Abstract Title: Interactivity and participation - a qualitative study about the making of machinima with World of Warcraft (Interaktivitet och och deltagande – en kvalitativ studie kring skapandet av machinima med World of Warcraft) Number of pages: 68 total, 50 without appendix Author: Peter Brandberg Tutor: Else Nygren Period: Autumn 2006 Course: Media and Communication Studies C University: Division of Media and Communication, Department of Information Science, Uppsala University Purpose/Aim: The aim of this study is to take a closer look at the phenomenon machinima by analysing a number of specific movies from the site worldcraftmovies.com. This analyse is focusing on how the content of these movies relate to the wider game culture of the MMORPG World of Warcraft, what specific elements in the movies is referring to and if there is differences or similarities between different genres (or categories). Material/Method: The method used in analysing the movies is a combined method inspired by hermeneutic, semiotics and discourse analysis. Main results: Instead of answers this study raises many questions about the diverse content of the movies. A general division can be seen between movies focusing on the games rules and movies that are trying to present a fictive world. But the study also shows how there are many movies moving between these two points. The study also suggests that further studies need to focus on the emotional investment players put into the game. Keywords: cultural studies, participatory culture, convergence culture, fan culture, new media, game studies, machinima, MMORPG, World of Warcraft

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In this thesis I survey the terrain of digital interactions between youth, corporations and pop culture texts in order to complicate current visions of participatory culture. I argue that popular images of the empowered young users of a new digital democracy need to be complicated by asking questions about the politics of digital participation: about whose voices are heard, about where attention is centred, about how interactivity is defined, about who is rewarded for creative labour. The opening chapter introduces key issues within a critical examination of digital participation, including commodification, user agency and intellectual property. It also outlines my methodologies and my choice of research site – namely internet television, and the proliferation of corporate and youth practices around digitized television texts. The next two chapters provide case studies that identify and evaluate not only the interactions between corporate producers and young users, but also the power relations between the two. First, I analyze young women‘s video remixes of the program Gossip Girl. I consider the remixes as gendered texts that contribute new aesthetics and concerns, even as they reproduce dominant interpretations of contemporary girlhood. I also consider the distribution of the videos on YouTube, noting how their circulation simultaneously challenges corporate ownership and creates profit and promotion for those same corporate owners. Next, I examine interactions around the The Colbert Report. Focusing on the program‘s official discussion boards, I demonstrate how young fans have taken up Stephen Colbert‘s invitation to join in the parody by creating a vibrant, dialogic and rowdy community that has frequently come into conflict with Comedy Central producers. In their attempts to address these conflicts and create alternative spaces of their own, these young people gesture towards larger tensions over the control of public digital dialogue. The final chapter draws on my research and experience as a teacher to consider how these case studies might help us to frame our own educational projects. I call for a digital literacy curriculum that provides both a place for students to reflect on their daily activities within mediated environments and the opportunity to experiment with digital production.

In this thesis I survey the terrain of digital interactions between youth, corporations and pop culture texts in order to complicate current visions of participatory culture. I argue that popular images of the empowered young users of a new digital democracy need to be complicated by asking questions about the politics of digital participation: about whose voices are heard, about where attention is centred, about how interactivity is defined, about who is rewarded for creative labour. The opening chapter introduces key issues within a critical examination of digital participation, including commodification, user agency and intellectual property. It also outlines my methodologies and my choice of research site – namely internet television, and the proliferation of corporate and youth practices around digitized television texts. The next two chapters provide case studies that identify and evaluate not only the interactions between corporate producers and young users, but also the power relations between the two. First, I analyze young women‘s video remixes of the program Gossip Girl. I consider the remixes as gendered texts that contribute new aesthetics and concerns, even as they reproduce dominant interpretations of contemporary girlhood. I also consider the distribution of the videos on YouTube, noting how their circulation simultaneously challenges corporate ownership and creates profit and promotion for those same corporate owners. Next, I examine interactions around the The Colbert Report. Focusing on the program‘s official discussion boards, I demonstrate how young fans have taken up Stephen Colbert‘s invitation to join in the parody by creating a vibrant, dialogic and rowdy community that has frequently come into conflict with Comedy Central producers. In their attempts to address these conflicts and create alternative spaces of their own, these young people gesture towards larger tensions over the control of public digital dialogue. The final chapter draws on my research and experience as a teacher to consider how these case studies might help us to frame our own educational projects. I call for a digital literacy curriculum that provides both a place for students to reflect on their daily activities within mediated environments and the opportunity to experiment with digital production.

