Pub Date : 2023-08-31DOI: 10.1177/13548565231199968
A. Weare
This production study utilizes postfeminist theory as a lens for seeing ‘beauty work’ on YouTube via the multi-channel network (MCN) ICON Network, a collaboration between the production company Endemol Shine and beauty YouTuber Michelle Phan. By bringing to focus the unique year of 2015–2016 when YouTube beauty production was largely produced within MCNs, the study sets the stage for the proceeding professionalization of YouTube content creation under legacy production and distribution companies in the 2020s. In-depth producer interviews with ICON management and YouTubers illuminated MCN business practices and producer perceptions of YouTube beauty production. Interview data was analyzed for its articulation within ICON as a postfeminist media culture (Gill, 2007) through (a) work conditions of beauty video production and (b) best practices of beauty video production. Results indicate that ICON is a site where the markers of feminism, postfeminism, and transnational feminism intersect and collide. These intersections contextualize today’s beauty influencing landscape which pushes for independence from MCNs, transparency, and authenticity.
{"title":"Beautytube: Enacting postfeminism on the YouTube multi-channel network ICON from 2015 to 2016","authors":"A. Weare","doi":"10.1177/13548565231199968","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/13548565231199968","url":null,"abstract":"This production study utilizes postfeminist theory as a lens for seeing ‘beauty work’ on YouTube via the multi-channel network (MCN) ICON Network, a collaboration between the production company Endemol Shine and beauty YouTuber Michelle Phan. By bringing to focus the unique year of 2015–2016 when YouTube beauty production was largely produced within MCNs, the study sets the stage for the proceeding professionalization of YouTube content creation under legacy production and distribution companies in the 2020s. In-depth producer interviews with ICON management and YouTubers illuminated MCN business practices and producer perceptions of YouTube beauty production. Interview data was analyzed for its articulation within ICON as a postfeminist media culture (Gill, 2007) through (a) work conditions of beauty video production and (b) best practices of beauty video production. Results indicate that ICON is a site where the markers of feminism, postfeminism, and transnational feminism intersect and collide. These intersections contextualize today’s beauty influencing landscape which pushes for independence from MCNs, transparency, and authenticity.","PeriodicalId":47242,"journal":{"name":"Convergence-The International Journal of Research Into New Media Technologies","volume":"4 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":2.8,"publicationDate":"2023-08-31","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"85283689","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-08-31DOI: 10.1177/13548565231199983
S. Driessen
What happens if your favorite artist gets canceled? Can you remain a fan after such a controversy? This study explores how fans – those with a strong affective bond toward their fan object – negotiate their fannish position and practices after the cancellation of their idol. Fans are asked to re-evaluate their fandom, and potentially their participation in it: a political turning point in their fannish career. To better understand this phenomenon, this study examines the fandom of the canceled Dutch singer and The Voice coach Marco Borsato. Doing so, it highlights how fans negotiate, give meaning to and understand the cancellation of their ‘problematic fave’ by drawing on an interview study with twelve Dutch fans of Marco Borsato complemented with an analysis of online fan comments. A thematic analysis of this data shows the complexity of being a fan of a canceled artist. Further, it reveals how fans navigate the everyday political and cultural consequences of being a(n ex-)fan in this situation. Findings illustrate how some fans steadfastly commit to their fandom and dismiss the allegations, while others are more careful in publicly expressing their affection and wish to first learn more about the situation. They feel conflicted about the situation and turn their fandom into something more /private. Based on these findings, this article unfolds what motivates some to step away from this cancel case and Borsato, while others defend him at all costs. Through this lens, we can argue that this might resonate with and help us better understand for example polarized views in society at large. So, seemingly innocent fannish play offers a first look and step toward an understanding of how such processes play out on a macro-level.
