This article considers the impact of new technologies on the adolescent experience of live, literary theatre. Drawing together the work of theorists in literacies, new technologies and audience studies, together with brain research, and the results of a focus group of four secondary students who have seen four plays at Canada’s National Arts Centre, it examines the consequences of young people’s immersion in digital culture and the new mindset that often results. The expectation of instant access to data, inter-connectivity, stimulation and control can make it difficult for adolescents to decode the metaphorical aspects of a theatrical performance. The article concludes that language arts and dramatic arts educators have a key role in teaching students how to decode—and therefore enjoy and appreciate— a play.

Book consumption is no longer only a solitary practice of one person sitting in an armchair with a bound volume of their favorite novel or the latest paperback bestseller. Books have become part of what Henry Jenkins has termed convergence culture. Books are no longer just books, they are also adapted into films, they are available as audiobooks and e-books, they are accompanied by websites, author blogs, and dedicated Facebook pages, they are continued by fans writing their own stories based on the original, they are discussed in online forums and communities, and they are being reviewed in Youtube videos, to just name a few. Convergence culture refers to the spread of content over different platforms and devices, the conglomeration of media companies on the production side, and the new possibilities for participation on the side of consumers. Media and communication studies have curiously neglected book consumption in its re-examination of audience studies in the light of convergence. This study assumes that audience studies, redefined to account for cross-media use and active as well as passive aspects of consumption, are well suited to investigate contemporary book consumption. The aim of this study is to explore media use surrounding books in the broad sense described above. It also investigates how commercial structures on the one hand and participation on the other shape book consumption. To do so, this study exemplarily analyzes the book related media use of members of an online reading community (Lovelybooks). Methodologically this study follows a mixed-methods approach by adopting the concept of media repertoires. Media repertoires describe patterns of habitual media use, thus integrating the quantitative mapping of media use with the analysis of the meaningful principles behind it. The results from a survey that was distributed to Lovelybooks’ members describe which media components are used, how they are combined and to what extent they are participatory. Semi-structured interviews complement the survey results by exploring which influence commercial structures and the attitudes towards them have on Lovelybooks members’ participatory media use. The interpretation is informed by critical political economy, discussing the implications of an online community being commercially owned and run, the consequences of commercial structures for participation, and the appropriation of personal data and labor by corporations.

This article considers the impact of new technologies on the adolescent experience of live, literary theatre. Drawing together the work of theorists in literacies, new technologies and audience studies, together with brain research, and the results of a focus group of four secondary students who have seen four plays at Canada’s National Arts Centre, it examines the consequences of young people’s immersion in digital culture and the new mindset that often results. The expectation of instant access to data, inter-connectivity, stimulation and control can make it difficult for adolescents to decode the metaphorical aspects of a theatrical performance. The article concludes that language arts and dramatic arts educators have a key role in teaching students how to decode—and therefore enjoy and appreciate— a play.

This thesis investigates student engagement in the Media and Communication Programme at Malmö University through the lens of audience- as well as learning theories. It has two main aims: Building a systematized theoretical framework to distinguish different nuances of audience activity in a cross-mediatic learning environment, and exploring factors influencing student engagement in our Media and Communication Master Programme (MCS). Constructivist Grounded Theory (Charmaz 2006) with a multi-method approach for data collection is applied to gather rich data and analyse it accordingly through coding processes and constant comparison. Following social constructivism, it argues that each student, actively constructing knowledge, has her own subjective learning preference. This thesis takes a non- normative stand on the subject. A matrix of audience activity, grounded in audience theories and developed through the collected data, is established. In a second step this is used to illustrate the concepts participation, engagement and collaboration and then further employed to examine factors influencing student engagement. Thereby, the matrix is tested, refined and further developed. Through this approach eight states a student might be situated in while studying as well as possible barriers for student engagement were identified. Factors influencing student engagement this study found are the personal situation of the student, the access Hyflex education allows, possibilities and challenges of physical and virtual learning spaces, the interaction between teachers and students, the structure of the programme and how students are connected with each other. By looking at student engagement in a media rich environment from an audience- as well as education-angle this thesis expands existing research. It presents influencing factors for student engagement. More importantly the theoretical model is a useful tool to investigate different kinds of student activities and to develop educational media tools. It could also be transferred to research other audiences.

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This article considers the impact of new technologies on the adolescent experience of live, literary theatre. Drawing together the work of theorists in literacies, new technologies and audience studies, together with brain research, and the results of a focus group of four secondary students who have seen four plays at Canada’s National Arts Centre, it examines the consequences of young people’s immersion in digital culture and the new mindset that often results. The expectation of instant access to data, inter-connectivity, stimulation and control can make it difficult for adolescents to decode the metaphorical aspects of a theatrical performance. The article concludes that language arts and dramatic arts educators have a key role in teaching students how to decode—and therefore enjoy and appreciate— a play.

