Fan Practice
Do fans of a TV show or any other type of pop culture interest have a particular set of practices that define them? What skills could we say they have? Is there a general type of fan practice out there today?
One place to start is Henry Jenkins, drawing upon Levy’s Collective Intelligence idea Jenkins points out three trends in new media useage which might have some overlap with the idea of fan practice today. These trends are:
1. new media tools enable users to archive, annotate, appropriate, and rearticulate media content
2. DIY subcultures promote a particular culture of using new media
3. Media industries actively engage with media audiences/users and encourage the flow of ideas, images, and narrative across multiple media channels and platforms (link to transmedia).
I think fans do the following: archive, annotate, appropriate, and rearticulate media content. And there may be a DIY practice here – tutoring others in knowledge, non-professionals, etc.
I wonder if there is a particular type of fan practice that is able to re-imagine locations around them based on their favourite pop culture texts. For example seeing their city as an exciting city centre through Grand Theft Auto, or imagining giant monsters lurking in the local river or bay ala ”The Host”? What types of collision would these appropriations create between the local history and fan practices?
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I’ve become an enormous fan of CivIV after getting back into the Civ game through playing it on PS3 (then DSlite). Now I’m playing on PC and have worked my way through the game to play the Beyond the Sword addition. I’m loving it, after being a huge fan of it way back in the early 90s when I played the very first Civ game on PC. Apart from enjoying the scope and depth of the game as you build your empire and negotiate the other civs I’ve found many overlaps with the theories and ideas I’m working through in Media and Communications studies. I’m currently reading Benkler’s ‘wealth of networks’ and finding that I can get my head around some of his more complex categories of market and nonmarket knowledge production through drawing upon my fascination with CivIV’s game mechanics.
For instance the ideal-type information production strategies Benkler identifies (from Romantic Maximizers , Michey’s to Joe Einstein’s) reminds me of the civics and leader traits, both define how actions, agendas, and benefits are organised around certain preferences and traits. If you understand how these work, you’ll be able to ‘game’ the systems – eg: look for exploits, look for winning strategies, appreciate context, etc.
I’ve also got to admit that being a scholar whose always been more interested in cultural studies, audience theory and reception issues I’ve always felt a little bit prejudiced against the empirical social science methods such as Political Economy. But I’m beginning to see that my enjoyment of getting into the deeper mechanics of CivIV (exploring FAQs and guides for successful city maintenance, warmongerring, great people produciton, etc) is based on a similar empirical scrutinty that lies within Pol Eco. What further insights that benefit both work and pleasure await?
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Tags: CivIV, political economy, video gaming
A google search
One of the aspects of searching online I’m fascinated by is the ability to drill down deep into a variety of perspectives around a topic or idea through the results I get. I’m always surprised at the variety of sources which appear and the different agendas and biases they have. Benkler nicely articulates this point here:
“One needs only to run a Google search on any subject of interest to see how the “information good” that is the response to one’s query is produced by the coordinate effects of the uncoordinated actions of a wide and diverse range of individuals and organizations acting on a wide range of motivations – both market and nonmarket, state-based and nonstate.”
Google’s ‘information good’ is helped by the efforts of a large enough ciritical mass of content and coordinators – and I am reminded of this by the “image labeler” game in google. In this game you label images on the internet with a fellow labeller to create a type of peer-review system of accuracy. It’s worth checking out if you’re not aware of it.
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How the world might be
Benkler, in his book The Wealth of Networks, talks about a battle occuring today over how we make information, knowledge and culture betwen nonmarket interests vs the established industrial information economy. The consequence of this battle may be dramatic and long lasting. As Benkler says,
“How these battles turn out over the next decade or so will likely have a significant effect on how we come to know what is going on in the world we occupy, and to what extent and in what forms we will be able – as autonomous individuals, as citizens, and as participants in cultures and communities – to affect how we and others see the world as it is and as it might be.”
I think this quote nicely captures some of the key aspects of symblic power being contested today through issues like copyright, domain name cybersquatting, etc. That is, the new stakeholders (prosumers, produsers, pro-ams, user-generated content, etc) are challenging the current hierarchy of media production and distribution. One of the implications is that it may give voice to Couldry’s concerns about making explicit the self-appointed power of mainstream commercial media players (the newspapers, current affairs TV shows, etc) the right to frame and define issues and the world around us (particularly that which we don’t have any first-hand knowledge of).
I particularly like the last part of the quote: “how we and others see the world as it is and as it might be.” As it is, and how it might be. Realistic, but still optimistic and maybe a little idealistic.
Are there recent examples of this battle and how it shows the world as it is and might be? The favourite I’ve found recently was the manga/steam punk/state library mash-up I was involved with last year, check out the great photos posted here, and further research to follow.
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Who?
