Independent Creators Research Articles

EXPLORING YOUTUBE'S ROLE IN SHAPING PUBLIC PERCEPTION AND UNDERSTANDING OF THE ISRAEL-PALESTINE CONFLICT

This study aims to explore YouTube's role in shaping public perception and understanding of the Israel-Palestine conflict. Drawing on literature that examines media influence, digital communication, and conflict narratives, the research synthesizes insights from various sources to assess how YouTube impacts viewers' opinions and knowledge. The analysis reveals that YouTube democratizes information dissemination, providing a platform for diverse voices, including official media, grassroots organizations, and independent creators. This multiplicity of perspectives contributes to a nuanced understanding of the conflict, highlighting personal stories, political contexts, and power dynamics. However, findings also indicate that YouTube can amplify polarization by creating echo chambers and spreading misinformation. Ultimately, YouTube serves as a double-edged sword, capable of both educating the public and perpetuating biases, making its role in the Israel-Palestine conflict both influential and complex.

Video Game Concerts: Unending Consumption on Video Game Platforms

Over the past several decades, video games have gone from single-purpose games to multi-faceted platforms. This article is a case study that develops ‘unending consumption’ to understand the political economy of video game concerts. Unending consumption is the expansion of the means of consumption under a subscription model. By applying unending consumption to the political economy of video games, I show how video game concerts are embedded in the current moment of capitalism. The new political economy of video games blurs the line between video games and music as distinct media—an element of convergence. While video games and music converge through a new form of unending consumption, I argue these changes create more gatekeepers and limit the ability of independent creators to make a living.

Nauczyciel jako artysta: perspektywy roli i cech nauczyciela jako artysty w dobie zmian i niestabilności

This article aims to provide new viewpoints on the role of the teacher by combining epistemological and artistic perspectives on education. In the age embossed by change and instability, the teacher must build a role that facilitates the development of resilient and independent pupils. A point of emphasis in the article is to renegotiate the view of knowledge and how knowledge can be attained. The “abyssal thinking” of Western modernity, which is heavily reliant on abstract intellectual thinking, is imbedded in the current educational system, which causes profound challenges in the encounter between individuals and education. These challenges come to expression in increasing mental illness and pedagogical challenges in schools and classrooms, as more pupils cannot cope with current demands and expectations. To address these complex challenges, the teacher needs new conceptual and practical tools to provide an education that can accommodate the entirety of human existence and potential. This is where artistic perspectives and approaches can prove highly potent and beneficial for further development of education. The article utilizes perspectives on education from Pestalozzi, Steiner, Freire, and Biesta. The educational dimensions are discussed in light of epistemological theories from Buber and Heron, which is expanded by the relation between art and freedom as formulated by Arendt, Tolle, Klein and Csikszentmihalyi. The complexity of society is likely to increase even further, and hence pupils will need new and more profound tools. These tools are necessary not only to tackle life, but to become resilient and independent creators of it. The article aims to point out areas of potential development, that can provide pupils with necessary emotional and existential support and means of expression.

Art Decoration in Theatrical Productions as a Means of Scenographic Formation of Space

The purpose of the research is to find out the role of scenery in theatrical productions, their types and features of their creation by a production designer. The research methodology is based on the complex use of methods of modern art history, which are aimed at the theoretical and artistic-practical understanding of scenery in theatrical productions; the method of art-historical analysis is used, which makes it possible to investigate the trends of the cultural development of theatre technologies; empirical material is studied in a combination of art studies, theatre studies, cultural studies, and historical approaches; the method of formal and stylistic analysis allows revealing the artistic features of scenographic solutions. The scientific novelty lies in the fact that the article is one of the first analytical works in which the author tries to reveal the multifaceted role of scenery in theatrical productions by analysing the definitions of "scenery”, “theatrical and decorative art”, “scenography” that describe the artistic design of theatrical productions. Conclusions. In the process of analysing the role of scenery in theatrical productions, a completely objective impression was formed that scenery is a type of fine art related to the artistic design of a theatrical performance, the elements of which were rooted in antiquity and with minor changes have reached our days and consist of decorations, noise design, lighting, and props, actors' costumes and make-up. Each element has its own function in achieving theatrical expressiveness, which as a whole creates a single artistic whole, the purpose of which is to create the illusion of a place for a theatrical performance. Scenery in theatrical productions is created by a production designer according to the director's idea, which are closely related to the theatre itself, its development and general trends in modern art and modern theatre, the arrangement of theatre premises and the stage, lighting techniques, equipment and many other conditions. The analysis of the definitions of “scenery”, “theatrical and decorative art”, “scenography”, which are used to describe the artistic design of the stage and space in different ways in the scientific and artistic literature, makes it possible to conclude that the scenery is an important part of almost any theatrical performance, and many theatre artists are recognised as independent creators.
 Key words: scenery; decorative arts; scenography; theatre and decorative arts; theatre artist.

