Pub Date : 2021-05-07DOI: 10.1285/I22840753N19P155
Alessio Ceccherelli
This article aims to reflect on the character invented by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle at the end of the nineteenth century, as well as to explore the crossmedial nature of this figure, who managed to quickly enter modern imagination, reaching the present day. Sherlock Holmes can be interpreted as a foreshadowing of something that did not exist at the time of his invention: the network/digital technology. We claim that his way of reasoning, of memorising, of making comparisons, of rapidly arriving at hypotheses, together with his multiformity and his relationship with the homeless (used as an information network) recall the image of the computer and the Internet. The research questions will address the reasons of this enormous success, which is even recent, as is proved by the reinterpretation made by the BBC, CBS and the film industry. Additionally, we will enquire into the symbolic functions that this character, thanks to his almost infallible rationality, carried out at the time of his invention and still carries out today in the imagination of our time, particularly characterised by irrationality, precariousness, mutability, falsifiability.
{"title":"La persistenza di Sherlock Holmes nell'immaginario tardomoderno = The persistence of Sherlock Holmes in the late modern imagination","authors":"Alessio Ceccherelli","doi":"10.1285/I22840753N19P155","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1285/I22840753N19P155","url":null,"abstract":"This article aims to reflect on the character invented by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle at the end of the nineteenth century, as well as to explore the crossmedial nature of this figure, who managed to quickly enter modern imagination, reaching the present day. Sherlock Holmes can be interpreted as a foreshadowing of something that did not exist at the time of his invention: the network/digital technology. We claim that his way of reasoning, of memorising, of making comparisons, of rapidly arriving at hypotheses, together with his multiformity and his relationship with the homeless (used as an information network) recall the image of the computer and the Internet. The research questions will address the reasons of this enormous success, which is even recent, as is proved by the reinterpretation made by the BBC, CBS and the film industry. Additionally, we will enquire into the symbolic functions that this character, thanks to his almost infallible rationality, carried out at the time of his invention and still carries out today in the imagination of our time, particularly characterised by irrationality, precariousness, mutability, falsifiability.","PeriodicalId":40441,"journal":{"name":"H-ermes-Journal of Communication","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.1,"publicationDate":"2021-05-07","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"46965275","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2021-05-07DOI: 10.1285/I22840753N19P115
Luca Bertoloni
Within the contemporary mediascape, Once Upon a Time (ABC, seven seasons, 2011-2018) represents a rather original serial experiment: starting from the shared westerly (and not only) fairy-tale imagery, fueled and sometimes created by Disney, the series, thanks to its ecosystem structure, is configured in its essence by intersections with other imaginaries. The result is the creation of a contaminated hyper-imaginary novel that rethinks, re-semantizes and reformulates characters and stories already imprinted in the collective imaginary. The architecture of the series resorts to the starting imaginaries as architraves and foundations; the semantic construction, instead, weaves a constant dialogue with the spectators, questioning stories, characters, musical moments, costumes, iconographies, even entire sequences of other films - all materials well impressed in the collective imaginaries of viewers, whose memory is solicited. It is only thanks to the links generated in the audiovisual memory of the spectators – in turn, well evoked by the narrative and metanarrative strategies applied by the authors – it the series manages to carve out its own originality. Therefore, the series under discussion creates, from scratch, a reflective imaginary of imaginaries in a constant evolution. So, the traditional fairy-tale imagery is not forgotten, but reshaped and re-semantized in favor of the new perspectives that dominate in the contemporary mediascape (gender perspectives, villains back history, transmedia storytelling, replicability), combined with an original metanarrative: therefore Once Upon a Time, referring to the paradigm of complexity, proposes itself as a new point of reference that can be useful on several levels, and could be seen as a new postmodern and postmedial myth valid from childhood to adulthood.
