind of global fan is actually a Caucasian, native English-speaker, most likely from North-America. These assumptions are painful to watch for many fan scholars who come from different countries and traditions, who do spell out that they study Japanese, Indian or Polish fans. Being specific helps, and that has always been my credo. But that perhaps also has to do with the nature of my fieldwork, across many different countries and language traditions. But I think that for everyone in our field needs to spell out which fans they are actually studying.  

You recently had a blog entry by Rukmini Pande that touched upon these issues too. We had a Twitter incident earlier this year, for which I apologized, and I could not stress this more: I wholeheartedly agree with her and I am so sorry that I did not show more empathy. The incident still bothers me, especially since I’m a queer European woman who is so invested in making this field better. And I do believe we can do better in terms of cultural research. Much better. The way forward requires solid research, but also empathy and kindness within our community.  

We need to be kind to each other as we work through a difficult time, globally. No country or region is the same. Because we all struggle with local problems and contexts too, we don’t always zoom out. As I’m writing this blog, the humanities are slowly being defunded in The Netherlands, and every day I worry whether we’ll even media or cultural studies bachelors in the next few years. In such a context, it’s easy to become blind to systemic problems in our field. I have been in survival mode the past few years, and it’s hard to see a future in academia some days.

The way forward requires solid research, but also empathy and kindness within our community. You never know what other people are really going through behind the screen. That’s why we need to be kind.

Dr. Nicolle Lamerichs is senior lecturer and team lead at Creative Business at HU University of Applied Sciences, Utrecht. She holds a PhD in media studies from Maastricht University (2014). In her book Productive Fandom (2018), she explores intermediality, affect, costuming and creativity in fan cultures. Her research focuses on participatory culture and new media, specifically the nexus between popular culture, storytelling and play.

Fan Materiality and Affect: Interview with Nicolle Lamerichs (Part 3)

Henry

Your book can also be understood as part of a new emphasis on materiality within fandom studies. You write, “Stuff – bodies, fabrics, plastic – allows us to tell stories.” What general claims might we make about the ways that fans make meaning and form affective relations with “stuff”? Are there specific sites which become more central to the field as we begin to take materiality seriously as part of our approach. 

Nicolle

Very good question! Stuff, whether it’s merchandise or fabric, has meaning. This can show in multiple things – our relationships with our collections, our fashion and fan apparel, our archives. There’s a certain performativity to stuff – we want these archives and collections to be seen by others. They are closely connected to our fan identity and how we perform that in front of others.  

Stuff is also related to creative practices and media. When a cosplayer chooses a certain fabric to represent a game character, that is an aesthetic choice. Something may seem a “thing” but it is also used as a medium by fans to express themselves. Furthermore, merchandise and stuff embodies the characters that we love. Again, it’s all about affective reception really, it  allows us to form loving relationships with the characters that mean something to us.  

Also, objects can tell stories long after a text is finished. They allow a story to linger or continue in some form. In this sense William’s “post-object fandom” comes to mind. The official object might have ended, but other objects and material will continue to remediate it long after. I personally have a large collection of things related to Saturday morning cartoons, and they bring back that feeling of safety, family and homeliness that I often miss in my life today.   

As for where material culture is best studied, I think some sites do stand out. Theme parks, film sets, signings and fan conventions are highly suitable for a material analysis focusing on different things, from costumes to merchandise. Spaces of commerce are a valuable site too. Again, fandom is increasingly a market place, a space of business. To speak of it only as a gift economy neglects the many corporate practices that influence fandom today. Businesses, stores, and platforms sell fandom as a material culture quite heavily. It’s important to dive deep into what those Funko pops, Red Bubble T-shirts and idol photographs in Japan actually mean to people, what they represent. Objects can be keepsakes and toys, but also tell a wider personal or fannish story.   

Materiality, by the way, is by no means exclusively offline. Even written texts and fan fiction have materiality, which is related to the platforms that they are posted on.  It’s important to realize that even digital content has materiality, from pixels and bites to the algorithms that increasingly shape and filter fandom. You could even create an object-oriented ontology based entirely in virtual worlds, like Ian Bogost did. Objects are increasingly virtual, and the materiality of a like-button or an Instagram picture can also be analyzed.  

Henry

Your book often blurs the boundaries between fans and gamers, boundaries that I have seen heavily enforced by gamers and game scholars. What do we gain by looking at fandom as a “ludic identity”? What happens to foundational ideas in games studies, such as the magic circle, if we incorporate fan practices into our understanding of role-playing games? 

Nicolle

Yes, the first feedback I ever got at a games conference was that I could not call Firefly role-players “fans”. They were “players”. Scholars indeed police the boundaries of fields that in my experience could learn from each other and are adjacent to each other. Speaking from this specific case-study, not all Firefly role-players I investigated were fans, but the concept of “fan” allowed me to unpack their affective, social and creative relations to the story world. Calling them a player or a gamer seemed far too general for me, since they were working in an existing story world and remixing it heavily. In other words, their live-action role-play was analyzed a fan practice in my work and this interpretation led to new insights. I used “fan” as a concept to better understand what they do.  

Ludic identity can be applied to many phenomena we see today – eSports, cosplay, live-streaming play. To some extent, fandom can even be read as a space that always requires play to come up with new versions of beloved texts and characters. Some forms of ludic identity today are highly complex ones. I would argue that we see different participatory cultures emerge that bridge fan/gamer identities, for instance, the audience of a Dungeons & Dragons live-stream on Twitch. They are an audience, some might be fans, some role-play in other groups themselves. Or consider fans of The Adventure Zone, a Dungeons & Dragons podcast with a massive following. Some listeners have started role-playing because they enjoyed the show so much, others got inspired to create a podcast themselves. Can we have a ludic identity without being a participant of the play, while being outside of the magic circle?  

Game theory can learn a lot from fan studies and vice versa. The magic circle and ideas of transformative play map on to fandom, to some extent at least. A cosplay is a form of dress-up and pretend play that could be framed as part of the magic circle. But as you know, I am also very critical of magic circle as a concept. Within game studies, the concept of the magic circle has been heavily critiqued, and rightly so. Games and play are not separate from the everyday but are deeply embedded in other social contexts. The magic circle? There is no such thing, and if there is, it’s very porous. In reality, games affect everyday life and what happens in games can have lasting effects. Gaming can create loving communities, just like fandom, but marginalization is a fact. Speaking for myself, I haven’t outed myself as a woman in online games for ages, because some of these spaces are brutally toxic.  

Game studies, similar to fan studies, made the objects that it studied look beautiful for a long time. It didn’t want to discuss games as addictive or toxic spaces, partly to justify the existence of the field. Through incidents like Gamergate and recent shootings in the USA, for instance, we have realized that we have come to terms with the fact that pop-culture can also mobilize people for the worst. This is something we need to study, and I think fan/game studies can draw a lot from each other when studying participatory cultures as they are, both the good and bad.   

Henry

You stress “cosplay is less about developing or performing a character and more about constituting a visual resemblance with it.” What are the implications of stressing the visual in discussing cosplay as oppose to reading it through a performance studies lens? 

Nicolle

Both go hand in hand in my work, but the attention to visual and material culture brings attention to the craft. It moves attention from the performance and scene to the fabrics, the creative process, the visual aspects of the hobby and the places.

This is needed, because cosplay is not just a performance. It has performative elements, certainly at the end, but it’s also a complex affective trajectory. For most of my informants, the enjoyment was in creating the outfit and living up to the moment of wearing the costume. The craft mattered as much as the performance at the end. Only using performance as a word neglects that cosplayer is highly creative – s/he often also recreates the outfit and models in it. This is a very personal fan creation.

Performativity is a part of that, but the process involves so much more than that. That’s why I call it an “affective process” – it constantly develops and it consists of different stages. From the costume creation to the performance in a masquerade to a photo shoot, we can ask about different affects: What’s the affective relationship with characters, the convention space, with parts of the outfit, and even with our sewing machine?  

Cosplay is a network of different actors, and the individual performance is part of that. The recent book on cosplay by David Hancock and Garry Crawford dives deep into it as an art form and as design. That resonates with me as well. Cosplay is art, visual culture, storytelling, play and performance condensed in one hobby.

Dr. Nicolle Lamerichs is senior lecturer and team lead at Creative Business at HU University of Applied Sciences, Utrecht. She holds a PhD in media studies from Maastricht University (2014). In her book Productive Fandom (2018), she explores intermediality, affect, costuming and creativity in fan cultures. Her research focuses on participatory culture and new media, specifically the nexus between popular culture, storytelling and play.

Fan Materiality and Affect: Interview with Nicolle Lamerichs (Part 2)

Henry

You draw heavily here on ideas from reception theory to explain the repertoires which fandom bring to bear on their favorite texts. Reception studies and fandom studies have existed in parallel for many decades now. What do they have to teach each other?

Nicolle

Indeed, reception theory resonated with me early on in my academic career, and I’m specifically interested in reader-response theory. When I was an undergraduate studying cultural studies and literature, the emphasis was always on texts and formal criticism. Somehow we felt that as academics, we had the best reading of texts. Since I had been active in fandom for a long time, that always seemed strange to me.

When my supervisor borrowed a copy of Wolfgang Iser’s Der Akt des Lesens, I was sold. During my various trips to the library, I dove deep into the reception theories of Jonathan Cullen to Monika Fludernik amongst others. Reception theory foregrounds the actual reading practice and how personal consuming media really is. It is always connected to our competences, repertoires and imagination. This theory helps understand how media fans situate their readings and interpret narrative blanks. It enables us to pay attention to each individual person. What I find so valuable about this theory is that it allows us to get specific. There is not one ideal reader or fan in these theories. Rather, each reader or consumer is considered unique in this theory.  

What follows is that each interpretation is personal and different and shaped by our history, identity and worldview. This resonates with me. I don’t think there is one formal close-reading possible of any text. Fans see very different things in texts. When I went to the Lion King with friends, some of us were impressed and nostalgic, while others were disgusted by the style, aesthetics and Disney’s business model of constantly remixing their own products. We see different things in texts that are shaped by our culture, political views, and personal taste. That’s also where a fandom can clash heavily, which we have seen in the reception of films like Star Wars: The Last Jedi.  

Being on one level with the fans and readers is what I find highly attractive about  many reader-response theories. Like other audiences, I rely on my competences. I do not have a position of privilege or a “preferred” reading to offer. I just provide a context. That is not to say that I do not offer close-readings in my work, but I offer them in a humble way, and often by relating a text to other texts, and its culture of production.  

Henry

Your book can be understood as part of a larger process of fan scholars shifting focus onto the affective dimensions of fan experiences and identities. As a first generation fandom scholar, I often found it difficult to talk about the emotional dimensions of fandom for two reasons: 1) a lack of theoretical resources for discussing affect more generally and 2) an anxiety that a focus on affect would keep alive the image of the fan as irrational in their response to media texts. What has shifted in terms of these two issues which makes an affective turn in fandom studies more possible and desirable? 

Nicolle

Those are good points. As for the first, there is such a wealth of affective theory that discusses affect in general terms. You could draw from the philosophical tradition - Descartes, Deleuze and Guattari, Massumi. These are solid readings, but their understanding of affect is very ontological. More practical is feminist work of Sara Ahmed and Lauren Berlant, for instance. Phenomenology could be another entry point, especially if you are interested in the role of the body, with leading thinkers like Sobchack. Finally there is social-constructivist work on affect which is very concrete, and shows how affect is constructed through certain activities. Thinkers like Hennion and Gomart truly inspire in this sense.  

By now there is more work on affect emerging in our field and adjacent fields (e.g. queer studies). Some fan scholars might also find their way to affect via fan studies itself, for instance through Grossberg’s work. However, I would always recommend looking beyond fan studies and engaging with different studies on affect from different fields.   

As for your second point, this anxiety around stigmatizing fans is still there in many fields. I worked at some departments where my concern with affect and emotional reception was mocked. Depending on what university you work at, you will still see an interest that gravitates towards formal readings and “proper” criticism. Affective reading has been seen as a fallacy in literary studies for a long time. The ideal reader maintains his distance and thereby his critical disposition. Fans themselves however show that affective reading does not exclude criticism. They discuss and evaluate texts, remix, socialize, and immerse themselves in the text deeply. All these practices go hand in hand for them, why should we be any different as academics?  

That being said, these ideas of “emotional fans” are sticky ones, also in fandom. Male fans are quite prone to casting themselves in the role of a critic. For instance, when I asked a few male fans about shipping during an interview, I was mocked: ‘Shipping is such a stupid word, and we don’t care about romance.’ For a deeper reading on how affective and transformative fan practices are policed, I recommend Suzanne Scott’s Fake Geek Girls. Fans are not stigmatized, emotions are, women are. It’s up to us to feed back into academic and popular discourses and provide a full picture. But just dodging emotions, including the negative and toxic emotions that many fans shape their identity around, is not the way.  

Fandom is big and mainstream by now. It is at the forefront of culture, politics and digital communication. Simply making fans look great, distant, and “rational” is not the solution. Neither should we keep augmenting their creativity and activism. We need to tell it as is. Fandom is not beautiful. Fandom involves a lot of disaffect, hate and marginalization. Let’s focus on the lived experience of fans, rather than staying so concerned with justifying our field.  

Henry

A focus on affect, for example, justifies your emphasis on the centrality of characters to fan engagement with specific texts. You write, “television characters can be understood as embodied vessels of thes desires. The reception of fans and producers shows a love for reintroducing characters and deepening them. That is not surprising. Real emotions, after all, are not triggered by events, but by the characters who endure them, the memorable individuals like Sherlock Holmes whom we learn to know and

love time and time again.” Do characters need to be psychological rounded or realist in order to generate these forms of affective commitments? Or can a character function simply as a trigger for emotional responses? Why does fan fiction tend to push towards an understanding of the hidden motives and psychology of fictional characters as compared with their construction in the source material? 

Nicolle

I love that you bring up characters! Indeed, characters are key. Fans identify with them, speculate about them, embody them. Today’s characters are fascinating to study. They come in many forms and media, and are often deeply embedded in different transmedia contexts. In a way these characters are highly “networked”, which I discuss often with my colleague Lukas Wilde from Tubingen University. When different transmedia products seemingly contradict the characters and their development, clashes happen. Think of the debates around how Luke Skywalker was portrayed in The Last Jedi.  

I don’t think a character needs to be particularly round to generate affect. The flat characters that we often see in manga and anime fandom (many of which are mascots or tropes) are just as beloved by fans as characters like Hannibal Lecter. Some characters are definitely triggers. Cute characters like Hello Kitty or Mickey Mouse might be good examples. Their cuteness generates ideas about youth and childhood, but can even a bit eerie.  

Characters feel real to fans. In other words, they have “emotional realism”, which Ien Ang has also written about. Even if a plot line is outrageous, we want characters to make choices that make sense to us. Characters have a sense of realness or “experientality”, to use Monika Fludernik’s concept. They are not actually real, but as readers we like to  think about them as if they are real. In fandom, this reality and reasoning of the characters matters. When they behave out of character, or when there is dissonance, fans either distance themselves from the work or psychologize the characters very deeply. 

Characters are central to fandom and affective reception. I’d love to bring more character studies to our field, to be honest!

Dr. Nicolle Lamerichs is senior lecturer and team lead at Creative Business at HU University of Applied Sciences, Utrecht. She holds a PhD in media studies from Maastricht University (2014). In her book Productive Fandom (2018), she explores intermediality, affect, costuming and creativity in fan cultures. Her research focuses on participatory culture and new media, specifically the nexus between popular culture, storytelling and play.

Fan Materiality and Affect: Interview with Nicolle Lamerichs (Part 1)

Having shared the syllabus for my Fandom Studies PhD seminar last week, and stressed there the importance of work that moves race to the center of our understanding of the field, I wanted to use this week to stress some other important developments in the field of fandom studies. Nicole Lamerichs’s new book, Productive Fandom: Intermediality and Affective Reception in Fan Cultures, embodies at least four key trends that seem important to me, each of which will get discussed over the next four installments,

First, she represents the greater emphasis on the national specificity of fandom. Too often, early work — my own included — reads Anglo-American fan culture as “universal” or at least was not especially interested in its cultural specificity. Lamerichs, however, introduces a specifically European (and more particularly Low Country) vantage point within fandom studies, More than that, her interest in games and anime fandom encourages her to think about transcultural exchanges. A strength of her book are a series of ethnographic observations of different fan conventions and the cultural contexts within which they operate.

This focus on local particulars grows out of a second trend she represents — a shift back towards the physical world after several decades of emphasis placed on on-ine fandom. Of course, more and more, we recognize the complex integration that occurs across our physical and virtual lives, but she’s pushing us to reconnect with what we are missing about the material aspects of fandom.

And I see this focus on materiality as leading to a third concern with bodily performance. She is part of a growing emphasis in the field on cosplay, fan fashion, and the use of textiles as a means of expressing fan identities. Some of this has to do with bringing performance studies more decisively into conversation with fandom studies and some of it has to do with connecting fan studies with interests in fashion and craft

Finally, her work points to a larger and overdue engagement with affect studies within our field. In my own early work, I pushed back against the emotional dimensions of fandom in favor of what Matt Hills called the cognitive dimensions, though I still contend that the study of meaning is linked to the idea of meaningfulness which for fans has to do with affect as well as cognition. But we lacked the rich vocabulary for thinking about affect that has emerged across disciplines in recent years. I am excited to see some of that language begin to find its ways into fandom research.

Lamerichs is not alone in any of these interests, but her work makes serious contributions on each of these levels. And I am using this interview to focus attention on these significant developments.

______

I want to start with a series of questions that pull to the surface some of your core methodological and theoretical choices here. In both your introduction and conclusion, you stress your focus on materially grounded -- rather than digital -- forms of fan experience. What do you feel has been lost as fandom studies, from your perspective, has placed too much emphasis on online identities and experiences?

 Nicolle

That is an important question and at the heart of my work. By emphasizing the online spaces of fandom, often exclusively, we have painted a narrow picture of what contemporary fandom is about. In my experience, media fandom is highly affective and moves betwixt and between different online and offline spaces. Such heterogeneous groups that are best studied by a mixed method approach. Depending on what aspect of fandom we study, our methodology includes offline spaces.  

In our field, there has been a heavy focus on specific practices, such as digital fan fiction, but fandom has a lot to offer. Doing research in offline spaces allows us to examine the communities and identities of fans, their art, embodiment and feelings. Material culture is an entry point to study these different creative practices, hierarchies and stories in the flesh. All kinds of creative practices can be influenced by our fan identity, from crafting, knitting and eating to fashion.  