Debates concerning the veracity, ethics and politics of the documentary form circle endlessly around the function of those who participate in it, and the meaning attributed to their participation. Great significance is attached to the way that documentary filmmakers do or do not participate in the world they seek to represent, just as great significance is attached to those subjects whose participation extends beyond playing the part of eyewitness or expert, such that they become part of the very filmmaking process itself. This Ph.D. explores the interface between documentary practice and participatory culture by looking at how their practices, discursive fields and histories intersect, but also by looking at how participating in one might mean participating in the other. In short, the research is an examination of participatory culture through the lens of documentary practice and documentary criticism. In the process, however, this examination of participatory culture will in turn shed light on documentary thinking, especially the meaning and function of ‘the participant’ in contemporary documentary practice. A number of ways of conceiving of participation in documentary practice are discussed in this research, but one of the ideas that gives purpose to that investigation is the notion that the participant in contemporary documentary practice is someone who belongs to a participatory culture in particular. Not only does this mean that those subjects who play a part in a documentary are already informed by their engagement with a range of everyday media practices before the documentary apparatus arrives, the audience for such films are similarly informed and engaged. This audience have their own expectations about how they should be addressed by media producers in general, a fact that feeds back into their expectations about participatory approaches to documentary practice too. It is the ambition of this research to get closer to understanding the relationship between participants in the audience, in documentary and ancillary media texts, as well as behind the camera, and to think about how these relationships constitute a context for the production and reception of documentary films, but also how this context might provide a model for thinking about participatory culture itself. One way that documentary practice and participatory culture converge in this research is in the kind of participatory documentary that I call the ‘Camera Movie’, a narrow mode of documentary filmmaking that appeals directly to contemporary audiences’ desires for innovation and participation, something that is achieved in this case by giving documentary subjects control of the camera. If there is a certain inevitability about this research having to contend with the notion of the ‘participatory documentary’, the ‘participatory camera’ also emerges strongly in this context, especially as a conduit between producer and consumer. Making up the creative component of this research are two documentaries about the reality television event Band In A Bubble, and participatory media practices more broadly. The single-screen film, Hubbub , gives form to the collective intelligence and polyphonous voice of contemporary audiences who must be addressed and solicited in increasingly innovative ways. One More Like That is a split-screen, DVD-Video with alternate audio channels selected by a user who thereby chooses who listens and who speaks in the ongoing conversation between media producers and media consumers. It should be clear from the description above that my own practice does not extend to highly interactive, multi-authored or web-enabled practices, nor the distributed practices one might associate with social media and online collaboration. Mine is fundamentally a single authored, documentary video practice that seeks to analyse and represent participatory culture on screen, and for this reason the Ph.D. refrains from a sustained discussion of the kinds of collaborative practices listed above. This is not to say that such practices don’t also represent an important intersection of documentary practice and participatory culture, they simply represent a different point of intersection. Being practice-led, this research takes its procedural cues from the nature of the practice itself, and sketches parameters that are most enabling of the idea that the practice sets the terms of its own investigation.