{"title":"Intersezioni di immaginari in un iper-immaginario postmoderno e postmediale: il caso della serie Once Upon a Time = Intersections of imaginaries in a postmodern and postmedial hyper-imaginary: the case of the series Once Upon a Time","authors":"Luca Bertoloni","doi":"10.1285/I22840753N19P115","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1285/I22840753N19P115","url":null,"abstract":"Within the contemporary mediascape, Once Upon a Time (ABC, seven seasons, 2011-2018) represents a rather original serial experiment: starting from the shared westerly (and not only) fairy-tale imagery, fueled and sometimes created by Disney, the series, thanks to its ecosystem structure, is configured in its essence by intersections with other imaginaries. The result is the creation of a contaminated hyper-imaginary novel that rethinks, re-semantizes and reformulates characters and stories already imprinted in the collective imaginary. The architecture of the series resorts to the starting imaginaries as architraves and foundations; the semantic construction, instead, weaves a constant dialogue with the spectators, questioning stories, characters, musical moments, costumes, iconographies, even entire sequences of other films - all materials well impressed in the collective imaginaries of viewers, whose memory is solicited. It is only thanks to the links generated in the audiovisual memory of the spectators – in turn, well evoked by the narrative and metanarrative strategies applied by the authors – it the series manages to carve out its own originality. Therefore, the series under discussion creates, from scratch, a reflective imaginary of imaginaries in a constant evolution. So, the traditional fairy-tale imagery is not forgotten, but reshaped and re-semantized in favor of the new perspectives that dominate in the contemporary mediascape (gender perspectives, villains back history, transmedia storytelling, replicability), combined with an original metanarrative: therefore Once Upon a Time, referring to the paradigm of complexity, proposes itself as a new point of reference that can be useful on several levels, and could be seen as a new postmodern and postmedial myth valid from childhood to adulthood.","PeriodicalId":40441,"journal":{"name":"H-ermes-Journal of Communication","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.1,"publicationDate":"2021-05-07","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"46623778","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
The streaming video platforms, like Netflix and Amazon Prime Video, continue to grow up the original content titles, proposing changes and variation without being choked by the production costs. Something that would have been impossible in the past decade. Today, the platforms can provoke such broad interest exploiting in one shot a double effect of revenue maximizing and effort minimizing: a combination of executives' intuition and analytics suggestion about the best-watching movie or series. The Queen's Gambit, produced by Netflix last year, ranked everywhere at first position in the first month, is not unfamiliar to this classification. In this work we try to deconstruct the main features that have achieved worldwide prominence: the script's ability to maintain an equilibrium between originality and curiosity, weirdness and popular attitudes (at worst addictions) with which the general audience could recognize themselves or the neighbor. We focus the attention on the more interesting contribution of the subject, a mixture between logic of chess strategies and imagination of the player. Not only this pattern opens the path of the success but becomes the central point of main topics' attraction around the story (the changing of the fashion, the brand female evolution, the prodigy addiction, the friction between instinct and education).