The daily news podcast ecosystem from the strategy and business model perspectives

The expansion of the daily news podcast format in the media industry has brought new narrative opportunities and shows the strength of the audio medium. For this reason, a qualitative analysis of the daily news podcast ecosystem has been performed from the strategy and business model perspectives through a comparative study of 14 cases (10 with media parent companies and 4 independent) in the Spanish-speaking segment using semi-structured interviews with the heads of the entities analyzed. The results reveal that daily news podcasts allow media outlets to improve their positioning by forming part of their audience’s routines, and create new revenue streams through sponsorships and brand agreements. Two editorial concepts have been identified: the in-depth analysis of a topic with support from the editorial department, and round-ups similar to radio news bulletins that cover the outlet’s informative key elements. The research also highlights audio initiatives by independent creators in specialized fields who shed light on the format’s potential for news narratives.

Education “Ever Anew” – A Reflection on the Changing Educational and Professional Reality in Theoretical and Practical Terms

The article aims to make a critical reflection, theoretical and practical, on the school and its functioning in the context of shaping the desired competences among graduates that distinguish them on the labour market. It is a strong impression that young people in the Polish classroom system still play the role of passive recipients of educational services rather than independent creators. Thus, there is a clear need to create high-quality bridges between the areas of pedagogical support for students in their educational and professional choices and the labour market and employers’ space in Poland. Education “ever anew” is the one that continually changes, adjusts its forms and contents to the changing socio-economic reality, creates a new quality focused on an individual and demanding recipient. The introduction takes the form of a brief reflection on the current dynamics of educational and professional life and the competences that will be needed in the future. The next section presents selected contexts and the diversity of the conditions of educational spaces in Poland. The summary contains inspiration for selected aspects of the future of education, such as the concept of learning in cyber parks and the use of “creative confidence” in learning.

CRYPTO ART: A NEW ERA IN ART VS ADVENTURE CHALLENGE

The purpose of the article is to consider the current phenomenon of crypto art from an artistic point of view. The research methodology includes historical, art studies, and comparative analysis. The scientific novelty of the article is that the fact of the emergence and development of a new phenomenon that attracts the attention of an increasing number of artists has been established, and a systematic analysis of its existing challenges and advantages over the traditional art market has been carried out. Conclusions. We are at the beginning of a multi-year process. The trend is gaining momentum, increasingly drawing humanity into a technological singularity, where, on the one hand, the war in all its forms and manifestations does not end, and on the other — the synergy of passionaries opens up new unprecedented horizons for joint creative work and monetisation of their artistic skills. The popularisation of NFT by a “magical” force has attracted the attention of independent creators to new communication channels and the formation of new decentralised communities, which usually demonstrate a high level of cooperation and culture in general. Digital art has rarely received as much attention as it does now. The NFTs may disappear, but the critical dialogue they have created will remain in our collective memory, and the value and legitimacy they have brought to digital art through this conversation may have changed their social perception forever. The new paradigm first of all emphasises that “value” as a property and characteristic of objects or phenomena in modern conditions is increasingly determined not by the past, but by the future. This is what determines the “paradigm shift” — the present in the future is much more important than the traditional in the past.

