How to tell the difference between production and consumption : a case study in Doctor Who fandom

A television series is tagged with the label "cult" by the media, advertisers, and network executives when it is considered edgy or offbeat, when it appeals to nostalgia, or when it is considered emblematic of a particular subculture. By these criteria, almost any series could be described as cult. Yet certain programs exert an uncanny power over their fans, encouraging them to immerse themselves within a fictional world.In Cult Television leading scholars examine such shows as The X-Files; The Avengers; Doctor Who, Babylon Five; Star Trek; Xena, Warrior Princess; and Buffy the Vampire Slayer to determine the defining characteristics of cult television and map the contours of this phenomenon within the larger scope of popular culture.Contributors: Karen Backstein; David A. Black, Seton Hall U; Mary Hammond, Open U; Nathan Hunt, U of Nottingham; Mark Jancovich; Petra Kuppers, Bryant College; Philippe Le Guern, U of Angers, France; Alan McKee; Toby Miller, New York U; Jeffrey Sconce, Northwestern U; Eva ViethSara Gwenllian-Jones is a lecturer in television and digital media at Cardiff University and co-editor of Intensities: The Journal of Cult Media.Roberta E. Pearson is a reader in media and cultural studies at Cardiff University. She is the author of the forthcoming book Small Screen, Big Universe: Star Trek and Television.

The absence of form

what was silent will speak, what is closed will open and will take on a voice Paul Virilio The fundamental problem in dealing with the digital is that we are forced to contend with a fundamental deconstruction of form. A deconstruction that renders our content and practice into a single state that can be openly and easily manipulated, reimagined and mashed together in rapid time to create completely unique artefacts and potentially unwranglable jumbles of data. Once our work is essentially broken down into this series of number sequences, (or bytes), our sound, images, movies and documents – our memory files - we are left with nothing but choice….and this is the key concern. This absence of form transforms our work into new collections and poses unique challenges for the artist seeking opportunities to exploit the potential of digital deconstruction. It is through this struggle with the absent form that we are able to thoroughly explore the latent potential of content, exploit modern abstractions of time and devise approaches within our practice that actively deal with the digital as an essential matter of course.

Copyright, digital media literacies and preservice teacher education

This article considers copyright knowledge and skills as a new literacy that can be developed through the application of digital media literacy pedagogies. Digital media literacy is emerging from more established forms of media literacy that have existed in schools for several decades and have continued to change as the social and cultural practices around media technologies have changed. Changing requirements of copyright law present specific new challenges for media literacy education because the digitisation of media materials provides individuals with opportunities to appropriate and circulate culture in ways that were previously impossible. This article discusses a project in which a group of preservice media literacy educators were introduced to knowledge and skills required for the productive and informed use of different copyrights frameworks. The students’ written reflections and video production responses to a series of workshops about copyright are discussed, as are the opportunities and challenges provided by copyright education in preservice teacher education.

Building climate change resilience and adaptive capacity in Australia’s community sector using social media and technology innovation

Public and private sector organisations worldwide are putting strategies in place to manage the commercial and operational risks of climate change. However, community organisations are lagging behind in their understanding and preparedness, despite them being among the most exposed to the effects of climate change impacts and regulation. This poster presents a proposal for a multidisciplinary study that addresses this issue by developing, testing and applying a novel climate risk assessment methodology that is tailored to the needs of Australia’s community sector and its clients. Strategies to mitigate risks and build resilience and adaptive capacity will be identified including new opportunities afforded by urban informatics, social media, and technologies of scale making.

Music, media and making : humanising digital media in music education

This paper examines three functions of music technology in the study of music. Firstly, as a tool, secondly, as an instrument and, lastly, as a medium for thinking. As our societies become increasingly embroiled in digital media for representation and communication, our philosophies of music education need to adapt to integrate these developments while maintaining the essence of music. The foundation of music technology in the 1990s is the digital representation of sound. It is this fundamental shift to a new medium with which to represent sound that carries with it the challenge to address digital technology and its multiple effects on music creation and presentation. In this paper I suggest that music institutions should take a broad and integrated approach to the place of music technology in their courses, based on the understanding of digital representation of sound and these three functions it can serve. Educators should reconsider digital technologies such as synthesizers and computers as music instruments and cognitive amplifiers, not simply as efficient tools.

The Hindraf saga : media and citizenship in Malaysia

In the early part of 2008, a major political upset was pulled off in the Southeast Asian nation of Malaysia when the ruling coalition, Barisan Nasional (National Front), lost its long-held parliamentary majority after the general elections. Given the astonishingly high profile of political bloggers and relatively well established alternative online new sites within the nation, it was not surprising that many new media proponents saw the result as a major triumph of the medium. Through a brief account of the Hindraf (Hindu Rights Action Force) saga and the socio-political dissent nursed, in part, through new media in contemporary Malaysia, this paper seeks to lend context to the events that precede and surround the election as an example of the relationship between media and citizenship in praxis. In so doing it argues that the political turnaround, if indeed it proves to be, cannot be considered the consequence of new media alone. Rather, that to comprehensively assess the implications of new media for citizenship is to take into account the specific histories, conditions and actions (or lack of) of the various social actors involved.

Photographic representations of Asylum seekers in Australian media

This paper introduces three approaches to unlocking the degrees of “truth” within photographs published in newspapers by exploring the genres of Press photography, Photojournalism and Documentary photography. This is brought into context through a study of photographs appearing in The Australian newspaper during 2001 when the Norwegian freighter, the MV Tampa, rescued boat people whose vessel had sunk off the West Australian coast in 2001, and two months later the Children Overboard incident occurred.

New Media and Public Communication: Mapping Australian User-Created Content in Online Social Networks

Presentation describling a project in data intensive research in the humanities. Measuring activity of publically available data in social networks such as Blogosphere, Twitter, Flickr, YouTube

Technological talespinning : new media and higher education in the USA : an examination of technological determinism

This thesis examines the theory of technological determinism, which espouses the view that technological change drives social change, through an analysis of the impact of new media on higher education models in the United States of America. In so doing, it explores the impacts of new media technologies on higher education, in particular, and society in general. The thesis reviews the theoretical shape of the discourse surrounding new media technologies before narrowing in on utopian claims about the impact of new media technologies on education. It tests these claims through a specific case study of higher education in the USA. The study investigates whether 'new' media technologies (eg the Internet) are resulting in new forms of higher education in the USA and whether the blurring of information and entertainment technologies has caused a similar blurring in education and entertainment providers. It uses primary data gathered by the author in a series of interviews with key education, industry and media representatives in North America in 1997. Chapter 2 looks at the literature and history surrounding several topics central to the thesis - the discourses of technological determinism, the history of technology use and adoption in education, and impacts of new media technologies on education. Chapter 3 presents the findings of the American case study on the relationship between media and higher education and Chapter 4 concludes and synthesises the investigation.