{"title":"The participatory politics and play of canceling an idol: Exploring how fans negotiate their fandom of a canceled ‘fave’","authors":"S. Driessen","doi":"10.1177/13548565231199983","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/13548565231199983","url":null,"abstract":"What happens if your favorite artist gets canceled? Can you remain a fan after such a controversy? This study explores how fans – those with a strong affective bond toward their fan object – negotiate their fannish position and practices after the cancellation of their idol. Fans are asked to re-evaluate their fandom, and potentially their participation in it: a political turning point in their fannish career. To better understand this phenomenon, this study examines the fandom of the canceled Dutch singer and The Voice coach Marco Borsato. Doing so, it highlights how fans negotiate, give meaning to and understand the cancellation of their ‘problematic fave’ by drawing on an interview study with twelve Dutch fans of Marco Borsato complemented with an analysis of online fan comments. A thematic analysis of this data shows the complexity of being a fan of a canceled artist. Further, it reveals how fans navigate the everyday political and cultural consequences of being a(n ex-)fan in this situation. Findings illustrate how some fans steadfastly commit to their fandom and dismiss the allegations, while others are more careful in publicly expressing their affection and wish to first learn more about the situation. They feel conflicted about the situation and turn their fandom into something more /private. Based on these findings, this article unfolds what motivates some to step away from this cancel case and Borsato, while others defend him at all costs. Through this lens, we can argue that this might resonate with and help us better understand for example polarized views in society at large. So, seemingly innocent fannish play offers a first look and step toward an understanding of how such processes play out on a macro-level.","PeriodicalId":47242,"journal":{"name":"Convergence-The International Journal of Research Into New Media Technologies","volume":"23 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":2.8,"publicationDate":"2023-08-31","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"90236956","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-08-19DOI: 10.1177/13548565231193706
Daniel L. Gardner, T. J. Tanenbaum
Access controls are an inescapable and deceptively mundane requirement for accessing digital applications and platforms. These systems enable and enforce practices related to access, ownership, privacy, and surveillance. Companies use access controls to dictate and enforce terms of use for digital media, platforms, and technologies. The technical implementation of these systems is well understood. However, this paper instead uses digital game software and platforms as a case study to analyze the broader socio-technical, and often inequitable, interactions these elements regulate across software systems. Our sample includes 200 digital games and seven major digital gaming platforms. We combine close reading and content analysis to examine the processes of authentication and authorization within our samples. While the ubiquity of these systems is a given in much academic and popular discourse, our data help empirically ground this understanding and examine how these systems support user legibility and surveillance, and police identities in under-examined ways. We suggest changes to the policies and practices that shape these systems to drive more transparent and equitable design.
{"title":"The access control double bind: How everyday interfaces regulate access and privacy, enable surveillance, and enforce identity","authors":"Daniel L. Gardner, T. J. Tanenbaum","doi":"10.1177/13548565231193706","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/13548565231193706","url":null,"abstract":"Access controls are an inescapable and deceptively mundane requirement for accessing digital applications and platforms. These systems enable and enforce practices related to access, ownership, privacy, and surveillance. Companies use access controls to dictate and enforce terms of use for digital media, platforms, and technologies. The technical implementation of these systems is well understood. However, this paper instead uses digital game software and platforms as a case study to analyze the broader socio-technical, and often inequitable, interactions these elements regulate across software systems. Our sample includes 200 digital games and seven major digital gaming platforms. We combine close reading and content analysis to examine the processes of authentication and authorization within our samples. While the ubiquity of these systems is a given in much academic and popular discourse, our data help empirically ground this understanding and examine how these systems support user legibility and surveillance, and police identities in under-examined ways. We suggest changes to the policies and practices that shape these systems to drive more transparent and equitable design.","PeriodicalId":47242,"journal":{"name":"Convergence-The International Journal of Research Into New Media Technologies","volume":"20 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":2.8,"publicationDate":"2023-08-19","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"84503832","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-08-11DOI: 10.1177/13548565231191261
A. Barbala
Political social media influencers are taking increasingly central and agenda-setting roles within contemporary media ecologies; however, little in-depth research has been conducted with regard to their agency and the practices of the specific agents involved. This article examines Scandinavian Instagram feminists’ practices and experiences in light of the #MeToo campaigns. Building on observations and interviews with feminist influencers whose followers exceed 10,000 each, the article seeks to contribute new insights about social media user agency, concentrating on some of the most powerful voices in digital activism. By regarding #MeToo an assemblage of various homogenous and shifting elements, the article highlights how feminist influencers in the Scandinavian context have taken positions as defining agents of feminism through employing Instagram’s user options for performing affective acts of labor. Though they do not utilize Instagram as a means for making money through advertising the way mainstream influencers do, nonprofit influencers such as microcelebrity feminists have large social media followings and are still arguably important players in the platform economy because of their significant reach and ability to influence political agendas.
