"Fandom and Co-Production in King of the Dot's Battle Rap Scene."

This interdisciplinary dissertation documents the performances of fans of the professional battle rap league King of the Dot (KOTD), the biggest battle rap league in Canada and one of the highest viewed platforms for battle rap in the world. By collectively tracing and articulating battle rap’s aesthetics, practices, formats, and community standards in digital spaces such as social media sites and fan forums, fans document the scene’s histories while driving innovation and shaping the culture they participate in. I argue that fans play a central role in the meaning-making of battle rap’s cultural practices through their participation in a digital battle rap scene. Through live and digital performance analyses, archival interviews, and oral testimonies, this dissertation prioritizes the voices of the participants in the scene, emphasizing the labour and agency present in battle rap fandom

"Fandom and Co-Production in King of the Dot's Battle Rap Scene."

This interdisciplinary dissertation documents the performances of fans of the professional battle rap league King of the Dot (KOTD), the biggest battle rap league in Canada and one of the highest viewed platforms for battle rap in the world. By collectively tracing and articulating battle raps aesthetics, practices, formats, and community standards in digital spaces such as social media sites and fan forums, fans document the scenes histories while driving innovation and shaping the culture they participate in. I argue that fans play a central role in the meaning-making of battle raps cultural practices through their participation in a digital battle rap scene. Through live and digital performance analyses, archival interviews, and oral testimonies, this dissertation prioritizes the voices of the participants in the scene, emphasizing the labour and agency present in battle rap fandom

From Gangnam to global: K-pop transcultural fan labour and South Korean soft power

Over the past two decades, the steady global popularity of South Korean pop music, known as K-pop, has brought with it a rise in scholarly inquiry surrounding not only the reception of the music itself, but also the potential it possesses in terms of soft power for the nation state. Much of the focus has been directed towards initiatives at the level of the government, the industry, and even the recognition of audiences across the world. Adding to this field of study, this project instead proposes to investigate how global fan labour in particular plays a role in the cultural diplomacy field through its inherent connectivity. More specifically, this project aims to elucidate the ways in which K-pop fan creation exists as a transcultural labour network that re sides within the affective spaces of attachment and exchange. Through employing a conjunct political economy and fandom studies lens, this thesis argues that it is the value of affective attachment constructed and promoted by the labour of fans that not only positions the fandom as active agents of soft power alongside industry and government but allows the work to be transformative in its position as a resistive experience and expression