Materiality allows us to focus on objects, and through those objects, on identities. For instance, I interviewed cosplayers in costume at fan conventions. They showed me parts of their outfits and explained how they created them, and what they meant to them. But I could also focus on what the convention means to them as a place. Physical spaces such as a convention are places of imagination -  they bring together locations, stories and people. Scholarship on media tourism also emphasizes this, by paying attention to spaces like theme parks or film sets. Space can be sold and marketed to fans.  

That brings me to the point that material culture is not neutral, but deeply related to consumer culture as well. We live in an increasingly complex fan economy that has been unpacked by Benjamin Woo and Lincoln Geraghty, for instance, who did work around shops and collector practices. Fandom is not just a gift economy, but a neoliberal market. In this sense, the offline does not exist in a vacuum but constantly intersects with business, media and platforms. The global gig economy of Amazon and Uber is a great example. It goes beyond the digital and shapes the way we organize our cities and infrastructure. Such a rapidly changing datafied society requires constant interdisciplinary work and reflection.  

Henry

You describe yourself as coming from a European perspective. What are some of the ways that this vantage point informs your choices and conclusions here? For example, you did a case study of Dutch fans of Sherlock.  Many of the fans you discuss seem to possess strong cross-cultural competencies, which are consistent with claims about how the internet has led to new forms of pop cosmopolitanisms. In what ways did local knowledge come into play here? Would some of these findings have been different in, say, a country like Turkey which has a more influential local media industry and greater forces seeking to isolate local fans from transnational and transcultural currents? 

Nicolle

I am happy that you bring up culture, and cross/trans-cultural competences. Cultural dynamics is one of my favorite topics. I am happy that it is increasingly getting attention in fan studies. The work of Lori Morimoto and Bertha Chin stands out in this regard, for instance.  

You refer to the Sherlock case-study, which was a reception study of the text, based on a focus group and interviews. Questions about the text itself, the context and characters were key here. What I found was that fans mobilize their Dutch competences and repertoires when interpreting BBC Sherlock. Their interpretation of the canon and corpus cuts across cultures, but also heavily draws from their local culture as well. Sherlock is compared to different Dutch detective shows and genres, to other European detective shows such as Tatort, to tease out what makes it essentially English and foreign.  

Countries have unique fan practices, interpretations, and ways of communicating in fandom. If we’d launch a similar study in Turkey, we’d find different forms of communication, creativity and  activism, shaped by, for instance, its political landscape and media landscape. Sometimes there are legal and social restrictions as well. Think about Russia, where some of the fan fiction scene takes place underground, as our colleague Natalia Samutina once pointed out to me.   

Fandom is far from global, even though some concepts travel and spread widely. We need to be specific about cultural practices, including politics. Participatory culture can be a force for change, as you showed us, but can also lead to toxic messages spreading fast. As fan studies scholars, I feel we need to share our insights especially in these difficult times. 

Henry 

You describe your approach as grounded in “geek feminism” in contrast to the aca-fan perspective. What are some of the defining traits of “geek feminism” and how do they manifest themselves in your work? 

Nicolle 

The viewpoint of “geek feminism” promotes critical online and offline activity that supports women and brings about change. The term was coined by Mary Bucholtz to outline a theoretical and socially engaged stance informed by the legacy of feminism while retaining geek identity. She defined it as a “social practice”, continuously influenced by different social spheres. I felt that “geek” fitted me and the people that I study. The cosplayers in my book, for instance, were not always hardcore fans of one particular genre, but rather interested in Japanese pop-culture as a whole. Geek connotes enthusiasts and hobbyists, and even suggests a particular life-style that swirls around internet or gaming capital.  

Geek feminism requires a specific research stance as well – for me, it’s about seeing research as a constant dialogue, and being inclusive and specific in your studies. It also points to the affective relationships between me and my informants. I see my research as a dialogue to bring European voices to this field. This stance is innately tied up with my identity as a woman and “geek girl”, a type of fan that is often discredited in the industry and by male gate-keepers. Suzanne Scott’s Fake Geek Girls discusses the identity of the geek girl in a very clear and accessible way, I really recommend her work in this sense. The identity of the female geek is re-invented through these commercial paradigms. She is often overlooked or excluded as a creative fan that operates outside of the media industry. 

Working as a geek feminist also means that I give back to fandom in different ways. I chaired the LGBTQ+ convention YaYCon in The Netherlands for the past ten years, and took care of critical panels and content as well. Each year we do critical and informative panels on what it means to be asexual, trans or a fan of color in fandom. I was also part of an expertise team for an inclusive exhibition on cosplay (Character Building) in Rotterdam last year at MAMA. We arranged this exhibition as live creative space where non-white, non-binary and queer cosplayers made their costumes. Inclusivity and love are key values of MAMA. That’s the kind of work I do on the side and I believe it matters.  

In other words, being a geek feminist mean that  you are committed to making change in a constructive and positive way.   

Dr. Nicolle Lamerichs is senior lecturer and team lead at Creative Business at HU University of Applied Sciences, Utrecht. She holds a PhD in media studies from Maastricht University (2014). In her book Productive Fandom (2018), she explores intermediality, affect, costuming and creativity in fan cultures. Her research focuses on participatory culture and new media, specifically the nexus between popular culture, storytelling and play.

Harry Potter Fandom in an Illiberal Democracy

I am always on the look out for research which can shed light on the diverse forms participatory culture takes around in the world and in particular, the impact participatory culture has on the political realm (what my collaborators and I like to discuss as The Civic Imagination.) I was, thus, pleased to receive email this summer from a scholar in Hungary — Tibor Desswffy — who is doing research on the ways Harry Potter is being deployed in political struggles within his country, which he describes as “an illiberal democracy.” I have circled around the example of Harry Potter both in my own scholarly writing and on this blog, including a report on the forms Harry Potter fandom was taking in Russia and an interview with Andrew Slack, who was then a leader in the Harry Potter Alliance. When I read the draft of his scholarly essay, I asked if he could write a shorter summing up of the key findings to share here with the readers of my blog.

Harry Potter Fandom in an Illiberal Democracy

Tibor Dessewffy

Life in an illiberal democracy, anything but boring. Recently, for example, I run into a plea from Márton Békés, "Gramsci is ours - read it, interpret it, use it!" Békés is not a marginalized left-wing thinker - just the contrary. He is the Director of Research at the House of Terror, a Disneyland kind of history museum, which aim to display the crimes of the twentieth century.

The House of Terror is a central institution for the construction of Orban's cultural hegemony. Its visit is strongly recommended to schools by the government and when May 2018 Steve Bannon flew into Budapest to give an invitation-only lecture, a visit to the Terror House was squeezed into his busy schedule. But the Museum  also represents significant disproportionality: while the Hungarian collaboration with the Nazis, that leads to the deportation and mass-murdering of 600 000 Hungarian Jew occupies two rooms, the crimes of the communist era are portrayed in 22.

Thus Békés, who holds several other positions besides being an instrumental part of the House of Terror, is an important right-wing ideologue whose fascination with Gramsci draws attention to a strange feature one can observe throughout Europe: while the left is almost completely devoid of striving to create hegemony, the virulent right-wing demagogic populism is building consciously and successfully in this area.

This is surprising when one considers the fact that, in the diverse world of popular culture there is a marked presence of highly successful texts that could help to strengthen a liberal progressive worldview. For the sake of simplicity, here I will focus on just one element of this, often elaborated in the literature, the Harry Potter universe. The reason for this choice is that the Potterverse's popularity, value, and political activism are well documented in the academia. (following the inequalities in the scientific world, these are primarily demonstrated in the Anglo-Saxon context)

In contrast, in Orban’s Hungary, there is almost no social activism. This is partly because the regime, is very conscious of preventing the emergence of such movements, and although not with Putin’s or Erdogan’s brutality crashing them down. But in the all-encompassing apathy, two further questions arise and our research focuses on answering these.

 1. How popular is Potterverse in Hungary? After all, although it would contradict to our intuition, in principle, these messages may resonate less in Hungarian society.

 2. If the answer to the previous question is that Harry Potter, is indeed, popular in Hungary then maybe the values, ambitions, and activities of the fandom differ from international experience, like for instance, in the often discussed case of the Harry Potter Alliance.

Therefore, we need to examine the activity repertoire and preferences of the Hungarian Harry Potter fandom. Here we embarked on an innovative methodological development: we tried to reconstruct these preferences from public pages in the social media. (Although, I find the potentials of this method very exciting for cultural research, I won't discuss that here.)

1 Looking at the popularity of the Harry Potter universe, we find that Harry Potter is not just popular, but in fact, its public reception is overwhelming.

A glance at the Hungarian fan fiction site, Merengő, underscores this. Merengő was established in 2004 and fifteen years later it has 17. 341 fanfictions by 4,462 authors. The single biggest category books, with 7486 fanfictions, where fans wrote further chapters and books related to their beloved bestsellers. What we find here are the conservative authors who best embody the values ​​of the governing party that seeks to establish a cultural hegemony are hardly exist at all. On the contrary, the list of books that top the rankings of novels that have inspired the most efforts to weave the storyline of the original further looks as follows: Game of Thrones 63; Twilight 370; and Harry Potter 6,923 pieces of original fanfictions!

This stunning level of activity can be explained in part by the fact that Harry Potter is not the only popular among active and creative fans in Hungary - the series has a vast social base. According to a survey of reading habits, JK Rowling is the most popular author among Hungarian teenagers today who tends to cite Harry Potter as their favorite book. That is why it is no exaggeration to claim is not a single novel or work of fiction that is capable of generating a reading fever on par with that unleashed by Harry Potter, which has emerged as a shared experience of an entire generation. ”[1]

Actually, Hungarian government policy evokes an awareness of Harry Potter's popularity and has reacted to it: The State Secretariat for Education, Rose Hoffmann, justifies the introduction of a new uniform and centrally mandated elementary school curriculum by arguing that "significant changes can be expected, "Harry Potter is slowly taking the place of János vitéz [one of the classic pieces of Hungarian literature]."[2]

2 Thus, we can assert that even under the conditions of illiberal democracy, the popularity of Harry Potter is undiminished.

 It is important to stress that in the prevailing Hungarian situation the values exuded by the Harry Potter universe can be of substantial interest. What we seek to explore is how the Harry Potter series, which openly espouses the values of tolerance, acceptance, and social openness, can be so successful in a social context where right-wing political attitudes, national pride and anti-migration views continue to be typical of young peoples – who are at the same time also broadly characterized by political apathy and a basic commitment to democracy.

Therefore, we investigate how this value disposition correlates with other political/public affairs affinities. We researched interests, affinities, and actives patterns as they can be reconstructed from public Facebook activities. A huge advantage of this method as compared to the standard survey methodologies is that through its use of digital footprints it provides the analysis with data taken from actual online behavior.

 In the forthcoming paper, we present the preferences and attitudes of the 14,200 anonymized Facebook users from 35 Harry Potter relevant platforms, who were included in the sample we generated for our social media analysis.

One observation about the users with an affinity for Harry Potter is that they exhibit a high level of non-party related political activity, as 85% of them were active in our on some Facebook page, group, or event involving a public affairs issue. This ratio was very high compared to the average Hungarian Facebook users (the overrepresentation score, compare to the average Facebook users, was 26). Half of the users with Harry Potter affinity (50%) were active on the platforms of political parties, which is also higher than the Hungarian average (the overrepresentation score was 15) 

We also examined how active Harry Potter fans were on the pages of civic organizations, social movements, as well as charity and welfare organizations. The analysis reveals that based on their Facebook footprints, 40% of Harry Potter fans are active on charity-related Facebook pages, which is also rather high compared to the often-mentioned general apathy of Hungarian society. (the overrepresentation score was a 4). We also observed that 35% of them are interested in civic organizations, NGOs, or some type of social movement (the overrepresentation score for this segment was a 7).

The analysis of media consumption revealed that the major left-wing/liberal news sites and left-wing political blogs. We observed higher than average levels of activity on the Facebook pages of these media outlets. However, blogs and newspapers heavily influenced by the Orbán government did not score well; the overlap between the target group’s online activity and these sites is 1%. The media consumption patterns of the Harry Potter group demonstrate openness to left-wing/ liberal media and a lack of interest in pro-government news outlets.

Concerning political parties, we can assert is that the group of persons with Harry Potter affinity exhibited manifold and often opposing party preferences. When looking at their activities on the platforms of the various political parties in Hungary, Harry Potter fans were most active on the pages of the Hungarian Two-tailed Dog Party (26%), an anti-establishment satirical party that is extraordinarily popular in the online space and on social media pages. Their most prominent slogan is “Free beer and eternal life for everybody.” It followed by the radical right-wing Jobbik Movement for a Better Hungary  (9%) and Momentum (5%). Even though in polls with a 36% level of support among the youngest cohort of voters, Orbán’s Fidesz enjoys the highest level of support, which makes it all the more striking that we did not see any activities on the part of Harry Potter fans on Fidesz-related platforms.

The Momentum Movement is a small centrist-liberal party that was founded in March 2017, and thus we only had one year’s worth of data on Momentum-related activity in the data collection period (as opposed to the four years of data collection on the other parties).

Summarizing the above, it appears that Harry Potter fans evince not only a high level of interest in public affairs and politics but are also sensitive when it comes to social and welfare-related issues.

These findings are supported by the results of European Value Study. Trust in and the social acceptance of political institutions is at a low point in Western societies and in Hungary even more so, especially among the younger generations.

The basic question we explored in our research was whether being a fan of Harry Potter is correlated with a more open attitude towards public affairs and reflects more active social/political attitudes. Based on the empirical examples examined here, it can be asserted that this relationship unequivocally exists. And even if we can't prove it right now, one of the most important questions in Hungary today is whether these existing values will be able to turn into significant political activism.

The esteemed reader may recall that Momentum, a generational party founded in 2017 that explicitly seeks to attract and represent youths, has generated sufficient online reaction to be measurable in our research despite the lack of a long history. Still, the party failed to reach the parliamentary threshold of 5% in the national election of April 2018. After that failure, they adopted a new strategy, which was leaked to the press. The first point of this new strategy was the “Construction of social ties - creating a Dumbledore Army.”[3] In the European election of May 2019, Momentum achieved a stunning breakthrough when it won 10% of the votes, receiving a spectacular 17% in the Hungarian capital, Budapest.

Tibor Dessewffy, Mikes Mezei: Fandom and Politics in an illiberal democracy (forthcoming: Transformative Works and Cultures special issue on Fandom and Politics March 2020 )

We do not suggest that this particular success owed to their references to Harry Potter, but what we can nevertheless say with certainty is that under the illiberal Orbán regime it was the newcomer party that actively used the Harry Potter mythology to mobilize the Harry Potter generation which generated perhaps the most spectacular unexpected electoral result. As the party chairman, András Fekete-Győr confirmed, “the Harry Potter universe is relevant both as an inspiration within the organization and to successfully reach out to the new generation”.[4] It remains to be seen how far the utilization of Harry Potter narratives will take Momentum in stimulating political activism, and how much impact they will have on Hungary by so doing. But it could be useful as a building block in a Gramscian hegemony and awakening dormant values in society.

Endnotes

[1]  http://www.azenkonyvtaram.hu/documents/11543/34323/toth_mate_-_kozvelemenykutatas_-_3-17_evesek.pdf/e4bc8bac-c8e2-4fc9-a63d-7922d03045a5

 [2] https://index.hu/belfold/2010/08/24/hoffmann_rozsa_harry_potter_kiszoritja_janos_vitezt/

[3] https://24.hu/belfold/2018/08/28/momentum-mozgalom-fekete-gyor-andras-strategia/

 [4] Personal correspondence with the author

Biography

Back to School Special: Transmedia Entertainment

Last time, I shared the revised syllabus for my PhD Seminar on Fandom, Participatory Culture and Web 2.0. Today, I want to share my up-dated syllabus on Transmedia Entertainment. Here, the changes are less dramatic; there has been an explosion of new writing about transmedia among academics and I have incorporated state of the art research into the course readings. But there is nothing as dramatic as a paradigm shift on the level of the debates around race and nationality in fandom we discussed last time.

The core framework has changed very little since the last time I taught the class three years ago, even if the selection of cases and readings has shifted some. I take advantage of our Los Angeles location to bring an interesting mix of speakers to the class, people who are out there doing ground-breaking work and can introduce a grounded perspective to my students. Most of the students who take this class are from the Cinema School, many of them want to break into the mainstream entertainment industry, and the course has developed a reputation as one which helps them to understanding the big picture of how Hollywood is functioning right now.

That said, it is far from clear how much longer the transmedia term will operate in its current form. Academic institutions have embraced it even as it has more and more fallen from use in the entertainment industry. As one of my guest speakers said in our first class session, “there is no transmedia industry; there is only the entertainment industry.” Transmedia perspectives are everywhere and nowhere when we look at what’s happening at, say, Disney+ and the D23 conference a few weeks ago. At the same time, I am starting to see faculty teaching Trans Media classes, which focus on programs like Pose or Orange is the New Black or any number of independent films which take up transgender perspectives. So it isn’t just that the term has lost its meaning in the industry but it is also developing competing meanings within the academy. Something is going to have to give. But for now, here’s what I am teaching this term.

CTCS 482: Transmedia Entertainment

Fall 2017

Tuesdays 2:00-5:50pm

SCA 316

4 units 

Contact Information:

Henry Jenkins

Office: ASC 101C

hjenkins@usc.edu

TA: Jesse Tollison

 Please send all inquiries regarding office hour appointments to Jocelyn Kelvin and questions regarding the course to Professor Jenkins or Jesse Tollison.

 TRANSMEDIA ENTERTAINMENT 

We now live in a moment where every story, image, brand, and relationship plays itself out across the maximum number of media platforms, shaped top down by decisions made in corporate boardrooms and bottom up by decisions made in teenagers’ bedrooms. The concentrated ownership of media conglomerates increases the desirability of properties that can exploit “synergies” among different parts of the medium system and “maximize touchpoints” with different niches of audiences. The result has been a push toward franchise-building in general and transmedia entertainment in particular. 

A transmedia story represents the integration of entertainment experiences across a range of media platforms. Franchises, such as The Walking Dead, Game of Thrones, The Marvel Cinematic Universe, Harry Potter or Riverdale move fluidly across media platforms (television, film, comics, games, the web, even alternate or virtual reality) picking up new audiences as they go and allowing the most dedicated fans to drill deeper. The fans, in turn, may translate their interests in the franchise into concordances and Wikipedia entries, fan fiction, vids, fan films, cosplay, game mods, and a range of other participatory practices that further extend the story world in new directions. Both the commercial and grassroots expansion of narrative universes contribute to a new mode of storytelling, one which is based on an encyclopedic expanse of information which gets put together differently by each individual, as well as processed collectively by social networks and online knowledge communities. 