{"title":"Reassembling #MeToo: Tracing the techno-affective agency of the feminist Instagram influencer","authors":"A. Barbala","doi":"10.1177/13548565231191261","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/13548565231191261","url":null,"abstract":"Political social media influencers are taking increasingly central and agenda-setting roles within contemporary media ecologies; however, little in-depth research has been conducted with regard to their agency and the practices of the specific agents involved. This article examines Scandinavian Instagram feminists’ practices and experiences in light of the #MeToo campaigns. Building on observations and interviews with feminist influencers whose followers exceed 10,000 each, the article seeks to contribute new insights about social media user agency, concentrating on some of the most powerful voices in digital activism. By regarding #MeToo an assemblage of various homogenous and shifting elements, the article highlights how feminist influencers in the Scandinavian context have taken positions as defining agents of feminism through employing Instagram’s user options for performing affective acts of labor. Though they do not utilize Instagram as a means for making money through advertising the way mainstream influencers do, nonprofit influencers such as microcelebrity feminists have large social media followings and are still arguably important players in the platform economy because of their significant reach and ability to influence political agendas.","PeriodicalId":47242,"journal":{"name":"Convergence-The International Journal of Research Into New Media Technologies","volume":"31 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":2.8,"publicationDate":"2023-08-11","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"73676390","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-08-04DOI: 10.1177/13548565231193694
Z. McDowell, Katrin Tiidenberg
A growing body of academic work on internet governance focuses on the ‘deplatforming of sex’, or the removal and suppression of sexual expression from the internet. Often, this is linked to the 2018 passing of FOSTA/SESTA – much-criticized twin bills that make internet intermediaries liable for content that promotes or facilitates prostitution or sex trafficking. We suggest analyzing both internet governance and the deplatforming of sex in conjunction with long-term agendas of conservative lobbying groups. Specifically, we combine media historiography, policy analysis, and thematic and discourse analysis of the National Center on Sexual Exploitation’s (NCOSE, formerly Morality in Media) press releases and media texts to show how conservative moral entrepreneurs weaponize ideas of morality, obscenity, and harm in internet governance. We illustrate how NCOSE has, directly and indirectly, interfered in internet governance, first by lobbying for rigorous enforcement of obscenity laws and then for creating internet-specific obscenity laws (which we argue CDA, COPA, and FOSTA/SESTA all were for NCOSE). We show how NCOSE adjusted their rhetoric to first link pornography to addiction and pedophilia and later to trafficking and exploitation; how they took advantage of the #metoo momentum; mastered legal language, and incorporated an explicit anti-internet stance.
{"title":"The (not so) secret governors of the internet: Morality policing and platform politics","authors":"Z. McDowell, Katrin Tiidenberg","doi":"10.1177/13548565231193694","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/13548565231193694","url":null,"abstract":"A growing body of academic work on internet governance focuses on the ‘deplatforming of sex’, or the removal and suppression of sexual expression from the internet. Often, this is linked to the 2018 passing of FOSTA/SESTA – much-criticized twin bills that make internet intermediaries liable for content that promotes or facilitates prostitution or sex trafficking. We suggest analyzing both internet governance and the deplatforming of sex in conjunction with long-term agendas of conservative lobbying groups. Specifically, we combine media historiography, policy analysis, and thematic and discourse analysis of the National Center on Sexual Exploitation’s (NCOSE, formerly Morality in Media) press releases and media texts to show how conservative moral entrepreneurs weaponize ideas of morality, obscenity, and harm in internet governance. We illustrate how NCOSE has, directly and indirectly, interfered in internet governance, first by lobbying for rigorous enforcement of obscenity laws and then for creating internet-specific obscenity laws (which we argue CDA, COPA, and FOSTA/SESTA all were for NCOSE). We show how NCOSE adjusted their rhetoric to first link pornography to addiction and pedophilia and later to trafficking and exploitation; how they took advantage of the #metoo momentum; mastered legal language, and incorporated an explicit anti-internet stance.","PeriodicalId":47242,"journal":{"name":"Convergence-The International Journal of Research Into New Media Technologies","volume":"19 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":2.8,"publicationDate":"2023-08-04","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"88082808","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-08-02DOI: 10.1177/13548565231193121
Emmelle Israel