Quantifying the Creator Economy: A Large-Scale Analysis of Patreon

In recent years, the “creator economy” has emerged as a disruptive force in creative industries. Independent creators can now reach large and diverse audiences through online platforms, and membership platforms have emerged to connect these creators with fans who are willing to financially support them. However, the structure and dynamics of how membership platforms function on a large scale remain poorly understood. In this work, we develop an analysis framework for the study of membership platforms and apply it to the complete set of Patreon pledges exceeding $2 billion since its inception in 2013 until the end of 2020. We analyze Patreon activity through three perspectives: patrons (demand), creators (supply), and the platform as a whole. We find several important phenomena that help explain how membership platforms operate. Patrons who pledge to a narrow set of creators are more loyal, but churn off the platform more often. High-earning creators attract large audiences, but these audiences are less likely to pledge to other creators. Over its history, Patreon diversified into many topics and launched higher-earning creators over time. Our analysis framework and results shed light on the functioning of membership platforms and have implications for the creator economy.

Misinformation About the Human Gut Microbiome in YouTube Videos: Cross-sectional Study.

BackgroundSocial media platforms such as YouTube are integral tools for disseminating information about health and wellness to the public. However, anecdotal reports have cited that the human gut microbiome has been a particular focus of dubious, misleading, and, on occasion, harmful media content. Despite these claims, there have been no published studies investigating this phenomenon within popular social media platforms.ObjectiveThe aim of this study is to (1) evaluate the accuracy and reliability of the content in YouTube videos related to the human gut microbiome and (2) investigate the correlation between content engagement metrics and video quality, as defined by validated criteria.MethodsIn this cross-sectional study, videos about the human gut microbiome were searched for on the United Kingdom version of YouTube on September 20, 2021. The 600 most-viewed videos were extracted and screened for relevance. The contents and characteristics of the videos were extracted and independently rated using the DISCERN quality criteria by 2 researchers.ResultsOverall, 319 videos accounting for 62,354,628 views were included. Of the 319 videos, 73.4% (n=234) were produced in North America and 78.7% (n=251) were uploaded between 2019 and 2021. A total of 41.1% (131/319) of videos were produced by nonprofit organizations. Of the videos, 16.3% (52/319) included an advertisement for a product or promoted a health-related intervention for financial purposes. Videos by nonmedical education creators had the highest total and preferred viewership. Daily viewership was the highest for videos by internet media sources. The average DISCERN and Health on the Net Foundation Code of Conduct scores were 49.5 (SE 0.68) out of 80 and 5.05 (SE 2.52) out of 8, respectively. DISCERN scores for videos by medical professionals (mean 53.2, SE 0.17) were significantly higher than for videos by independent content creators (mean 39.1, SE 5.58; P<.001). Videos including promotional materials had significantly lower DISCERN scores than videos without any advertisements or product promotion (P<.001). There was no correlation between DISCERN scores and total viewership, daily viewership, or preferred viewership (number of likes).ConclusionsThe overall quality and reliability of information about the human gut microbiome on YouTube is generally poor. Moreover, there was no correlation between the quality of a video and the level of public engagement. The significant disconnect between reliable sources of information and the public suggests that there is an immediate need for cross-sector initiatives to safeguard vulnerable viewers from the potentially harmful effects of misinformation.

Design Anthropology, Algorithmic Bias, Behavioral Capital, and the Creator Economy

Abstract As algorithms become increasingly responsible for discovering information, how we choose to design them will have a significant impact on our collective lived experience. One example is how algorithmic bias affects the estimated 50 million people that make up the creator economy. This group of independent creators is financially dependent on recommender systems to suggest their content. Currently, most recommender system designs produce rich-get-richer dynamics, resulting in structural inequalities that favor some over others. This article details a design anthropology approach for creating a new model of sociality and business that rewards behavioral capital.

Copyright, podcasts and crowdfunding: an ‘abundance model’ for an emerging medium?