Each class session will introduce a concept central to our understanding of transmedia entertainment that we will explore through a combination of lectures, screenings, and conversations with industry insiders who are applying these concepts through their own creative practices. 

In order to fully understand how transmedia entertainment works, students will be expected to immerse themselves in at least one major media franchise for the duration of the term. You should experience as many different instantiations (official and unofficial) of this franchise as you can and try to get an understanding of what each part contributes to the series as a whole. 

REQUIRED BOOKS 

§  Andrea Phillips, A Creator’s Guide to Transmedia Storytelling (New York: McGraw-Hill, 2012)

§  Matthew Freeman and Renira Rampazzo Gambarato (eds.) The Routledge Companion to Transmedia Studies (London: Routledge, 2019) (This book is expensive so recommend renting a digital copy at https://www.routledge.com/The-Routledge-Companion-to-Transmedia-Studies-1st-Edition/Freeman-Gambarato/p/book/9781138483439)

§  Ann M. Pendelton-Jullian and John Seely Brown, World Building

§  For the color version: $23.00 - http://www.lulu.com/shop/ann-pendleton-jullian/world-building/paperback/product-23934846.html

§  For the black and white version: $7.00 - http://www.lulu.com/shop/ann-pendleton-jullian/world-building/paperback/product-23934845.html 

All additional readings will be provided through the Blackboard site for the class. 

AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL RESPONSE

For the first assignment, you are asked to write a 5-7 page autobiographical essay describing your relationship to a media franchise that you have found to be personally meaningful. You should use this essay to identify the cultural attractors that drew you to this franchise, to discuss which variants of the franchise you experienced, and to describe any cultural activators that encouraged you to more actively contribute to the fan community surrounding this franchise. Be as specific as possible in discussing moments in the transmedia story that were especially important in shaping your engagement with the property. Make explicit reference to ideas about transmedia and engagement from the readings. This assignment is partially about getting to know you as a transmedia participant and partially about getting you to experiment with the critical vocabulary we’ve introduced so far for talking about transmedia experiences. (Due September 10) (10 Percent) 

EXTENSION PAPER

Write a 5-7-page essay examining one commercially produced story (comic, website, game, mobisode, amusement park attraction, etc.) that acts as an extension of a “core” text (for instance, a television series, film, etc.). You should try to address such issues as its relationship to the story world, its strategies for expanding the narrative, its deployment of the distinctive properties of its platform, its targeted audience, and its cultural attractors/activators. The paper will be evaluated on its demonstrated grasp of core concepts from the class, its original research, and its analysis of how the artifact relates to specific trends impacting the entertainment industry. Where possible, link your analysis to the course materials, including readings, lecture notes, and speaker comments. (30 Percent, October 29) 

FINAL PROJECT – FRANCHISE DEVELOPMENT PROJECT

Students will be organized into teams, which—for the purpose of this exercise—will function as transmedia companies. You should select a media property (a film, television series, comic book, novel, etc.) that you feel has the potential to become a successful transmedia franchise. In most cases, you will be looking for a property that has not yet added media extensions, though you could also look at a property that you feel has been mishandled in the past. You should have identified and agreed on a property no later than Sept. 12th.  [j2] Each week, a designated member from each team should email a brief summary of your progress to Professor Jenkins and Jesse Tollison. Ideally the report will reflect your thinking around that week’s focus. 

By the end of the term, your team will be “pitching” this property. The pitch should include a briefing book that describes:

1.      the defining properties of the media property

2.      a description of the intended audience(s) and what we know of its potential interests

3.      a discussion of the specific plans for each media platform you are going to deploy

4.      an overall description for how you will seek to integrate the different media platforms to create a coherent world

5.      parallel examples of other properties which have deployed the strategies being described 

For a potential model for what such a book might look like, see the transmedia bible template from Screen Australia, available here: http://videoturundus.ee/bible.pdf 

Include only those segments of their bible template that make sense for your particular property and approach. You can also get insights on what a bible format might look like from the Andrea Phillips book. 

The pitch itself will be a group presentation, followed by questions from our panel of judges (who will be drawn from across the entertainment industry). The length and format of the presentation will be announced as the term progresses to reflect the number of students actually involved in the process and thus the number of participating teams. The presentation should give us a “taste” of what the property is like, as well as lay out some of the key elements that are identified in the briefing book. Each team will need to determine what the most salient features to cover in their pitches are, as well as what information they want to hold in reserve to address the judge’s questions. Each team member will be expected to develop expertise around a specific media platform, as well as to contribute to the overall strategies for spreading the property across media systems. 

The group will select its own team leader, who will be responsible for contact with the instructor/TA and who will coordinate the presentation. The team leader will be asked to provide feedback on what each team member contributed to the effort, while team members will be asked to provide an evaluation of how the team leader performed. Team members will check in on Week Six, Week Ten and Week Thirteen to review their progress on the assignment.  

Students will pitch their ideas to the panel of judges on December 3. They should expect to receive feedback from the instructor over the following few days, and then turn in the final version of their written documentation on the exam date scheduled for the class. (40 percent) 

CLASS FORUM/PARTICIPATION

For each class session, students will be asked to contribute a substantive question or comment via the class forum on Blackboard. Comments should reflect an understanding of the readings for that day, as well as an attempt to formulate an issue that we can explore with visiting speakers. Students will also be evaluated based on regular attendance and class participation. (20 Percent) 

WEEK ONE: 

Tuesday, August 27

Transmedia Storytelling 101 

§  Henry Jenkins, “Searching for the Origami Unicorn: The Matrix and Transmedia Storytelling,” in Convergence Culture: Where Old and New Media Collide (New York: New York University Press, 2006), pp. 93-130.

§  Henry Jenkins, “Transmedia Storytelling 202: Further Reflections,” Confessions of an Aca-Fan, August 1, 2011, http://henryjenkins.org/2011/08/defining_transmedia_further_re.html

§  Elizabeth Evans, “Transmedia Texts: Defining Transmedia Storytelling,” in Transmedia Television: Audiences, New Media, and Daily Life (London: Routledge, 2011), pp. 19-39

§  Andrea Phillips, “What’s Happened to Transmedia?” Immerse https://immerse.news/whats-happened-to-transmedia-855f180980e3

§  Henry Jenkins, “Transmedia What?” Immerse https://immerse.news/transmedia-what-15edf6b61daa

§  Christy Dena, “Transmedia Performing Badly,” Immerse https://immerse.news/transmedias-transitions-9c28ef2c5835

§  Caitlin Burn, “Transmedia: Art Forms Created in Real Time,” Immerse https://immerse.news/transmedia-art-forms-created-in-real-time-4943648389a4 

Guest Speaker: Mike Monello is a true pioneer when it comes to immersive storytelling and innovative marketing. In the late 1990s, Monello and his partners at Haxan Films created The Blair Witch Project, a story told across the burgeoning internet, a sci-fi channel pseudo-documentary, books, comics, games, and a feature film, which became a pop-culture touchstone and inspired legions of “found-footage” movies in its wake. It forever changed how fans engage with story and how marketers approach the internet. Inspired by the possibilities for engaging connected fan cultures and communities online, Monello co-founded Campfire in 2006. There, he leads an agency that has developed and created groundbreaking participatory stories and experiences for HBO, Amazon, Netflix, Cinemax, Discovery, National Geographic, Harley- Davidson, Infiniti, and more. Campfire won Small Agency Campaign of the Year via AdAge in 2013 and Small Agency of the Year via Online Marketing Media and Advertising Awards in 2012, and has been awarded top honors at the Emmys, Cannes Lions Festival, Clios, One Show, and MIXX. Monello serves on the Peabody Awards Board of Jurors, and regularly speaks at high-profile events such as Cannes, Advertising Week, SXSW, and more.

WEEK TWO:

Tuesday,  September 3

A Brief History of Transmedia 

§  Matthew Freeman, “A World of Disney: Building a Transmedia Storyworld for Mickey and His Friends,” in Marta Boni (ed.) Worldbuilding: Transmedia, Fans, Industries (Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2017)

§  Justin Wyatt, “Critical Redefinition: The Concept of High Concept,” in High Concept: Movies and Marketing in Hollywood (Austin, TX: University of Texas Press, 1994), pp. 1-22.

§  Jonathan Gray, “Learning to Use the Force: Star Wars Toys and Their Films,” in Show Sold Separately: Promos, Spoilers, and Other Media Paratexts (New York: NYU Press, 2010), pp. 177-187.

 Team Focus: Identifying Your Property 

Guest Speaker: Mark Bartscher is Senior Manager, Games & Interactive, Disney DTCI, Product & Design. He is a digital strategist and executive producer with over 15 years experience developing innovative kids content and products for new media. Working at the cross-section of technology, kids, and storytelling, his passion is to create new ways for kids to engage with the characters and stories they love. His specialties are digital strategy, product development, business development, interactive television, and game design.   

WEEK THREE:

Tuesday, September 10

Producing Transmedia

§  Derek Johnson, “Battleworlds: The Management of Multiplicity in Media Industries,” in Marta Boni (ed.) Worldbuilding: Transmedia, Fans, Industries (Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2017).

§  Brian Clark, “Transmedia Business Models,” Confessions of an Aca-Fan, November 7, 2011 http://henryjenkins.org/2011/11/installment_1_transmedia_busin.html,   http://henryjenkins.org/2011/11/brian_clarke_on_transmedia_bus.html,

http://henryjenkins.org/blog/2011/11/brian_clark_on_transmedia_busi.html

http://henryjenkins.org/2011/11/brian_clarke_on_transmedia_bus_1.html

http://henryjenkins.org/2011/11/brian_clark_on_transmedia_busi_1.html

§  Andrea Phillips, “How to Fund Production Costs,” “And Maybe Make Some Profit, Too,” in A Creator’s Guide to Transmedia Storytelling (New York: McGraw-Hill, 2012), pp. 223-239.

§  Jeff Gomez, “Transmedia Developer: Success at Multiplatform Narrative Requires a Journey to the Heart of the Story”  and Peter von Stackelberg, “Transmedia Franchising: Driving Factors, Storyworld Development and Creative Process” in Routledge Companion  

Team Goal: Finalize property selection 

Guest Speaker: Maureen McHugh’s most recent collection of short stories, After the Apocalypse, was one of Publishers Weekly’s Ten Best Books of 2011.  She has been working in interactive storytelling since 2003 when she was a writer and managing editor for the ARG ilovebees.  She worked on several major interactive projects including Year Zero for Nine Inch Nails.  She’s written interactive narrative for second screen and VR.  She teaches screenwriting and interactive writing at USC.   

WEEK FOUR:

Tuesday, September 17

Media Mix

§  Otsuka Eiji, “World and Variation: The Reproduction and Consumption of Narrative,” in Mechademia 5, 2010, pp. 99-116.

§  Ian Condry, “Characters and Worlds as Creative Platforms,” in The Soul of Anime: Collaborative Creativity and Japan’s Media Success Story (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2013).

§  Mizuko Ito, “Gender Dynamics of the Japanese Media Mix,” in Yasmin B. Kafai, Carrie Heeter, Jill Denner, and Jennifer Y. Sun (eds.), Beyond Barbie and Mortal Kombat: New Perspectives on Gender and Gaming (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2008), pp. 97-110.

§  Mia Consalvo, “Convergence and Globalization in the Japanese Videogame Industry,” in Cinema Journal, Spring 2009, pp.135-141. 

Team Goal: Discuss business model 

Guest Speakers: Professor Cristina Mejia Visperas examines the intersections of race, state violence, and the life sciences, and whose work is deeply engaged in Visual Culture Studies, Science and Technology Studies, African American Studies, and Disability Studies. She is currently writing a book manuscript on the visual culture of postwar medical science research conducted in prisons.

Prof. Visperas holds a Ph.D. in Communication, Science Studies, from the University of California, San Diego, where she previously taught courses on communication, race, and science and technology, and during which time she was also managing editor of the open-access journal, Catalyst: Feminism, Theory, Technoscience (2014-2016). Prior to becoming a communication scholar, Prof. Visperas had been a laboratory researcher in both academic and industry settings, where the focus of her work had ranged from stems cells and parasitic plants to burn injuries and the biochemistry of membranes. 

Hye Jin Lee is a clinical assistant professor at the USC Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism. Lee is also the founder and former editor of Books Aren’t Dead, which is a podcast series for Fembot (fembotcollective.org) that reviews and discusses recent publications by feminist scholars in the field of media, communication, science and technology. Lee holds a Ph.D. in Mass Communication from University of Iowa. At University of Iowa, Lee served as the managing editor of Journal of Communication Inquiry (jci), a peer-reviewed academic journal that focuses on interdisciplinary scholarship in the field of communication and cultural studies. Lee’s primary research focuses on cultural meanings of popular culture and the power struggles (as well as collaborations) between the industry and the fans in the creation of those cultural meanings. Lee’s current research include K-pop industry and global fandom, transformation of cultural meaning, status and content of popular culture when it crosses borders, convergence of social media and television and the gendering of technology.

WEEK FIVE:

Tuesday, September 24

Transmedia Logics: Learning, Activism, and Play 

§  Meryl Alper and Becky Herr-Stephenson, “T is for Transmedia,” Joan Ganz Cooney Center and Annenberg Innovation Lab white paper. http://www.joanganzcooneycenter.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/03/t_is_for_transmedia.pdf

§  Henry Jenkins, “Transmedia Logics and Locations,” in Benjamin W. L. Derhy Kurtz and Melanie Bourdaa (eds.) The Rise of Transtexts: Challenges and Opportunities (New York: Routledge, 2016), pp.220-240.

§  Henry Jenkins, Sangita Shresthova, Liana Gamber-Thompson, and Neta Kligler-Vilenchik, "Superpowers to the People!: How Young Activists Are Tapping the Civic Imagination," in Eric Gordon and Paul Mihailidis (eds.) Civic Media: Technology/Design/Practice (Cambridge: MIT Press), pp. 295-320.

§  Donna Hancock, “Transmedia for Social Change: Evolving Approaches to Activism and Representation” and Dan Hassler-Forest, “Transmedia Politics: Star Wars and the Ideological Battlegrounds of Popular Franchises” in Routledge Companion.

Team Goal: Discuss civic imagination goals for project.

Guest Speaker: Dan Goldman is a writer, artist and activist working in graphic novels, animated TV, video games and digital media. Creator of works like critically-acclaimed works like RED LIGHT PROPERTIES, SHOOTING WAR and PRIYA’S SHAKTI, he designs works of mindful entertainment. His next graphic novel CHASING ECHOES--which follows the children and grandchildren of Holocaust survivors across rural Poland in search of confiscated family land--will be released in November 2019. He lives in Los Angeles where he runs the Kinjin Story Lab with his partner Liliam. 

WEEK SIX:

Tuesday, October 1 (Henry – Out of Country, class taught by Jesse Tollison)

Transmedia Aesthetics

§  Victor Kaptelinin, “Affordances,” The Encyclopedia of Human Computer Interaction, https://www.interaction-design.org/literature/book/the-encyclopedia-of-human-computer-interaction-2nd-ed/affordances

§  Dena, Christy. “Beyond Multimedia, Narrative and Game: The Contributions of Multimodality and Polymorphic Fictions.” New Perspectives on Narrative and Multimodality. Ruth Page (ed.). London: Routledge, 2009. 181-201.

§  Gunther Kress

o   “What is a Mode?” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kJ2gz_OQHhI

o   “What is multimodality?” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nt5wPIhhDDU

o   “How do people choose between modes?” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OvP2sN7MFVA

 Team Goals: Dig deeper into media mix of property

WEEK SEVEN:

Tuesday, October 8

Transmedia Engagement 

§  Christy Dena, “Emerging Participatory Culture Practices: Player-Created Tiers in Alternate Reality Games,” Convergence, February 2008, pp. 41-58.

§  Ivan Askwith, “Five Logics of Engagement,” Television 2.0: Reconceptualizing TV as an Engagement Medium, Master’s thesis, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 2007, pp. 51-150. http://cmsw.mit.edu/television-2-0-tv-as-an-engagement-medium/

§  Andrea Phillips, “The Four Creative Purposes for Transmedia Storytelling,” “Interactivity Creates Deeper Engagement,” “Uses and Misuses for User-Generated Content,” “Challenging the Audience to Act,” and “Make Your Audience a Character, Too,” in A Creator’s Guide to Transmedia Storytelling (New York: McGraw-Hill, 2012), pp.  41-54, 110-126,  137-148, 149-182.

§  Paul Booth, “Transmedia Fandom and Participation: The Nuances and Contours of Fannish Participation” in Routledge Companion.  

Team Goal: Strategies for audience engagement

Ivan Askwith is a cultural strategist and producer, specializing in experience design for digital platforms and fan communities. He has been named one of Fast Company’s “100 Most Creative People in Business” for “knowing how to get fans more of what they want," and described by Wired as “the secret weapon” behind entertainment's biggest crowdfunding successes, where he has raised over $20,000,000 through record-breaking crowdfunding campaigns for Veronica Mars, Reading Rainbow, Super Troopers 2, Mystery Science Theater 3000 and The Aquabats. 

Askwith is also an Executive Producer for Amazon's upcoming animated transmedia series Do, Re & Mi (2020), which aims to help pre-school listeners develop a lifelong passion for music. Previously, Askwith spent several years leading the Digital Media division of Lucasfilm, and several more leading the Strategy group at Big Spaceship, an award-winning digital agency. He was also a founding member of MIT's Convergence Culture Consortium (C3), where he worked with Professor. Henry Jenkins to develop a new model for understanding fan behaviors and motives when engaging with popular culture. 

Rebekah McKendry is a professor at the University of Southern California in the Cinematic Arts Department. She is also an award-winning filmmaker with a strong focus in the horror and science fiction genres. She has a doctorate focused in Media Studies focused on the Horror Genre from Virginia Commonwealth University, a MA in Film Studies focused in Cult Media from City University of New York, and a second MA from Virginia Tech in Arts Education. Rebekah previously has worked as the Editor-in-chief at Blumhouse Productions and as the Director of Marketing for Fangoria Entertainment. She is also a co-host of Blumhouse’s Shock Waves Podcast and founder of the Stephanie Rothman Fellowship for Female Film Students. 