This dissertation explores the social patterns and cultural layers of musical "open mics" in New York City. The study uses a qualitative approach which includes methods such as ethnography, in-depth interviewing, historical and discourse analyses focusing on open mics and the popular musicians who attend and perform them. Open mics, short for "open microphones," are public events that allow musicians to perform songs without a pre-planned, formal booking with a club or venue. Owing a historical and discursive connection to the folk hootenannies and jazz jam sessions of the past, these events have proliferated and spread considerably across the United States since the 1990s since their development, by name, in the late 1970s. Open mics not only reflect a do-it-yourself and participatory cultural ethos manifested with other recent expressive cultural activities, but also demonstrate a growing interstitial "musical third place" residing between private practicing and public performance. Musical open mics as musical third places provide musicians and singer/songwriters to network with other musicians, practice new musical compositions and play when other performance opportunities are not readily available. It provides a means for musicians to "hone their craft" in terms of performance methods and also construct musical identities in the almost exclusive company of other working singer/songwriters. This "backstage region" is thus framed and keyed by the musicians onto a continuum between two theoretical poles: performance practicing and practicing performance. Performance practicing as defined in this study frames a more performance-oriented display for musicians in locations called "closed open mics" or COMs. These settings, also residing on a theoretical continuum are socially more exclusive in terms of performance types, the aesthetic careers of the performers, the genres represented and the sociological makeup of the setting participants in general. OOMs or "open open mics," on the other hand, usually have a more fluid, diverse sociological composition of musical performers, performance types, and musical genres played and represented in these mainly weekly events. Closed open mics align into more homogeneous, isomorphic settings comprising "local open mic scenes" and open open mics remain more heterogeneous, socially inclusive, and unsettled as "pre-scenes."

In the past decades a lot of research has been dedicated to widening the understanding of different media audiences, as well as to determining the motivations behind both, creation of user-generated content (UGC) as well as audience behavior. This thesis seeks to broaden this knowledge by studying vloggers and their interaction with their audiences. Instead of asking the audience members: In what ways are the vloggers an influence on you, this thesis asks: “Can the audience be a source of inspiration and influence for vloggers? The thesis aims also at recognizing typicality’s in vloggers audio-visual content as well as strategical approaches for audience engagement. Approach in order to find answers to the set questions is critical yet humanistic. Empirical research is divided in two parts, of which the first is done by qualitative content analysis and the second part by semi-structured interviews. The aim of this multimethod approach is to get a broad yet deep view on this commercial, and contemporary storytelling form. Appadurai’s five scape- theory is used as the theoretical framework, and the research findings as well as conclusions are also viewed through other recent studies from media and communications field.

Le scandale est un concept qui suscite l’intérêt des chercheurs de plusieurs disciplines comme l’histoire de l’art, la sociologie ou la politique, mais moins ceux du domaine musical savant. Il s’agit d’une chose surprenante étant donné que certains des scandales les plus flamboyants ont pris place sur les scènes musicales. La période qui correspond à la IIIe République en France est remplie de ces œuvres célèbres qui ont suscité réactions violentes et négatives chez une grande partie de l’auditoire. Qu’est-ce qui a déclenché de telles passions? Quels sont les facteurs qui peuvent expliquer le rejet de ces œuvres au moment de leur présentation? L’objectif de ce mémoire est de présenter ces différents scandales d’envergure et de proposer une schématisation plus claire des actions des différents acteurs du champ sous la forme d’un système simple axé autour de la métaphore conceptuelle de l’opposition entre une force centrifuge, exercée par l’œuvre sur le champ, et une force centripète, exercée par le champ sur l’œuvre. Axée principalement autour de la lutte en constante évolution entre les traditionalistes et les modernes, la recherche réalisée présente sept cas particuliers entre 1902 et 1924 : Pelléas et Mélisande de Claude Debussy (1902), Le Sacre du Printemps d’Igor Stravinski (1913), Salomé de Richard Strauss (1907), les Histoires naturelles de Maurice Ravel (1907), le Pierrot Lunaire et la musique atonale d’Arnold Schoenberg à Paris (1922), Parade d’Érik Satie (1917) et 1finalement Relâche du même compositeur (1924). La question qui sera posée est la suivante : Comment les forces en action, qu’elles soient sociales, politiques, culturelles ou esthétiques, qui entourent la présentation d’une œuvre scandaleuse affectent-t-elles sa réception et son acceptation auprès du public et des acteurs du champ musical? / Scandal is a concept that attracts the interest of researchers in many disciplines, such as art history, sociology and politics, but less so in the field of scholarly music. This is surprising, given that some of the most flamboyant scandals have taken place on the musical stage. The period corresponding to the Third Republic in France is full of these famous works, which provoked violent and negative reactions from large sections of the audience. What triggered such passions? What factors might explain the rejection of these works at the time of their presentation? The aim of this dissertation is to present these various large-scale scandals and propose a clearer schematization of the actions of the various players in the field in the form of a simple system centered around the conceptual metaphor of the opposition between a centrifugal force, exerted by the work on the field, and a centripetal force, exerted by the field on the work. Focusing mainly on the constantly evolving struggle between traditionalists and moderns, the research carried out presents seven specific cases between 1902 and 1924: Claude Debussy's Pelléas et Mélisande (1902), Igor Stravinsky's Le Sacre du Printemps (1913), Richard Strauss's Salomé (1907), Maurice Ravel's Histoires naturelles (1907), Arnold Schoenberg's Pierrot Lunaire and atonal music in Paris (1922), Érik Satie's Parade (1917) and finally Relâche by the same composer (1924). The question that will be asked is: How do the social, political, cultural and aesthetic forces at work around the presentation of a scandalous work affect its reception and acceptance by the public and those involved in the musical field?

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