{"title":"The Queen's Gambit. Un perfect match tra immaginario ludico e calcoli algebrici = The Queen's Gambit. A perfect matching between game imagery and algebraic strategies","authors":"Paolo Marocco","doi":"10.1285/I22840753N19P93","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1285/I22840753N19P93","url":null,"abstract":"The streaming video platforms, like Netflix and Amazon Prime Video, continue to grow up the original content titles, proposing changes and variation without being choked by the production costs. Something that would have been impossible in the past decade. Today, the platforms can provoke such broad interest exploiting in one shot a double effect of revenue maximizing and effort minimizing: a combination of executives' intuition and analytics suggestion about the best-watching movie or series. The Queen's Gambit, produced by Netflix last year, ranked everywhere at first position in the first month, is not unfamiliar to this classification. In this work we try to deconstruct the main features that have achieved worldwide prominence: the script's ability to maintain an equilibrium between originality and curiosity, weirdness and popular attitudes (at worst addictions) with which the general audience could recognize themselves or the neighbor. We focus the attention on the more interesting contribution of the subject, a mixture between logic of chess strategies and imagination of the player. Not only this pattern opens the path of the success but becomes the central point of main topics' attraction around the story (the changing of the fashion, the brand female evolution, the prodigy addiction, the friction between instinct and education).","PeriodicalId":40441,"journal":{"name":"H-ermes-Journal of Communication","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.1,"publicationDate":"2021-05-07","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"46095394","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2021-05-07DOI: 10.1285/I22840753N19P105
Jessica Camargo Molano
Since 2016 the unicorn has become one of the trendiest subjects in several sectors: from fashion to accessories, to food, as is proved by the launch of drinks such as "unicorn's milk". Yet, what does the unicorn represent in contemporary imagery? In order to answer such a question, this research traces the history of the symbolism of the unicorn, so as to understand how its representation and meaning have changed. Ever since ancient times the Greeks had attributed thaumaturgical powers to the unicorn; in particular, its horn was considered a universal antidote to any poison, whereas the unicorn itself became a symbol of purity. The presence of the figure of the unicorn in Psalm 91 brings the animal close to Christianity. In the Middle Ages the unicorn was often depicted in the illuminated Bibles and was also used in the decorations of the main buildings of the time, usually next to a virgin as an allegory of chastity. For this reason, it became a symbol of chaste love and marital fidelity. In the 16th and 17th centuries, the powder of the unicorn horn was still considered an antidote to poison and even an aphrodisiac. Only in the Victorian Age did the unicorn begin to people children's stories, losing the sexual meaning and being associated with the rainbow for the first time. The connection between the unicorn and the rainbow has led to the present use of the animal as an emblem of LGBT+ community. Nowadays the unicorn embodies the concepts of rarity and magic. It is even worth noting how the term "unicorn" has also become part of the economic language. The instagrammability of the unicorn has made the animal even more popular, making it, in the social media era, the symbol of uniqueness and differentiation from the mass.
{"title":"Unicorno-mania: dalla mitologia greca all'immaginario contemporaneo = Unicorn-mania: from Greek mythology to contemporary imagery","authors":"Jessica Camargo Molano","doi":"10.1285/I22840753N19P105","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1285/I22840753N19P105","url":null,"abstract":"Since 2016 the unicorn has become one of the trendiest subjects in several sectors: from fashion to accessories, to food, as is proved by the launch of drinks such as \"unicorn's milk\". Yet, what does the unicorn represent in contemporary imagery? In order to answer such a question, this research traces the history of the symbolism of the unicorn, so as to understand how its representation and meaning have changed. Ever since ancient times the Greeks had attributed thaumaturgical powers to the unicorn; in particular, its horn was considered a universal antidote to any poison, whereas the unicorn itself became a symbol of purity. The presence of the figure of the unicorn in Psalm 91 brings the animal close to Christianity. In the Middle Ages the unicorn was often depicted in the illuminated Bibles and was also used in the decorations of the main buildings of the time, usually next to a virgin as an allegory of chastity. For this reason, it became a symbol of chaste love and marital fidelity. In the 16th and 17th centuries, the powder of the unicorn horn was still considered an antidote to poison and even an aphrodisiac. Only in the Victorian Age did the unicorn begin to people children's stories, losing the sexual meaning and being associated with the rainbow for the first time. The connection between the unicorn and the rainbow has led to the present use of the animal as an emblem of LGBT+ community. Nowadays the unicorn embodies the concepts of rarity and magic. It is even worth noting how the term \"unicorn\" has also become part of the economic language. The instagrammability of the unicorn has made the animal even more popular, making it, in the social media era, the symbol of uniqueness and differentiation from the mass.","PeriodicalId":40441,"journal":{"name":"H-ermes-Journal of Communication","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.1,"publicationDate":"2021-05-07","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"44149800","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2021-05-07DOI: 10.1285/I22840753N19P207
Federico Pilati, Flavio Piccoli
Over the last decade, the term populism has become increasingly popular. However, due to the mutability of populist movements and the diversity of the contexts in which they have developed, it has been difficult to place the different manifestations of the populist phenomenon within a single ideology. In fact, a populist narrative seems to resort to the cultural toolkit at its disposal, drawing from time to time on different components of the social and cultural environment in which it is immersed, without being crystallized in a coherent and static ideology. From this perspective, populism can therefore be traced back to the type of discourse used to frame a political event, in which the narrative component of the discourse is used strategically – or adaptively – to constitute a multifaceted and contradictory political identity to which everyone can refer even if not all the instances are shared. To investigate the hypotheses regarding the role of online communication in the construction of such populist narratives, we will analyse all the tweets produced by the three best known representatives of the Five Star Movement (Alessandro Di Battista, Luigi Di Maio and Raffaele Fico) from 2013 to 2019 by means of computational techniques. Starting from the works that have already defined the communicative style of the founder Beppe Grillo, our goal is to shift the attention to the Directorate, the plural leadership of the Five Star Movement innovative organizational structure and understand its role in the construction of the social imaginary connected to the party.
