Unmute This: Circulation, Sociality, and Sound in Viral Media

Cats at keyboards. Dancing hamsters. Giggling babies and dancing flashmobs. A bi-colored dress. Psy’s “Gangnam Style” music video. Over the final decade of the twentieth century and the first decades of the twenty-first, these and countless other examples of digital audiovisual phenomena have been collectively adjectivally described through a biological metaphor that suggests the speed and ubiquity of their circulation—“viral.” This circulation has been facilitated by the internet, and has often been understood as a product of the web’s celebrated capacities for democratic amateur creation, its facilitation of unmediated connection and sharing practices. In this dissertation, I suggest that participation in such phenomena—the production, watching, listening to, circulation, or “sharing” of such objects—has constituted a significant site of twenty-first-century musical practice. Borrowing and adapting Christopher Small’s influential 1998 coinage, I theorize these strands of practice as viral musicking. While scholarship on viral media has tended to center on visual parameters, rendering such phenomena silent, the term “viral musicking” seeks to draw media theory metaphors of voice and listening into dialogue with musicology, precisely at the intersection of audiovisual objects which are played, heard, listened to. The project’s methodology comprises a sonically attuned media archeology, grounded in close readings of internet artifacts and practices; this sonic attunement is afforded through musicological methods, including analyses of genre, aesthetics, and style, discourse analysis, and twenty-first-century reception (micro)histories across a dynamic media assemblage. By analyzing particular ecosystems of platforms, behavior, and devices across the first decades of the twenty-first century, I chart a trajectory in which unpredictable virtual landscapes were tamed into entrenched channels and pathways, enabling a capacious “virality” comprising disparate phenomena from simple looping animations to the surprise release of Beyoncé’s 2013 album. Alongside this narrative, I challenge utopian claims of Web 2.0’s digital democratization by explicating the iterative processes through which material, work, and labor were co-opted from amateur content creators and leveraged for the profit of established media and corporate entities. “Unmute This” articulates two main arguments. First, that virality reified as a concept and set of dynamic-but-predictable processes over the course of the first decades of the twenty-first century; this dissertation charts a cartography of chaos to control, a heterogeneous digital landscape funneled into predictable channels and pathways etched ever more firmly and deeply across the 2010s. Second, that analyzing the musicality of viral objects, attending to the musical and sonic parameters of virally-circulating phenomena, and thinking of viral participation as an extension of musical behavior provide a productive framework for understanding the affective, generic, and social aspects of twenty-first-century virality. The five chapters of the dissertation present analyses of a series of viral objects, arranged roughly chronologically from the turn of the twenty-first century to the middle of the 2010s. The first chapter examines the loops of animated phenomena from The Dancing Baby to Hampster Dance and the Badgers animation; the second moves from loops to musicalization, considering remixing approaches to the so-called “Bus Uncle” and “Bed Intruder” videos. The third chapter also deals with viral remixing, centering around Rebecca Black’s “Friday” video, while the fourth chapter analyzes “unmute this” video posts in the context of the mid-2010s social media platform assemblage. The final chapter presents the 2013 surprise release of Beyoncé’s self-titled visual album as an apotheosis to the viral narratives that precede it—a claim that is briefly interrogated in the dissertation’s epilogue

Carol Vernallis. 2013. Unruly Media: YouTube, Music Video, and the New Digital Cinema. New York: Oxford University Press. Reviewed

“I love the media swirl,” begins Carol Vernallis’s (2013) Unruly Media. In this exploratory, whirlwind, and sometimes frustrating volume, Vernallis acts as an exuberant tour guide through the bleeding edges of twentieth– and twenty–first–century media content. Vernallis cares deeply about the material under scrutiny in her book—pop culture artifacts from the “Sneezing Baby Panda” video to Baz Luhrmann’s 2001 Moulin Rouge!—and the thesis of Unruly Media is, in part, that these objects are worthy of serious scholarly attention. Outing herself so blatantly as a fan of her material is a bold scholarly move, and, despite weaknesses in Unruly Media’s argumentation and execution, Vernallis’s call for further, rigorous, interdisciplinary attention to music video and other contemporary audiovisual phenomena is one that deserves to be heeded by scholars across a wide spectrum of disciplinary backgrounds

Mental health teaching to UK psychology undergraduates: report of a survey

One of the limitations on developing more progressive applied psychology training is the teaching received by students at undergraduate level. In this study, we focus on the provision of teaching about mental health or its equivalents (e.g. abnormal psychology and clinical psychology) on UK undergraduate psychology programmes. Most students who go on to train as clinical psychologists will have received teaching on modules like these. A survey questionnaire was sent to 109 university departments which might offer a module in mental health and 348 individuals who might be involved in delivering such modules. The majority of programmes responding offered a mental health module which was available each year as an optional subject. A number of findings on the content and delivery of the modules are reported and a number of recommendations are made including more involvement from practitioners and service users

A Phenomenon Resembling Early Superhumps in a New SU UMa-Type Dwarf Nova with a 2-Hour Orbital Period

We investigate K2BS5, an optical transient that we identified in Campaign 13 of the Kepler/K2 archives by the "K2 Background Survey", and classify it as a new SU UMa-type dwarf nova. Using the light curve generated from Kepler's long-cadence observation mode, we analyze the dwarf nova during quiescence and superoutburst. Following 20 days of quiescence at the start of the observation, the system entered a superoutburst lasting 12 days, after which it experienced at least one rebrightening. K2BS5 clearly meets the criteria for an SU UMa star, but at the peak of the superoutburst, it also shows double-wave oscillations consistent with the spectroscopic orbital period, a phenomenon that closely resembles early superhumps in WZ Sge stars. While we do not classify K2BS5 as a WZ Sge system, we discuss how this phenomenon could complicate efforts to use the suspected detection of early superhumps to distinguish SU UMa-type dwarf novae from the recently recognized class of long-orbital-period WZ Sge systems.Comment: 11 pages, 7 figures. Accepted for publication in the Astronomical Journa

Colorectal liver metastases: Current management and future perspectives.

