Reception Practices Research Articles

Game of Thrones: Quality Television and the Cultural Logic of Gentrification

The success of the television adaptation of Game of Thrones marks a crucial transitional moment in the relationship between cult audiences and the global elite associated with ‘quality television’. By looking not only at the specific changes made to the novels as they were adapted for television, but also at the reception practices that have surrounded the series on fan forums and social media, this essay argues that the ‘mainstreaming’ of cult genres has troubling political implications. Increasingly, fan activity is in the process of being commodified by corporations that mobilize their most loyal consumers as brand-name ambassadors and online ‘influencers’.

Seriality and Transmediality in the Fan Multiverse: Flexible and Multiple Narrative Structures in Fan Fiction, Art, and Vids

This article explores new forms of serial structure found in transmedia story worlds, with particular attention to the innovations of amateur transmedia works. Although the term transmedia has most often been associated only with corporate media at the center, taking amateur works as the paradigmatic example produces new insights into the affordances of digital technology, beyond the industry’s limitations, namely how transmedia creativity can function in the absence of the need to remain marketable, to maintain a coherent brand, and to work within a corporate family of conglomerated media companies. This study thereby focuses on fan fiction, art, and “vids”, a form of remix video collage, to demonstrate how contemporary amateur production interacts with professional content, but also produces its own type of complex narration through unique forms, aesthetics, and story structures, likewise encouraging alternate reception practices as a result. This article identifies at least three types of transmedial seriality elucidated by studying amateur fan media. First, fan works emphasize the increasingly complex nature of seriality in all transmedia and the way in which serial effects do not vanish, but increasingly depend upon the viewer’s choices. Secondly, fan works create their own kind of flexible and multiple serial effects wherein meaning does not depend on consuming a specific sequence of narratives, but instead upon reading any collection of narratives within larger cycles or tropes to assemble a sense of flowing norms, genres, and preferences. Finally, fan works also uniquely analyze and reconfigure the serial effects of tropes found not only across the transmedia components of individual stories, but also across the breadth of popular culture. By remixing and reimagining repeated structures of representation, fan works often call attention to latent forms of seriality within popular culture as a collective whole.

Il riconoscimento del progetto migratorio del minore e la valorizzazione della rete parentale nell'accoglienza dei minori stranieri non accompagnati: l'evoluzione della presa in carico nel comune di Cremona (2005 - 2011)

Il fenomeno dei minori stranieri non accompagnati fu gestito a Cremona, fino all'anno 2007, unicamente tramite l'accoglienza in strutture residenziali. Tale pratica dovette però confrontarsi con la criticità (anche di tipo economico) rappresentata dalla massiccia crescita degli arrivi di minorenni stranieri dichiaranti essere "non accompagnati", verificatasi negli anni 2006 e 2007. La frequente presenza di reti parentali dei minori nelle provincie limitrofe, indusse a ritenere che il percorso migratorio dei MSNA giunti a Cremona fosse il risultato di una strategia messa a punto da adulti di riferimento, i quali indirizzavano il giovane verso quei territori dove le pratiche d'accoglienza apparivano più efficaci riguardo all'acquisizione del titolo di soggiorno. Ciò che emerge è la correlazione intercorrente tra modalità di accoglienza e strategia migratoria. A partire dall'anno 2008, il riconoscimento del carattere "famigliare" del progetto migratorio del minore, e della sua rete parentale come risorsa per una più efficace e sostenibile presa in carico, portò all'identificazione di una strategia di accoglienza incentrata sull'affidamento famigliare.

Tango, senses and sensuality

One of the most important contributions of the Peircean paradigm to semiotics consists in its opening the sign to development and modification. Sense, meaning, is no longer a static and fixed property. The Peircean paradigm allows us to wonder about how signs are interpreted, how they make sense in actual reception practices. The purpose of this paper is to address the problem of the relationship between appropriation practices (Montes, 2011) and significance processes from the analysis of an empirical case, observing how signs of sensuality are produced in the ballroom tango dance. Tango has earned international reputation mainly as a sensuality dance thanks to its spectacularization and subsequent mediatization. However, as I expect to demonstrate, at the moment of reception, people put those discourses in interaction with specific appropriation practices that shape very special interpretive habits. I will address the issue from an empirical investigation, especially focused on the production of interpretants (emotional, energetic, and logical), that is to say, looking back to the sign reception from the body to the mind. From a corpus of 25 focused interviews with people who got to know tango through mass media but that afterwards learnt to dance it as a social dance, it is my intention to show what sensuality means to them today, and how that current practice interacts with other external and previous discourses to produce interpretive habits. Finally, I wish to offer a theoretical reflection about the relationship between these three types of interpretants, their interaction with the discourse of the mass media and the place corporality has in the reception processes.