{"title":"La costruzione dell'immaginario M5S attraverso i social media: qual è stato il ruolo del Direttorio? = The construction of M5S imaginary through social media: what has the role of the Directorate been?","authors":"Federico Pilati, Flavio Piccoli","doi":"10.1285/I22840753N19P207","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1285/I22840753N19P207","url":null,"abstract":"Over the last decade, the term populism has become increasingly popular. However, due to the mutability of populist movements and the diversity of the contexts in which they have developed, it has been difficult to place the different manifestations of the populist phenomenon within a single ideology. In fact, a populist narrative seems to resort to the cultural toolkit at its disposal, drawing from time to time on different components of the social and cultural environment in which it is immersed, without being crystallized in a coherent and static ideology. From this perspective, populism can therefore be traced back to the type of discourse used to frame a political event, in which the narrative component of the discourse is used strategically – or adaptively – to constitute a multifaceted and contradictory political identity to which everyone can refer even if not all the instances are shared. To investigate the hypotheses regarding the role of online communication in the construction of such populist narratives, we will analyse all the tweets produced by the three best known representatives of the Five Star Movement (Alessandro Di Battista, Luigi Di Maio and Raffaele Fico) from 2013 to 2019 by means of computational techniques. Starting from the works that have already defined the communicative style of the founder Beppe Grillo, our goal is to shift the attention to the Directorate, the plural leadership of the Five Star Movement innovative organizational structure and understand its role in the construction of the social imaginary connected to the party.","PeriodicalId":40441,"journal":{"name":"H-ermes-Journal of Communication","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.1,"publicationDate":"2021-05-07","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"42124028","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2021-05-07DOI: 10.1285/I22840753N19P263
María A. Ribón, A. Pérez-González, Carmen Vázquez
At the end of the 20th century, the disappearance of the great utopias occurs. Crises are favorable moments to imagine better worlds. Social scientists and humanists - because of their knowledge of reality and its possibilities for change - are privileged to visualize the Covid-19 crisis as an opportunity for change and transfer the orientation of change to all of society. This is a transcendental translation for the consolidation of utopia in the social imaginary. This work explores the rehabilitation of utopia in the exceptional circumstances of the pandemic's start by academics. Doing this identifies, classifies, and analyzes the specific proposals that these thinkers have published in the press to move towards a happy world. We note that the pandemic has not managed to rehabilitate the utopia and that the community's proposals for change are fragmented. We consider that this fragmentation is a symptom of micro-stories, which implies a shift towards micro-routes. However, medium-range utopias proliferate in which messages appear insistently and, in that sense, may be reflected in the social imaginary
{"title":"Diffusion of the utopias. The academy and the media in times of pandemic","authors":"María A. Ribón, A. Pérez-González, Carmen Vázquez","doi":"10.1285/I22840753N19P263","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1285/I22840753N19P263","url":null,"abstract":"At the end of the 20th century, the disappearance of the great utopias occurs. Crises are favorable moments to imagine better worlds. Social scientists and humanists - because of their knowledge of reality and its possibilities for change - are privileged to visualize the Covid-19 crisis as an opportunity for change and transfer the orientation of change to all of society. This is a transcendental translation for the consolidation of utopia in the social imaginary. This work explores the rehabilitation of utopia in the exceptional circumstances of the pandemic's start by academics. Doing this identifies, classifies, and analyzes the specific proposals that these thinkers have published in the press to move towards a happy world. We note that the pandemic has not managed to rehabilitate the utopia and that the community's proposals for change are fragmented. We consider that this fragmentation is a symptom of micro-stories, which implies a shift towards micro-routes. However, medium-range utopias proliferate in which messages appear insistently and, in that sense, may be reflected in the social imaginary","PeriodicalId":40441,"journal":{"name":"H-ermes-Journal of Communication","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.1,"publicationDate":"2021-05-07","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"45192667","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2021-05-07DOI: 10.1285/I22840753N19P233