Traditional media’s convergence with online media platforms intensifies the already unpaid and unrecognized affective, immaterial and emotional labor expected of women of color and other historically marginalized media workers. This article uses the example of Bon Appetit (BA) and the downfall of their popular YouTube channel to argue that understanding this intensification is critical to envisioning possibilities for media workers to address exploitative working conditions. In the wake of Black Lives Matter uprisings in the summer of 2020, Black and Brown women food writers took to social media to point out that while BA profited from portraying a diverse workforce on their YouTube channel, the reality was very different. At the time, popular press and social media discourse largely attributed these issues to entrenched histories of racialized and gendered discrimination in legacy media. However, recent research on online platforms has engaged feminist studies, Black studies, and critical STS epistemologies to demonstrate that intersectional oppressions based on race, gender, class, and sexuality are reinscribed in the labor and technical infrastructures of platforms. Together, theorizations of the racialized and gendered aspects of unpaid and unrecognized labor alongside research on the biases reinscribed into algorithmic and internet platform infrastructures inform my analysis of a variety of texts related to the BA YouTube channel: BA YouTube channel metadata and videos, advertising trades coverage of Conde Nast’s digital media efforts, popular press coverage of the racial reckoning at Conde Nast and BA, and disclosures about BA and Conde Nast workplace cultures shared in public interviews by BA workers. By analyzing these texts together, I argue that the downfall of the BA YouTube channel demonstrates how media convergence and the platformization of legacy media intensifies racialized and gendered inequalities for media workers, but opportunities to publicly disclose these discriminatory workplace dynamics also galvanize worker organizing.
{"title":"Exposing the mess in the online kitchen: Bon Appetit and digital continuities in legacy media’s workplace exploitations","authors":"Emmelle Israel","doi":"10.1177/13548565231193121","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/13548565231193121","url":null,"abstract":"Traditional media’s convergence with online media platforms intensifies the already unpaid and unrecognized affective, immaterial and emotional labor expected of women of color and other historically marginalized media workers. This article uses the example of Bon Appetit (BA) and the downfall of their popular YouTube channel to argue that understanding this intensification is critical to envisioning possibilities for media workers to address exploitative working conditions. In the wake of Black Lives Matter uprisings in the summer of 2020, Black and Brown women food writers took to social media to point out that while BA profited from portraying a diverse workforce on their YouTube channel, the reality was very different. At the time, popular press and social media discourse largely attributed these issues to entrenched histories of racialized and gendered discrimination in legacy media. However, recent research on online platforms has engaged feminist studies, Black studies, and critical STS epistemologies to demonstrate that intersectional oppressions based on race, gender, class, and sexuality are reinscribed in the labor and technical infrastructures of platforms. Together, theorizations of the racialized and gendered aspects of unpaid and unrecognized labor alongside research on the biases reinscribed into algorithmic and internet platform infrastructures inform my analysis of a variety of texts related to the BA YouTube channel: BA YouTube channel metadata and videos, advertising trades coverage of Conde Nast’s digital media efforts, popular press coverage of the racial reckoning at Conde Nast and BA, and disclosures about BA and Conde Nast workplace cultures shared in public interviews by BA workers. By analyzing these texts together, I argue that the downfall of the BA YouTube channel demonstrates how media convergence and the platformization of legacy media intensifies racialized and gendered inequalities for media workers, but opportunities to publicly disclose these discriminatory workplace dynamics also galvanize worker organizing.","PeriodicalId":47242,"journal":{"name":"Convergence-The International Journal of Research Into New Media Technologies","volume":"7 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":2.8,"publicationDate":"2023-08-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"89774658","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-08-02DOI: 10.1177/13548565231192100
Miriam Lind, Sascha Dickel
With the popularisation of intelligent personal assistants (IPAs) like Amazon’s Alexa and the Google Assistant, natural language-based interaction with machines is increasingly becoming a part of everyday life. The conceptualisation of these tools as agentive assistants who help with a variety of tasks in both the household and at work is guided by their marketing: When Apple introduced the Siri-technology at their keynote event in 2011, the system responded to the question ‘Siri, who are you?’ with ‘I am a humble personal assistant’. This claim to a speaking subject position while at the same time locating this subject firmly in a servile social role has become a defining feature of the social place of IPAs: Designed to postulate agency, they do so not in equality with humans but as their servants. This paper offers an interdisciplinary analysis of video advertisements for IPAs, combining sociological and linguistic approaches. We treat agency and actors not as something given but as something that becomes visible through communicative acts, suggesting an understanding of these advertisements as socio-technical visions in which the negotiation of agency in