Fandom Before “Fan”

vol. 6, 2014 Copyright © 2014 The Pennsylvania State University, University Park, PA These are interesting times for reception theorists, especially those who study fandom, an extraordinary form of audiencing that includes everything from emotional attachment to performers to obsessive collecting. In particular, the nature of fandom’s extraordinariness has changed a great deal in the past several decades, thanks to the advent of the Internet and digital production. Previously “abnormal” fan practices have not only become more and more accepted but also explicitly supported and nurtured by new technologies and reframed by niche marketing. We live in an age when “following” a stranger because you “like” her or him represents a harmless form of networking. As Twitter encourages us, “Follow your interests.”1 What has fascinated me most, however, is not the specific quality of these shifts but rather the ways they have begun to shape our understanding of fandom as a historical phenomenon. When I talk to my students about fandom, they often marvel at what it must have been like before the World Wide Web. “How did fans find out about things?,” they ask. “Where did fan communities exist before Facebook?” As an ethnographer who did extensive fieldwork with popular music fans in the late 1980s and early 1990s—not that long ago—I was at first amused by the shaping the history of enthusiastic audiences Fandom Before “Fan”

Mediating Diasporas and Fandom: Second-Generation Korean American Adolescent Diasporas, Identification, and Transnational Popular Culture

Research on second-generation diasporic reception practices is rare, and it is the goal of this article to continue the nascent inquiry on multiple-generation diasporic audiences. The complicated ways in which diasporic identity is negotiated allows for greater understanding of the border zones that multiple-generation diasporas inhabit. Fully acculturated but not fully included, second-generation diasporas infuse their identities with meanings drawn in part through reception of transnational popular media and the development of fan communities. For Korean Americans, it is a way of identifying with a transnational home identity that allows for counterhegemonic identification. Boundaries of fan communities, however, exclude as well as include. Intraethnic taste hierarchies define what counts as authentically ethnic and who counts as sufficiently Korean.

La literatura en la era digital: un análisis a propósito de Tierra de extracción de Doménico Chiappe y Andreas Meier

¿En qué consiste la narrativa electrónica? ¿Cómo se produce este tipo de literatura? ¿Cuáles son las tecnologías y recursos estéticos utilizados en su producción?¿Qué efectos producen en el lector las tecnologías digitales incorporadas en la literatura electrónica? Las respuestas a éstas y otras preguntas relacionadas con la producción de la literatura electrónica serán exploradas en el presente trabajo, a partir de las propuestas teóricas de diversos autores y el análisis de la hipernovela Tierra de extracción de Doménico Chiappe y Andreas Meier.

Drawing on tradition: manga, anime, and religion in contemporary Japan

Manga and anime (illustrated serial novels and animated films) are highly influential Japanese entertainment media that boast tremendous domestic consumption as well as worldwide distribution and an international audience. Drawing on Tradition examines aspects of the culture of manga and anime production and consumption through a methodological synthesis of narrative and visual analysis, history, and ethnography. Rather than merely describing the incidence of religions such as Buddhism or Shinto in these media, Jolyon BarakaThomas shows that authors and audiences create and re-create religious frames of mind through their imaginative and ritualised interactions with illustrated worlds. Manga and anime therefore not only contribute to familiarity with doctrines and imagery, but also allow authors, directors, and audiences to modify and elaborate upon such tropes, sometimes creating hitherto unforeseen ideas and practices. The book takes play seriously by highlighting these recursive relationships between recreation and religion, emphasising throughout the double sense of play as entertainment and play as adulteration (i.e., the whimsical or parodic representation of figures, doctrines, and imagery). Building on recent developments in academic studies of manga and anime--as well as on recent advances in the study of religion as related to art and film--Thomas demonstrates that the specific aesthetic qualities and industrial dispositions of manga and anime invite practices of rendition and reception that can and do influence the ways that institutions and lay authors have attempted to captivate audiences. Drawing on Tradition will appeal to both the dilettante and the specialist: Fans and self-professed otaku will find an engaging academic perspective on often overlooked facets of the media and culture of manga and anime, while scholars and students of religion will discover a fresh approach to the complicated relationships between religion and visual media, religion and quotidian practice, and the putative differences between traditional and new religions.

New media, pirate radio and the creative appropriation of technology in Zimbabwe: case of Radio Voice of the People

This article examines the creative appropriation of new media technologies by the producers of a pirate radio station (Radio Voice of the People) beaming into Zimbabwe from South Africa. In particular the article explores the news production process and the ways in which new technologies have transformed audience reception practices. Radio VOP has deployed multiple alternative transmission strategies that have rendered Zanu PF's claims to communication sovereignty obsolete. This article argues that radio as a medium of communication has adapted and appropriated digital technologies to extend its reach while opening up novel platforms of audience participation. The survival of the pirate radio since 2002 (even after its Harare studio was bombed) demonstrates its tenacity and resilience in the face of brutal repression. There are, however, limitations to the reach of pirate radio, and this article shows that its interactive website promotes elite participation because of the digital divide pervading developing countries.

