Communities of Broadcasting and Communities of Interactivity

This paper critiques Holmes’ (1997, pp. 26—45) chapter in Virtual politics: identity and community in cyberspace, which addresses differences between ‘communities of broadcast and communities of interactivity’. The perspective adopted is informed by my extensive (140-interview) ethnographic survey of remote Western Australia following the (1987) introduction of broadcast television. Holmes’ (1997, pp. 33—34) argument is that “what has been largely ignored is an appreciation of the property of broadcast’s power of individuation (or metro-nucleation) of the population ... the ascendancy of the Internet can be explained precisely by a new kind of commodification – the sale of lost levels of community back to the consumer.” This is a seductive argument – and Holmes makes many other exciting and insightful comments – but it is not borne out by the experience of those in remote Western Australia, one of the last populations in the globe to receive television broadcasts

Creative writing as practice-led research

This paper accepts that new knowledge in the Arts is created through practice-led research and that creative writing is one expression of a practice leading to practice-led research outcomes. However, in trying to explain this methodological approach to \u27outsiders: the practice-led researcher may be accused of circularity and/or self-delusion. The alleged circularity tends to be represented back to the researcher as \u2750 what you\u27re saying is that \u27practice-led research leads to knowledge that results from engaging in practice\u27 Is that right?\u2

Treating Internet Users as \u27Audiences\u27: Suggesting some Research Directions

Within the last decade the Internet \u27has emerged out of nowhere\u27 (Barr 2000, back cover) to monopolise much of the domestic time, intellectual interest, and financial resources that had previously been lavished upon film, television, and (specialist console) game consumption. So far, research on the Internet appears to be following a similar evolutionary pattern to research on broadcast media-displacement studies (what have people \u27given up\u27 to make time for the Internet?), effects studies (is it addictive, bad, bankrupting, and why?), ratings data, and response to moral panics (Internet gambling and pornography). Arguably, applied research involving Internet partidpants treats users as \u27audience/s\u27. Is this a legitimate perspective, however, when members are often content creators as well as consumers? The concept of the active audience recognises that all consumption is also production, but the production of meaning for the individual television audience member differs significantly from that which occurs when people engage in interactive exchanges on the Internet, creating content for themselves and others. This paper addresses these issues, suggesting possible research trajectories

Attempting to Ground Ethnographic Theory and Practice

This paper is a response to continued discussion about the necessary and sufficient characteristics of a claim to \u27ethnographic method\u27 when made by researchers in the Media and Cultural Studies traditions. Many of the seminal studies informing-particularly-audience studies research have claimed that they were \u27ethnographic\u27. But is this a variety of ethnographic that an anthropologist would recognise? And if not, what kind of ethnography is it, and why might it be more or less appropriate as a research fromework than straightforward \u27interview\u27 or \u27focus group\u27 research? Further, when might we say that an interview is conducted in the course of an ethnographic study and when might we exclude a claim to ethnography? The discussion around these issues is fraught with a certain slipperiness in tenminology, and in the borrowing of research clothes from other traditions, but the Media and Cultural Studies canon is sufficiently robust to claim both difference from and similarity with versions of ethnography borrowed from a variety of research paradigms

Is it Meaningless to Talk About \u27the Internet\u27?

This paper suggests that there is no longer any fixed meaning to the term \u27Internet\u27. Instead, the Internet is created anew in the hands of each individual user and reflects their prioritie!i and interests. At the same time, the dynamism of Internet innovation and development is such that a burgeoning range of options has become available, allowing Internet users to customise and create their online environment to approxima.te a personal manifestation of what we might call, in a generic sense, \u27their Internet\u27. In part, this shift has been reflected in something as mundane as the everyday usage of the word. Just a few years ago, the word \u27internet\u27 would have been identified by MS Word as an error, unless it had a capital \u271\u27. Now that word-without the capital letter-is accepted. [This journal still prefers \u27Internet\u27. Ed.] The Internet is no longer a proper noun, like a place: instead, the word \u27Internet\u27 is more frequently used as an adjective or a noun-a general category of thing, as in \u27internet shopping\u27 and \u27internet research\u27. This paper looks at whether we can still have a shared meaning around the concept of \u27the Internet\u27 and, if so, what that meaning is and how and where it is confounded in everyday and emerging usage. \u27It argues that the meaningfulness of the term \u27Internet\u27 is now highly compromised and that the specificity it once enjoyed has now become subsumed within a generality equivalent to the notion of \u27the book\u27, or of \u27communication\u27