WEEK EIGHT:

Tuesday,  October 15

World Building Part 1

 §  Henry Jenkins, “The Pleasure of Pirates and What It Tells Us about World Building in Branded Entertainment”, Confessions of an Aca-Fan, June 13, 2007 http://henryjenkins.org/2007/06/forced_simplicity_and_the_crit.html

§  John Seeley Brown and Ann Pendleton-Jullian, World-Building 

Team Goal: World Building Workshop 

Professor Ann Pendleton-Jullian is an architect, writer, and educator whose work explores the interchange between culture, environment, and technology.

From a first short career in astrophysics, Professor Pendleton-Jullian has come to see the world through a lens of complexity framed by principles from ecology theory. This, in tandem with a belief that design has the power to take on the complex challenges associated with an emergent highly networked global culture has led her to work on architecture projects that range in scale and scope from things to systems of action - from a house for the astronomer Carl Sagan, to a seven village ecosystem for craft-based tourism in Guizhou province, China - and in domains outside of architecture including patient centered health, new innovation models for K-12 and higher ed, and human and economic development in marginalized populations.

Prior to the Knowlton School she was a tenured professor at MIT for fourteen years. She is also a core member of a cross-disciplinary network of global leaders established by the Secretary of Defense to examine questions of emerging interest.

As a writer, she has most recently finished a manuscript Design Unbound, with co-author John Seely Brown, that presents a new tool set for designing within complex systems and on complex problems endemic to the 21st century. Worldbuilding is one of the most powerful tools within that tool set and has been used in various diverse real world settings, as she will discuss.

WEEK NINE:

Tuesday October 22

World Building Part 2

§  Geoffrey Long, “Creating Worlds into Which to Play: Using Transmedia Aesthetics to Grow Stories into Storyworlds,” in Benjamin W.L. Derhy Kurtz and Mélanie Bourdaa (Eds.) Rise of the Transtexts: Challenges and Opportunities (New York: Routledge, 2016),  pp.139-152.

§  Henry Jenkins, “‘All Over the Map’: Building (and Rebuilding) Oz,” Film and Media Studies: Scientific Journal of Sapientia University, 9, 2014, 7-29.

§  Henry Jenkins, “Matter, Dark Matter, Doesn’t Matter’: An Interview with Lost in Oz’s  Bureau of Magic

§  Mark J. P. Wolf, “Transmedia World-Building: History, Conception, and Construction” in Routledge Companion.

 Team Goal: Focus on World-Building 

Guest Speaker: Danny Bilson is a writer, producer, director and game designer. He is currently Chair of the Interactive Media and Games Division of the School of  Cinematic Arts and Director of USC Games.  In Television, Bilson created and Executive Produced The Flash, The Human Target, The Sentinel and Viper.  He wrote Disney’s The Rocketeer as well as the upcoming Spike Lee Joint Da 5 Bloods, to be released in 2020.  As a senior executive in the game industry Bilson shepherded the Harry Potter, James Bond and Medal of Honor Franchises for Electronic Arts, as well as Saint’s Row, Space Marine, and Red Faction at THQ. He was also a producer on the original “The Sims”, helping to launch that multi-billion dollar franchise. Danny also contributed designs, concepts, and helped prototype Disney’s Star Wars: Galaxy’s Edge. Danny Bilson  has experience developing properties in film, video games, television, theme parks and comic books. www.dannybilson.com.

WEEK TEN:

Tuesday, October 29

Immersion and Extractability 

§  Henry Jenkins, “He-Man and Masters of Transmedia,” Confessions of an Aca-Fan, May 21, 2010, http://henryjenkins.org/2010/05/he-man_and_the_masters_of_tran.html

§  Henry Jenkins, “Harry Potter: The Exhibition, or What Location Entertainment Adds to a Transmedia Franchise,” Confessions of an Aca-Fan, December 14 2009. http://henryjenkins.org/2009/12/harry_potter_the_exhibition_or.html

§  Mark J. P. Wolf, “Immersion, Absorption and Saturation,” in Building Imaginary Worlds: The Theory and History of Subcreation (New York: Routledge, 2012), pp.48-51.

§  Andrea Phillips, “Bringing Your Story Into the Real World,” in A Creator’s Guide to Transmedia Storytelling (New York: McGraw-Hill, 2012), pp. 209-222.

§  Matthew Freeman, “Transmedia Attractions: The Case of Warner Bros. Studio Tour -- The Making of Harry Potter” and Anne Kerchy, “Transmedia Commodification: Disneyfication, Magical Objects and Beauty and the Beast,” in Routledge Companion 

Team Goal: Merch strategies

Guest Speaker: Ivan Lopez is the General Manager of Accelerators for Techstars across the Americas West region. He has over 25 years of global executive leadership experience in business development, marketing and technology. Ivan led teams in mobile technology, fiber optics, cloud services, e-commerce, video streaming, IP licensing, gaming, SaaS, procurement, media and entertainment in North and South America, Europe and Asia Pacific. Prior to joining Techstars Ivan built the strategic partners business for Merch by Amazon creating the largest merchandise print on demand business worldwide working with over 400 major brand partners ranging from YouTube celebrities to The Walt Disney Company In this role he also launched "Merch Collab" which established a global marketplace for fan art with brand creative approval and monetization for both fan designer and brand, a first in the industry. Equally, he advises international talent and celebrities on brand creation across multiple categories that are aligned with their values and personal mission. Ivan holds a degree in Telecommunications Engineering and has completed the Harvard Law School Program on Negotiation (PON) executive training.

WEEK ELEVEN:

Tuesday,  November 5

Seriality and Complexity 

§  Jason Mittell, “Transmedia Storytelling,” Complex Television http://mcpress.media-commons.org/complextelevision/transmedia-storytelling/h

§  Mark J. P. Wolf, “More Than a Story: Narrative Threads and Narrative Fabric,” in Building Imaginary Worlds: The Theory and History of Subcreation (London: Routledge, 2013) pp. 198-225.

§  Andrea Phillips, “Conveying Action Across Multiple Media,” in A Creator’s Guide to Transmedia Storytelling (New York: McGraw-Hill, 2012), pp.  93-102.

§  Frank Kelleter, “Five Ways of Looking at Popular Seriality,” in Media of Serial Narrative (Ohio State University Press, 2017), pp.7-36. 

Team Goal: Segmentation and Story Flow  

Though best known as one of the Emmy Award-Winning Producer/Writers of Lost, and for creating the “The Middleman” graphic novels and television series, Javier “Javi” Grillo-Marxuach is a prolific creator of television, film, comics, essays, and trans-media content. Between 2019 and 2020, Javi will have written and produced shows as varied as The Jim Henson Company’s production of The Dark Crystal: Age of Resistance, and Cowboy Bebop - both for Netflix - as well as the CBS summer series Blood and Treasure, while developing his original pilot Skyborn with Bad Wolf and The Jim Henson Company for UCP. Javi is also co-host and co-creator (with fellow writer/producer/Puerto Rican, Jose Molina) of the Children of Tendu podcast, an educational series which aims to teach newcomers how to navigate the entertainment industry with decency and integrity. Javier Grillo-Marxuach was born in San Juan, Puerto Rico, Spanish is his native language, and his name is pronounced "HA-VEE-AIR GREE-JOE MARKS-WATCH". 

WEEK TWELVE:

Tuesday,  November 12

Continuity and Multiplicity 

§  William Uricchio and Roberta E. Pearson, “I’m Not Fooled by That Cheap Disguise,” in Roberta E. Pearson and William Uricchio (eds.), The Many Lives of the Batman: Critical Approaches to A Superhero and His Media (New York: Routledge, 1991), pp. 182-213.

§  Sam Ford and Henry Jenkins, “Managing Multiplicity in Superhero Comics,” in Pat Harrigan and Noah Wardrip-Fruin (eds.), Third Person: Authoring and Exploring Vast Narratives (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2009), pp. 303-313.

§  Shawna Kidman, “Five Lessons For New Media From the History of Comics Culture,” in International Journal of Learning and Media 3.4 (2012): 41-54.

§  William Proctor, “Transmedia Comics: Seriality, Sequentiality, and the Shifting Economics of Franchise Licensing” in Routledge Companion 

Team Goal: Focus on time table 

WEEK THIRTEEN:

Tuesday, November 19

Subjectivity And Performance 

§  Andrea Phillips, “Online, Everything is Characterization,” in A Creator’s Guide to Transmedia Storytelling (New York: McGraw-Hill, 2012), pp. 83-92.

§  Sam Ford, “WWE’s Storyworld and the Immersive Potentials of Transmedia Storytelling,” in Benjamin W.L. Derhy Kurtz and Mélanie Bourdaa (Eds.) Rise of the Transtexts: Challenges and Opportunities (New York: Routledge, 2016),  pp.169-186.

§  Roberta Pearson, “Transmedia Characters: Additionality and Cohesion in Transfictional Heroes” in Routledge Companion

§  Matthew Weise and Henry Jenkins, “Short Controlled Bursts: Affect and Aliens,” in Cinema Journal, Spring 2009, pp.111-116. 

WEEK FOURTEEN:

Tuesday, November 26 - Teams work on Final Presentations

 WEEK FIFTEEN:

Tuesday, December 3 (LAST DAY OF CLASS) - Final Presentations

Back to School Special: Fandom, Participatory Culture and Web 2.0

As classes start back at the USC campus, I am teaching two of my trademarked courses this term — my PhD seminar in fandom studies and an advanced undergraduate/graduate class on transmedia entertainment. Both are classes that need to be significantly up-dated each time I teach them, so while I have shared syllabi for these classes here in the past, I decided it was worth it to post them again.

Today, I want to focus on the changes I have made in the fandom studies class. As I suggested in introducing Squee from the Margins author Ruckmini Pande last Spring, the field is undergoing some dramatic changes right now as a generation of fan scholars of color are actively seeking to “decolonize” this area of study, pushing a field that has been focused heavily on issues of gender and sexuality to incorporate intersectional perspectives on race and nationality, and in the process of recentering our objects of study, challenging much of the foundational thinking.

As someone often cited as a founding figure or senior statesman in fandom studies, I find myself in a curious position as I bring this new work into the classroom of contributing to a process that is decolonizing some of my own life’s work. I welcome this process, which has been a long-timing coming and which I have long advocated for.

I have kept some classic pieces but for the most part I am teaching new works this semester, much of it from scholars who are at the early stages of their careers. The warhorses are taught in relations to critiques which challenge some of their underlying models and assumptions so that my class will be “teaching the crisis”, working through with my students what this new scholarship means for future developments in fandom studies. Issues surrounding racial and ethnic identity are woven across most of the topics rather than having a special day dedicated to fans of color.

And while I was rethinking race, I introduce the notion of transnational fandom fairly early in the semester so that we place the need to specify which fans in which contexts as a key framing question from the start. In doing so, I am trying to create a space where my students — who are increasingly transnational in their backgrounds — can share their own experiences as fans in Asia, Latin America, the Middle East, Europe, and other parts of the world.

I know I am going to learn a lot from this process, using my students as thinking partners as I work through the implications of this new work. I hope other senior scholars in the field will be doing similar things as they bring this important new work into their classes.

COMM 577 Special Topics: Fandom, Participatory Culture and Web 2.0

Spring 2017

12-2:50pm Mondays

ASC 328

Prof. Henry Jenkins

Please email jkelvin@usc.edufor office hours. 

Sites like YouTube, Flickr, Twitter, and Wikipedia have made visible a set of cultural practices and logics that had been taking root within fandom over the past hundred-plus years, expanding their cultural influence by broadening and diversifying participation. In many ways, these practices have been encoded into the business models shaping so-called Web 2.0 companies, which have in turn made them far more mainstream, have increased their visibility, and have incorporated them into commercial production and marketing practices. The result has been a blurring between the grassroots practices I call participatory culture and the commercial practices being called Web 2.0. 

Fans have become some of the sharpest critics of Web 2.0, asking a series of important questions about how these companies operate, how they generate value for their participants, and what expectations participants should have around the content they provide and the social networks they entrust to these companies. Given this trajectory, a familiarity with fandom may provide an important key for understanding many new forms of cultural production and participation and, more generally, the logic through which social networks operate. 

So, to define our three terms (at least provisionally): fandom refers to the social structures and cultural practices created by the most passionately engaged consumers of mass media properties; participatory culture refers more broadly to any kind of cultural production which starts at the grassroots level and which is open to broad participation; and Web 2.0 is a business model that sustains many web-based projects that rely on principles such as user creation and moderation, social networking, and "crowdsourcing."

That said, the debates about Web 2.0 are only the most recent set of issues in cultural and media studies which have been shaped by the emergence of a field of research focused on fans and fandom. Fan studies:

• emerged from the Birmingham School's investigations of subcultures and resistance

• became quickly entwined with debates in Third Wave Feminism and queer studies

• has been a key space for understanding how taste and cultural discrimination operate

• has increasingly been a site of investigation for researchers trying to understand informal learning or emergent conceptions of the citizen/consumer

• has shaped legal discussions around appropriation, transformative work, and remix culture

• has become increasingly central to discussions of racial representation, diversity, and inclusion within the entertainment industry

• has become a useful window for understanding how globalization is reshaping our everyday lives.

This course will be structured around an investigation of the contribution of fan studies to cultural theory, framing each class session around a key debate and mixing writing explicitly about fans with other work asking questions about cultural change and the politics of everyday life. This term, I have chosen to revise my syllabus to reflect ongoing debates in the field – in particular, a new effort to “de-colonize fandom studies,” to recenter the field around questions of race and nationality as well as its historic focus on gender and sexuality. Together, we will work through the ways that this new work requires us to question and revise earlier formulations of the field. 

Assignments:

• Students will be expected to post regular weekly comments reacting to the readings on the Blackboard site for the class. (20 percent)

• Students will write a short five-page auto-ethnography describing their own history as a fan of popular entertainment. They will explore whether or not they think of themselves as a fan, what kinds of fan practices they engage with, how they define themselves a fan, how they became invested in the media franchises that have been part of theirlife, and how their feelings about being a fan might have adjusted over time. (10 percent)(DueSept. 9)

• Students will develop an annotated bibliography exploring one of the theoretical debates that have been central to the field of fan studies. These might include those which we've identified for the class, or they might include other topics more relevant to the student's own research. What are the key contributions of fan studies literature to this larger field of inquiry? What models from these theoretical traditions have informed work in fan studies? (30 Percent) (Due Oct. 28)

• Students will write a 15-20 page essay on a topic of their own choosing (in consultation with the instructor) which they feel grows out of the subjects and issues we've been exploring throughout the class. The paper will ideally build on the annotated bibliography created for the earlier assignment. Students will do a a short 10 minute presentation of their findings during the final week of class. (40 percent) (Due  TBA)

Readings: There are NO assigned books. All readings are available on course blackboard site.

WEEK ONE: August 26

Defining Terms

§ Jonathan Gray, Cornel Sandvoss, and C. Lee Harrington, "Why Study Fans?" in Jonathan Gray, Cornel Sandvoss, and C. Lee Harrington,Fandom: Identities and Communities in a Mediated World(New York: New York UP, 2007)  

If you have not previously read any of the following, take a look: 

§  Angela McRobbie, “Settling Accounts with Subcultures: A Feminist Account” http://www.hu.mtu.edu/~jdslack/readings/CSReadings/McRobbie_Settling_Accounts_with_Subcultures.pdf

§  Stuart Hall, “Encoding/Decoding” in Simon During (Ed.) The Cultural Studies Reader(London: Routledge, 2007)  https://faculty.georgetown.edu/irvinem/theory/SH-Encoding-Decoding.pdf

§ Raymond Williams, “Culture Is Ordinary” (1958) 

§  Janice Radway, “The Readers and Their Romances,” Reading the Romance: Women, Patriarchy and Popular Literature(Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1984)  

September 2: NO CLASS - LABOR DAY

WEEK TWO: September 9

Fan Studies and Cultural Resistance 

§ John Fiske, "The Cultural Economy of Fandom," in Lisa A. Lewis (ed.) The Adoring Audience: Fan Culture and Popular Media(New York: Routledge, 1992) 

§ Camille Bacon-Smith, "Identity and Risk," Enterprising Women: Television Fandom and the Creation of Popular Myth(Philadelphia: University of  Pennsylvania Press, 1992) 

§ Constance Penley, "Feminism, Psychoanalysis, and the Study of Popular Culture" in Lawrence Grosberg, Cary Nelson, and Paula A. Treichler (eds.), Cultural Studies(Durham: Duke University Press, 1991) 

§ Henry Jenkins, "Star TrekRerun, Reread, Rewritten,” Fans, Bloggers and Gamers(New York: New York University Press, 2006) 

§  Rebecca Wanzo, “African American acafandom and other strangers: New genealogies of fan studies,” Transformative Works and Culture, 2015, http://journal.transformativeworks.org/index.php/twc/article/view/699

§ (Rec.) Stephen Duncombe, “Resistance” in Laurie Ouellette and Jonathan Gray (eds.) Keywords For Media Studies(New York: New York University Press, 2017)

§ (Rec.)  Henry Jenkins, “Negotiating Fandom: The Politics of Race-Bending” in Melissa A. Click and Suzanne Scott (eds.) The Routledge Companion of Fandom Studies(London: Routledge, 2017).

 Auto-Ethnography Assignment Due 

WEEK THREE: September 16

From Engagement to Participation   

§ Mark Duffet, “How Do People Become Fans?” Understanding Fandom: An Introduction to the Study of Media Fan Cultures(London: Bloomsbury, 2013)

§ Rhiannon Bury, “Fans, Fan Studies and the Participatory Continuum” in Melissa A. Click and Suzanne Scott (eds.) The Routledge Companion of Fandom Studies(London: Routledge, 2017)

§ Henry Jenkins, Sam Ford and Joshua Green, “The Value of Media Engagement,” Spreadable Media: Creating Value and Meaning in a Networked Culture(New York: New York University Press, 2013), 113-150.

§ danah boyd, Henry Jenkins, and Mimi Ito, “Defining Participatory Culture,” Participatory Culture in a Networked Era(London: Polity, 2014), 1-31. 

WEEK FOUR: September 23

Tracing the History of Participatory Culture 

§  Robert Darnton, "Readers Respond to Rousseau: The Fabrication of Romantic Sensibility," The Great Cat Massacre And Other Episodes in French Cultural History (New York: Basic, 2009) 

§ Daniel Cavicchi, Foundational Discourses of Fandom” in Paul Booth (ed.) A Companion of Media Fandom and Fan Studies(New York: Wiley Blackwell, 2017).