Focusing on the production process of major agencies

학위논문(석사) -- 서울대학교대학원 : 국제대학원 국제학과(국제지역학전공), 2023. 2. 박지환.As BTS became an undisputable sales juggernaut, the Korean idol industry also get global attention. When looking at the share of each country in the global idol market, Japan dominated until the early 2000s. However, the Korean idol industry, which grew through benchmarking Japan, has been receiving attention in Asia since the 2000s, and in the 2020s, it is receiving worldwide attention. The economic ramifications of Korean idols are huge, and what they eat, use, and the places they visit to attract the attention of fans and extend to other industries such as K-beauty and K-foods. This thesis analyzed the idol industry in South Korea and Japan. Among the three main actors that make up the idol industry which is 'idols (celebrities) - fans - agency', this research subject is limited to the agency or the production side. The research also focused on the management aspects of the agency, that is, the activities of the agency in the production process, to analyze the success factors of the two countries. It proves that the process of developing the idol industry in the two countries is very different. Specifically, the success of idols in both countries was explained in the framework of thorough management strategies and training systems of major agencies, the producers. First, in the management strategies of agencies, it argued that Korea had grown in a strategy keeping pace with globalization, glocalization, and logalization, and a strategy of storytelling using global platforms like YouTube, while Japan had grown in a strategy keeping pace with localization, and storytelling strategy that focused analog methods. Second, in terms of the training system, it argued that the industry grew in Korea through boot-camp style training, the pursuit of perfect idols-total manufacturing-, and a rat-race system based on meritocracy while in Japan, it grew through individual training, the pursuit of developing type idols-consuming intimacy- and a rat-race system based on human egalitarianism.방탄소년단(BTS)의 세계적인 성공과 함께 21세기 아이돌 산업은 한국을 견인하는 산업의 하나로 해를 거듭할수록 그 규모가 커지고 있다. 글로벌 아이돌시장에 있어 각국의 점유율을 살펴보면 1980년대까지만 해도 일본이 압도적이었다. 그러나 일본을 벤치마킹하면서 성장해 온 한국의 아이돌 산업은 2000년대부터 아시아에서 주목을 받고, 2020년대 이르러서는 세계적인 관심을 받고 있다. 한국 아이돌이 갖는 경제적 파생 효과는 엄청나며 그들이 먹은 것, 사용한 것, 가본 곳 등이 팬들의 관심을 끌고, K-beauty, K-foods 등으로 타산업에까지 영향을 뻗친다. 본 연구의 목적은 한국 아이돌산업은 왜 성공하고, 일본은 왜 정체하는지를 알아보는 것이다. 특히 왜 일본은 지역화의 길을 걷고, 한국은 세계화의 길을 걸었는지, 한국의 대표 기획사들의 전략은 무엇이고, 일본의 대표 기획사들의 전략은 무엇인지를 보다 깊이 알아본다. 아이돌 산업을 구성하는 3대 주체는 아이돌(연예인) – 팬 – 기획사 이다. 이 가운데 연구 대상을 기획사로 한정하고, 연구 내용 또한 기획사의 경영적 측면, 즉 생산과정에서의 기획사의 활동을 중심으로 양국 아이돌의 성공 요인을 분석하며 양국의 아이돌 산업을 발전시켜온 과정이 매우 다르다는 사실을 입증한다. 구체적으로는 양국 아이돌의 성공을 생산자인 주요 기획사들의 철저한 경영전략과 훈련시스템이라는 틀에서 설명하는데, 첫째 기획사들의 경영전략에 있어 한국은 국제화와 세방화(glocalization)에 발맞춘 전략과 세계적인 플랫폼 YouTube를 이용한 SNS스토리텔링 전략으로, 일본은 국내화와 아날로그 방식에 치중한 스토리텔링 전략으로 성장하였다고 주장했다. 둘째 훈련시스템 측면에서는 한국은 군대식 훈련, 완성형 아이돌 추구, 실력주의에 기반한 무한경쟁체제로, 일본은 개별 훈련, 성장형 아이돌을 추구하면서, 인간평등주의에 기반한 무한 경쟁체제로 산업을 키웠다고 주장한다.I. Introduction 1 1. Background 1 2. Literature Review 6 2.1 Hallyu (Korean Wave) and Japanese Culture 7 2.2 Localization, Globalization, Glocalization, and Logalization 14 2.3 Organizational Cultures 17 3. Research Methodology 20 II. Music Market Environment and Entertainment Agencies in Korea and Japan 23 1. Music Market Environment 23 2. Characteristics of Talent Agencies in Korea and Japan 29 2.1 JYP, YG, and HYBE in Korea & Hello Project! and AKB series in Japan 29 2.2 SM Entertainment and Johnny's Associates 38 2.2.1 SM Entertainment 39 2.2.2 Johnny's Associates 46 III. Strategies of Korea and Japan's Agencies 54 1. Management Strategies 55 1.1 Glocalization & Logalization (Korea) vs. Localization (Japan) 55 1.2 SNS Strategies of both countries 65 2. Organizational Cultures 72 2.1 NFOB vs. FOB 72 2.2 Modularization vs. Shokunin 75 3. Training Strategies 77 3.1 Boot-camp style training vs. Individual training 78 3.2 Total manufacturing vs. Consuming "Intimacy" 82 3.3 Rat-race 85 IV. Conclusion 90 Bibliography 93 Abstract in Korean 100석

Emergence of individuated nationalism among the major baseball fans in South Korea

This dissertation investigates the transformation of identities of people who experience globalization through mass media in their local places. I explore how South Korean sports fans constitute individual and collective identities through enjoying global sports, i.e. Major League Baseball. This study examines both the process of globalizing MLB in South Korea in the late 90s and the ways that Korean MLB fan enjoy MLB through interacting with other fans in their online community. This study is concerned with three issues: global sports and nationalism/nation-states, global sports and national identity, and fans in an online community. First, using the experiences of Korean baseball fans as an exemplary case, this dissertation examines the issue of identity in a global era vis-à-vis the changing status of nationalism and the nation-states. Korean nationalism and the Korean government are still key influences in reconstituting the identities of Korean MLB fans. Particularly, mass media representations of MLB provided examples of national individuals as models for the altered nationalism of the late 1990s. Secondly, this dissertation investigates how the global sports are embedded in (re)constituting national identity among local people, and then how national identity has been transformed in this process. It focuses on global sports as a key element in national identity, the presence of national sentiment in MLB fandom in South Korea, and the transformation of “the structures of the national” among Korean MLB fans. Third, this dissertation examines an online community and its members, who are no longer limited to a geographical place but rather connect to each other based on common interest. Conclusively, I suggest the term “individuated nationalism” to explain the complicated merging of the national with the idea of individuality. The notion of individuated nationalism implies that, in South Korea, nationalism is embedded in people’s everyday lives, but it is chosen as a personal taste or even rationalized and justified as an identity rather than embraced as a moral imperative or ideological manipulation. Korean MLB fans utilize their national fandom as a source of individual identity based on personal experiences, memories, and the circumstances in which they consume MLB