Here are some basic Journalistic questions about my approach to video games that could do with further understanding:
Who? What? Where? When? Why? How? So What?
If we take as the beginning of this analysis of video games an interest to draw upon local strengths (that is, things close to my physical location in Tas or Australia – so that it is reasonaly easy to secure interviews, data, etc), and communities and networks one is already tapped into (academic, social, etc) then what are some of the frameworks that we can set up?
If we just take the first of these, ‘Who,’ what can we begind to say?
The initial question cuold be “Who are active participants in the local Tasmanian video game community?” Is there a regional aspect here that this addresses, or can one still make extensions from the Hobart scene that could be extrapolated to any urban, developed setting?
There are game consumers, produsers, and producers (eg: Adam Walker Productions – Indie production based in Hobart?). There are good projects to consider around audiences and producers.
There are MMORPG gamers such as WoW players, there are gamers of ’shrink-wraped’ games for consoles such PS3, XBox, Wii, etc, as well as those playing on mobile phones and other mobile devices.
There are also ways of breaking this down by gender, age, ethnicity, etc.
Who plays video games in Hobart? And is there something significant about identifying oneself as a gamer? There are terms such as hardcore and casual which have become increasingly popular ways of polarising the gamer in todays post-Wii game space. Some people reject this gamer identity saying that it is inaccurate and simplistic (just as calling some a reader or TV watcher is a simplistic and narrow way of defning smoeone.) And maybe that has something to it in this transmedia, cross-platform media space where in, when often ones media consumption/production spills into many mediums, or mediums are converged within one platform (the internet etc). Others however would strongly identify with the gamer identity and even take a political position regarding anti-censorship, anti-nanny state, etc in their language towards the governments stand on games classification, etc.
There are aspects of theory around subculture-identity, audience studies, fan-culture theory, which may be useful in unpacking this question of gamer identity.
Was there an issue/event from which this gamer identity began to crystalize? Was it the Wii and the alienation of the hard-core gamer? This seems to be an anchor that many gamers give when they are trying to order there definitions of being a gamer today, or when the issue of the gamer comes into play. But is this purely a sub-culture issue that is the realm of blogs and podcasts within the community. Are there mainstream media reports reinforcing this, picking up on this ordering of the term, gamer?
And we still have: What? Where? When? Why? How? So What? to consider.
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Tags: video
Tas Book Prize
Earlier this week I had the pleasure of speaking at the Tas Book Prize with Sarah Howell and Therese Fingleton. I was asked two very interesting questions about New media and publishing, and I wanted to highlight here what I thought were some of the main issues:
What new expectations do readers have of stories these days? Are they expecting to be able to engage directly with authors through websites, blogs, and so on? In other words, are audiences seeking greater ‘interactivity’ with authors?
• Hybrid media spaces
• Different interest groups
• Conflict and negotiation between different forms of power
• Embrace this or try and control (or fear it)
• Ursula LeGuin vs J.K.Rowling
• Other positive egs: Jon Birgmingham (also Joss Whedon)
• Transmedia environment of the book (multiple entry points)
• Pro-Am possibilities
• Alternative spaces of success: Web Comics (Social Networks, participant cultures)
Do you think that this is a sign that the promise of new technologies in publishing has been over-hyped?
- Utopia and dystopia
- Black box fallacy
- Technological determinism
- Not magical wands
- Positives and negatives
- Participant spaces BUT also polarising of views
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Integrate insights
What are those central news web sites where interpretation and investigation of gaming culture occurs?
There are some websites which I think offer an excellent space for partial stories to be further fleshed out in forum posts and links to the key sites with source material and the raw data being analysed. For the moment if we exclude the overseas online video gaming network, I think that within Australia sites like \”Screen Play\” and the Australian extension of the Kotaku site offer excellent spaces of analysis and discussion with a healthy forum community and the breaking of some important events to impact on the local gaming community.
Within these sites there can be some early interpretation and further investigation of issues that are raised. This might be a discussion around changes to a popular franchise (fan reaction to wii versions of Dead Rising and the upcoming Dead Space), as well as political (R18+ classification issues) and cultural and social (negotiating gaming with significant others, family and friends who may not share this interest) etc.
One could do some interesting research on a content analyses of co-creative labor in the production of video game culture.
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Tags: classification, social networking, video games
Social Networking
Yohai Benkler (2006) argues in his book, The Wealth of Networks, that new media such as the Internet act as a hybrid media ecology where there are various stakeholders at work in the same spaces, distribution channels and communication practices. Henry Jenkins furthers this idea with examples from YouTube and Second Life in his blog posts.
