Lostpedia and Wiki Fandom Article

15Sep09

Just a quick pointer to my newest publication: in the new issue of Transformative Works and Cultures, I’ve published “Sites of Participation: Wiki Fandom and the Case of Lostpedia.”Here’s the abstract:
This essay explores the award-winning fan site Lostpedia to examine how the wiki platform enables fan engagement, structures participation, and distinguishes between various forms of [...]

Filed under: Academia, Fandom, New Media, TV Shows, Technology, Television, Viewers   |  2 Comments
Tags: Lost, lostpedia, wiki

Twitter ambivalence

24Aug09

I joined Twitter this past Spring, in large part because I saw the great usefulness of the platform at a conference – I was at MIT6 and surrounded by people having backchannel conversations via Twitter. So I joined on the spot, and spent a few months trying to figure out how it fits my own [...]

Filed under: Meta-blogging, New Media, Technology   |  12 Comments

Transmedia Storytelling in Television: A Student Thesis

14Jul09

One of the pleasures of working with Middlebury College students is advising independent work on their senior projects. While I don’t have the opportunity to work with graduate students on their dissertations, every once in awhile I have undergraduate students who do exemplary work that feels quite similar to a condensed version of the graduate [...]

Filed under: Media Studies, Middlebury, Narrative, TV Shows, Technology, Television   |  1 Comment
Tags: Lost, transmedia

Burning up the internets

13Apr09

Just a couple of quick links & promotions before I carve out the time for a real blog post:
I had the pleasure and honor of doing an interview with Henry Jenkins about my new book, Television & American Culture. Today, Henry published the first part of the interview, with a very flattering introduction. I assume [...]

Filed under: Meta-blogging, Middlebury, TV Shows, TV Textbook, Technology, Television   |  Leave a Comment
Tags: planet forward, Self-Promotion

Essential tools for navigating digital culture

10Apr09

I’ve been asked by my friend/colleague/Dean/Provost Tim Spears to contribute to his blog, One Dean’s View, offering a post on a few digital tools that I find essential for navigating my digital life. Here’s what I had to say, reblogged:
I am known as one of the more technologically engaged/addicted faculty members at Middlebury. Luckily, it [...]

Filed under: Academia, Middlebury, New Media, Technology   |  2 Comments
Tags: tools

Mulling the future of public access TV

31Mar09

Since I moved to Vermont in 2002, I have been on the board of Middlebury Community Television, our local public access channel. Yesterday, the board sponsored a community media forum, where we invited members of our community to come together to discuss the role of a small public access channel in a small town today [...]

Filed under: Media Politics, Middlebury, TV Industry, Technology, Television, Vermont   |  4 Comments
Tags: public access

The media library in a post-disc world

06Jan09

I’ve read a number of articles like this one, speculating on the potential future of the Blu-ray disc as media platform in the wake of online delivery of HD content. As a consumer and viewer, I’m heartened by this, as I’ve not jumped on the Blu-ray train yet. Moreover, I see a lot of potential [...]

Filed under: Academia, Copyright, Fair Use, Media Studies, New Media, Technology   |  6 Comments
Tags: blu-ray, dvd, library

Life Imitates TiVo

04Oct08

One great feature of TiVo (and potentially other DVRs, but I’m an exclusive TiVotee) is that live broadcasts are always buffered for 30 minutes, allowing you to rewind or pause on the fly. A quirk in the system allows you to press a button and go back to the beginning of the buffer (or the [...]

Filed under: Technology, Viewers   |  6 Comments
Tags: random thoughts, tivo

Teaching Technology: Video Games

12May08

Here’s the third entry in my series of posts highlighting my students’ work from my Media Technology course. One key medium that we studied was videogames, and it has been a challenge to think about how to create a project that allows students to make media criticism using videogame technology – if I had the [...]

Filed under: Middlebury, New Media, Teaching, Technology, Videogames   |  1 Comment
Tags: machinima, rock band

When I was a kid…

04May08

This is not a nostalgic post, nor is it an attempt to judge the present on the standards of the past. And I’m not trying to tell any kids to get off my lawn.
Rather it just struck me that there’s a pretty big shift in the media ecosystem. Actually, this isn’t news to anyone who [...]

Filed under: Meta-blogging, New Media, Not Quite TV, Spoilers, Technology, Television   |  2 Comments
Tags: bissinger, costas, leitch, sports

The Wire: “An amorphous series detailing society’s ills”

24Jan08

I’ve been remiss in my promise to blog about each episode of The Wire. I blame TiVo.
There was a scene in last week’s episode, “Unconfirmed Reports,” that I wanted to discuss at length, and I figured I could take advantage of one of TiVo’s coolest features, TiVoToGo, to transfer it to my laptop, edit down [...]

Filed under: Narrative, TV Shows, Technology, Television   |  1 Comment
Tags: The Wire, tivo

From Flow to Files

18Jan08

Update: The book will be out soon – details on the Television & American Culture website.
As I’ve blogged before,  I’m in the process of writing a textbook called Television & American Culture. I’m close to being done, although I’ve been a bit stalled with other obligations. This January I’m putting my final push in to [...]

Filed under: Academia, Media Studies, New Media, TV Textbook, Teaching, Technology, Television   |  1 Comment
Tags: dvds, dvrs, home video, media history, time-shifting, tivo

Television writers – on strike, but off-base

11Nov07

The writers’ strike is reaching at the one week point. Since my last post, an 11th hour negotiating session led the writers’ to inexplicably cave on one of their chief demands, doubling the DVD residuals. Ken Levine offers the explanation – the studios had suggested that pulling DVDs from the table would yield a new [...]

Filed under: Fandom, Film Industry, New Media, TV Industry, TV Shows, Technology, Television   |  13 Comments
Tags: Heroes, Lost, strike, wga

Explaining Digital Television

28Aug07

Update: The book will be out soon – details on the Television & American Culture website.
I just realized it’s been over a week of blog silence. The semester approaches, summer is waning, and I’ve been uninspired to write in a bloggy fashion. So I’ll share what I have been writing – continual work on my [...]

Filed under: Media Politics, New Media, TV Textbook, Technology   |  Leave a Comment

Tom Brokaw’s electronic brain machine

18Aug07

In yesterday’s New York Times, the editorial page ran a series of brief commentaries about rethinking presidential debates in the new media era. A number of commentators engaged in digital media offered interesting suggestions: some serious (Zephyr Teachout’s round-robin of one-on-one debates was my favorite), some semi-serious (Kevin Kelly’s candidate webcams is a bit far-fetched, [...]

Filed under: Media Politics, New Media, Technology   |  2 Comments