§ Alexandra Edwards, “Literature Fandom and Literary Fans” in Paul Booth (ed.) A Companion of Media Fandom and Fan Studies(New York: Wiley Blackwell, 2017).

§ Andre M. Carrington, “Josh Brandon’s Blues: Inventing the Black Fan,” Speculative Blackness: The Future of Race in Science Fiction (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. 2016). 

§ Helen Merrick, “FLAWOL: The Making of Fannish Feminisms,” The Secret Feminist Cabal: A Cultural History of Science Fiction Feminisms (New York: Aqueduct, 2019). 

WEEK FIVE: SEPTEMBER 30 

Fan Activism 

§ Neta Kligler Vilenchik, “’Decreasing World Suck’: Harnessing Popular Culture for Fan Activism,” in Henry Jenkins et al., By Any Media Necessary: The New Youth Activism (New York: New York University Press, 2016).

§ Henry Jenkins, Sangita Shresthova, Liana Gamber-Thompson and Neta Kligler Vilenchik, “Superpowers to the People: How Young Activists are Tapping the Civic Imagination,” in Eric Gordon and Paul Mihailidis (eds.) Civic Media: Technology, Design, Practice(Cambridge: MIT Press, 2016).

§ Ashley Hink, “The Nerdfighter’s YouTube Project for Awesome,”  Politics for the Love of Fandom: Fan-Based Citizenship in the Digital World (New Orleans: Louisiana University Press, 2019).

§  Lori Kido Lopez,  "Fan Activists and the Politics of Race in The Last Airbender."International Journal of Cultural Studies 15 (5): 431–45. http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/1367877911422862. 

WEEK SIX: October 7

The Contested Social Dynamics of Fandom 

§ Bertha Chin, “It’s About Who You Know’: Social Capital, Hierarchies and Fandom” in Paul Booth (ed.) A Companion of Media Fandom and Fan Studies(New York: Wiley Blackwell, 2017).

§  Dayna Chapman, “Black Twitter and the Politics of Viewing Scandal” in Jonathan Gray, Cornell Sandvoss, and C. Lee Harrington (eds.) Fandom: Identities and Communities in A Mediated World (New York: New York University Press, 2017).

§  Sarah Florini, “Enclaving and cultural resonance in Black "Game of Thrones" fandom” In "Fans of Color, Fandoms of Color," edited by Abigail De Kosnik and andré carrington, special issue, Transformative Works and Cultures, no. 29. https://doi.org/10.3983/twc.2019.1498.

§  Benjamin Woo, “The Invisible Bag of Holding: Whiteness and Media Fandom” Melissa A. Click and Suzanne Scott (eds.) The Routledge Companion of Fandom Studies(London: Routledge, 2017).

§  Stanfill, Mel. 2011. "Doing Fandom, (Mis)doing Whiteness: Heteronormativity, Racialization, and the Discursive Construction of Fandom." In "Race and Ethnicity in Fandom," edited by Robin Anne Reid and Sarah Gatson, special issue, Transformative Works and Cultures, no. 8.https://doi.org/10.3983/twc.2011.0256

§  Suzanne Scott, “Interrogating the Fake Geek Fan Girl: The Spreadable Misogyny of Contemporary Fan Culture,” Fake Geek Girls: Fandom, Gender and the Contemporary Culture Industry  (New York: New York University Press, 2019).

WEEK SEVEN: October 14

Transcultural Fandom 

§  Bertha Chin and Lori Hitchcock Morimoto, “Towards a Theory of Transcultural Fandom,” Participations, May 2013, http://www.participations.org/Volume%2010/Issue%201/7%20Chin%20&%20Morimoto%2010.1.pdf

§ Miranda Ruth Larsen, “Fandom and Otaku” in Paul Booth (ed.) A Companion of Media Fandom and Fan Studies(New York: Wiley Blackwell, 2017).

§ Bertha Chin, Aswin Punathembekar, Sangita Shresthova, ‘Advancing Transcultural Fandom: A Conversation” in Melissa A. Click and Suzanne Scott (eds.) The Routledge Companion of Fandom Studies(London: Routledge, 2017).

§ Rukmini Pande, “Can’t Stop the Signal: Online Media Fandom as Postcolonial Cyberspace,” Squee From the Margins: Fandom and Race(Iowa City” University of Iowa Press, 2019).

§  Mizuko Ito, “Contributors Versus Leechers: Fansubbing Ethics and a Hybrid Public Space,” in Mizuko Ito, Daisuke Okabe and Izumi Tsuji (eds.) Fandom Unbound: Otaku Culture in a Connected World(New Haven: Yale University Press, 2012)  

WEEK EIGHT: October 21
Performing Fan Identities

§ Ellen Kirkpatrick, "On [Dis]play: Outlier Resistance and the Matter of Racebending Superhero Cosplay." In "Fans of Color, Fandoms of Color," edited by Abigail De Kosnik and andré carrington, special issue, Transformative Works and Cultures, no. 29. https://doi.org/10.3983/twc.2019.1483.

§ Samantha Close, “Fannish masculinities in transition in anime music video fandom,” Transformative Works and Cultures, 2016 http://journal.transformativeworks.org/index.php/twc/article/view/713

§ Rebecca Williams, “Fan Tourism and Pilgrimage” in Melissa A. Click and Suzanne Scott (eds.) The Routledge Companion of Fandom Studies(London: Routledge, 2017).

§ Nicole Lamerichs,”Fan Fashion: Re-Enacting Hunger Games Through Clothing and Design,” in Paul Booth (ed.) A Companion of Media Fandom and Fan Studies(New York: Wiley Blackwell, 2017).

§ Richard Dyer, “Judy Garland and Gay Men,” Heavenly Bodies: Film Stars and Society(London: McMillian, 1986)

WEEK NINE: October 28

Fan Production: Fan Fiction

§  Ebony Elizabeth Thomas, Amy Stornaiuolo,“Race, Storying and Restorying: What We Can Learn From Black Fans?”In "Fans of Color, Fandoms of Color," edited by Abigail De Kosnik and andré carrington, special issue, Transformative Works and Cultures, no. 29. https://dx.doi.org/10.3983/twc.2019.1562.

§  Julie Levin Russo, “The Queer Politics of Femslash” in Melissa A. Click and Suzanne Scott (eds.) The Routledge Companion of Fandom Studies(London: Routledge, 2017).

§  Francesca Coppa “Five Things Fan Fiction Is and One Thing It Isn’t,” The Fan Fiction Reader: Folk Tales for the Digital Age(Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press. 2017.)

§ Rukmini Pande and Swati Moitra, “‘Yes, the Evil Queen Is Latina!’: Racial Dynamics of Online Femslash Fandoms,” ed. Julie Levin Russo and Eve Ng, Transformative Works and Cultures24 (2017). http://dx.doi.org/10.3983/twc.2017.908.

§  Francesca Coppa and Rebecca Tushnett, “Transformative” in Keywords in Remix Studies (London: Routledge, 2018).

 WEEK TEN: November 4

Fan Production:Vidding and Fan Art 

§ Tisha Turk and Joshua Johnson. 2012. "Toward an Ecology of Vidding." In "Fan/Remix Video," edited by Francesca Coppa and Julie Levin Russo, special issue, Transformative Works and Cultures, no. 9.  https://journal.transformativeworks.org/index.php/twc/article/view/326/294

§ Katherine Freund, “Becoming a Part of the Storytelling: Fan Vidding Practices and Histories” in Paul Booth (ed.) A Companion of Media Fandom and Fan Studies(New York: Wiley Blackwell, 2017).

§ Jessica Seymour, “Racebending and Prosumer Fan Art Practices in Harry Potter Fandom” in Paul Booth (ed.) A Companion of Media Fandom and Fan Studies(New York: Wiley Blackwell, 2017).

§ Francesca Coppa, Alex Lothian, Tisha Turk, “Vidding and Identity: A Conversation” in Melissa A. Click and Suzanne Scott (eds.) The Routledge Companion of Fandom Studies(London: Routledge, 2017).

§ Abigail De Kosnik, “Queer and Feminist Archival Cultures: The Politics of Preserving Fan Works,” Rogue Archives: Digital Cultural Memory and Media Fandom(Cambridge: MIT Press, 2016).

WEEK ELEVEN: November 11

Fandom and Authorship 

§  Suzanne Scott, “Who’s Steering the Mothership?: The Role of the Fanboy Auteur in Transmedia Storytelling,” and Henry Jenkins, “The Guiding Spirit and the Powers That Be: A Response to Suzanne Scott,” in Aaron Delwiche and Jennifer Jacobs Henderson (eds.) The Participatory Cultures Handbook(New York: Routledge, 2012) 

§  Henry Jenkins, “Out of the Closet and Into the Universe’: Queers and Star Trek,” Fans, Bloggers, and Gamers(New York: New York University Press, 2006).

§  James Rendell. 2019. "Black (Anti)fandom's Intersectional Politicization of The Walking Dead as a Transmedia Franchise." In "Fans of Color, Fandoms of Color," edited by Abigail De Kosnik and andré carrington, special issue, Transformative Works and Cultures, no. 29.  http://dx.doi.org/10.3983/twc.2019.1477.

§  Henry Jenkins,“Noncompliants, Brimpers and She-Romps: Bitch Planet, Sex Criminals, and Their Publics”in Frederick Luis Aldama (ed.) The Oxford Companion of Comic Book Studies(London: Oxford University Press, 2019).

§ (Rec) Michel Foucault, “What Is an Author?” http://artsites.ucsc.edu/faculty/Gustafson/FILM%20162.W10/readings/foucault.author.pdf 

WEEK TWELVE: November 18

Fan Labor, Moral Economy, and the Gift Economy 

§ Henry Jenkins, Sam Ford and Joshua Green, “What Went Wrong with Web 2.0,” Spreadable Media: Creating Value and Meaning in a Networked Culture(New York: New York University Press, 2013) 

§ Mark Andrejevic, "Exploiting YouTube: Contradictions of User-Generated Labor," in Pelle Snickars and Patrick Vonderau (eds.), The YouTube Reader(Stockholm: National Library of Sweden, 2009

§ Tisha Turk, “Fan Work: Labor, Worth, and Participation in Fandom’s Gift Economy,” Transformative Works and Cultures, no. 15. http://dx.doi.org/10.3983/twc.2014.0518.

§ John Campbell, “Whistle While You Work: Alienation, Exploitation, and the Immaterial Labor of Disney Fans,” (Work in Progress) 

§ Mel Stanfill, “Fandom And/As Labor” Exploiting Fandom: How the Media Industry Seeks to Manipulate Fans(Iowa City: University of Iowa Press. 2019). 

WEEK THIRTEEN: November 25

Material Fandom 

§ John Bloom, "Cardboard Patriarchy: Adult Baseball Card Collecting and the Nostalgia for a Presexual Past," in Henry Jenkins, Tara McPherson and Jane Shattuc (eds.) Hop on Pop: The Politics and Pleasures of Popular Culture(Durham, NC: Duke UP, 2002) 

§ Brigid Cherry,“Fandom, Textiles, Gender,”Cult Media, Fandom, and Textiles (London: Bloomsbury,2018).

§  Bob Rehak, “Materializing monsters: Aurora models, garage kits and the object practices of horror fandom,” Journal of Fandom Studies1(1), November 2012

§  Benjamin Woo,“A pragmatics of things: Materiality and constraint in fan practices,” Transformative Works and Cultures, 2014, http://journal.transformativeworks.org/index.php/twc/article/view/495/437

WEEK FOURTEEN: December 2

Fan Expertise, Taste and Mastery 

§ Jonathan Gray, “How Do I Dislike Thee? Let Me Count the Ways,” and Melissa A. Click, “Haters Gonna Hate”­ in Melissa A. Click (ed.) Anti-fandom: Dislike and Hate in the Digital Age(New York: New York University Press, 2019).

§ Alan McKee, "Which is the Best Doctor WhoStory? A Case Study in Value Judgment Outside the Academies,"Intensities1, 2001 

§ Henry Jenkins, “Spoiling Survivor,” Convergence Culture: Where Old and New  Media Collide (New York: New York University Press, 2006) 

§  Nancy Baym "Participatory Boundaries" Playing to the Crowd: Musicians, Audiences, and the Intimate Work of Connection(New York: New York University Press, 2018)

§ Cornel Sandvoss, "The Inner Fan: Fandom and Psychoanalysis" in Fans: The Mirror of Consumption(Cambridge: Polity, 2005)

Student Presentations 

Final Essay Due (TBA)

No Permission Necessary: Bringing Young Activists to the Connected Learning Summit

“No Permission Necessary”: Bringing Young Activists to the Connected Learning Summit

Stepping in front of over 800,000 people gathered at the March for Our Lives in Washington D.C. (and many more watching via live-stream and on cable news networks), Emma González stood fearlessly through a six-minute and 20 second moment of silence as she asked her audience to reflect on the short time span it took for her classmates to die at the hands of a school shooter. Latinx, female, bisexual, with a shaved head, Emma González has become an icon of youth empowerment.  Her green bomber jacket, covered in patches, buttons, and pins, reflected an anarchist visual vernacular: a revolutionary Cuban flag, the Apollo 11 mission insignia, the words “We Call BS” and “Not too shabby,” and colorful ribbons tied to unique causes including a rainbow LGBTQ pride flag).

Emma González

Some of these patches no doubt had personal associations, some subcultural, but the assemblage suggests the diversity of identities and affiliations to which contemporary youth seek to lay claim. Her jacket helps us to trace the roots of this movement through other recent examples of networked activism—Occupy Wall Street, #BlackLivesMatter, the Dreamers, the LGBTQ movement, and many others. These patches position González and her peers as intersectional figures bridging different populations, forging a new coalition for social change. Her symbolic choices demonstrate an awareness of the multiple media contexts in which her message will spread.

The jacket, especially the Cuban flag patch, became a focal point for right-wing television and radio pundits. Rep. Steve King (R-Iowa) described González as wearing a “communist flag” and suggested that “your ancestors fled the island when the dictatorship turned Cuba into a prison camp, after removing all weapons from its citizens.  Others suggested that the Cuban flag be understood “not as a symbol of political orientation.… but rather as a sign of national belonging, independent of ideological belief.”

As politicians and political commentary tried to nail down the meaning of this one patch among the many on the jacket, her young supporters began to construct their own jackets, embracing the attire as a symbol of youth empowerment to be worn at rallies across the country. The shared fashion statement expresses solidarity even if the selection of patches allows each participant to express unique aspects of their identity. While many discussions of networked activism start and stop with the digital, González’s jacket helped her to embody the change she wants to inspire. During her extended moment of silence, the television cameras fixated on her jacket, signaling who she is and what she cares about. 

This young activist’s resourcefulness and commitment contrasts sharply with wide-spread critiques (especially in the popular press) of American youth as disconnected from politics or as engaging in forms of online expression that can be easily dismissed as “clicktivism” or “slacktivism.” As one critic explains, “The end result is the degradation of activism into a series of petition drives that capitalise on current events. Political engagement becomes a matter of clicking a few links. In promoting the illusion that surfing the web can change the world, clicktivism is to activism as McDonald’s is to a slow-cooked meal. It may look like food, but the life-giving nutrients are long gone.” The clicktivist critique often describes online campaigns as involving limited risk or exertion and having superficial impact on institutional politics. Typically, such critiques isolate what takes place online from its larger context within a social movement, so that much of what we will discuss in this essay would not surface in such accounts.

Drawing on field research conducted by USC Annenberg School PhD candidate Rogelio Alejandro Lopez, we co-authored an article for The Brown Journal of World Affairs, discussing the #NeverAgain movement as an example of “Participatory Politics” at work. Youth today often express their civic agency through alternative forms of political participation where culture, media practice, and social networks coalesce. According to Joe Kahne, Cathy Cohen and Danielle Allen,  working with the MacArthur Foundation-funded Youth and Participatory Politics Network (YPP), participatory politics are “interactive, peer-based acts through which youth exert both voice and influence on issues of public concern.” YPP researchers found that young people who engaged in participatory politics were almost twice as likely to vote as those who did not. Young people have been the focus of voter suppression efforts; candidates often talk past young people, not only ignoring their issues, but also using insider language which can be hard for many voters (young and old) to parse (e.g., six-point plans involving multiple governmental agencies)  Despite all of this, by almost any measure youth involvement in participatory politics has dramatically increased over the past decades. Contrary to those who dismiss slacktivism, these practices often involved deeper commitments of time, energy, social capital, and knowledge than those of institutional politics. Social media may enable quick, superficial mobilizationsintended as a rapid responses to an immediate concern, but networked political practices also allow participants to stay linked, develop strong social ties, and generate shared perspectives, all of which can result in young people protesting, registering to vote, or lobbying political leaders.

In their 2018 book, #NeverAgain: A New Generation Draws The Line, David and Lauren Hogg suggest the merging of these old and new pathways to youth engagement: We are growing up in a time when technology gives us the confidence to assume that we can do things and figure out the world in ways that it hasn’t been figured out before. No permission necessary. Stoneman Douglas is a big piece, too, because teachers there put such a huge emphasis on studying real problems in the world today, so we already knew a lot about politics and social issues and just presumed that we could do something about them.

Some of the Parkland students acquired skills through high school debate, student government, newspaper, drama clubs, A/V groups, and through their civics and public speaking classes. These new activists are also fans, gamers, and bloggers. All these experiences inspired their participation and built capacity, but the shootings were their catalyst. As David Hogg wrote, “Before February 14, we thought we had plenty of time. We wanted to do something that would make the world a better place…But first we had to finish high school...When it happened to us, we woke up….We had to make the world a better place now. It was literally a matter of life and death.”  

Six weeks later, the teens had helped to organize a massive march on Washington, a march which would attract national media coverage. Since this monumental day of action, #NeverAgain has sustained their momentum toward gun legislation reform, and their efforts are yielding real results. Since the Parkland shooting, more than  26 states have passed 55 gun laws. Parkland has become emblematic for the new youth activists, in part because this movement has been so successful, at forging intersectional networks with leaders from other social movements, such as Black Lives Matter or those involved in the Standing Rock uprisings, showing the often unacknowledged connections amongst diverse communities involved in struggles around gun violence in America. Working together across divides which hobbled previous generations of activist, these young people seek to change the world by “any media necessary.”

At this year’s Connected Learning Summit to be held on October 2-5 at the University of California-Irvine, I will be sitting down with two young activists to discuss the factors which have enabled them to have an out-sized impact upon contemporary social policy debates.   