The liver is the commonest site of metastatic disease for patients with colorectal cancer, with at least 25% developing colorectal liver metastases (CRLM) during the course of their illness. The management of CRLM has evolved into a complex field requiring input from experienced members of a multi-disciplinary team involving radiology (cross sectional, nuclear medicine and interventional), Oncology, Liver surgery, Colorectal surgery, and Histopathology. Patient management is based on assessment of sophisticated clinical, radiological and biomarker information. Despite incomplete evidence in this very heterogeneous patient group, maximising resection of CRLM using all available techniques remains a key objective and provides the best chance of long-term survival and cure. To this end, liver resection is maximised by the use of downsizing chemotherapy, optimisation of liver remnant by portal vein embolization, associating liver partition and portal vein ligation for staged hepatectomy, and combining resection with ablation, in the context of improvements in the functional assessment of the future remnant liver. Liver resection may safely be carried out laparoscopically or open, and synchronously with, or before, colorectal surgery in selected patients. For unresectable patients, treatment options including systemic chemotherapy, targeted biological agents, intra-arterial infusion or bead delivered chemotherapy, tumour ablation, stereotactic radiotherapy, and selective internal radiotherapy contribute to improve survival and may convert initially unresectable patients to operability. Currently evolving areas include biomarker characterisation of tumours, the development of novel systemic agents targeting specific oncogenic pathways, and the potential re-emergence of radical surgical options such as liver transplantation

Efficacy and Safety of Viltolarsen in Boys With Duchenne Muscular Dystrophy: Results From the Phase 2, Open-Label, 4-Year Extension Study

Background: Duchenne muscular dystrophy (DMD) is caused by DMD gene mutations, resulting in absence of functional dystrophin protein. Viltolarsen, an exon 53 skipping therapy, significantly increased dystrophin levels in patients with DMD. Presented here are completed study results of \u3e 4 years of functional outcomes in viltolarsen-treated patients compared to a historical control group (Cooperative International Neuromuscular Research Group Duchenne Natural History Study [CINRG DNHS]). Objective: To evaluate the efficacy and safety of viltolarsen for an additional 192 weeks in boys with DMD. Methods: This phase 2, open-label, 192-week long-term extension (LTE) study (NCT03167255) evaluated the efficacy and safety of viltolarsen in participants aged 4 to \u3c 10 years at baseline with DMD amenable to exon 53 skipping. All 16 participants from the initial 24-week study enrolled into this LTE. Timed function tests were compared to the CINRG DNHS group. All participants received glucocorticoid treatment. The primary efficacy outcome was time to stand from supine (TTSTAND). Secondary efficacy outcomes included additional timed function tests. Safety was continuously assessed. Results: For the primary efficacy outcome (TTSTAND), viltolarsen-treated patients showed stabilization of motor function over the first two years and significant slowing of disease progression over the following two years compared with the CINRG DNHS control group which declined. Viltolarsen was well tolerated, with most reported treatment-emergent adverse events being mild or moderate. No participants discontinued drug during the study. Conclusions: Based on the results of this 4-year LTE, viltolarsen can be an important treatment strategy for DMD patients amenable to exon 53 skipping

Haptoglobin Phenotype, Preeclampsia Risk and the Efficacy of Vitamin C and E Supplementation to Prevent Preeclampsia in a Racially Diverse Population

Haptoglobin's (Hp) antioxidant and pro-angiogenic properties differ between the 1-1, 2-1, and 2-2 phenotypes. Hp phenotype affects cardiovascular disease risk and treatment response to antioxidant vitamins in some non-pregnant populations. We previously demonstrated that preeclampsia risk was doubled in white Hp 2-1 women, compared to Hp 1-1 women. Our objectives were to determine whether we could reproduce this finding in a larger cohort, and to determine whether Hp phenotype influences lack of efficacy of antioxidant vitamins in preventing preeclampsia and serious complications of pregnancy-associated hypertension (PAH). This is a secondary analysis of a randomized controlled trial in which 10,154 low-risk women received daily vitamin C and E, or placebo, from 9-16 weeks gestation until delivery. Hp phenotype was determined in the study prediction cohort (n = 2,393) and a case-control cohort (703 cases, 1,406 controls). The primary outcome was severe PAH, or mild or severe PAH with elevated liver enzymes, elevated serum creatinine, thrombocytopenia, eclampsia, fetal growth restriction, medically indicated preterm birth or perinatal death. Preeclampsia was a secondary outcome. Odds ratios were estimated by logistic regression. Sampling weights were used to reduce bias from an overrepresentation of women with preeclampsia or the primary outcome. There was no relationship between Hp phenotype and the primary outcome or preeclampsia in Hispanic, white/other or black women. Vitamin supplementation did not reduce the risk of the primary outcome or preeclampsia in women of any phenotype. Supplementation increased preeclampsia risk (odds ratio 3.30; 95% confidence interval 1.61-6.82, p<0.01) in Hispanic Hp 2-2 women. Hp phenotype does not influence preeclampsia risk, or identify a subset of women who may benefit from vitamin C and E supplementation to prevent preeclampsia