Pop Junctions: Reflections on Entertainment, Pop Culture, Activism, Media Literacy, Fandom and More.

Pop Junctions has evolved from Confessions of an Aca-Fan into a platform of diverse content generated by the following collective editorial board:

Benjamin Burroughs is an Associate Professor of emerging media at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas (UNLV). His research focuses on streaming media and technology, media industries, and social media. His work has been published in journals such as New Media and Society, Social Media + Society, and Games and Culture. His latest research focuses on 'Civic Streaming' and the cultural/political implications of live streaming technology.

Christopher Cayari (he/they; DrCayari on Twitter, YouTube, and Instagram) is an associate professor of music at Purdue University, West Lafayette, Indiana. He holds a Ph.D. and M.M.E. in Music Education from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and a bachelor’s degree in music education from Trinity Christian College in Palos Heights, IL. Their research spans topics including, but not limited to, YouTube, identity, communities of practice, learning & teaching, race & ethnicity, gender & sexuality, and musical & theatrical performance. His video research on music, video games, and social media can be found on this YouTube playlist.

Samantha Close earned her PhD in Communication at the University of Southern California. Her research interests include digital media, theory-practice, fan studies, gender, race, and Japanese media. She focuses particularly on labor and transforming models of creative industries and capitalism. Her documentary, I Am Handmade: Crafting in the Age of Computers, based on her most recent research project, is hosted online by Vice Media’s Motherboard channel. Her writing appears in edited volumes and academic journals, such as Feminist Media Studies, Transformative Works and Cultures and Anthropology Now.

Mark Deuze is a professor of Media Studies at the University of Amsterdam (before that at Indiana University). He is author of 9 books, including McQuail's Media and Mass Communication Theory (Sage, 2020), and Life in Media (The MIT Press, 2023), and co-editor 5, including Happiness in Journalism (Routledge, 2024). Mark is the bassist/singer of the band Skinflower.

Julie Escurignan is a Lecturer in Communication Studies at Sorbonne Paris Nord University and a Doctoral Researcher in Film and Television Studies at the University of Roehampton, London. She holds a MA in Communication Studies from the Sorbonne University, has conducted research at doctoral level at the University of Texas at Austin and at the University of Nordland, Norway, and has worked for NBC Universal International. She researches television series’ fandoms, and particularly transnational fans as well as material practices of fandom. Her thesis looks at the material experience of Game of Thrones transnational fans. She is the author of several book chapters on television hits such as Game of Thrones and Black Mirror.

Renata Frade is a tech feminism PhD candidate at the Universidade de Aveiro (DigiMedia/DeCa). Cátedra Oscar Sala/ Instituto de Estudos Avançados/Universidade de São Paulo Artificial Intelligence researcher. Journalist (B.A. in Social Communication from PUC-Rio University) and M.A. in Literature from UERJ. Henry Jenkins´ transmedia alumni and attendee at M.I.T., Rede Globo TV and Nave school events/courses. Speaker, activist, community manager, professor and content producer on women in tech, diversity, inclusion and transmedia since 2010 (such as Gartner international symposium, Girls in Tech Brazil, Mídia Ninja, Digitalks, MobileTime etc). Published in 13 academic and fiction books (poetry and short stories). Renata Frade is interested in Literature, Activism, Feminism, Civic Imagination, Technology, Digital Humanities, Ciberculture, HCI.

Martina Fouquet is a J.D. candidate at USC’s Gould School of Law, Class of 2022.

Grace D. Gipson is an assistant professor of African American Studies at Virginia Commonwealth University where she teaches courses on theories and foundations in Africana Studies, Blackness in pop culture, and Black media narratives. Her research interests include Black pop culture, race and gender in comics, Afrofuturism, and digital humanities. Outside the classroom, you can find Grace collecting comic books and stamps on her international travel discoveries, ticket stubs to the latest movies, co-hosting the video podcast "Conversations with Beloved and Kindred," contributing her personal and professional thoughts on pop culture via blackfuturefeminist.com and giving back to the community through a myriad of projects and organizations. You can also follow her on Twitter @GBreezy20 and Instagram @lovejones20.

Kishonna Gray is currently an Associate Professor in Writing, Rhetoric, and Digital Studies at the University of Kentucky. She previously served as an MLK Scholar and Visiting Assistant Professor at MIT in Comparative Media Studies and the Women & Gender Studies Program. She also served as a Faculty Visitor at the Social Media Collective at Microsoft Research (Cambridge). Her scholarship is influenced by my interdisciplinary training and grounded in critical race theory and feminist approaches to knowledge production. She interrogates the impact that technology has on culture and how Black users, in particular, influence the creation of technological products and the dissemination of digital artifacts. While her extensive publication record explores how technology disparately impacts women and people of color, her current research interrogates the possibilities and potentials of what that technology can afford Black communities who are traditionally excluded from public spaces, including digital ones.