Jessica Riestra attends the University of Sacramento. She worked with the California Democratic Party as a field organizer, serves as the Co-Director for March for Our Lives California, and acts as the Vice President of External Affairs for a new group called GenUp. Moreover,  Riestra has also been an organizer for MoveOn while being the Volunteer Coordinator for the Western Service Workers Association of Sacramento.  

Justin Scott Jr. also known as STR33T. is a student, activist, and “constant learner” who shares that ‘Throughout the past three years I have worked diligently alongside grass roots organizations such as Students Deserve, United Black Student Unions of California, and Black Lives Matter, to combat the massive inequity within education. I use the arts via poetry, music, visual arts, and more as a mode to effectuate social and political change.”

Speaking with them via Skype in preparation for the event, I was left with a sense of awe about how much these young activists  have dedicated themselves to making a difference on issues that matter to them and their communities. In our book, By Any Media Necessary: The New Youth Activist, we described the experience of pulling together a similar mix of young change-makers for an event at MIT and having each of them step away from the label of activist, feeling that it did not describe their understanding of their methods for changing the world. Today, Jackson Bird, one of the student leaders who participated in this event, has emerged as a key figure in the fight for the rights of Trans youth, writing an upcoming book, Sorted: Growing Up, Coming Out, and Finding My Place.  

Speaking with Riestra and Scott, it was clear that they had no trouble conceptualizing themselves as activists. The times that have changed. In the age of Trump, many of the issues that impact young people’s lives have come to a head, requiring them to speak out often for their own survival. 

Preparing this blog post, I asked each of them to share some thoughts about what the term, activism, means to them and what set them on their current paths as people who dedicate seemingly every waking moment to their causes. 

Jessica Riestra shared:

Activism means giving back to the community that has provided to you. It means never forgetting about your origins but fighting for your people. It is a continuation of a civil rights fight that has been fought by multiple generations to improve for the next one. I come from a background where I have been belittled because of my race and my language. Although, born in the United States, I grew up with Spanish being the dominant language in my life. Throughout my life I have had to surpass multiple challenges and struggles in order to succeed in life. People have been vocal on their desire to see me fail, which has empowered me to become a voice for my community.  

The biggest wakeup call was during Trump's campaign trail that landed him in Orange County. During that rally, I was called more names then I can ever imagine. I was called an alien, dirty, immigrant, ext.. I had people telling me to go back to my country and was harassed by 10 men who were trying to take advantage of me. It has and will always be one of the most difficult moments of my life. However, my political participation means me being a voice for many of my family members. Most of my family members are still undocumented and risk the chance of deportation. My participation means me empowering my family to fight for their individual rights as citizens of this country. It means an overcoming of an era where I felt I would not become anyone simply because I had so many people wishing me to fail. In general it means me continuing the fight of the generations before me and hoping to make changes for the generations after me.

 Justin Scott Jr. told me: 

Activism is more than protesting, voting, marching, and Instagram posts. Activism is advocating for underrepresented and oppressed communities in all aspects of life. Activism is being a community builder and future sculptor. Activism is analyzing the oppressive systems that halt the growth of underrepresented communities, then having the courage, will, and faith to use direct actions and indirect actions that would destroy those systems that exploit the vulnerable. Activism is all about working out of ones love for people and community in order to change the world around us.  

As they prepared to speak to a room full of educators, activists, artists, and community leaders, the issue of mentorship was one we all knew we would need to speak to. Our audience will want to know what they can do to support young people who are putting so much effort into social justice struggles inside school and beyond. I asked the two youth to share what forms of mentorship they had received along the way. 

Justin Scott Jr. recalled: 

I've been blessed to have numerous elders that have nurtured me and assisted in my journey to becoming a critically conscious individual. From some of them, I learned the importance of seeking knowledge because the current public school system does not truly educated Black youth, so we must find other methods to develop our consciousness. This critical education can come from the arts, literature, history, and mostly interacting with the community that you are surrounded in. My elders have also taught me that this work comes with a lot of pain, anger, and anxiety at times, but the only true emotion that can solve the problems at hand is love. The community's pain and suffering can only be healed through love, so the community activists and advocates must move with love in every aspect of life. Us, the activists, must be the light in the community when all that everyone else sees is the dark; we must bring our people the love resources and happiness that they deserve.  

Lastly, my elders have taught me that activism starts first and foremost, with the youth. The youth are the most fertile soil to plant the seeds of love, community, and critical thinking. If Black youth got the opportunity to experience true love, support, and happiness, we would be unstoppable and I am living proof of that statement. 

Jessica Riestra shared: 

One of my mentors was named Asia. She taught me that it is important to take care of myself while it is significant to love myself. In this type of realm, mental health often becomes our worse rival. We have doubts about ourselves and our fight. We often sacrifice so much for others, that we forget to take care of ourselves. In the end, we fail to realize our own importance. It is through the constant reminders, love, and trust that I learned this lesson. Now I use this to help my members understand their contributions and knowing that before the organization, comes the person. 

We plan to talk more about the ways schools do or do not support students who are involved in social change movements, the ways that students and teachers are making common cause to transform these institutions, when we take the stage together at the Connected Learning Summit. This is an event you will not want to miss.

My Newest Book: Participatory Culture—Interviews

As we are about to start my blog back up for the fall term, I wanted to take a moment to announce the release of my newest book — Participatory Culture: Interviews — from Polity Press. This book is intended as a companion volume to Participatory Culture in a Networked Era, a book long conversation between danah boyd, Mimi Ito, and myself. Here, I am expanding the conversation by curating a selection of some of the most engaging and thought provoking interviews which I have run on this blog since it launch in 2006.

The book is organized around the core concepts of Participatory Culture, Participatory Learning, and Participatory Politics, which more or less traces the trajectory of my own research initiatives across this period. I have held in reserve some other core topics concerning fandom, games, and transmedia, which have also been central to the conversations here, in case this volume takes off and I am able to edit a second selection of interviews.

You, my regular followers, will have read these interviews first, but we went back to the interview subjects and asked them to reflect on the ways their thinking has shifted since the interview was originally done. Some of these were more than a decade ago, some only a year or two back, but given the way political shifts across the planet have changed the way we think about the democratic and participatory potentials of new media, everyone had interesting things to discuss. We live in dark times, no doubt, but is there anything worth holding onto from more optimistic accounts of how we are living, learning, and politicking within a networked culture? I like to think so.

Below is the official description of the book. I hope some of you will check it out.

Since 2006, Henry Jenkins's Confessions of an Aca-Fan blog has hosted interviews in which academics, activists, and artists have shared their views on the changing media landscape. For the first time, Jenkins – often called “the Marshall McLuhan for the twenty-first century” – compiles some of these interviews to highlight his recurring interests in popular culture and social change. 

Structured around three core concepts – culture, learning, politics – and designed as a companion to Participatory Culture in a Networked Era, this book broadens the conversation to incorporate diverse thinkers such as David Gauntlett, Ethan Zuckerman, Sonia Livingstone, S. Craig Watkins, James Paul Gee, Antero Garcia, Stephen Duncombe, Cathy J. Cohen, Lina Srivastava, Jonathan McIntosh, and William Uricchio. With an introduction from Jenkins and reflections from each interviewee, this volume speaks to a sense of crisis as contemporary culture has failed to fully achieve the democratic potentials once anticipated as a consequence of the participatory turn.

This book is ideal for students and scholars of digital media, popular culture, education, and politics, as well as general readers with an interest in the topic.

“Henry Jenkins collects here, for a dark political time, some engaging conversations with leading scholars around one core issue: the transformative social potential of culture when it operates in a participatory mode. The result is open, richly contextual, and genuinely exhilarating.” Nick Couldry, London School of Economics and Political Science

“Participatory Culture contains a multiplicity of voices that each uniquely expresses support for democracy, empowerment, respect, and empathy. With this book, Henry Jenkins has generously created a transdisciplinary meeting place, which will offer novel ideas to each reader.” Nico Carpentier, Charles University in Prague

Squee from the Margins: Interview with Rukmini Pande (Part III)

Many fans may argue that they are being respectful in not constructing minority-centered narratives because these are not “their stories to tell,” because of the dangers of appropriation or stereotyping. How do we create a learning space within fandom where such representations can be critiqued and debated without shutting down willingness to participate and contribute? 

I think there is a significant difference in terms of context between the conversations that occur in the publishing industry around appropriation and the ownership of particular stories/experiences and the unwillingness of fans to engage with already existing characters of color within popular cultural texts.  

In professional circles, non-white authors face significant barriers in accessing publishing opportunities that come much easier to white authors due to institutional racism. This is why there has been a concerted effort in genres such as romance novels and Young Adult literature, amongst others, to help spread awareness of more diverse voices in a white dominated field.   

However, within fandom, the conversation has always been more about creating communal modes of enjoying characters and texts. It is true that certain experiences are specific to cultures that may be unfamiliar to white audiences but to posit that the majority of narratives and tropes that make up fanfiction are somehow inaccessible to characters of color is once again ascribing a universalism only to whiteness.   

With regard to concerns about stereotyping, I would point out that fans routinely engage with (white) queer cultures of which they have no direct experience. The resulting fanwork regularly sparks in-fandom discussions about whether these are also problematic depictions of (white) queer lives. These discussions often become heated but I do not think fandom is going to stop writing those stories any time soon. Again, to posit that writing well rounded characters of color is an especially fraught process is to continue to validate the idea that whiteness is normative.  

The concept of cultural appropriation seems especially charged in writing about fandom since fandom studies has also celebrated the ways fans appropriate and rework materials drawn from mass culture. How might we work through these conflicting ideas about appropriation as we begin to incorporate race more fully into our analysis?

I don’t have specific thoughts on this but would point to Ebony Elizabeth’s excellent upcoming book The Dark Fantastic which considers this is more detail.  

Editor’s Note: Check out the podcast interview we did with Ebony Elizabeth Thomas about this project.

A push for greater awareness of racial exclusions and inclusions seems to be simultaneously playing out in fandom and fandom studies, helping us to map some of the potential fault lines (and continuities) in the aca-fan identity. What similarities and differences do you see in the ways the two communities have responded to the critiques you and others are posing at the current moment? 

I think that fandom and fan studies have had a similar range of responses to critique which is a mix of genuine engagement, defensiveness, and outright hostility. As I’ve mainly been discussing fandom so far I’ll address fan studies here.  

I will be honest that it remains a difficult area to discuss because I’ve received support for my work from my peers as an individual and I am always going to be grateful for that. However, I’ve also been confronted with the field’s whiteness in a very direct and aggressive fashion. This occurred in Feburary 2019, in response to my tweeting what was, in my opinion, a rather self-evident fact – that Fan Studies as a discipline is dominated by whiteness. I was extremely surprised by the pushback I received, the wider implications of which have been discussed in detail by Samira Nadkarni here.  

I think it is also really important to reflect on what this level of defensiveness means when talking about issues such as decolonization. After all, if we are still at the point where non-white scholars are asked to explain extremely basic concepts such as institutional racism and structural whiteness then it is a very damning indictment of our bibliographies, methodologies, peer review processes and publishing.  

I am often told that white scholars are afraid of speaking about race. In response I would say that firstly, this fear puts the entire burden of doing the work of decolonization on non-white scholars who, it must be pointed out, also face considerable anxiety and an equal possibility of messing up when approaching the topic. Secondly, this fear is damaging the field because it results in work that is fundamentally incomplete and also participates in further entrenching whiteness-as-default.  

As this debate around your book have unfolded, there has been some tendency of academics to acknowledge that systemic and structural racism impacts academic research as a whole but to push back on the idea that fandom studies might be particularly problematic in this regard. This no doubt reflects the perception within fandom, and fandom studies, that this is a more progressive, inclusive, and transgressive space than most traditional disciplinary spaces. Yet, your argument is that we can only really maintain that sense of ourselves by bracketing race from our conversation. And throughout the book, you offer a range of examples where the exclusion of race from our consideration erases, silences, or marginalizes. How do you respond to the “not only fandom studies” argument? 

I think that’s a rather blinkered argument to make because isn’t the whole point of an academic field to be self-critical so that it can move forward to produce better, more accurate, and more incisive knowledge? If we allow such defensiveness to shut down not just critique, but the possibility of enriching our research through rigorous and inclusive methodologies, theoretical frameworks, and publishing practices, then we will certainly fail in accurately portraying the complexity of fan communities today.

__________

Dr Rukmini Pande is currently an Assistant Professor in English Literature at O.P Jindal Global University, India. She completed her PhD at the University of Western Australia. She is currently part of the editorial board of the Journal of Fandom Studies and has been published in multiple edited collections including the Wiley Companion to Media Fandom and Fan Studies and The Routledge Handbook of Popular Culture Tourism. She has also been published in peer reviewed journals such as Transformative Works and Cultures and The Journal for Feminist Studies. Her monograph, Squee From The Margins: Race in Fandom, was published in 2018 by the University of Iowa Press. She is also working on an edited collection on race/racism in fandom in order to bring together cutting edge scholarship from upcoming scholars in the field.

Squee From the Margins: Interview with Rukmini Pande (Part II)

I suspect some fans are going to be more willing to accept the idea of more diverse participants in fandom spaces than are going to be willing to take on an obligation to personally expand the representations of race within fandom. Can we separate out inclusion from diversity in regard to representation within a participatory culture? Why or why not?

 I think the first thing to question here is the framing the concept of engaging with characters of color as “taking on an obligation.” Why should it be so?  

The assumption that characters of color do not offer the same possibilities of pleasure and exploration of fandom tropes and archetypes is in itself racist. Indeed, while characters of color that offer rich potential for fannish squee have always existed, as the roles offered to non-white actors within popular cultural texts have expanded this disjuncture has become even more clear. There are plenty of similarities between Bucky Barnes from the MCU movies and Finn from Star Wars in terms of their character arcs but only the former has become the locus of fan attention.  

To link this to my earlier responses, there is a clear connection between the attitude that assumes that characters of color are somehow inherently unsuitable for fannish modes of pleasure and the labelling of vocal fans of color as fandom killjoys. The foreclosure of the possibility of learning to find joy in characters of color (as I did in my experiences with Star Trek) and only framing this process in punitive language – policing, obligation, scoring social justice points, etc – is in itself a product of the logic of white supremacy.  

Also I think it is important to underline that fans of color have always been in these spaces and have contributed materially to their evolution through the production of fanwork, supporting projects like the AO3, and building community infrastructure. So, even though this labor has been invisibilized, I don’t think they need (or desire) the acceptance of white fans to validate their continuing participation.   

One of the more chilling observations running across your book is the idea that as Hollywood has developed marginally more inclusive representations, fan fiction writing communities have tended to lag behind rather than keep pace, still focusing on white characters even when they are peripheral to the original narratives rather than helping to further develop minority characters and re-center stories around them.  In what ways does the fan fiction community seem to reproduce the exclusions and silences of the entertainment industry more generally?  What obligations do individual fans bear in dealing with this situation? And what strategies have emerged in response to this process of marginalization? 

To pick up from my response to the last question, I think that framing these interactions in exclusively punitive terms is limiting. After all, there is a long and celebrated tradition of analyzing fandom as a learning resource. People have incessantly documented their experiences of this – from figuring out how to code, to deconstructing internalized attitudes towards sexism, homophobia, and slutshaming, to kink exploration, to researching what kind of lubricant would be available to the Victorians. However, when it comes to unlearning internalized racism – to which fans of color are equally susceptible – why is the possibility of fandom leading to that completely negated? Why do white fans need to see this engagement as an obligation or as policing? It is because there is a deep and immediate defensiveness sparked by the idea that whiteness is a racialized identity with specific effects.  

To address the second part of the question, fans of color are definitely in a continual state of overt or covert negotiation with the whiteness of fandom spaces and texts and have evolved strategies to deal with it – self segregation, fanwork fests, etc. However, it is also limiting to frame their fannish activities only through this lens. It is after all, not their responsibility, nor is it within their power, to fix the problem. For instance, sometimes an angry post about how the pairing of Steve Rogers/Darcy Williams (who have never met in the MCU canon) continues to have more fanfiction than the pairing of Steve Rogers/Sam Wilson (who are well established companions) is just that – an angry post that is meant to vent frustration without offering a solution.  

You argue that these silences or exclusions are not simply “glitches” in a system that otherwise works to embrace a range of identities and experiences. Rather, you see these “glitches” as part of how “fannish algorithms” operate. Explain. 

In my framing, fandom algorithms are structures that are seen to order the workings of media fandom, both in terms of communitarian etiquettes and technical strategies that involve fannish digital infrastructure like archiving fanworks and organisational strategies such as tagging. These algorithms are basically “strategies of squee.” They are seen to operate independently and without bias towards any particular individual fan or character.  

So when racism is seen to interrupt their workings, it is seen in the form of a “glitch,” an interruption of a system that otherwise works smoothly towards promoting such common fannish experiences such as the formation of safe spaces, the exchange squee, the pushback against a restrictive canon and the lessening of friction between opposed groups.  

Another effect of this formulation is to see the roots of these glitches, when they occur, as part of a larger systemic malfunction that fandom participants cannot influence. This allows for troubling patterns of behaviour to be deflected outwards onto flawed popular cultural texts or onto individuals who act in bad faith against fandom etiquettes, allowing the core liberal nature of media fandom spaces to operate without questioning. 

As an example, fandom algorithms can be axiomatic such as “Ship and Let Ship” which is seen as a basic common sense approach to fandom spaces where different individuals have different needs from a text. Theoretically, the operation of this algorithm would result in a harmonious fan space but the “glitch” would occur when fans of Finn from Star Wars would point out the anti-blackness that is influencing his sidelining in fanworks.  

The larger effect of this algorithm then is to encourage fans to ignore patterns of erasure over time, such as the inevitable elevation of white characters in text after text.

__________ 

Dr Rukmini Pande is currently an Assistant Professor in English Literature at O.P Jindal Global University, India. She completed her PhD at the University of Western Australia. She is currently part of the editorial board of the Journal of Fandom Studies and has been published in multiple edited collections including the Wiley Companion to Media Fandom and Fan Studies and The Routledge Handbook of Popular Culture Tourism. She has also been published in peer reviewed journals such as Transformative Works and Cultures and The Journal for Feminist Studies. Her monograph, Squee From The Margins: Race in Fandom, was published in 2018 by the University of Iowa Press. She is also working on an edited collection on race/racism in fandom in order to bring together cutting edge scholarship from upcoming scholars in the field.