‘Pirate’ radio, convergence and reception in Zimbabwe

Using a qualitative research approach, this study examines the appropriation of digital technologies and their implications for the reception of the so-called ‘pirate’ radio in Zimbabwe. It specifically explores how the use of the Internet (and its associated digital technologies), including the mobile phone by two prominent ‘underground’ radio stations, Short Wave (SW) Radio Africa and Voice of America’s Studio 7, beaming into Zimbabwe from the UK and the US, respectively, has impacted on the reception of their content. Drawing on reception theory, the paper highlights the ambiguities and complexities associated with the reception of (pirate) radio in the era of convergence in Africa. It argues that while both SW Radio Africa and Studio 7’s multiple digital transmission strategies have broadened the range of options available for the reception of their content (albeit in disproportionate ways), traditional forms of reception remain in force. This is largely because of enduring questions of access to digital technologies (especially the Internet), and the lasting connections between traditional live radio and the oral traditions of local culture. These contextual factors sustain reception practices that differ markedly from the scenario in the economically developed world of the North where digital technologies have radically redefined radio reception practices. Similarly, the mobile phone has expanded options for the generation and reception of news content from the radio stations thus pointing to the fact that in Africa convergence can indeed assume unique forms, shaped by an intricate combination of local socio-economic and cultural factors.

Wordsworth and Reading Verse

By learning from Wordsworth's account of how readers experience verse, I argue, current scholars could increase their sensitivity to elusive social and historical dimensions of poems. If, as Wordsworth asserts, readers' experiences of verse are conditioned by their historical expectations, then critics should ask how qualities of metrical language prominent in their own experiences of a poem might have carried historically specific meanings for that poem's initial readers. Scholars can make informed surmises about those meanings by considering the experiences implied in past vocabularies and practices of literary reception and evaluation. This would also help critics better appreciate the historical and social significance of the conflict within Wordsworth's poems between interpretive mastery and unforeseen response. I try to demonstrate the potential benefit of these considerations by applying them to my own close interpretation of Wordsworth's A narrow girdle of rough stones and crags from Lyrical Bal...

Analyzing the Training and Internship Needs Assessment of Verbal Communication Skills amongst Hotel Practitioners

There is a need to expose the learners in the hospitality industry to real workplace requirement in terms of communication skills. In view of its importance, human resource managers, researchers and educators in the field of hospitality management or the hotel practitioners have to pay more serious attention to it. Thus, it is pertinent that both employers and potential employees have a consensus on what are to be instilled in the learners as this would prepare them for the actual hotel reception practices which in particular are the verbal communication skills. A needs analysis in the form of a questionnaire, distributed to the hotel managers and the interns involved help to identify the verbal communication skills that the interns require. These findings will also assist the curriculum designers in producing future hotel management professionals that can function effectively at their workplace.

Passing the Remote: Community and Television Viewing in <em>Woobinda</em> and <em>La guerra degli Antò</em>

Author(s): Seger, Monica | Abstract: This paper explores television-modeled narratives in Silvia Ballestra’s La guerra degli Anto, of 1992, and Aldo Nove’s Woobinda, of 1996. In so doing, it considers both the role of a text's author and the majority/minority reception practices that lead to its social imprint. For a definition of reception practices it turns to the work of media and reception scholars such as Henry Jenkins and Ien Ang.Employing a soap-operatic narrative and respecting the viewing practices of a minority viewer group, Ballestra navigates contemporary TV language to shape receptive communities within, and outside, of her text. Nove, in turn, models his work on majority group viewing habits to exploit and parody the homogenizing, and conversely isolating, effects of this language. In Woobinda authority lies with television, the medium of debased culture, while in La guerra degli Anto the narrator asserts her authority by adopting and mutating the codes of this same medium. Each text serves an important function, Nove’s text details the ultimate impasse of efforts to assert subjectivity, while Ballestra’s suggests a means of bypassing the impediments.

