Comics Beyond the Page in Latin America

Comics Beyond the Page in Latin America is a cutting-edge study of the expanding worlds of Latin American comics. Despite lack of funding and institutional support, not since the mid-twentieth century have comics in the region been so dynamic, so diverse and so engaged with pressing social and cultural issues. Comics are being used as essential tools in debates about, for example, digital cultures, gender identities and political disenfranchisement. Rather than analysing the current boom in comics by focusing just on the printed text, however, this book looks at diverse manifestations of comics ‘beyond the page’. Contributors explore digital comics and social media networks; comics as graffiti and stencil art in public spaces; comics as a tool for teaching architecture or processing social trauma; and the consumption and publishing of comics as forms of shaping national, social and political identities. Bringing together authors from across Latin America and beyond, and covering examples from Argentina, Brazil, Colombia, Mexico, Peru and Uruguay, the book sets out a panoramic vision of Latin American comics, whether in terms of scholarly contribution, geographical diversity or interdisciplinary methodologies. Comics Beyond the Page in Latin America demonstrates the importance of studying how comics circulate in all manner of ways beyond print media. It also reminds us of the need to think about the creative role of comics in societies with less established comics markets than in Europe, the US and Asia

A world of difference: media translations of fantasy worlds

The modern consumer has access to a massively complex entertainment world. Many of the products available reveal a visible movement of popular fantasy worlds between different media. This transmedia process creates a strong link between film, merchandising and games; with all of these mediums borrowing from each other. This borrowing takes various forms, from licensed adaptations to unofficial copying of ideas, settings and characters as well as exploiting the different aesthetics and techniques of different media. Much of the scholarship on transmedia concentrates on storytelling, where a single overarching narrative unfolds over several different media. This thesis will move away from storytelling to consider how culture producers borrow the aesthetics, narratives and fantasy worlds from other sources, including computer games. This borrowing happens because it enables them to use transmedia functionality to gain market share from an already established audience who have a vested interested in, and enthusiasm for, an established world. Most of this borrowing happens around specific genres – especially fantasy, science fiction and horror. These genres are particularly wide-ranging and emphasise the possibilities of worldbuilding, making then good sources for multi-media franchises. This thesis will examine examples from these genres to examine what elements are translated to a new medium, and what is discarded. This examination will help explain how and why different media and settings work in the way that they do

Online reviews and consumers\u27 willingness to pay: the role of uncertainty

Empirical studies of online reviews have found that valence (average rating) has a consistently positive impact on consumers’ willingness to pay (WTP), but volume does not. Although two studies tried to explain this phenomenon using different perspectives (Wu and Ayala, 2012; Sun, 2012), neither study can fully accommodate the consumer behaviors observed by the other. This dissertation adopts a theoretical framework that can explain the consumer behaviors observed in both studies as well as the varying influence of review volume at the individual level. Specifically, several studies were conducted to investigate the relationship between bidirectional online seller reviews (e.g., the eBay review format) and consumers’ WTP. Essay 1 provides an extensive review of studies that investigate online consumer reviews at the market, product, firm, consumer, and message level; special attention is given to the outcomes of consumer reviews for both products and sellers. In addition, this essay establishes the importance of the current research topic. Essay 2 combines economic and behavioral theories of decision-making under uncertainty to develop a theoretical framework. The framework proposes that review volume and valence influence a consumer’s WTP through a weighting function of outcome probability. Consumers with different preferences towards uncertainty will have different preferences toward review volume, and for some consumers, such preference can change depending on the review valence. Based on this conceptualization, the framework reconciles the current literature by explaining the inconsistent influence of review volume both across and within individuals. The internal validity of the framework is tested with an experiment and analyses carried out at the individual level provide strong support for the proposed conceptual model. Essay 3 establishes the relevance of this research for managers by applying the framework to real market data. Due to the nature of the transactional data, a finite mixture model is used to estimate the weighting function, and hypotheses are tested at the group instead of the individual level. A simulation study demonstrates the validity of using a finite mixture model to estimate the weighting function and classify groups. The results of the hypotheses testing provide adequate support for the framework

The marketing techniques of William Hogarth (1697-1764), artist and engraver.

Abstract In its commercial gearing, the eighteenth-century publishing industry updated and extended popular print. New productions included an increase in the number of newspapers, books such as the novel and the engraved print which, as a repeatable commodity, became a feature of a society in which art was considered a commercial activity as well as a cultural one. The prospect of art becoming as much a commercial entity as an endorsement of cultural status provided enterprising artists such as William Hogarth with the opportunity to satisfy the requirements of an expanding, diverse and literate audience on terms with which they would be familiar. This related not only to the creation of a narrative form of art within the framing strictures of the book and text, but also the establishment of a direct link between the artist and the ‘public at large’ by the strategic use of newspaper advertisements and the competitive promotion of works through the subscription process. These key entrepreneurial activities are considered alongside the securing of intellectual property rights for artists by Hogarth through his successful promotion of the Engravers Copyright Act 1735 which made artists independently responsible for the production and distribution of their own work. Chapter One outlines the conceptual framework for the analysis and interpretation of contemporary society in the early eighteenth-century. This takes into account changes in cultural gradations and the effect these had on commercial trading patterns and aesthetic interpretations of art. Chapter Two provides an overview of the background and upbringing of William Hogarth and the trajectory of his career as he became influenced by commercial opportunity and the prospect of a more open and diverse market for art. Chapter Three identifies technical developments in print and publishing during the period and demonstrates how these and the subscription process provided William Hogarth with commercial opportunities not previously available to artists. The creation by Hogarth of the visually attractive subscription ticket as an artistic item in its own right is considered along with a social analysis of sixty-four signed subscription tickets as a guide to audience composition. Chapter Four analyses the use of advertising in London newspapers by William Hogarth and the specific strategies he adopted on a print by print basis. It also provides fresh evidence of which newspapers were most advertised in and the prints which featured most frequently. Chapter Five reveals the extent to which auction sales in London, as unregulated sales events, responded to, and assisted in the commercialisation of art as an exchangeable commodity once it had left the artists hands. This demonstrates the extent to which the quest for cultural capital of an increasingly large consumer base exerted a formative influence on the commercial and marketing techniques of eighteenth -century art.