Otávio Daros
This article intends to examine, in a documented and systematized way, the main contributions of scholars of the imaginary to research in journalism in Brazil, since the mid-1990s. It begins by presenting the idea of Juremir Machado da Silva ("journalism as an operation of information and mythologization"), followed by Vera Franca ("journalism as a form of sociability"), both postgraduates under Michel Maffesoli's guidance, in France. Then, the theses of Gislene Silva ("journalism as a mythic-symbolic manifestation") and Ana Tais Barros ("journalism as a potential generator of myths") are discussed, authors also affiliated with the French tradition initiated by Gilbert Durand, in the 1960s. The investigation seeks to examine the specific findings of each research, while promoting comparison between them, in order to highlight both the similarities and the differences in the way of viewing the news media. The strongest conclusion is that, despite the theoretical repertoire shared by Brazilian academics in the area — notably around the anthropological theory of the imaginary and the sociology of everyday life — their journalistic analyzes show conflicting results on the phenomenon in contemporary times.
本文试图以系统化的方式，检视自1990年代中期以来，虚构学者对巴西新闻研究的主要贡献。它首先提出了jurremir Machado da Silva(“新闻作为一种信息和神话化的操作”)的想法，然后是Vera Franca(“新闻作为一种社交形式”)，两人都是米歇尔·马费索利指导下的法国研究生。然后，讨论了Gislene Silva(“新闻作为神话-象征的表现”)和Ana Tais Barros(“新闻作为神话的潜在产生者”)的论文，他们也是1960年代由Gilbert Durand发起的法国传统的作者。调查旨在审查每项研究的具体发现，同时促进它们之间的比较，以突出观看新闻媒体方式的相似之处和差异。最有力的结论是，尽管巴西学者在这一领域有共同的理论——特别是关于想象的人类学理论和日常生活的社会学——但他们的新闻分析显示出当代现象的相互矛盾的结果。
{"title":"Estudos de imaginário do jornalismo no Brasil = Imaginary studies of journalism in Brazil","authors":"Otávio Daros","doi":"10.1285/I22840753N19P233","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1285/I22840753N19P233","url":null,"abstract":"This article intends to examine, in a documented and systematized way, the main contributions of scholars of the imaginary to research in journalism in Brazil, since the mid-1990s. It begins by presenting the idea of Juremir Machado da Silva (\"journalism as an operation of information and mythologization\"), followed by Vera Franca (\"journalism as a form of sociability\"), both postgraduates under Michel Maffesoli's guidance, in France. Then, the theses of Gislene Silva (\"journalism as a mythic-symbolic manifestation\") and Ana Tais Barros (\"journalism as a potential generator of myths\") are discussed, authors also affiliated with the French tradition initiated by Gilbert Durand, in the 1960s. The investigation seeks to examine the specific findings of each research, while promoting comparison between them, in order to highlight both the similarities and the differences in the way of viewing the news media. The strongest conclusion is that, despite the theoretical repertoire shared by Brazilian academics in the area — notably around the anthropological theory of the imaginary and the sociology of everyday life — their journalistic analyzes show conflicting results on the phenomenon in contemporary times.","PeriodicalId":40441,"journal":{"name":"H-ermes-Journal of Communication","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.1,"publicationDate":"2021-05-07","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"44183597","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2021-05-07DOI: 10.1285/I22840753N19P293
M. Raffa, Riccardo Pronzato