Podcasts have emerged as an increasingly popular form of creative expression over the past decade, and are largely released for free. Their distribution and funding model are reliant on digital technologies, but what role does copyright play? Prior to the digital age, the reproduction of works implied physical reproduction, which imposes a natural scarcity. The technological default for digital works on the other hand is abundance. In this context, some creators and publishers have embraced new business models which do not rely on excluding non-paying users, so-called ‘abundance models’. Many podcast creators are independent from anything like traditional publishers and so have to find their own funding. For independent creators, like podcasters, releasing free work through intermediary platforms, the role of copyright in realizing their business models is far from clear and worth investigating. This article discusses how podcast creators monetize their work through crowdfunding. The specifics of this business model are laid out with support from data gathered through a content analysis study of podcasts which fundraise through the crowdfunding platform Patreon. The concept of an ‘abundance model’ is only an imperfect fit for crowdfunded podcasts, but nevertheless provides a useful frame for the discussion of existing business models.

Back to the Future

When speculating about the state of moving image in 2021, it might be instructive to explore the ‘pre-history’ of the current streaming era – and therefore this paper will initially focus on a particular cultural/historical moment, the year 2000 (and the very early 2000s); the start of a new millennium and the peak of the ‘dot com era’. This period was characterized by a huge burst of creative and technological energy related to moving image on the web, manifested in the emergence of specialised web portals such as Atomfilms, Shockwave, Heavy, Brickflims; independent creators such as Evan Mather and hi.res; a global plethora of Fanfilms (particularly based around Star Wars); as well as digital moving image festivals such as One Dot Zero (UK) and Res.Fest (US), which purported to be a window into the future, or at least the ‘bleeding edge’ of new media aesthetics intersecting with cinema. In this pre-Broadband and pre-YouTube period, the web was a ‘clunky’ and unreliable platform for a variety of technically complicated moving image files. However, it is possible to look back on the early 2000s as a liminal moment between the celluloid/video/physical media era and our remotely hosted, high-definition present. This paper will describe it as a fertile and open space, where artists and curators had the opportunity to dream of what the future might become, grappling with how moving image on the web (and their narrative language and aesthetics) could be envisioned differently from what had come before. If the Internet was a ‘site’, what types of moving image work could be ‘site-specific’? The paper will offer up key examples from that period and then jump forward in time to apply a similar framework of speculation to moving image online in the year 2021, and in the latter stages will explore what if any radical new ways of storytelling might arise as we move forward into an uncertain ‘future’.

Contenidos infantiles convergentes, identidad latinoamericana y los desafíos de las televisiones públicas

Before the pandemic crisis, the irruption of the convergent scenario and the television digitalization forced the Latin American public television to develop strategies that consider new forms of audiovisual consumption and to make the resources profitable, such as the development of digital platforms and co-production with independent creators. Pakapaka, TVN and Señal Colombia coproduced children television programs with Chilean filmmakers that achieved a high audience and received acknowledgements at audiovisual festivals for their quality, their contribution to the local identity and Latin American own nature. Based on a content analysis carried out on tv shows aimed to children, present in both Chilean public digital platforms: CNTV Infantil (former Novasur) and TVN Kids, this study describes the collaborative model from the media literacy perspective, with emphasis on the diversity of children’s programs, considering their origins, acquisition, financing, and characteristics of the protagonist’s characters. The results indicate that the contents are varied and that the presence of female protagonists, native peoples and migrants, although incipient, constitutes a contribution to the identity of the continent’s childhoods. In conclusion, it is essential that public service television can count on permanent funding that promotes the realization of relevant content for children, in accordance with their public service mission, especially in today pandemic crisis and confinement.