human–machine interaction serves two functions: Firstly, the asymmetrical relationship between the human and the machine promises a symmetrisation of human–human relationships. In an imagined diversified world of equal human rights and relationships, social inequality is reconfigured in the relationship between human and non-human entities. Secondly, the negotiation of agency between humans and machines deflects from questions regarding the increasing agency and power of the companies behind these IPAs and their growing access to and influence on people’s private lives. Our paper will thus provide insights into how agency is ascribed in human–human and human–machine interaction considering social practices of symmetrisation and hierarchisation as well as a critical investigation into the triangular relationships between humans’, machines’, and companies’ agency.
{"title":"Speaking, but having no voice. Negotiating agency in advertisements for intelligent personal assistants","authors":"Miriam Lind, Sascha Dickel","doi":"10.1177/13548565231192100","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/13548565231192100","url":null,"abstract":"With the popularisation of intelligent personal assistants (IPAs) like Amazon’s Alexa and the Google Assistant, natural language-based interaction with machines is increasingly becoming a part of everyday life. The conceptualisation of these tools as agentive assistants who help with a variety of tasks in both the household and at work is guided by their marketing: When Apple introduced the Siri-technology at their keynote event in 2011, the system responded to the question ‘Siri, who are you?’ with ‘I am a humble personal assistant’. This claim to a speaking subject position while at the same time locating this subject firmly in a servile social role has become a defining feature of the social place of IPAs: Designed to postulate agency, they do so not in equality with humans but as their servants. This paper offers an interdisciplinary analysis of video advertisements for IPAs, combining sociological and linguistic approaches. We treat agency and actors not as something given but as something that becomes visible through communicative acts, suggesting an understanding of these advertisements as socio-technical visions in which the negotiation of agency in human–machine interaction serves two functions: Firstly, the asymmetrical relationship between the human and the machine promises a symmetrisation of human–human relationships. In an imagined diversified world of equal human rights and relationships, social inequality is reconfigured in the relationship between human and non-human entities. Secondly, the negotiation of agency between humans and machines deflects from questions regarding the increasing agency and power of the companies behind these IPAs and their growing access to and influence on people’s private lives. Our paper will thus provide insights into how agency is ascribed in human–human and human–machine interaction considering social practices of symmetrisation and hierarchisation as well as a critical investigation into the triangular relationships between humans’, machines’, and companies’ agency.","PeriodicalId":47242,"journal":{"name":"Convergence-The International Journal of Research Into New Media Technologies","volume":"11 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":2.8,"publicationDate":"2023-08-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"77253691","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-08-02DOI: 10.1177/13548565231193120
Gabrielle M Greig (Lennox)
Theatre is increasingly exploring the potential of interactivity, especially as the growing experience economy reveals that people actively seek activities that offer new ways to engage with stories. The inclusion of interactive elements akin to game mechanics, which I call ergodic mechanics, shifts these performances into an intermedial sphere between digital games and conventional theatre. I use the term ergodic theatre to classify this specific subgenre of immersive theatre where the traveller works to form their path through the storyworld. Ergodic mechanics are the systems through which the traveller works or interacts. But what impact does the inclusion of ergodic mechanics have on storytelling? This question is critical to producing meaningful ergodic theatre performances and preventing interactive elements from becoming gimmicks, as some theatre reviewers have labelled them (Gardner, 2014). I interrogate the relationship between and impact of ergodic mechanics on the creation of story and meaning by examining narrative moments from The Under Presents, a VR ergodic theatre experience, and What Remains of Edith Finch and Dream, both digital ergodic theatre experiences. Analysing these case studies helps demonstrate the value of weaving ergodic mechanics with the story. When there is harmony between the interactive and story elements, the included ergodic mechanics heighten the traveller’s narrative engagement and emotional connection to the play’s characters or themes. I argue that ludonarrative harmony loops are a powerful tool that can enrich the traveller’s theatrical experience. I present an interdisciplinary approach by applying digital game theory parsed through dramaturgy to address the nuances of telling meaningful and engaging stories in ergodic theatre. Analysing the incorporation and dramaturgical function of interactivity highlights the potential of ergodic mechanics in intermedial ergodic performances. Furthermore, creating ludonarrative harmony is central to ergodic theatre’s continued success and growth as a storytelling medium.