“MORE JAPANESE THAN JAPANESE”: SUBJECTIVATION IN THE AGE OF BRAND NATIONALISM AND THE INTERNET

Today, modern technologies and the rapid circulation of information across geographic boundaries are said to be making the nation-state less relevant to daily life. In contrast, this dissertation argues that national boundary maintenance is increasingly made more relevant not in spite of such technologies, but precisely because of them. Indeed, processes of circulation are themselves making and re-making such boundaries rather than erasing them, while states simultaneously react to contain the perceived threats of globalization and to capitalize on the sale of their “cultural” commodities through nation branding. For American otaku, or Japan fans, internet technologies and the consumption of Japanese media like videogames and anime are quintessential global flows from within which they first articulate a desire for Japan. Increasingly, some make the very real decision to leave home and settle in Japan, although scholars have suggested otaku are unable to understand the “real” Japan. Once there, however, the Japanese state’s ongoing nation branding policies, along with immigration control and patterns of everyday interactions with Japanese citizens, marginalize even long-term residents as perpetual visitors. Building on the work of Foucault, I seek to understand how notions of national “of courseness,” which fix Japaneseness as naturally homogeneous and impenetrable, subjectivize American fans. Drawing on 12 months of full time participant observation with otaku living in Tokyo, along with 18 months of part time follow-up research, diachronic interviews with Americans in the US and Japan, and extensive textual analysis of all things “Japanese,” this work contrasts the purported deterritorializing promise of online communications and the withering of the relevance of the modern nation-state, with the national boundary making work that these otaku migrants participate in, both online and off. Once in Japan, otaku themselves actively support Japan's nation branding efforts by teaching English and producing the very cultural commodities that motivated their migration in the first place, as they increasingly codify what Japaneseness is for other “foreigners.” At the same time, otaku migrants further reproduce Japanese national identity through accepting and affirming their status as non-Japanese, and through the reinscription of these very boundaries onto other otaku

The Voice of China: Interactive Television and Participatory Audiences in Mainland China

In 2012, the most popular reality TV show in China was The Voice of China (TVoC). It is an adaptation of The Voice of Holland, the format of which has been traded to many countries. Unlike its international versions, audiences cannot vote in TVoC due to government regulations. This research focuses on audience engagement with TVoC (2012), in light of this crucial difference. To investigate how audiences engage and make meanings with the show, this thesis is the first study approaches audience engagement in China by examining the tensions between government media policies, industry strategies and audience reception. Building on existing literature on media convergence and participatory culture in the West, this thesis argues that Internet technologies alongside social media enable and stimulate individual critical thinking and creativities which resist structural constraints such as censorship and commercialisation. Although direct online political participation is censored in China, audiences express and negotiate power as ways to construct political values. These online engagements bring new perspectives to understand participatory culture and ‘empowerment’ of audiences. Using political economy frameworks, this thesis highlights the power of government media policies in shaping TV industry and media content. Analysis of how the industry interprets and implements policies demonstrates how production companies use social media in attracting and cultivating audiences as part of promotional strategies. Adopting a historical reception approach with online ethnography, this study analyses how Chinese audiences engage with TVoC differently on two social media platforms: Sina Weibo and Baidu Tieba. It finds the active engagement of Chinese audiences/fans can be read as grassroots resistance, which can be achieved through different practices through different platforms. The multiple-level analysis of this research provides a new and comprehensive approach to the transformational nature of online participatory culture with regard to reality television in non-Western context

Encounters with Samulnori: The Cultural Politics of South Korea's Dynamic Percussion Genre

This dissertation interrogates how diverse actors ascribe semantic, affective, and political meanings to instrumental music under changing historical circumstances and in different performance contexts. In what I call an “ethnographic reception study,” I employ historical and ethnographic methods to assess the ways in which the popular samulnori percussion genre from South Korea has been imbued with associations as divergent as a sonic symbol of Korea to narratives of resistance against the state. Through five chapters, I track some of the contested and multiple meanings as they interact, both in historical moments in South Korea and vis-à-vis transnational circulations that led to the genre’s transmission outside Korea. As a genre of percussion music that was first created in South Korea in 1978, samulnori has had a complex reception during three dramatic decades in modern Korean history—leading to life-changing encounters from its fans while also eliciting scorn from its detractors. As a dynamic musical genre that is now notated and largely nonverbal, samulnori has served as a user-friendly sonic canvas upon which identities and affinities have been easily grafted by non-Korean fans, leading to the development of amateur samulnori ensembles and musical communities around the world. By considering the ways in which the samulnori genre has been evaluated, interpreted, and practiced by different actors, I show how the genre’s complex reception exhibits a relational and imbricated set of meanings over time. Last, by considering the cultural politics of samulnori from diachronic and synchronic perspectives, I offer a working methodology for contemporary studies of music reception.Musi