Hiding Behind Nakedness on the Nude Beach

This paper draws upon a series of experiences between 1980-85, when I identified as a naturist during my summer holidays in Europe, and in a visit to Wreck Beach in Vancouver (where I felt very much at home). At the time, I was aware that nude beaches were much less threatening to me as a large woman than are conventional \u27textile\u27 beaches. This paper draws upon those experiences to theorise why this might be the case, and why I have been absent from beach culture for much of the past decade

Did the World Really Change on 9/11?

In setting myself the question \u27Did the world really change an 9/11 ?\u27, I tie myself into two discussions. The first is an exercise in comparing and contrasting perceptions around the pivotal date of September 11, 2001: what was the world \u27really\u27 like prior to the attacks on America (as they came to be called) and what is it \u27really\u27 like now? The use of the word \u27really\u27 here flags the operation of value judgements; any estimation of change around this event is laden with personal perspectives. The second discussion is the one I deal with first: is there a body of opinion asserting that the events of 9/11 were world-changing events? I propose to offer four examples, centred in the US media, but exported thence to western audiences, which variously assert that the events of September 11 changed the world

Understanding celebrity and the public sphere

However, he argues, this is a cause for celebration because the \u27old model\u27 (\u27modernist\u27 construction) of the public sphere suited and benefited an influential minority in society (white, middle-class, educated males) and the new model of the (\u27postmodern\u27) public sphere increasingly engages the sectors of society systematically excluded and marginalised by modernity\u27s view of what the public sphere should be and does. An Introduction was pitched as a starting point for debate and thus wasn\u27t explicitly addressed to me-after all, I\u27ve studied and written on the public sphere myself.18 McKee\u27s book was consequently an unexpected treat and all the more delicious as a result of its piquant disregard of many academic conventions, in particular the repetition of the structure of the main thesis and the use of extremely accessible and non-academic language (for example, the analysis of what makes the public sphere trashy [83])

From Impartial Objectivity to Responsible Affectivity: Some Ethical Implications of the 9/11 Attacks on America and the War on Terror

In this paper we trace same of the ways a responsibility to affect might be thought of in the wake of the events of 9/11, and examine what it might mean to shift the orientation of journalistic ethics away from an ethics based on objectivity to an ethics of affectivity

Play up! Play up! And play the game!

This paper is about LANing culture. For some, this is ‘gaming culture plus’ – for others, the games are the smokescreen for the BitTorrent sites, porn and illegal downloads. Either way, the LANing activity is a cultural choice overwhelmingly associated with young males and with the kind of commitment and technological dedication that was first recognised in Kidder’s (1981) work, The Soul of the New Machine. Alongside the passion for ‘pimping’ the machine – adding heat sinks, coolers, neon lights, high speed graphic cards etc – is the need to be doing all these things to excess. LANing is at its purest when it involves the negation (or postponement) of everyday life. Organised LANs, for example, are round the clock 26-hour techno-fests fuelled by full-sugar coke and cold fast food runs. It’s a badge of honour to fall asleep in a morning classroom because the night has been spent in a massively multiplayer online game. For all the value ascribed by contemporary society to technological prowess, creativity and digital literacy, the dissident uses of the LAN for copyright flouting and for trading porn and other illegitimate programming – and the implications of nocturnal engagement with the LANing world – means that kids that are into LANs tend also to be constructed as ‘playing up’. Thus the exhortation to ‘Play up! Play up! And play the game!’ is subverted to mean non-compliant behaviour consequent upon dedicated engagement with gaming culture