戏剧越来越多地探索互动性的潜力，特别是随着体验经济的发展，人们积极寻求提供新方式参与故事的活动。包含类似于游戏机制的互动元素(我称之为遍历式机制)将这些表演转变为介于数字游戏和传统戏剧之间的中间领域。我用“遍历式戏剧”这个词来分类这种沉浸式戏剧的特定亚类型，在这种戏剧中，旅行者努力形成他们在故事世界中的路径。遍历机制是旅行者工作或互动的系统。但遍历式机制对故事叙述有何影响?这个问题对于制作有意义的戏剧表演和防止互动元素成为噱头至关重要，正如一些戏剧评论家所标记的那样(Gardner, 2014)。我通过研究《the Under Presents》(VR遍历式戏剧体验)和《What Remains of Edith Finch and Dream》(两者都是数字遍历式戏剧体验)中的叙事时刻，来探究遍历式机制对故事和意义创造的关系和影响。分析这些案例研究有助于展示将遍历式机制与故事相结合的价值。当互动性和故事元素之间存在和谐时，所包含的遍历式机制会提高旅行者的叙述参与度以及与戏剧角色或主题的情感联系。我认为，叙事和谐循环是一个强大的工具，可以丰富旅行者的戏剧体验。我提出了一种跨学科的方法，通过运用数字博弈论解析戏剧，以解决在遍历戏剧中讲述有意义和引人入胜的故事的细微差别。通过对互动性的结合和戏剧功能的分析，突出了遍历力学在中间遍历表演中的潜力。此外，作为一种讲故事的媒介，创造戏剧叙事的和谐是遍历戏剧持续成功和发展的核心。
{"title":"Mechanical meaning: The relationship between game mechanics and story in ergodic theatre","authors":"Gabrielle M Greig (Lennox)","doi":"10.1177/13548565231193120","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/13548565231193120","url":null,"abstract":"Theatre is increasingly exploring the potential of interactivity, especially as the growing experience economy reveals that people actively seek activities that offer new ways to engage with stories. The inclusion of interactive elements akin to game mechanics, which I call ergodic mechanics, shifts these performances into an intermedial sphere between digital games and conventional theatre. I use the term ergodic theatre to classify this specific subgenre of immersive theatre where the traveller works to form their path through the storyworld. Ergodic mechanics are the systems through which the traveller works or interacts. But what impact does the inclusion of ergodic mechanics have on storytelling? This question is critical to producing meaningful ergodic theatre performances and preventing interactive elements from becoming gimmicks, as some theatre reviewers have labelled them (Gardner, 2014). I interrogate the relationship between and impact of ergodic mechanics on the creation of story and meaning by examining narrative moments from The Under Presents, a VR ergodic theatre experience, and What Remains of Edith Finch and Dream, both digital ergodic theatre experiences. Analysing these case studies helps demonstrate the value of weaving ergodic mechanics with the story. When there is harmony between the interactive and story elements, the included ergodic mechanics heighten the traveller’s narrative engagement and emotional connection to the play’s characters or themes. I argue that ludonarrative harmony loops are a powerful tool that can enrich the traveller’s theatrical experience. I present an interdisciplinary approach by applying digital game theory parsed through dramaturgy to address the nuances of telling meaningful and engaging stories in ergodic theatre. Analysing the incorporation and dramaturgical function of interactivity highlights the potential of ergodic mechanics in intermedial ergodic performances. Furthermore, creating ludonarrative harmony is central to ergodic theatre’s continued success and growth as a storytelling medium.","PeriodicalId":47242,"journal":{"name":"Convergence-The International Journal of Research Into New Media Technologies","volume":"57 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":2.8,"publicationDate":"2023-08-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"86606764","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-07-24DOI: 10.1177/13548565231190343
Natalie Le Clue
This paper focuses on the under-studied and complex aspect of toxic fan practices by analysing the discourse surrounding the Twitter hashtags #CrookedHillary and #LockHerUp as used throughout the 2016 Presidential Election in the United States. Based on the analysis of these hashtags, the previously ‘normal’ and ‘acceptable’ type of discourse has been co-opted into what can, arguably, be termed as toxic rhetoric and fan behaviour on Twitter. The results of this paper point to an acceptance by fans of being immersed in toxic practices despite a paradigmatic relocation of what is ‘normal’ towards more unchecked, unethical, and toxic behaviour.