Boys' Love for the Love of it: Progressive prosumers and the proliferation of queer culture through Manga

Boys’ love (BL) manga (as a genre of Japanese comics) with either homoerotic or homosocial graphics and content, is largely produced by and for female readers. Much like the audacious women writers in Victorian Britain, these amateur female BL artists (dōjin) and their respective consumers in Japan have arguably empowered themselves as a subcultural community, as well as the represented LGBT community, through progressive and often radical means. Although much scholarly attention has focused on the readers’ gratifications and why BL has such a large female readership, little attention has been given to how, or the extent to which, the popularity of BL manga has potentially fostered LGBT visibility; or to the illustrators who have continued to independently publish such content at their own expense. Essenitally, I analyse the positive socio-economic effects and greater significance which lie in autonomous authorship, exclusive fan rituals, and their potential by-product of progression towards equality in terms of gender and sexuality. By comparing content, readership and fandom practices from the Victorian era and modern-day Japan, I demonstrate that the dissemination and consumption of cultural products which cater for and stem from a disempowered gender group may foster an explicitly queer space and its wider tolerance in the community. Determining if and how this phenomenon has fostered the empowerment of traditionally disenfranchised groups in Japan can provide insight into the subtle social and ideological shifts currently underway in Japan—shifts in which gender and sexuality are enmeshed, and occur in a contemporary context of an ageing population which is clinging onto the security found in traditions and conventions, albeit while adapting to the effects of globalisation

Bollywood eclipsed : the postmodern aesthetics, scholarly appeal, and remaking of contemporary popular Indian cinema

This thesis uses postmodern theory to explore aesthetic shifts in post-millennial Bollywood cinema, with a particular focus on films produced by the Bombay film industry over the past nine years (2000-2009) and the recent boom of Hindi cross-cultural and self-remakes. My research investigates reasons behind the lack of appeal of Bollywood films in the West (particularly in their contemporary form), revealing how our understanding and appreciation of them is restricted or misinformed by a long history of censure from critics, scholars, educators and ambassadors of the Indian cinema. Through my analysis of the function and effects of cultural appropriation and postmodern traits in several recent popular Indian films, I expose Bollywood's unique film language in order to raise our appreciation of this cinema and suggest ways in which it can be better incorporated into future film studies courses. My analysis is based on a study of over a hundred contemporary Bollywood remakes and includes close textual analysis and case studies of a wide variety of popular Bollywood films, including: Dil Chahta Hai (2001), Abhay (2001), Kaante (2002), Devdas (2002), Koi…Mil Gaya (2003), Sarkar (2005), Krrish (2006) and Om Shanti Om (2007). In my conclusion, I offer a redefinition of contemporary Bollywood and I consider postmodernism's usefulness as a tool for teaching Indian cinema and its value as an international cultural phenomenon

An Empirical Look at the Brokered Market for Patents

We studied five years of data on patents listed and sold in the quasi-public “brokered” market. Our data covers almost 39,000 assets, an estimated eighty percent of all patents and applications offered for sale by patent brokers between 2012 and 2016. We provide statistics on the size and composition of the brokered market, including the types of buyers and sellers who participate in the market, the types of patents listed and sold on the market, and how market conditions have changed over time. We conclude with an analysis of what our data can tell us about how to accurately value technology, the costs and benefits of patent monetization, and the brokered market’s ability to measure the impact of changes to patent law

The Material Culture of Freemasonry:A Part of Things not a Thing Apart

Freemasonry is often seen as 'a thing apart' rather than 'a part of things'. This thesis applies well-established anthropological and sociological theories to the material culture of freemasonry, in particular Actor Network Theory. It establishes for the first time that this method binds freemasonry into the broader world of material culture and also provides unexpected insights into freemasonry itself.Centering the examination on my personal experience as Curator at the Museum of Freemasonry in London I consider how the collecting and display or failure to display objects used by, created by and commercially produced for freemasons provides insights in the round on how the material is regarded by society. The perceived secrecy of freemasonry is considered and I show that this is a contested and variable boundary between concealment and revelation. Most of the information needed to study the material culture of freemasonry is accessible to external researchers.I establish the nature of these objects and the way in which the inanimate material culture of freemasonry has innate properties that generate affect and agency on the freemasons and wider society. I show how this material culture is bound into the development of capitalism and consumerism from the early eighteenth century onwards. It forms the first and only continuous example of identity supporting material culture to arise ex nihilo and develop in parallel with the consumer society from the early eighteenth century. This has strong parallels with later material cultures reinforcing identity but is the paradigm and key point for comparison.I view freemasonry's material culture from different viewpoints, firstly its development and relevance to freemasons then establishing its relationship with the broader non-masonic world. I then de-contextualise it by examining its role as collectable giving the material a new agency not always related to its intended function or meaning.The thesis establishes for the first time that masonic material culture has a meaning and significance beyond the specifics of freemasonry studies. I show that a wide range of theories can be brought to bear on this topic and argue that there are multiple significant additional routes to study that have yet to be investigated.I conclude that the material culture of freemasonry is indeed 'a part of things' and if as researchers we fail to investigate the 'things' that freemasonry creates we lose a significant tool to investigate and analyse freemasonry as part of the wider social and anthropological world