The prominent role played by algorithmic platforms in people’s everyday lives has in recent years triggered a growing interest towards algorithmic imaginaries, intended as worlds of experience users make of the algorithmic media, thereby building up their own awareness of the platform and in turn moulding the algorithm itself through their performativity. Today, part of the construction of individual cultures takes place on streaming platforms, media environments where subjects access cultural materials and cultural exchanges occur. Platforms, such as Netflix or Spotify, have become privileged sites for studying the platformization of cultural production and the construction of algorithmic imaginaries by users and developers. Despite this, to date little has been discussed about cultural creators’ algorithmic imaginaries. This paper intends to discuss how to include algorithmic imaginaries in research regarding platforms and cultural production, by focusing on the case of music platforms. Specifically, the main goal of this contribution is to address the following issues in the light of existing literature: i) The role of algorithms as cultural gatekeepers and how they may affect the creative disposition of music producers, as well as their strategies to relate with the broader environment of cultural production and consumption. ii) The optimization of culture, i.e., how cultural producers may attempt to create platform-optimized products adapting their creative efforts to platforms’ affordances, thus fostering processes of product homogenization. Finally, suggestions will be made for future investigations regarding how all the actors in the music industry relate to streaming platforms
{"title":"The algorithmic imaginary of cultural producers. Towards platform-optimized music?","authors":"M. Raffa, Riccardo Pronzato","doi":"10.1285/I22840753N19P293","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1285/I22840753N19P293","url":null,"abstract":"The prominent role played by algorithmic platforms in people’s everyday lives has in recent years triggered a growing interest towards algorithmic imaginaries, intended as worlds of experience users make of the algorithmic media, thereby building up their own awareness of the platform and in turn moulding the algorithm itself through their performativity. Today, part of the construction of individual cultures takes place on streaming platforms, media environments where subjects access cultural materials and cultural exchanges occur. Platforms, such as Netflix or Spotify, have become privileged sites for studying the platformization of cultural production and the construction of algorithmic imaginaries by users and developers. Despite this, to date little has been discussed about cultural creators’ algorithmic imaginaries. This paper intends to discuss how to include algorithmic imaginaries in research regarding platforms and cultural production, by focusing on the case of music platforms. Specifically, the main goal of this contribution is to address the following issues in the light of existing literature: i) The role of algorithms as cultural gatekeepers and how they may affect the creative disposition of music producers, as well as their strategies to relate with the broader environment of cultural production and consumption. ii) The optimization of culture, i.e., how cultural producers may attempt to create platform-optimized products adapting their creative efforts to platforms’ affordances, thus fostering processes of product homogenization. Finally, suggestions will be made for future investigations regarding how all the actors in the music industry relate to streaming platforms","PeriodicalId":40441,"journal":{"name":"H-ermes-Journal of Communication","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.1,"publicationDate":"2021-05-07","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"44207339","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Over the last decades, immersivity has gained increasing importance in the audiovisual imaginary. In this paper, we propose to take a different route and to explore to what extent the dynamics of gazes – and particularly the direct address – can promote "emersive" strategies that challenge the dominant imaginary, with specific reference to creepypastas and horror video games. First, we trace back the origins of the emersive route to Bertolt Brecht, showing that his theory can be adapted to videogames. Second, we provide a survey of some of the types of gaze that actively involve the player in horror videogames. Then, we focus on creepypastas to demonstrate that the gaze is key to their aim of circumventing the players' character, in order to get in touch with the players themselves. Finally, we analyze a specific creepypasta-based game: Doki Doki Literature Club!. Based on this analysis, we draw the main lines of what, in our view, represents a key modification of contemporary horror imaginary.