Dreams and art: Dreams as the bedrock of art

Skill can build a bridge to Heaven’s Gate, but Art alone unlocks it! This is not to downgrade skill, but to put it in its rightful place. Skill is one of the three pillars of art: Head, Hand and Heart. Yet more precisely, skill is a combination of the two pillars of Head and Hand. It’s not until an IDEA comes to the head that art begins, or more accurately, that the process of art makes itself apparent. But where do ideas come from? Not a question over which the artist generally loses any sleep. Yet occasionally he or she will acknowledge that it came in the middle of the night, which might lead us to surmise that it was spawned by a DREAM. It would certainly seem to be a most natural inference, especially since waking up at that time of the night with an idea that promised to catapult us into a fresh phase of creativity, could only have stemmed from a dream that was intimately bound up with what was in the head of the dreamer upon waking. My own research certainly confirms this and more. By this I mean that it isn’t just inspiration that’s dream-based, but life in general. Indeed, since life is transitory like a dream it must be seen as a form of dreaming and thus as comparatively illusive. What on the other hand is constant and real is consciousness. It is not only real and constant, but in fact the sine qua non of existence. Thus, being the ground of existence, it must also be the creative force that brings about the spectacle of the world; and since the artists are an intrinsic part of the world dream, they must be an intrinsic part of its creative impulse. In this light, artists are no longer independent creators of arbitrary works, but an interdependent channel of the creative impulse of consciousness. What is readily forgotten about this creative impulse is the fact that what it manifests is not a permanent entity, but like the dream, a transitory product. In other words, the emanations of consciousness are constantly reabsorbed into Absolute Consciousness, the matrix of existence. This process is intrinsic to the character of creativity whether it be that of the world dream or of the individual artist. In short, this innate principle of manifestation and reabsorption makes the work of the individual artists to a natural channel of reabsorption into the ground of existence with the result that not only the artists themselves are constantly drawn back to their origin, but also the ones that contemplate their work.

No longer the only game in town: British indies, podcasts and the new audio economy of independent production

The world of audio is undergoing seismic changes. Traditionally a space dominated by linear radio programmes, in the 2020s this form of listening remains relevant but is now being challenged by other forms and global media platforms. In particular, podcasting offers producers opportunities to pitch for commissions from brands and platforms or to make work independently. Historically, podcasting was a medium led and shaped by amateurs and distributed for free by independent creators. In the 2020s this relationship began to shift. In the United Kingdom, audio producers are now finding success outside of radio, in what was once a market dominated by the BBC. Forming what we might term a ‘new audio economy’, producers and creatives are working across multiple forms of production in the long tail of audio media. Through interviews and analysis, this article will explore the impact of podcasting and other forms of audio production on the UK-independent radio/audio sector, noting the influence of the BBC and shifting patterns of production within the sector

Social Media as Contractual Networks: A Bottom up Check on Content Moderation

Is there any limit to social media platforms' ostensibly un-fettered discretion to indefinitely suspend users' accounts or re-move content? The fierce debate over the exercise of discretionary power by platforms to terminate users' accounts and remove content has primarily focused on free speech ramifications and the constitutional restraints on top down legal interventions. While suspension and removal decisions by platforms often trigger questions situated in public law, they also raise important challenges to private law. Cutting the livelihood of small businesses, independent creators and political activists, termination and removal decisions may carry irreparable financial and reputational harms. When moderating content, digital platforms exercise discretionary powers conferred under boilerplate contracts defining their Terms of Service (ToS). So far, platforms have successfully invoked contractual provisions as a shield against lawsuits of users claiming that unjustified suspension was a breach of contract. This Article argues that courts have often erroneously dismissed users’ claims because they have misinterpreted the agreement be-tween platforms and users as dyadic, namely involving two contracting parties. The interpretation of such contracts as establish-ing bilateral/vertical obligations only, undermines the true intention of the contracting parties and overlooks the plethora of rights and obligations created by such contracts to multiple stakeholders. The purpose of this Article is to highlight this blind spot in current contractual analysis and offer courts an interpretive framework for addressing contractual claims involving digital platforms. We argue that platforms' contracts should be interpreted as contractual networks. This analytical framework is based on a growing body of literature which focuses on interrelated contractual obligations among independent agents who share a com-mon goal. Users in social media platforms, we argue, collaborate in creating the shared economic and social value generated by social media. By framing the contractual relationship between platforms and users as a contractual network, courts are called to consider this complexity and the extent to which removals or terminations meet the contractual expectations of the networks' members and advance their common goal. This approach to contract interpretation may facilitate a bottom-up check on content moderation via private ordering, thus increasing platforms’ accountability. Specifically, if users could effectively raise contractual claims against platforms and hold them accountable for capricious, biased, or unfair removal decisions, they could pressure platforms to align content moderation policies with the shared interests of the community of users. To that end, contract law could empower users by offering a decentralized and diversified check over the platforms’ content moderation practices. Holding platforms accountable for content moderation practices via private ordering could also facilitate more diversity and exploration, enabling the emergence of different models for moderating digital content and promoting a more pluralist public discourse.