{"title":"The new normal: Online political fandom and the co-opting of morals","authors":"Natalie Le Clue","doi":"10.1177/13548565231190343","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/13548565231190343","url":null,"abstract":"This paper focuses on the under-studied and complex aspect of toxic fan practices by analysing the discourse surrounding the Twitter hashtags #CrookedHillary and #LockHerUp as used throughout the 2016 Presidential Election in the United States. Based on the analysis of these hashtags, the previously ‘normal’ and ‘acceptable’ type of discourse has been co-opted into what can, arguably, be termed as toxic rhetoric and fan behaviour on Twitter. The results of this paper point to an acceptance by fans of being immersed in toxic practices despite a paradigmatic relocation of what is ‘normal’ towards more unchecked, unethical, and toxic behaviour.","PeriodicalId":47242,"journal":{"name":"Convergence-The International Journal of Research Into New Media Technologies","volume":"25 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":2.8,"publicationDate":"2023-07-24","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"88799540","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-07-24DOI: 10.1177/13548565231189584
David Waldecker, Tim Hector, Dagmar Hoffmann
There are at least two perspectives concerning the role of digital and connected media systems in relation to individual agency. One suggests that individuals have a gain in agency while using digital devices and services while other approaches see that users become dependent on tech companies that use data flows to analyse and manipulate user behaviour. In our paper, we want to examine empirically how those two descriptions of agency work out and relate to each other. We use conversation analysis of face-to-interface interactions with smart speakers and intelligent personal assistants to examine the agency in front of the device and we rely on interviews with smart-speaker users to understand the users’ strategies to curtail the potentially unwanted effects of smart and connected devices and services. With reference to concepts of ‘co-operative work’ and ‘cooperation without consensus’ and a discussion of media and data practices, this paper elucidates how the two agencies of users and of device and service providers are intertwined and distributed.
{"title":"Intelligent Personal Assistants in practice. Situational agencies and the multiple forms of cooperation without consensus","authors":"David Waldecker, Tim Hector, Dagmar Hoffmann","doi":"10.1177/13548565231189584","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/13548565231189584","url":null,"abstract":"There are at least two perspectives concerning the role of digital and connected media systems in relation to individual agency. One suggests that individuals have a gain in agency while using digital devices and services while other approaches see that users become dependent on tech companies that use data flows to analyse and manipulate user behaviour. In our paper, we want to examine empirically how those two descriptions of agency work out and relate to each other. We use conversation analysis of face-to-interface interactions with smart speakers and intelligent personal assistants to examine the agency in front of the device and we rely on interviews with smart-speaker users to understand the users’ strategies to curtail the potentially unwanted effects of smart and connected devices and services. With reference to concepts of ‘co-operative work’ and ‘cooperation without consensus’ and a discussion of media and data practices, this paper elucidates how the two agencies of users and of device and service providers are intertwined and distributed.","PeriodicalId":47242,"journal":{"name":"Convergence-The International Journal of Research Into New Media Technologies","volume":"64 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":2.8,"publicationDate":"2023-07-24","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"73720965","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
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