Squee from the Margins: Interview with Rukmini Pande (Part I)

Few books have had the impact on the field of fandom studies that Rukmini Pande’s Squee From the Margins: Fandom and Race has had since it’s publication. I have been listening to Pande’s powerful and poignant critiques of our field take shape through multiple appearances on the Fansplaining podcast. The conversation about race and fandom has been long overdue. That moment of reckoning seems to be here, signaled not only by the publication of this important book, but also through important scholarly work by Rebecca Wanzo, André Carrington, Mel Stanfill and many others. Witness the recent issue of Transformative Works and Culture on “fans of color, fandoms of color” which was edited by Abigail De Kosnik and André Carrington. For those who want to de-colonize their reading and teaching, Pande has published a valuable bibliography.

These writers — many of them new, junior, and vulnerable — are rightly questioning some of Fandom Studies’s founding assumptions. It is not just that discussions of race (and fans of color) have largely been excluded from our previous work but that this absence has structured the field, determining what we see and what we don’t see, what we say and don’t say, throughout all aspects of our work.

As a founding figure in the field, I am trying to take ownership of some of my own past failures to fully address this issue. I have found myself rethinking some of my own work and shifting the ways I write about fandom to reflect what I have learned through these critiques, though I still have much to learn. I am also rethinking the syllabus for my fandom studies seminar which I will be teaching again this fall. I have come to recognize that the freedom to avoid writing and speaking about race is the worst form of white privilege inside the academy, and we — white scholars — cannot let ourselves off the hook here. Reading and assigning the works of scholars of color is not enough if it means we continue to ignore race and racism in our own scholarship.

This process of bringing issues of race and racism — and the perspectives of fans and scholars of color — into the center of our field and rethinking earlier work is painful, messy, and occurring in public. Pande has shown great courage in responding to the inevitable push-back her interventions are receiving, even as the field as a whole has embraced her important contributions to our scholarship.

As I thought about how to frame this interview, I wanted to give Pande a chance to respond to some of the pushback I have heard, both online and in private, from fans and aca-fans alike. As a consequence, with her agreement, I am playing devil’s advocate here, more than I might ordinarily do, as I bring some of these assumptions to the surface so they can be addressed. How we work through these debates will test the ethical core of our community, constituting a teachable moment as we learn from each other, listen to each other, and forgive each other. We need to confront certain issues directly, acknowledge histories of exclusion, marginalization, and dismissal, yet we also need to allow room for people to confront past mistakes and move beyond them. Above all, though, those of us who enjoy certain kinds of privilege need to err on the side of ethical listening.

From the book’s opening pages, you draw inspiration from Sara Ahmed’s concept of the feminist killjoy, asking “What does it mean to be a fandom killjoy with regard to being the subject of and reacting to racism in fandom spaces?” To this, I might add the question – what do you see as the dangers and potentials of taking on such a role at the current moment in the evolution of fandom studies? Is this a role which it is possible for fans of color (a problematic term for all of the reasons you note) to escape in regard to the racial dynamics you have identified in fandom spaces by remaining silent and complicit with a space which is safe for some but not for all, by “passing” within a space imagined to be post-racial? 

I think the position of the fandom killjoy is something that is ascribed to or imposed upon fans who point out the operations about race/racism in fandom spaces rather than a role that they seek out.  

It is important to make that distinction because fans who do talk about these issues are often branded as activists who are motivated by a desire to score social justice points rather than by a genuine fannish investment in a character or text. This othering also often comes with a hypervisibility that inhibits further fandom participation as their energy is expected to then go towards ‘fixing’ the problem they have identified. To quote Sara Ahmed (again!), she notes in Complaint as Diversity Work that, “A complaint teaches about institutional direction because a complaint is often treated as misdirection by the institution. Another way of saying this: to locate a problem is to become the location of a problem. Diversity work: becoming the location of a problem.”  

I think the question of escapism is a really interesting one for fans of color and one that I took up specifically in my research for Squee From The Margins. I wanted to hear about what kinds of escapism were available to fans of color in white-focused fandoms, especially in light of repeated claims by white fans that they come to fandom spaces to enjoy themselves and escape from having to consider “serious” issues (like racism) that they encounter in their daily lives.  

I found that while it is certainly possible for fans of color to “pass” within online fan spaces, their modes of escapism are mostly contingent – I can enjoy a source or fan text until it gets racist. Other fans articulated the importance of finding networks of fellow non-white fans so that they could curate their experiences to be safer. In all cases, fandom certainly isn’t a space where these fans can escape from race/racism even if it is not something that is engaged with publicly or vocally.   

Of course non-white fans have been building alternative fan spaces for a long time. Scholars like Kirsten Warner, Rebecca Wanzo and Andre Carrington have talked particularly about how Black fans in the USA have carved out space for themselves in this way. However, within anglophone media fandom this has been less successful and has been limited to events like one-off fanwork creation fests. There is certainly a level of self-segregation being practiced – non-white fans finding each other in white spaces, gravitating towards texts with better representation, etc – but fandom spaces today are simultaneously too scattered and too connected for this to be a large scale strategy. And of course, not all non-white fans like the same texts or want the same thing out of fanworks, so to treat them as a homogenous mass is also not productive. 

Across the book, you acknowledge what fandom offered you as a young woman growing up in small town India and the sense of frustration you felt in realizing that you were “passing” in a context where participants were always already assumed to be white. And you describe your growing awareness that you were not unique in having these experiences. Can you share some of the moments where you felt you were pushing against the limits of fandom in regard to race?  

The process of realising how deeply whiteness was structured into media fandom spaces was a gradual process for me. Initially, I was extremely resistant to the idea that my participation in fandom spaces could be racist. I think the first time I was confronted with evidence of this was in Star Trek (2009) fandom. As someone who’d been a Kirk/Spock shipper from the original series it was deeply enjoyable to see the explosion of fanwork around the pairing once again. I even nodded along with the dominant argument that the character of Nyota Uhura (Zoe Saldana) had been somehow lessened because of her canonical romance with Spock (Zachary Quinto).  

When some Black fans very rightly pointed out how problematic this argument was, and further that Kirk/Spock fans were either ignoring Uhura entirely or writing her character in extremely racist ways within their own fanwork, I was extremely discomfited and resistant. This was partly because as someone who had grown up in India with plenty of “people like me” on movie screens, I was unfamiliar with the racial dynamics of US-centric filmic representation. But it was also very much because I was, for the first time, being made to see how my modes of fandom were deeply implicated in whiteness even as they functioned to give me pleasure and the chance to explore (white) queerness.  

This experience was extremely foundational because once I was made aware of the racialization of my choices it gave me the chance to work through my own defensiveness. I realized that fandom had always encouraged me to be self-reflexive about my attraction to certain character archetypes and shipping dynamics in terms of gender and sexuality but had worked to elide their whiteness. This in turn helped me to value characters of color who also offered me the exact same modes of pleasure but which fandom had deemed to be uninteresting. This was a huge turning point for me, not because I was being policed into appropriate modes of fandom, but because I was able to actually expand notions of my own fannish pleasure. 

I don’t mean to imply that this was a smooth or easy process but it definitely showed me how fandom truisms (or algorithms as I term them in Squee From The Margins) like “Ship and Let Ship” while overtly functioning to maintain fandom harmony, also work towards making whiteness invisible. 

Your title, “Squee from the Margins,” evokes a fannish term that is bound up with notions of pleasure and affect. Fandom studies has long questioned the social construction of taste, whereas desire, fantasy, pleasure, and affect are seen as authentic or natural more often than not. Some would argue that the heart desires what the heart desires, so how can we push for broader representational practices in fandom without seeming to perform the kinds of policing of pleasure and fantasy which has been explicitly rejected within fandom communities in relation to gender and sexuality?  

The fact that fan studies has long questioned the social construction of taste and yet has left the deep racialization of fandom’s taste uninterrogated is, in my opinion, quite damning. As I have discussed earlier, the characterization of fans who critique the whiteness of fan spaces as ‘policing activists’ rather than people invested in communal pleasure is fundamental to how white supremacy maintains itself. This is also related to the reasoning that structures the positions that you mention where gender and sexuality are somehow magically de-racialized.  

I think the most blatant problem with the position of “The heart wants what it wants” is the accompanying unwillingness to name that “something” as whiteness because that would imply that fandom spaces are not neutral. White fans have, as decades of evidence proves, consistently chosen white characters to devote their fandom energies towards. Fannish pleasure and fantasy therefore are already fundamentally implicated in questions of race. It is simply a matter of acknowledging that fact. But, as is evident, naming whiteness triggers a deep defensiveness that manifests itself in trying to prove that those that point out the problem are the real location of disruption.   

You trace a “jigsaw puzzle of fandom histories” which led to the current moment. In particular, you focus on Race Fail 09 as a key event which helped develop a greater focus on the implicit and sometimes explicit racialized assumptions shaping fandom. Can you trace for us some of the paths which led from this incident to the growing attention to race and fandom? 

2019 marks 10 years since RaceFail ’09 and I think its legacy is an accurate reflection of the role of race in within fandom and fan studies. Firstly, it lead to a greater degree of openness in talking about the issues of race in SFF, both within fandom and in professional spaces. Secondly, it gave the chance for fans of color across media fandom to form points of connection and solidarity within these spaces at a time when that aspect of personal identity was less visible. These connections in turn amplified their critiques. I don’t think it is a coincidence that the debates in the Star Trek (2009) fandom that I discussed earlier were also happening at around the same time.

But equally, the trajectory of the debates around RaceFail ‘09 show that the presence of race/ism in fandom is noted only in times of crisis, located in the actions of individuals, and eventually excised from collective memory. When talking about fandom history, the number of scholars (and fans) who note StrikeThrough (which happened in 2007 and saw a mass purge of explicit sexual content on Livejournal) as foundational to the construction of contemporary fan spaces such as AO3 but completely ignore RaceFail (which happened only two years later) is remarkable. This forgetting is also seen in the lack of any reflection on the incident within the discipline of fan studies. For instance, during the roundtable on Race and Fan Studies at this year’s PCA/ACA conference, hardly anyone in the room could recall any scholars of color who were involved in the documentation and discussion of RaceFail. This is of course deeply troubling and points to the ways in which the discipline continues to actively enable its own structural whiteness.

__________

Dr Rukmini Pande is currently an Assistant Professor in English Literature at O.P Jindal Global University, India. She completed her PhD at the University of Western Australia. She is currently part of the editorial board of the Journal of Fandom Studies and has been published in multiple edited collections including the Wiley Companion to Media Fandom and Fan Studies and The Routledge Handbook of Popular Culture Tourism. She has also been published in peer reviewed journals such as Transformative Works and Cultures and The Journal for Feminist Studies. Her monograph, Squee From The Margins: Race in Fandom, was published in 2018 by the University of Iowa Press. She is also working on an edited collection on race/racism in fandom in order to bring together cutting edge scholarship from upcoming scholars in the field.

Participatory Politics in an Age of Crisis: Henry Jenkins & Nico Carpentier (Part V)

Henry

Yes, Yes, and Yes!!! I really find this approach very generative. So far, in mapping the ethics of participation, we have, at this moment of crisis, focused on anti-democratic and even fascistic players, seeking to recognize ideals and norms through their violation. But I wonder if we might reverse the lens for a moment and try to define what participatory leadership looks like. I know from our earlier conversation this was a key theme for you and it is something I am thinking about more and more. This brings me back to the figure of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, and the ways that she is disrupting conventional political rhetoric in order to create conditions that encourage participation by youth, women, and people of color within the political process. Here's a recent video she released about the Green New Deal, which seems particularly rich in terms of the ways it constructs, top-down though it may be, a model of what a more democratic/participatory society might look like.

First, I would note that her work is consistently pedagogical. She understands that if those who have been excluded from the political process (either formally through voter repression or informally through the ways established politicians talk) need a certain background to be brought into the conversation. We saw in the work I did for By Any Media Necessary that many young people felt the language of American politics was broken, both by partisanship and policy wonk rhetoric, both of which turned away first time voters. Here, she explains this potential set of policies in clear, vivid, and concrete terms. In this case, she's using animation and storytelling to illustrate both how we got to the current state and what a future alternative might look like.

Second, and tied to the first, she constructs an aspirational future -- not just telling us what the problem is but daring us to imagine, together, what alternatives might look like. And there are various explicit appeals here to participate, to get involved. She constructs herself as a model of a young person who has been able to become part of the most diverse group of congresspeople "so far" and she offers a model of a young Latinx girl who will grow up and replace her someday. She maps the transition between participatory or expressive politics (outside the formal system through protest) and institutional politics -- the ability to actively contribute to the decision-making process. Many young people say that they are never invited to participate in the decision-making process, never encouraged to vote, to petition, to protest, etc. and research shows that such direct appeals often make a difference.

Of course, the appeal is most effective when given by someone who plays a direct role in the young person's life. And that's why it matters that AOC's content is so damn spreadable, that she is actively encouraging people to circulate it through our everyday social networks, and thus her political speech goes where the people are rather than pulling them into uncomfortable, unfamiliar, spaces of formal politics.

I really value the ways that she embraces the civic imagination, that she dares to propose approaches that would be outside what the political establishment deems possible, given current constraints. She's pushing past what Stephen Duncombe calls "the tyranny of the possible." But at the same time, she does not mean for us to take this vision, literally, as the only possible way forward or the only way to achieve her goals. In the end, we do not have a utopia (problems persist) nor do we have a blueprint which is closed off from popular interventions. We have a provocation which encourages a continuing process of asking questions, proposing alternatives, and working to achieve them on the local, national, and global level.

Finally, if you look closely, you will see that she did the video in collaboration with Naomi Klein, best known for her book, No Logos, but more to the point, the author of a new work, No is Not Enough. This book makes the case that resistance is not enough to change what's wrong with global democracy, that we need to be willing to put effort into describing what alternatives look like, regardless of whether we yet have the means to achieve them. She describes work taking place in the environmental justice movement in Canada, which involves bringing diverse stakeholders together, to talk through problems and develop plans for alternative futures. The fact that these are considered alternatives (not THE answer) creates a space for people to participate in the process and contribute their own ideas.

There must be young leaders like AOC (or elders like Naomi Klein) all over the world who are working not just to resist authoritarian impulses in their cultures but to articulate and actively perform what an alternative might look like. Are there examples you might point to in Cyprus or the various European countries where you have been doing your work?

Our own Civic Imagination workshops are on a modest level trying to do something similar. We go into communities across America and elsewhere in the world to create temporary spaces where people can imagine the future together. Through our participatory process, we surface points of agreement as well as points of disagreement, helping communities to identify shared values and visions, as well as to recognize and pay respect to those things which differentiate their experiences and perspectives. Surprising things emerge -- a discussion of religious freedom in Beirut, a discussion of the need for national health care in Kentucky -- which do not fit our assumptions or mental categories of how such groups constitute themselves. We certainly hear some conservative perspectives, but we are also seeing people agree on things that set them apart from the institutional political leadership. It is through such a process that people may become awakened to and inculcated into the kinds of ethics of participation we have been discussing.

What does participatory leadership look like? How does it help to create conditions and provide resources that support the kinds of expansion of opportunities to participate you described in your last post? Too often, we talk about flat organizations and leaderless movements, terms which undervalue the importance that good leaders can bring to democratic processes. I am struck by the difference in the ways AOC represents herself and the ways that Trump does. Consider a news story today about the ways some servicemen wore badges on their sleeve which signaled their allegiance to Trump rather than to the American Constitution, badges which look pretty damn much like the kinds of iconography that surrounds other fascistic states. No wonder AOC has received such attacks from the alt-right -- she embodies the exact opposite of their vision for the future of American society.

Nico

Yes, I agree that leadership matters, and significantly matters, in the debates about participation, and in the debates about the protection of democracy. Where I would like to start is that participatory processes are affected by how leadership, expertise and ownership are defined and performed. Authoritarian forms of leadership disable participation, as they are contradictory. Authoritarianism is grounded in the centralization of power, while participation is based on its decentralization. The same point applies to expertise and ownership, that, depending how they are defined and performed in a particular context (and not only politics), can increase or decrease participatory intensities. Actually, there is quite a lot of mid-20th century literature in the field of leadership studies (e.g., Lewin and Adorno) that tries to think through these issues, for instance, by distinguishing between democratic and authoritarian leadership. That kind of literature can be re-interpreted and extended, to capture how participation and leadership interact, in constructive and destructive ways.

One of the additions that I would like to make is that we are up against a deeply rooted desire for these stronger forms of leadership. Different authors, e.g. Gramsci and Reich, have tried to provide answers to the question why people chose for authoritarian regimes. Without delving too deep into these discussions, I would argue that the fantasy of the ultimate charismatic leader, that manages to fulfill all contradictory demands of the people, and cares for the people as a father/mother figure, is a strong force, that we should take into account. I would also argue that this fantasy links to another fantasy, namely the fantasy of homogeneity, where there is no conflict, no dissensus, and no disagreement. Authoritarian leaders tap into these fantasies, offering to fulfill all these wishes and demands, and offering a construction of the people as the One. However tempting it is to believe that we can safely rest in the caring arms of the Leader, these fantasies are bound to be frustrated, through the heterogeneity of the social, the irreconcilability of demands, and thus the unavoidable presence of conflict.

But, as I argued earlier in our discussion, we are living in the era of the both, and I would argue that there is also another fantasy circulating, which is the fantasy of equality and horizontality. It is the fantasy of the absence of hierarchy. We find this fantasy in many different variations, some of which I would consider benevolent, while others can be deeply troubling. I would argue that when the two fantasies, the fantasies of horizontality and homogeneity, become integrated, the outcome can be deeply troubling. This is actually where populism (or what some would qualify as regressive or reactionary populism, see Mouffe's and Fraser's work) is situated, because of its anti-establishment discourse, that unifies (homogenizes) the people in its wish to remove the establishment that is considered to have betrayed it. In a next move, populism then brings in the (contradictory) logic of verticality, as it presents a new elite to the people (replacing the old established elite) that "truly" represents the people.

I think it is also possible to translate the fantasy of horizontality (and what I would prefer to label equivalence) into social practice without triggering the fantasy of homogeneity, but instead by respecting radical diversity. That is (I think and hope) where my position is situated. And (after this long detour): This is the playing field where I situate participatory leadership, or, as I prefer (to better connect to the existing reflections) democratic leadership. I do not want to articulate horizontality and homogeneity, which also means that I do not believe that we should eliminate leaders (or experts, and even (sic) owners), simply because we are all the same and we should not have leaders at all. I think this would imply the denial of human diversity, ignoring the idea that people have developed different skills throughout their life trajectories, for instance at the level of understanding, argumentation, communication and organization (which are qualities that define leadership).

