new media

Research update! Every once in awhile I introduce academic articles I’ve published for readers who can’t access them. This fall I wrote a piece for a special issue of the Journal of Communication Inquiry on television studies. The issue, with essays from Michele Hilmes, Horace Newcomb, Eileen Meehan and others, is an outgrowth of the University of [...]

Warning: Jargon ahead! Kept to a minimum, I hope. Every academic discipline has a debate they rehearse over and over again, sometimes over the course of decades. Here in the social sciences and humanities, among scholars of culture, there are two real debates. If you understand them, you can basically read half of everything written [...]

As you may know, I’m doing some heavy reading over the next few weeks, and they more I read, the more I realize there’s a lot of academic books on media history and theory that could benefit practitioners in the digital economy; books a lot people might pass over on Amazon for not directly addressing [...]

I’m not a cynic by nature, but the times may be changing and perhaps not for the better. I’d been planning to write this post for a while, and the recent news of Google’s talks with Verizon for the company to pay for better bandwidth gave new texture and urgency to the debate over the [...]

ORIGINAL at SpliceToday. Please excuse the following nerdy statement: I care about how artists represent online video. This is something you need to know to understand why Afterschool, an independent film out in limited release on Oct. 2, is one I respect but do not love. Afterschool, the debut feature of Antonio Campos that premiered [...]

UPDATE: For the full interview, click here. I had an email interview with Benny and Rafi Fine recently, the pair that makes up the Fine Brothers, the duo of producers making some of the most popular viral videos on the net, along with a couple of web series. They’re razor-smart, and I hope to quote [...]

(Click the photo above for video!) The level of humor here is pretty base: the Boston accent is funny. But, hey, it is funny! Bloggers are already raving about New Kids on the Block’s Joey McIntyre’s spoof Ma Men – although it really has little to do with the original. The 36-year old McIntyre is [...]

You’re forgiven if you don’t watch any made-for-Internet television — also known as: web series, webisodes, web shows, or web originals; they’re still working on the name. Most people don’t. Ever since Lonelygirl15, the faux-vlog on YouTube turned ridiculously over-the-top web series, debuted three years ago, the web show has been consistently on the rise [...]

So the following post is a truncated version of a paper I’ve written and plan to submit to conferences and publications soon. For an unrevised draft of the paper, click here. For a playful YouTube video I made on this topic, click here. For non-academics and makers of YouTube and other online video the headline [...]

So last night after an exhausting day — 4 hours of class, a presentation, preparing to teach today, starting a paper on realism — I came home in the mood for reading. I selected a random essay in the Cultural Theory and Popular Culture reader, and I’m so glad I did! Here is my take [...]