The politics of Iranian cinema: film and society in the Islamic Republic

Iran has undergone considerable social upheaval since the revolution and this has been reflected in its cinema. Drawing on first-hand interviews and detailed ethnographic research, this book explores how cinema is engaged in the dynamics of social change in contemporary Iran. The author not only discusses the practices of regulation and reception of films from major award winning directors but also important mainstream filmmakers such as Hatamikia and Tabizi. Contributing to ethnographic accounts of Iranian governance in the field of culture, the book reveals the complex behind-the-scenes negotiations between filmmakers and the authorities which constitute a major part of the workings of film censorship. The author traces the relationship of Iranian cinema to recent social/political movements in Iran, namely reformism and women’s movement, and shows how international acclaim has been instrumental in filmmakers’ engagement with matters of political importance in Iran. This book will be a valuable tool for courses on film and media studies, and will provide a significant insight into Iranian cultural politics for students of cultural studies and anthropology, Middle Eastern and Iranian studies.

Points on the dial: golden age radio beyond the networks

The golden age of radio is often recalled as a time when the medium unified the nation, when families gathered around the radios in homes across the country to listen to live, commercially sponsored network broadcasts. In Points on the Dial , Alexander Russo revises our understanding of radio’s past by revealing the hidden histories of production, distribution, and reception practices during this era, which extended from the 1920s into the 1950s. Russo brings to light a tiered broadcasting system with intermingling but distinct national, regional, and local programming forms, sponsorship patterns, and methods of program distribution. Examining a wide range of practices, including regional networking, sound-on-disc transcription, the use of station representatives, spot advertising, and programming aimed at homes with several radios, he not only recasts our understanding of the relationship between national networks and local stations but also charts the development of new ways of listening—often distractedly rather than attentively—that set the stage for radio in the second half of the twentieth century.

As práticas de recepção da publicidade como fluxo: apontamentos teórico-metodológicos

In this study, the relationship between audience practices and advertisements is approached from the concept of “flow”. The Cultural Studies legacy allows the exploration of advertising as a communication process which articulates diverse production and reception practices with a specific cultural form. We start with Raymond Williams’ perspective of “television flow” to consider “advertising flow”, by which we mean the sequence of advertisements, diffused by different media, which permeates social life, characterized by intertextuality and by fragmentation. We approach the “advertising reception flow”, determined by the subjects’ interaction with what the “production flow” offers, and point some paths to find devices and mediations that may be relevant to build strategies to analyze this process.

Slashing the Fiction of Queer Theory

The popularity of slash fiction, a productive strand of fan fiction in which same-sex television or film characters are subversively made into queer subjects, has grown in recent years. The practice of queer readings, which is about repositioning texts outside the borders of heteronormativity, very much resembles some of the basic premises of queer theory, the post-structural theory that contests strict categorical views on gender and sexuality. Unfortunately, slash fiction as well as audience reception practices do not appear to be high on the agenda of queer film theorists. This article argues that queer-sensitive audiences cannot be ignored in research on queer representations and reception in media studies. Moreover, the authors argue for a multidisciplinary approach that includes queer theory frameworks and insights from audience and reception studies as demonstrated by queer readings of non—queer-coded texts such as slash fiction.

Citizenship in the Age of the Internet

New information and communication technologies (ICTs) have allowed for changes in media content and in practices of media reception. How these changes have impacted on practices of citizenship, is the key question for this article. It starts by showing how notions of citizenship are closely related to public opinion formation, which, in turn is felt to be nurtured by journalism. The demise in newspaper readership is in that regard a worrying phenomenon. By first looking more closely at how the news itself has changed (the inclusion of vox pop segments; the wide use of polls) and by then turning to how practices of representing ordinary people point to the possibility of more inclusive notions of citizenship, the article proposes ‘cultural’ citizenship as a sensitizing concept. As ICTs are most visibly embodied by the Internet, a number of examples are discussed from this perspective. The article concludes that ICTs do not necessarily produce new citizens but that they do provide for new and important citizenship practices.

Hospitality language as a professional skill

International travel is a rapidly growing activity entailing cross-cultural communication between hosts and guests from different linguistic backgrounds. There is therefore a growing worldwide need for front-line staff (as hosts) in the hospitality industry who are able to communicate effectively with guests. This paper argues that particular patterns of language are associated with host-guest interaction. This language, corresponding to the different stages of the arrival–departure hospitality cycle, may be termed ‘hospitality language’. The first two parts of the paper investigate hospitality practices and define the notion of hospitality language, outlining its evolution in the context of the United Kingdom. This is followed by an illustration of its use in a case study of four hotels in Southampton. The fourth part discusses some pedagogical implications, with an emphasis on the need to expose learners to actual hotel reception practices. Interviews with hotel staff reveal that some hospitality skills could be developed through in-service training. It is argued that such training could be viewed as an ESP/ EOP requirement of the hospitality profession. The concluding section recommends that communication skills be given more serious attention by human resources managers, researchers and educators in the field of hospitality management.

Perverse spectators: the practices of film reception

Perverse spectators: the practices of film reception