{"title":"Una dinamica degli sguardi dall'immaginario creepypasta all'horror videoludico = A dynamics of gazes from the creepypasta imaginary to horror videogames","authors":"F. Cavaletti, F. Toniolo","doi":"10.1285/I22840753N19P71","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1285/I22840753N19P71","url":null,"abstract":"Over the last decades, immersivity has gained increasing importance in the audiovisual imaginary. In this paper, we propose to take a different route and to explore to what extent the dynamics of gazes – and particularly the direct address – can promote \"emersive\" strategies that challenge the dominant imaginary, with specific reference to creepypastas and horror video games. First, we trace back the origins of the emersive route to Bertolt Brecht, showing that his theory can be adapted to videogames. Second, we provide a survey of some of the types of gaze that actively involve the player in horror videogames. Then, we focus on creepypastas to demonstrate that the gaze is key to their aim of circumventing the players' character, in order to get in touch with the players themselves. Finally, we analyze a specific creepypasta-based game: Doki Doki Literature Club!. Based on this analysis, we draw the main lines of what, in our view, represents a key modification of contemporary horror imaginary.","PeriodicalId":40441,"journal":{"name":"H-ermes-Journal of Communication","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.1,"publicationDate":"2021-05-07","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"43662285","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2021-05-07DOI: 10.1285/I22840753N19P249
Heraldo Aparecido Silva
This article aims to analyse the superhero subgenre in comic books and webcomics. First, the study focuses on the characteristics of hero, superhero and antihero categories. Then we briefly describe some contemporary aspect of the history of the stories in superhero comics to propose the inclusion of two new sub-categories: the over-hero and the poser-hero. The theoretical foundation is based on authors such as: Moya (1977; 1994; 2003), Eco (1993), Mix (1993), Beirce (1993), Bloom (2002; 2003), McLauglin (2005), Knowles (2008), Irwin (2009), Mazur; Danner (2014), among others. The literature specializing in comic books and philosophical perspectives functions as analytical and theoretical support for the interpretation of themes taken from the superhero universe.With the advent of computer graphics and the internet, comic books have conquered new formats, new technologies and new audiences from a democratized distribution. In addition, two factors are important to understand the relevance of webcomics to the history of comics. First, as comics in print are scanned, the comics/webcomics distinction is not exclusive. In this text, we discuss about heroes and superheroes that can be found and read in both printed and digital formats. Second, webcomics have enabled many artists to achieve more visibility for their work through social media. From this perspective, we argue that the notion of webcomics evolve from the notion of comics. In the field of studies and research on sequential art, pop culture and other media the superhero subgenre is widespread. However, in the context of philosophical theorization, for a long time, the productions were limited to the perspective of superheroes from impassable conceptual and methodological approaches. From the 1970s to the mid-1990s, the analyses of comic books and, particularly, about the superhero subgenre suffered from the same kind of modeling approach that in many ways led to the same result. This is because, whether critical reading is favorable or unfavorable to superheroism, none of the cited theoretical-methodological contributions gave theoretical primacy to the sequential art, being merely relegated to the condition of object of study. Our proposal here implies subverting this scenario from the proposition of reading comics and webcomics as philosophy and as poetic theory. From this perspective, we will widely use arguments, contexts, and influences from comic book characters and sagas to review, deflect, and redirect some elements of the comic itself. In other words, we will draw our arguments indistinctly from philosophy or literature and comics and webcomics, without establishing any sort of hierarchy between them, in order to propose that the genre of superheroes itself evolved, and, besides heroes, superheroes and antiheroes, we now also have over-heroes and poser-heroes.
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