Instead, we need to respect and cherish these qualities, which brings me to Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who seems to have accumulated a number of these qualities, although it might be a bit early days to evaluate this. But more in general, democratic leadership is built on the articulation of horizontality, equivalence and diversity, which recognizes the particularity of individual leadership skills, but which also prevents that these differences (or particularities) harm or destroy the logic of equivalence. Or, in other words, democratic leaders are aggregators, translators and protectors of diversity, that use empathy to connect to the plurality of demands, defend the participatory ethics and avoid the creation of the incontestable 'One Narrative'. To refer to an ancient idea, democratic leaders have to have a little memento mori voice in their heads, which is a permanent reminder that they are mortal, and not divine.

I know that this is a lot to ask from individual leaders, but I think that this re-articulation of leadership is very necessary to protect contemporary democratic cultures (and, by the way, our environment as well, but that is for another discussion). At the same time, we should not blindly trust the authority of leaders, even if, at first, these leaders seem to fulfill all criteria of democratic leadership. We should keep in mind that time plays a role, and that the maintenance of democratic leadership poses a serious challenge, as leaders are exposed to the seductive capacities of power. That is, of course, the main reason why rotation remains a crucial democratic principle. But I would argue that also collective leadership structures, with leadership teams (without having a primus inter pares) instead of individual leaders, should be considered and implemented more.

And even when these more protective scenarios, driven by a structural distrust in the necessarily benevolent authority of leaders, are implemented, I would still argue that we simultaneously need mechanisms that undermine this authority of leaders. Historically, the jester has shown to be a crucial figure, that could speak truth to power. The carnavelesque is a more structural form of this kind of disruptive practice, which has the capacity to undermine authority, even if it is only for a limited period in time. A more contemporary version is political satire, which again has the capacity to desacralize leadership. Of course, political satire has gained a strong position in the US media sphere, but maybe the not-so-exclusive focus on one particular leader (which we now often find in these late-night talk shows) would be more beneficial, however tempting it is to focus on the current US president. And I would like to add that we need a better comprehension of the current transgressions and the enjoyment they create, but we also need to develop counter-transgressions, that strengthen the democratic tissue, instead of weakening it.

The shift towards a different (democratic) leadership model is part of a broader change towards a more progressive politics. There is, of course, paradoxically, the need for democratic leaders to develop an ideological project that elaborates these more progressive politics, including the identity of democratic leaders. In order to move outside this paradox, we need to broaden the notion of democratic leadership, not restricting it to institutionalized politics, but incorporating and connecting democratic leaders from all social fields. That returns us to Gramsci's concept of hegemony, or the creation of a dominant ideological project through a series of political alliances. This does not imply that all progressive forces need to agree on all issues, or that they need to become assimilated into one impossible meta-project. Instead, we need these forces to generate, in a non-defensive way, what Laclau and Mouffe call a chain of equivalence, with the many different progressive groups collaborating in the development of a new progressive ideology for the 21st century, without denying their internal differences.

But we also need a second, much broader, political alliance, with all democratic political forces, conservative and progressive, to protect the idea of democracy itself. I would argue that this is even more urgent, as anti-democratic forces are gaining strength in the West, and there is a strong need to re-hegemonize democracy. This does not mean that this broad alliance, a democratic front, needs to agree on particular ideological projects. They do not even have to agree on what kind of democracy is preferred. The plan to establish more intense forms of democracy, including participatory democracy, in a variety of fields (including media and communication), does not need to disappear from the progressive agenda. But there is a need for a new democratic social contract, that pledges to actively defend the idea of democracy itself. Now is about the time, I would say.

__________

Henry Jenkins is the Provost's Professor of Communication, Journalism, Cinematic Arts, and Education at the University of Southern California. He is the author or editor of twenty books on various aspects of media and popular culture. He is perhaps best known for Textual Poachers: Television Fans and Participatory Culture and Convergence Culture: Where Old and New Media Collide. He is celebrating the paperback publication of By Any Media Necessary: The New Youth Activism, of which he is co-author. His forthcoming books include Popular Culture and the Civic Imagination: Case Studies in Creative Social Change (which he co-edited with Sangita Shresthova and Gabriel Peters-Lazaro), Participatory Culture: Interviews, and Comics and Stuff. 

Nico Carpentier is Docent at Charles University in Prague; he also holds part-time positions at Uppsala University and the Vrije Universiteit Brussel (VUB - Free University of Brussels). Moreover, he is a Research Fellow at the Cyprus University of Technology and Loughborough University. Earlier, he was ECREA Treasurer (2005-2012) and Vice-President (2008-2012), and IAMCR Treasurer (2012-2016). Currently, he is Chair of the Participatory Communication Research Section at IAMCR. His latest books are The Discursive-Material Knot: Cyprus in Conflict and Community Media Participation (2017, Peter Lang, New York); Cyprus and its Conflicts. Representations, Materialities, and Cultures (2018, co-edited), Critical Perspectives on Media, Power and Change (2018, co-edited), Respublika! Experiments in the Performance of Participation and Democracy (2019, edited), and Communication and Discourse Theory (2019, co-edited).

Participatory Politics in an Age of Crisis: Henry Jenkins & Nico Carpentier (Part IV)

Henry

Your question here about whether a Lynch Mob would be participatory is a compelling one. Frankly, I am still trying to work through your question to my own satisfaction. Your position gives you a more stable vantage point from which to address this. But if you accept, as I do, that the goal should not to automatically assume that all participation is going to be progressive, if you accept that there is a continuum of different degrees of participation, and if you assume there is a blurry boundary between interaction/expression and participation, then you are left in an uncomfortable position right now.

You are correct that any formal or mechanical notion of participation poses some problems as we deal with right wing populist movements around the world. For example, there is strong evidence that the alt-right is using debates among fans of Star Wars, and other recent franchises (Ghostbusters, say) which have sought to move in more inclusive directions, to identify and recruit angry white male fans into their cause. And my friend, Tara McPherson, is researching Neoconfederate and white supremicist groups and finding that they are similar recruiting from gaming platforms. Fandom and gaming are both spaces I have read as central to what I describe as a more participatory culture. In some ways, these groups, whatever their politics, are helping young people bridge from the expressions associated with participatory culture and involvement in some political process. So, what allows us to discount them as participatory? I know, not your problem to address.

Or consider another example. I am really interested in a media event that occured in Forsyth County, Georgia, which was a so-called “sundown town” -- no Blacks lived there and they were not safe if they remained in the county after dark. (A white supremicist lynch mob had cleared out all of the black residents in the 1920s and as of the 1980s, none had moved back). Civil Rights protestors were directing national attention towards this segregated city and early in her career, Oprah chose to make this issue a focus of her program. She made a controversial decision to only allow people who lived in Forsyth County into the studio audience, much to the outrage of the Civil Rights leaders and protestors who had come in from elsewhere. When the episode aired, we got the spectacle of Oprah as the only black person on the set, dramaticizing more powerfully than anything else could the exclusion of blacks from the county. Inside the studio, the locals engaged in heated debates around the issue of being a white only community.  

Most showed some form of racism but within the terms of the conversation, there were real notable disagreements and these dissenting views were tolerated within the norms of the community. This group would ultimately make the decisions which impacted this policy. (Today, by the way, Forsyth County is a multiracial/multicultural community with demographics that look very much like all of the other counties in this part of Georgia.) Is this process participatory? It cuts to your question of who gets to participate, I think, since by one definition, the members of the community were allowed to participate where-as by another definition, there are visible acts of exclusion going on here. I often use this example to think through the issues we are both raising here.  

Your focus on participatory ethics gives us one path forward, and that’s why it interests me so much. If we develop an ethical definition of participation, then the fact that those who were excluded from membership within this community -- by force in some cases — were not allowed to participate surely limits the quality of participation, even if by a mechanical definition, the event follows participatory procedures and is in fact broadly inclusive within a narrower definition of what constitutes the community. This is why the other distinctions we are both proposing may be helpful.  From my opening post, we have: 

Participation in what?

Participation for whom and with whom?  

Participation towards what ends?

Participation under what terms?  

Participation to what degree? 

From your recent post, we have: 

What makes participation possible?

What is the level of participation?

And what does participation then do?  

There is a certain amount of overlap here, as well as a few nuanced differences. For example, “participation towards what ends?” describes motives while “What does participation then do?” focuses on results. “What is the level of participation?” and “participation to what degree?” are pretty interchangeable, unless I miss a more nuanced distinction. I love the “what makes participation possible?” question since it points to the issue of causation or at least the conditionality of participation, a question I had not included in my list. But it seems possible that the two lists could be merged, which would give us some ways to define different kinds of participation with a high degree of precision, even if I hold onto some messiness for descriptive rather than prescriptive purposes.  

Your question of “What makes participation possible?” suggests ways expression/interaction may enable deeper forms of participation (or may keep participation alive as an ideal even during times of repression). Here, I am thinking about the work of Yomna Elsayed who participated in one of the conversations in the series and also contributed to an earlier exchange about popular religion. She’s interested in mapping the democratic potentials within Egyptian popular/participatory culture following the collapse of the Arab Spring uprisings there. She sees critical voices emerging through anti-fandom, popular music, internet humor, and memes, which may not be overtly political, but do allow young people to form alliances and express oppositional perspectives on the values underlying the current power structure in their country. Within cultural studies, these practices has all the markings of cultural resistance but it has not yet coalesced into a formal political movement and would not meet your definition of participation in that they do not get to collectively participate in decision-making. Yet, if a new resistance movement emerged there, it might build on the foundation that such cultural expressions provide, just as earlier cultural practices (more-so than Twitter or Facebook as specific platforms) helped to foster the preconditions for the Arab Spring. For me, expressions are one of the cultural factors that shape the civic imagination and make participation on a more political level possible. 

Now, can we do similar work in terms of identifying some of the ethical norms essential to create what you describe here as a democratic culture? I’ve focused on not working to exclude others from meaningful participation. A second norm which might seem definitional of a democratic culture is a willingness to accept the outcome of democratically arrived decisions, something we are not seeing much of in America today, where Trump has sought to actively negate every law or policy that Obama passed and refused to enforce or promote those which remain on the books. And we might point to an obligation to defend rather than delegitimize democratic institutions and practices. What else would you add to the mix?

Nico

Let me start with the dilemma that your last reply starts with, and that we have been talking about for a while: The limits of participation. It is a very simple question that has been the starting point of my theoretical work: When does participation stop being participation? As you know, I find it hard to accept that every human action is labelled participation. Once that assumption is accepted, then the unavoidable question becomes: Which human interactions are outside participation?

One of the dilemmas that comes out of this simple question is the democratic limit of participation. My argument is that participation is a concept that loses its meaning if it is pushed outside democratic culture. Of course, there are many grey zones, and there, the discussion is famously complicated, but that should not spoil the fun right now. There is one important addition, and that is that we need to distinguish between progressive politics and democracy. It is implicitly present in your last reply, but I want to emphasize this distinction, because I think it is important. As you write, there is now ample evidence that participatory logics can be activated by a wide variety of political ideologies, and that is not the exclusive territory of progressive politics. This, of course, is combined with the realization that civil society is not necessarily progressive, and not even necessarily democratic. Some have proposed the term 'uncivil society' for this, but this idea segregates civil from uncivil society, which is sort of missing the entire point. Even then, it was about time that we got all this documented and made explicit.

But all this to say that I do not want to locate the cut-off point, the point that decides about the limit of participation, with progressive politics, thus excluding democratic-conservative politics from participation. I do think that it is perfectly feasible, and actually for me almost too obvious to mention, that we can combine conservatism and participation. I see democracy as a site of permanent struggle between a wide range of democratic ideologies, and participation has to be part of this, otherwise we would theoretically create one gigantic (progressive) echo chamber. I think that this cut-off point lies elsewhere, for instance when social interactions becomes antagonistic, and an enemy is created, even if the "us" is characterized by the most intense decentralization of power. These scenarios also include symbolic violence, in its many variations, which places, for instance, racism outside democratic culture, exactly because of its violent nature.

Of course, this is my stepping stone to the ethical discussion, but let me wait, and bring out one more complexity, that is also part of our limits-of-participation discussions. Again, this is one of the more troubling sides of defining participation. My argument would be that participation only occurs when (members of) a dis-privileged group becomes privileged through the participatory process. This question was one I was working on with a couple of great teams of Uppsala University students, who, in a wide range of case studies, always got confronted with these dilemmas. They looked at restaurants, churches, and so many other places, and the question that kept on coming back was: Who is part of a dis-privileged group, and who thus gets empowered through the participatory process? In an article with Derya Yüksek, about participatory contact zones and conflict transformation in Cyprus, we analyzed the role of youngsters in a Cypriot bi-communal education-related project, called the Cyprus Friendship Program (CFP). Here, and especially in the theoretical part, we really spelled out that discussions about youth participation need to be grounded in the idea that youngsters have a weaker power position in society, for instance, through the logic of adultism, and thus can become empowered through participatory processes. We can also turn the argument around, as I would never label the decision-making processes of elites participatory, especially when they find themselves in more or less the same power positions. I often use the example of a meeting of media company executives, which I do not consider a participatory process. But, if a union representative would be invited to that very same meeting, it would actually become participatory process (at least in my eyes).

And that brings me to our questions and lists. I think it is fairly easy to integrate both lists, and I agree with how you are approaching this integration (including your emphasis on messiness). But the previous paragraphs also bring me to suggest one more question: Who becomes empowered through the participatory process? Or, in a slightly more complicated language: Which members of a dis-privileged group find their power position strengthened through the participatory process? And if I may go back to my 12-step model for participatory analysis from 2016, I would also suggest these questions: In which context is the participatory process situated? And, maybe more importantly, what are the differences in the sub-processes that together make up a participatory process? The latter is important, I think, because one thing that I have seen in different research projects, is that participatory intensities can be quite high in one room, and much lower in another room, even if it is all about the same house.

These are, of course, analytical questions, but they are important, because there is a need for more reflection about participatory analysis. Still, now that we are talking about questions, I have two more (related) questions, that have been fascinating me: Why does participation matter? And what drives people to keep on engaging in these participatory processes, especially given the power mechanisms, that do not welcome maximalist participation? My curiosity resulted in the decision to edit a special issue for the Portuguese journal Comunicação e Sociedade ("Communication and Society"), together with two Portuguese colleagues (Ana Duarte Melo and Fábio Ribeiro). Related to the Participatory Communication Research (PCR) Section of the International Association for Media and Communication Research (IAMCR), this special issue had as remit to at least offer a few clarifying thoughts on why participation matters. The special issue is expected to come out in 2020, so we'll have to wait for a bit, and there is still a lot of work to be done, in order to figure things out.

And all this finally brings me to the ethical discussion. As I wrote a bit earlier, my starting point is that the ethical is constructed through the struggle between different normative frameworks (that is where Ernesto Laclau's influence on my work kicks in). At this stage, the ethics of selfishness and selectivity seems to be winning, but that is not a reason not to try to champion an alternative normative framework. My first proposal would be that participation is ethical in itself. This might sound obvious, but I think this has not been elaborated sufficiently. Actually, the ethical is problematically absent in contemporary Western political discourse as a whole. That is one more reason why we should explain that the redistribution of power is deeply ethical. Dis-privilege, in all its variations, ranging from the economic exclusion of poverty, over exclusions from public spaces to the exclusions from governing, is simply an unethical phenomenon, because it violates and damages the principle of universal equality.

My second proposal would be to argue that particular characteristics, can, firstly, intensify participation, and can, secondly, prevent that participatory procedures (or what you call the mechanics of participation) become disconnected from the ethical. The ensemble of these characteristics is what I would call participatory ethics. One place to start, slightly unusual for me, I must confess, would be the (normative dimension of the) ideal speech situation (ISS), as developed by Habermas. It is based on (1) the right to gain access, (2) the right to question, (3) the right to propose, and (4) the right not to be coerced. Of course, the critiques on the ISS are/were considerable, but I still very much like the ethical and rights-based dimension of the ISS, as a tool to develop a participatory ethics. But using my own conceptual language, I would also have to say that these norms behind the ISS are mostly related to access and interaction ethics (with the exception of the fourth one, which refers to autonomy).

So there is a need to add more characteristics. I would like to propose three other sets of characteristics, even if these are only snippets of ideas. The second cluster is the acceptance of the hegemony of democracy. Of course, the exact realization of democracy is object of legitimate socio-political conflict, and there should be a radical embrace of diversity, but there is also a need for the acceptance of the idea of democracy to become integrated in this normative framework of participation. A second cluster is related to the respect for democratic procedure and institutions. These are the issues you refer to, ranging from the acceptance of micro-level decisions to the acceptance of democratic institutions. But, and the "but" is important, this respect should not be blind. In this discussion, I believe that there is a lot to learn from the model of delegative democracy, which has the built-in principle to revoke the mandate of representatives, if they stop functioning properly. I think this is an idea that we can use at micro and macro/institutional levels. And finally, there is a need for an ethics of care, which I would translate in a collective care and responsibility for the participatory process itself, and in, secondly, the care of all participants for all participants.

__________

Henry Jenkins is the Provost's Professor of Communication, Journalism, Cinematic Arts, and Education at the University of Southern California. He is the author or editor of twenty books on various aspects of media and popular culture. He is perhaps best known for Textual Poachers: Television Fans and Participatory Culture and Convergence Culture: Where Old and New Media Collide. He is celebrating the paperback publication of By Any Media Necessary: The New Youth Activism, of which he is co-author. His forthcoming books include Popular Culture and the Civic Imagination: Case Studies in Creative Social Change (which he co-edited with Sangita Shresthova and Gabriel Peters-Lazaro), Participatory Culture: Interviews, and Comics and Stuff. 

Nico Carpentier is Docent at Charles University in Prague; he also holds part-time positions at Uppsala University and the Vrije Universiteit Brussel (VUB - Free University of Brussels). Moreover, he is a Research Fellow at the Cyprus University of Technology and Loughborough University. Earlier, he was ECREA Treasurer (2005-2012) and Vice-President (2008-2012), and IAMCR Treasurer (2012-2016). Currently, he is Chair of the Participatory Communication Research Section at IAMCR. His latest books are The Discursive-Material Knot: Cyprus in Conflict and Community Media Participation (2017, Peter Lang, New York); Cyprus and its Conflicts. Representations, Materialities, and Cultures (2018, co-edited), Critical Perspectives on Media, Power and Change (2018, co-edited), Respublika! Experiments in the Performance of Participation and Democracy (2019, edited), and Communication and Discourse Theory (2019, co-edited).