A variety of institutions and individuals (Commercial, amateur, nonprofit, govt, and educational media producers) intersect in these new media spaces such as on YouTube or forums (either overtly or covertly – anyone heard of corporate astroturfing?). All these participants can have radically different agendas and reasons for participating in these spaces, but what makes these moments of intersection so important are the debates which begin emerging as different groups communicate in the same space (a forum, YouTube clips etc), and the conflict and negotiation that’s going on between the groups and individuals which represent radically different power bases. It is in this background that I’ve continued to be fascinated by the debate with Atkinson appearing on the forums of Kotaku etc.
This conflict between the traditionally powerful (a politician – and attorney general no less), and the powerless (consumers – and video gamers no less) over R18+ classification in Australia is just a really interesting site of conflict. I’m less interested in this post in getting bogged down with whose right or wrong within this debate – eg: does an R18+ classification represent an unacceptable risk for gamers (particularly young ones) being negatively effected, or should adults have the freedom to choose their own entertainment interests etc. Rather what’s interesting to me is how this debate is taking place on the Internet today, and whether this free and open expression of arguments, concerns, etc had more critical mass because of the social networking of the participants involved than it would in a more conventional mass-media environment (eg: where many of these voices would be hidden away in the fan-press, selectively chosen letters-to-the-editor in newspapers, etc). The mainstream news broadcasters have left the implications of Australia not having an R18+ classification largely untouched (there was the unhelpful debate around Fallout 3 during the ABC’s Q&A show last year, which I’m keen to write some reflections on later). But, overall this issue is placed within a media-effect or moral-panic frame in the mainstream media.
There’s tons that this case offers in terms of looking at the networked public sphere. While the context of this R18+ debate is around classification issues, it’s about more than this I think – maybe about a broader issue of how democracy works today. Here we have a case where today’s new media Internet culture operates (social networking, podcasting, spreading documents broadly, etc), and large numbers of people are participating to gather news, interpret it, analyse it, distribute it, and make some claims about what this means about Australian politics, culture and society today. It’s a debate that’s largely being ignored by the mainstream media. It raises many questions of government practice in Australia, etc. We can certainly point towards the networked public sphere engaging with this issue, but my question is: will it successfully turn into something this is not an issue for serious public discussion into a public discussion that can lead to changes and public action?
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The game campaign
Continuing my previous discussion on games classification in Australia, Miller (2004) identifies the following characteristics of contemporary online networked issue campaigns:
- having a shared goal
- being ’structure-light’
- mobilising
- a diverse collation of skills and resources around shared goals
- advanced use of new media technologies
- embracing diversity and openness
- the ability to draw upon, and develop, media celebrity
- the ability to use media spectacle around specific targets
- time-limited strategies
- high levels of media visibility
- and the ability to act cheaply and quickly (2004: 208-13)
Has the current campaign around video censorship used any of these characteristics so far?
Does the campaign have a shared goal? – Yes, to get an R18+ classification in Australia.
Is it ’structure-light? Yes, the structure of the organisaiton is not centralised or established around a bricks-and-morter building or group. It uses the distribution advantages of the Internet to keep a broad forum of discussion going.
While we can see that some of these goals are being met, there still remains one of the more important aspects to fulfill for this to be seen as an effective network campaign: the ability to draw upon, and develop, media celebrity. I think this is one of the more surprising and ‘fun’ aspects of considering this campaign. And certainly there are a number of high-profile celebrity figures in many capaigns – I’ve seen media reports which have centred around Barry Humphries and his involvement in urban planning campaigns in Melbourne, etc. Who, so far, are the celebrities that have been attached to this issue (on both sides)? I recall a young politician being linked to the pro-camp (but it wasn’t a Bob Brown type figure). Off hand there’s no one from our ranks of A, B or even C level celebrities who have lent their support to this issue.
There have been other groups involved in this debate, such as the failed attempt for cosplayers to march on the Parliament House steps of Adelaide. This was being organised through a game-retailer I believe.
But at the moment the movement appears t a little too disperate and fractured.
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Network campaign
I’ve been watching with much interest the continuing debate around the Australian game classification not including an R18+ category. I’ve been most interested in the recent activity on Kotaku, particularly the response for Attonery General Michael Atkinson here. I’m curious to know what will happen next, and I’m interested to see the type of community activity from gamers. Will there be a well-executed campaign around this issue from gamers, what Miller refers to as a ‘network campaign’ where a diverse section of the community come together over a shared issue to lobby around an issue. As Miller says:
“Network campaigns allow a diverse grouping of organisations and indjviduals to participate through commitment to a shared purpose, while remaining autonomous individual agents. In this way, it is possible to gain additional leverage over decision-making bodies through the ‘multiplier effect’ of a coherent message and more efficient deployment of resources and effort, while maintaining the flexibility and energy that more bureaucratic forms of co-ordination tend to squander.” Miller (2004: 208)
I will keep watching the net for developments.
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