Bethan Jones is a Research Associate at the University of York. She has written extensively about anti-fandom, media tourism and participatory cultures, and is co-editor of Crowdfunding the Future: Media Industries, Ethics, and Digital Society (Peter Lang) and the forthcoming Participatory Culture Wars: Controversy, Conflict, and Complicity in Fandom (under contract with University of Iowa Press). Bethan is on the board of the Fan Studies Network, co-chair of the SCMS Fan and Audience Studies Scholarly Interest Group and one of the incoming editorial team for the journal Popular Communication.

Do Own (Donna) Kim is an Assistant Professor at the University of Illinois Chicago's Department of Communication. She studies everyday, playful digital cultures and mediated social interactions. She focuses on boundary-crossing practices in human-technology assemblages: being together across diverse "real", "online", "virtual", or "imaginary" places, and among the mundane and the weird, the "normal" and the Other. What does it mean to be human in mediated communication environments? How do we want to be together?She received my Ph.D. degree in Communication from the University of Southern California's Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism (2022). Her dissertation—Virtually Human? Negotiation of (Non)Humanness and Agency in the Sociotechnical Assemblage of Virtual Influencers—took a deep dive into boundary crossings in digital reality technology and social media cultures through the lens of virtual influencers (CGI human social media influencers).

Ellen Kirkpatrick is an activist-writer with a PhD in Cultural Studies. Her work focuses mostly on reading culture, social transformation, and power, as well as pop culture, fan cultures, civic imaginaries, and the transformative power of art, creativity, and (counter)storytelling. Published in a range of academic journals and media outlets, Ellen’s first book, titled Recovering the Radical Promise of Superheroes: Un/Making Worlds, is slated for publication in 2023 (punctum books). Ellen can be found writing at The Break, on Twitter @elk_dash, and on Mastodon @elk@zirk.us.

Charo Lacalle is Full Professor at the Autonomous University of Barcelona-UAB, in the Department of Journalism and Communication Sciences. Charo has two degrees, in Journalism and in Philosophy, and a PhD in Communication Sciences. Charo started as an assistant in the Faculty of Languages and Literature at the University of Bologna, and studied Semiotics with Umberto Eco. Charo’s research activities focus on Semiotics, TV and internet studies, media cultural analysis (particularly about fiction and entertainment genres), intermediality and fandom. Charo’s last book explores the social role of media in the construction and dissemination of dignity and indignity: (In)dignidades mediáticas en la Sociedad digital (Catedra Editors, 2022).

Dimitra Laurence Larochelle is post-doctoral researcher at the Université Polytechnique Hauts-de-France. She has a PhD in Cultural Studies (Université Sorbonne Nouvelle - Paris 3). She has taught at several French universities (Université Sorbonne Nouvelle - Paris 3, Université de Bourgogne Franche-Comté, Université de Paris, Université Paris 8 Vincennes Saint-Denis). She has three master degrees in Sociology (Université Paris Descartes), in Communication (Université Panthéon-Assas) and in Anthropology (Université Paris 8 Vincennes - Saint-Denis). She is Youth Representative at the United Nations for the ISA (International Sociological Association) and member of the board of the Research Committee 14 (Sociology of Communication, Knowledge and Culture) of the ISA. She researches transnational television series’ fandoms, feminist podcasts and online fatphobia.

Tara Lomax is the Discipline Lead of Screen Studies at the Australian Film Television and Radio School (AFTRS). She has expertise in blockbuster franchising, multiplatform storytelling, and contemporary Hollywood entertainment and has a PhD in screen studies from The University of Melbourne. She has published on topics such as the superhero genre, franchising, licensing, transmedia storytelling, storyworld building, and digital effects. Her work can be found in publications that include the journals Senses of Cinema and Quarterly Review of Film and Video, and the book collections Starring Tom Cruise (2021), The Supervillain Reader (2020), The Superhero Symbol (2020), The Palgrave Handbook of Screen Production (2019), and Star Wars and the History of Transmedia Storytelling (2017). Her research portfolio is available at Assembled Illusions.