“Why I Left BuzzFeed”: Alienation, YouTube, and Creative Labour in the Digital Age

Digital media companies on YouTube, exemplified by BuzzFeed, reinforce the perception of employment in the creative industries as an ideal opportunity for young millennials to make money “doing what they love.” In 2016, dozens of videos made by former BuzzFeed employees announcing their departures from the company went viral, challenging this view and granting the public unprecedented insight into the company's labour practices. BuzzFeed thus serves as a valuable case study for digital labour in the contemporary creative industries during a time when formal companies, individual creators, and unpaid users compete for viewership on the platform. This research paper reveals and critically engages with the tradeoffs that creative workers face when negotiating the benefits of working for a company, versus “going independent.” Using Marx’s theory of alienation to analyze “Why I Left BuzzFeed” videos, this paper argues that the option for professional creative workers to become independent creators on YouTube represents a shift towards the ideal of “non-alienated labour.” This article concludes by examining how, despite this shift, independent creative workers are still subsumed under capital.

Subscribe, Rate and Preserve Wherever You Get Your Podcasts

Contemporary podcasting is used not only to extend the reach of existing radio stations and personalities but also by hundreds of independent content creators who can bypass the strictures of traditional distribution channels to deliver audio programs directly to online audiences. Preserve This Podcast (PTP) was an Andrew W. Mellon-funded outreach and education project designed to raise awareness among indie podcasters of the need to proactively preserve their content and teach basic techniques for podcast preservation. This paper discusses the preservation challenges faced by indie broadcasters and strategies the PTP team used to address these through face-to-face workshops, online outreach, and web-based tools, using the present threat of “podfade” to raise larger issues surrounding the urgency and challenges of preserving born-digital audio content.

A Remix Compulsory Licensing Regime for Music Mashups

Spurred by advances in digital technologies, music mash-ups emerged as a defining musical genre in the early twenty-first century, reshaping content industries and the broader culture. Digital technology and file-sharing platforms enabled creators to reach vast audiences without the high share of proceeds demanded by traditional record labels, publishers, and distributors. Creators seeking to earn a living in the creative arts faced new challenges in this environment. The very technologies that liberated them from the shackles of the old intermediaries made it ever more difficult to achieve an adequate return on their investments in training, time, expense, and opportunity cost to produce art. Aggressive copyright enforcement, which was rarely a problem in the pre-internet age, took center stage in the twenty-first century, especially for independent creators. A just, effective, and forward-looking copyright system would channel internet-age creators and consumers into well-functioning digital-content marketplaces. Such a system must come to grips with the reality that a growing segment of the population does not view traditional markets for copyrighted works as the only means to access creative works. To many, participation in markets for copyrighted works is voluntary; it is more about convenience and fairness than compliance with the rule of law. Thus, trends in technology, social dynamics, and moral conscience have eroded copyright protection. Heavy-handed responses by copyright owners — such as mass litigation campaigns threatening outsize statutory damages, efforts to ramp up enforcement tools, and troll litigation — have alienated consumers, judges, and legislators and spurred work-arounds that lead new generations away from authorized digital content marketplaces and copyright-based creative careers. Notwithstanding the decline of the copyright system’s public approval rating, the core social, economic, and moral foundations on which copyright was built have not been rendered obsolete by technological advance. To a large extent, what many creators want and need has remained the same: freedom to create and fair compensation based on the popularity of their art. What many consumers want has also largely remained the same: easy access to creative original art at a fair price. These two forces create the conditions for copyright to provide a critical engine of creative and free expression in the digital age. For the copyright system to remain vital, copyright reform must channel post-Napster creators and consumers into a balanced marketplace, not alienate them. This essay explores why and how to transition the copyright system to the internet age through the lens of music mash-ups, a salient art form that has a particular cultural and social significance.