Multiple Heat Exchanger Cooling System for Automotive Applications – Design, Mathematical Modeling, and Experimental Observations

The design of the automotive cooling systems has slowly evolved from engine-driven mechanical to computer-controlled electro-mechanical components. With the addition of computer-controlled variable speed actuators, cooling system architectures have been updated to maximize performance and efficiency. By switching from one large radiator to multiple smaller radiators with individual flow control valves, the heat rejection requirements may be precisely adjusted. The combination of computer regulated thermal management system should reduce power consumption while satisfying temperature control objectives. This research focuses on developing and analyzing a multi-radiator system architecture for implementation in ground transportation applications. The premise is to use a single radiator during low thermal loads and activate the second radiator during high thermal loading scenarios. Ground vehicles frequently use different radiators for each component that needs cooling (e.g., engine blocks, electronics, and motors) since they have different optimal working temperatures. The use of numerous smaller heat exchangers adds more energy-management features and alternative routes for carrying on with operation in the event of a crucial subsystem failure. Moreover, despite cooling systems being designed for maximum thermal loads, most vehicles typically operate at a small fraction of their peak values. To study and examine the planned multi-heat exchanger cooling system concepts, various computer simulations and experimental tests were performed. A nonlinear state space model, featuring input and output heat flow paradigms, was developed using a multi-node resistance-capacitance thermal model. The heat removal rate from the radiator(s) was estimated using the -NTU method as downstream fluid temperatures were not required. The system performance was studied for two driving cycles proposed by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) – urban and highway driving schedules. The computer simulation was validated using the laboratory setup in the High Bay Area of Fluor Daniel Engineering Innovation Building. The configuration features computer controlled variable speed electric motor driven coolant pump and independent variable speed fans for each radiator to provide desired fluid flow rates. The pump and fan power consumptions are approximately 0.8-1.2 kW and 0.4-3.2 kW, which corresponds to coolant and air flow rates of 0.2-1.5 kg/s and 0.5-1.75 kg/s, respectively. Two servo motor-controlled gate valves limit the coolant outlet from each radiator. Various thermocouples and a magnetic flow sensor record test data in real time using a dSpace DS1103 data acquisition control system. Designing and analyzing a nonlinear control architecture for the suggested system was the last phase in the study process. A nonlinear controller equipped TMS should offer higher energy efficiency and overall system performance. Three controllers—sliding mode, stateflow, and classical—were designed and implemented in Matlab/Simulink and placed onto the dSpace hardware. The sliding mode controller is recommended for high performance applications since it offers steady temperature tracking, 5oC, an acceptable response time, 120 sec, but suffers from frequent changes in fan speed. The stateflow controller exhibited the fewest fan speed oscillations, the fastest response time, 88 sec, and the smallest temperature offset, 3oC, it is advised for use in common passenger vehicle applications. Both controllers need around six minutes to warm up. The traditional controller, meanwhile, had the quickest warmup, 600 sec, but the slowest response time, 215 sec. Nonlinear cooling systems are essential for maintaining component temperatures which will enable vehicle reliability, and maximize performance given the focus on hybrid and electric vehicles

Understanding 'It': Affective Authenticity, Space, and the Phish Scene

"Understanding It: Affective Authenticity, Space, and the Phish Scene" is an ethnographic study of "scene identity" around the contemporary rock band Phish. Utilizing data generated from six years of ethnographic fieldwork, including over one hundred and fifty interviews with Phish scene participants, this project explores how the production of space at Phish shows works to form a Phish scene identity. I contend that the identity of the Phish scene, what the band members and fans refer to as "it" and I call a spatial articulation of affective authenticity, is produced and formed by scene members themselves, drawing from the interrelations between the production of space (practices that create a specific environment) at shows and a white, middle and upper-middle class cultural memory of the Grateful Dead scene. I situate this process amidst a cultural backdrop of 1980s and 1990s identity politics and in particular, multiculturalism and suggest that Phish scene identity be analyzed as a middle class performance of resistance that achieves community and meaning without resisting class privilege. Following many American, cultural, and performance studies scholars as well as numerous anthropologists, sociologists, and both musicologists and ethnomusicologists, I treat performance as a ritual and posit Phish scene participants can be seen to achieve a social efficacy in their performance of resistance that although heightened from everyday life ultimately serves to replicate the structures of such life. Research regarding the affective nature of "it" and its relationship to the process of cultural memory, collective remembering and forgetting, can be seen as an insightful and powerful theoretical and methodological tool in cultural studies, for it exposes information pertaining not only to subject identity, but also to the discourses and contexts which help articulate such identities. This dissertation begins to examine what interdisciplinary scholars are to make of textual and spatial connections. How does one work to understand these affiliated, and oftentimes, affective relationships? And, in the case of Phish scene identity, how can one understand "it"