Calvin Liu is PhD graduate in communications from the Annenberg School of Journalism and Communication at USC. He specializes in systems in fan communities and how systems affect the relationships between fans and developers. His dissertation - Players, Systems and Developers in Magic: the Gathering – explored the trading card game Magic: the Gathering, and how the rules of magic mediated player relationships and translated developer intent. Calvin has also done work within the furry fandom, exploring how artifacts and performance are used to mediate identity between spaces.

Antonella Mascio is Associate Professor at the Department of Political and Social Sciences, University of Bologna, Italy. Her research interests focus on digital media, fashion communication, audience studies, nostalgia and celebrity culture.

Swapnil Rai is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Film, Television, and Media at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. Her research focuses on global media industries, networked cultures, and their intersections with questions of gender, policy, politics, and audiences. Dr. Rai holds a Ph.D. from the Department of Radio, TV and Film at the University of Texas at Austin. She has served as a Postdoctoral Visiting Fellow at the Center for Contemporary South Asia at Brown University and has taught at the College of Film and the Moving Image at Wesleyan University. Her work has appeared in a range of publications including Communication, Culture & Critique, Feminist Media Studies, International Journal of Communication, JumpCut, Journal of the School of Literature (JSL) and Cinephile. In her prior experience as a journalist, writer and editor, Swapnil has covered beats pertaining to cinema, arts, and culture. She has also worked in the multimedia and information services industry for Thomson Reuters.

Lauren Alexandra Sowa is a Visiting Assistant Professor of Communication at Pepperdine University. She recently received her Ph.D. from the Annenberg School of Communication and Journalism at the University of Southern California. Her research focuses on intersectional feminism and representation within production cultures, television, and popular culture. These interests stem from her several-decade career in the entertainment industry as member of SAG/AFTRA and AEA. Lauren is a proud Disneyland Magic Key holder and enthusiast of many fandoms.

Rachel Joy Victor works at the intersection of three related sectors: innovation strategy for content, products, and brands; product design for emerging tech; and narrative design and worldbuilding for interactive and immersive narratives.

Ioanna Vovou is an Assοciate Professor at Panteion University of Social and Political Sciences (Athens, Greece), in the Department of Communication, Media and Culture. Her writings focus on the relation between the media and the society, on media analysis and on Television studies.

Yessenbekova Ulbossyn M. is a citizen of the Republic of Kazakhstan. She has graduated from Abai Almaty State University and al-Farabi Kazakh National State University with a degree in Journalism (diploma with honours). She has also earned the degree of Candidate of Philological Sciences on the topic, “Kazakh TV journalism: the development of national consciousness, traditions and customs.” Ulbossyn M. Yessenbekova is a professional TV journalist with 25 years of experience as an announcer, news anchor, and analyst-editor on the national TV channel “Qazaqstan”. She worked as an adviser to the Chairman of the Board of JSC “Republican TV and Radio Company “Kazakhstan”, and as deputy director of the national TV channel “Qazaqstan”. Yessenbekova is a Professor at the L.N. Gumilyov Eurasian National University and author of more than 100 scientific papers, including 7 articles in international scientific journals, and more than 20 articles at international scientific conferences. U.M. Yessenbekova is the author of 3 textbooks and 16 electronic textbooks and in 2019 she published a scientific monograph “The Transformation of Human and Society in the Digital Age (Media Psychological Aspect)”. By decision of the Ministry of Education and Science of Kazakhstan, in 2020, U.M. Yessenbekova was awarded the title of “The Best Professor of a Higher Educational Institution of Kazakhstan”. She was awarded the “Excellence in Media” badge of the Ministry of Information and Social Development of the Republic of Kazakhstan and the “Lev Gumilyov” medal. The main areas of scientific research are the impact of the digital age and technology on humans and society, media convergence, and the ethics of artificial intelligence.

Xiaoxi Zhou earned her PhD in communication at Fudan University. Her research interests include fan studies, celebrity culture, and Asian popular culture. She is deeply attracted by the emotional characteristics of fan culture.Her dissertation, “Sturctures of Feeling of Chinese Idol Fans: a New Emotional Intimacy in the Making ", shows a new type of intimacy among Chinese fandom.

Sulafa Zidani is a writer, speaker, and educator at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where she is an Assistant Professor in Comparative Media Studies and Writing. She is a scholar of digital culture, and writes about global creative practices in online civic engagement across geopolitical contexts and languages such as Mandarin, English, Arabic, Hebrew, and French. She is working on a book-length study called Global Meme Elites: How Meme Creators Navigate Transnational Politics on the Multilingual Internet.

If you would be interested in contributing to this effort, contact me at hjenkins@usc.edu.