About the Book
Popular Media Cultures explores the relationship between audiences and media texts, their paratexts and interconnected ephemera. Authors focus on the cultural work done by media audiences, how they engage with social media and how convergence culture impacts on the strategies and activities of popular media fans.
Table of Contents:
Introduction: Fans and Paratexts; Lincoln Geraghty PART I: WRITING IN THE MARGINS 1. We put the 'media' in (anti)social media': Channel 4's Youth Audiences, Unofficial Archives and the Promotion of Second-Screen Viewing; Michael O'Neill 2. Television Fandom in the Age of Narrowcasting: The Politics and Proximity in Regional Scripted Reality Dramas The Only Way is Essex and Made in Chelsea ; Cornel Sandvoss, Kelly Youngs and Joanne Hobbs 3. 'A Reason to Live': Utopia and Social Change in Star Trek Fan Letters; Lincoln Geraghty PART II: READING BETWEEN THE LINES 4. Victims and Villains: Psychological Themes, Male Stars and Horror Films in the 1940s; Mark Jancovich 5. 'I Want to Do Bad Things With You': The TV Horror Title Sequence; Stacey Abbott 6. Cannibal Holocaust : The Paratextual (Re)Construction of History; Simon Hobbs PART III: FROM SPOILER TO FAN ACTIVIST 7. From Angel to Much Ado : Cross-Textual Catharsis, Kinesthetic Empathy, and Whedonverse Fandom; Tanya R. Cochran 8. Location, location, location: Citizen-fan Journalists' 'set reporting' and Info-war in the Digital Age; Matt Hills 9. Sherlock Holmes, the Defacto Franchise; Roberta Pearson 10. 'Cultural acupuncture': Fan activism and the Harry Potter Alliance; Henry Jenkins Afterword: Studying Media With and Without Paratexts; Jonathan Gray Index
About the Author :
Stacey Abbott, University of Roehampton, UK Tanya R. Cochran, Union College, USA Jonathan Gray, University of Wisconsin-Madison, USA Matt Hills, Aberystwyth University, UK Simon Hobbs, University of Portsmouth, UK Mark Jancovich, University of East Anglia, UK Henry Jenkins, University of Southern California, USA Michael O'Neill, University of Portsmouth, UK Roberta Pearson, University of Nottingham, UK Cornel Sandvoss, University of Huddersfield, UK Kelly Youngs, University of Surrey, UK Joanne Hobbs, University of Surrey, UK
Review :
'If fan studies has a supergroup, this is their new album: scholars at the top of their game, with fresh essays that already feel like classics. Over two decades since Henry Jenkins' Textual Poachers launched the discipline, this book demonstrates that the study of fan engagement illuminates texts from Conan Doyle's A Study In Scarlet through Hollywood thriller movies of the 1940s and Italian video nasties of the 1980s, right up to the reality TV shows of the 2010s. Vital, engaging, entertaining and gripping.' - Will Brooker, Professor of Film and Cultural Studies, Kingston University, London 'Collecting chapters from some of the top fan and media scholars writing today, Popular Media Cultures: Fans, Audiences and Paratexts brings the nascent study of media paratexts to the forefront of media studies. In a rapidly converging media environment, paratexts are the new texts. Through accessible and in-depth studies of such varied (para-)texts as Lego, Sherlock Holmes, Harry Potter, Doctor Who, True Blood, Cannibal Holocaust, and the works of Joss Whedon, among many others, Geraghty's collection reinvigorates contemporary scholarship, and is sure to be a must read for any media scholar.' - Paul Booth, Associate Professor of Media and Cinema Studies/Communication Technology, DePaul University, Chicago. 'We have long understood that paratexts such as marginalia, personal letters, and public responses contribute to our deeper understanding of classic works of literature. The publication of Popular Media Cultures suggests that we are finally doing to modern media texts what has long been accepted practice in other disciplines. Geraghty's thought provoking collection prompts us to re-evaluate what constitutes a text in our mediated world and to reconsider how we make meaning from this multiplicity of texts.' - Katherine Larsen, The George Washington University, Principal Editor of Journal of Fandom Studies