Latinx Superheroes in Mainstream Comics by Frederick Luis Aldama

Reviewed by: Latinx Superheroes in Mainstream Comics by Frederick Luis Aldama Jorge Santos (bio) Frederick Luis Aldama. Latinx Superheroes in Mainstream Comics. University of Arizona Press, 2017. 240 pp. $22.95. In Latinx Superheroes in Mainstream Comics, Frederick Luis Aldama follows up his impressive Your Brain on Latino Comics: From Gus Arriola to Los Bros Hernandez (2009)1 by narrowing his field of vision from a broad archive of Latinx independent creators to Latinx representations in mainstream superhero storyworlds. While Your Brain on Latino Comics offered an expansive, exhaustive, and occasionally esoteric deep dive into the world of [End Page 117] Latinx comic book storytellers, what Aldama offers in Latinx Superheroes is an equally extensive chronological archive of Latinx representations in comics' most recognizable genre—the superhero. In doing so, Aldama takes care to highlight creations that exhibit a committed "will to style" that can make "our perception, thought, and feeling about real Latinos" come alive (4–5). Aldama praises works that "create compelling Latino characters" by creators that realize "we take offense at being called Paco or that we don't all speak truncated English with a heavily accented Spanish" and "skillfully and compellingly geometrize the visuals that make up their stories" (5). Despite the chronological arrangement of his archive, as well as his praise of post-Bronze Age superheroes (1970s forward), Aldama rejects any notion that the archive follows any "trajectory of improvement" that implies natural progression across multiple sites of superheroic representation. Unsatisfied with simply cataloguing positive and negative representations of Latinx peoples in superhero comics, Aldama also includes a chapter that offers cognitive-based approaches for how to read these characters verbally and visually, while also including a chapter on how these trends manifest in related storyworld media such as film, animation, and television. As with Your Brain on Latino Comics, Latinx Superheroes at times sacrifices depth for breadth by working with a large archive of texts rather than identifying particular creators of note and focusing deeply on their work, as with the scholarship of Hillary Chute or Michael Chaney. However, this limitation is often, paradoxically perhaps, the book's strength, as Aldama has opened up multiple new lines of inquiry by delineating a long overlooked cultural archive. Due to Aldama's exhaustive research and unbridled joy for the subject matter, Latinx Superheroes is a welcome addition both to Latinx Studies and comics studies. Chapter One of Latinx Superheroes opens by excavating and "making visible a Latino superhero archive" (4) built from representation in print, film, television, and animation—starting as far back as 1940s print comics. Aldama opens the chapter by identifying a huge gap in the documentation of superhero print archives, from official sources such as Marvel and DC's own published encyclopedias to popular film documentaries on PBS or The History Channel. These official histories, Aldama chides, minimize or completely omit the many Latinx superheroes and villains contained in the pages of the comics they seek to canonize. As Aldama begins to fill this gap, he also delineates trends in how Latinx subjectivities are represented in these storyworlds, often by juxtaposing them with their Anglo counterparts. On the one hand, Anglo characters, Aldama contends, stress innate power and individuality and tend to be characterized as "Manifest Destiny cowboy types injected with invincibility" tasked with defending a nation that they "are somehow apart from" (7). On the other hand, Latinx superheroes, Aldama counters, tend to be identified more with their communities, depicted in manners that draw our attention to "their bodies and emotions (usually raw and out of control)" rather than their minds, often following bildungsroman patterns of having to learn how to be superheroes (as opposed to Anglo superheroes who tend to be born special coupled with a "meritocratic-rise-to-omnipotence") (7–8). [End Page 118] As Aldama traces this "initial typology of Latino superheroes" (7), his archive draws from over fifty characters and 100 comic issues from the 1940's Golden Age to the present moment. His excavations range from the lazily stereotypical (such as DC's 1980s homosexual hero Extraño), the impressively nuanced (such as the X-Men's 1980s anti-racist superhero Sunspot), and the bafflingly terrible (such...