Submitted by Clebson Anjos (clebson.leandro54@gmail.com) on 2016-03-01T18:01:39Z No. of bitstreams: 1 arquivototal.pdf: 3568225 bytes, checksum: 5a160c927cafc8b12cef6cc94dc824ec (MD5) / Made available in DSpace on 2016-03-01T18:01:39Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 arquivototal.pdf: 3568225 bytes, checksum: 5a160c927cafc8b12cef6cc94dc824ec (MD5) Previous issue date: 2011-09-30 / Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior - CAPES / The present study analyzes the process of participatory streaming as part of the development of Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs). Our purpose is to investigate the dynamics present within this process, taking as basis the notions of participation, post-massive functions and media convergence. We tried to find in the studies of theorists who analyze the motivations for a relationship with the media, at different times, such as McLuhan (1981), Wolton (2007), Lemos and Lévy (2010), vectors of a historical progression in media participation interest. We developed a reflection on what is intrinsic to the human being and reconfigures in the media processes, realising participation as a key concept for this analysis, in Diaz Bordenave (1994). Through the concept of massive and post-massive functions by Lemos and Lévy (2010) we seek to understand the transformations that the so-called new media provide to the of mass communication processes, analyzed by Wolf (2005). This confrontation gave us the foundation needed to start the presentation of the concept of horizontal mass media. We also hold in check the concept of media convergence, seeking a broad overview on the subject. From proposed convergence categories, we analyzed three cases of converged participation in participatory streaming: the talk show Roda Viva on the Internet, the band Arcade Fire concert on YouTube Live and a Brazilian soccer team match broadcasting in the website GloboEsporte.com. We concluded that, in the cases analyzed, we detected the formation of a horizontal mass media, established in a kind of convergence that mix media of different functions (massive and post-massive), in a collective experience that at the same time provides direct dialogue among the interactors. / A presente pesquisa analisa o processo das transmissões participativas, como parte do desenvolvimento das Tecnologias de Informação e Comunicação (TICs). Nosso objetivo é investigar as dinâmicas presentes dentro deste processo, tendo como fundamento as noções de participação, funções pós-massivas e convergência midiática. Buscamos em teóricos que analisam as motivações para uma relação com as mídias, em diferentes épocas, como McLuhan (1981), Wolton (2007), Lemos e Lévy (2010), encontrar vetores de uma progressão histórica no interesse pela participação midiática. Desenvolvemos uma reflexão sobre o que é intrínseco ao ser humano e se reconfigura nos processos midiáticos, encontrando a participação como um conceito-chave para esta análise, em Diaz Bordenave (1994). Através da conceituação de funções massivas e pós-massivas da mídia, de Lemos e Lévy (2010) buscamos entender quais transformações as chamadas novas mídias proporcionaram aos processos de comunicação de massa, analisados por Wolf (2005). Este embate nos deu a base necessária para iniciar a apresentação do conceito de mídia de massa horizontal. Detemo-nos também na verificação do conceito de convergência midiática, buscando uma visão ampla sobre o assunto. A partir de categorias de convergência propostas, analisamos três casos de participação convergente em transmissões participativas: o programa Roda Viva na Internet, o show da banda Arcade Fire no YouTube Live e a transmissão de um jogo da seleção brasileira de futebol no portal GloboEsporte.com. Concluímos que, com os casos analisados, detectou-se a formação de uma mídia de massa horizontal, estabelecida num tipo de convergência que mistura mídias de funções diferentes (massivas e pós-massivas), numa experiência coletiva e que, ao mesmo tempo, proporciona diálogos diretos entre os interatores.

Through discontinuous growth and its use in multiple sectors the podcasting established itself as a medium to be reckoned with in the future. Recently, the mainstream scene of French podcasting has seen, among its usual professionally produced shows, the presence of a few podcasts involving a clear and subjective message of activism. These manifestations, although a minority in the head of the charts, are only the visible part of a phenomenon made possible by the “long-tail” dimension of this medium. Indeed, although overwhelmed by the multitude of shows forming this tail, various activist circles have been able to take advantage of the myriad of useful qualities that this medium affords by creating their own programs. With the aim of grasping the interest shown by French activists in podcasting, this thesis was supported by the interviews of two French citizens working for progress through podcasting. The findings of these discussions were backed by active listening to the episodes produced and hosted by these participants and by three auto-ethnographic vignettes tracing the various stages of the creation of a podcasting show by the author of this work. The analysis of these results has been treated under the lenses of adequate theories to demonstrate that activists have a practical relationship with podcasting allowing them to reach their community active offline through participatory and independent episodes

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The aim of this thesis is to explore the social media-communication between the E-sport team Team Allliance and their fans, and doing so with the perspective of Jenkins basic theory on Convergence Culture, also called Participatory Culture, and within this theory-concept, researchers J. Sanderson and J.W. Kassings’ research article from 2011 concerning Tweets and blogs in sports media.   Data was gathered by two kinds of methods: qualitative semi-structured interviews with members of the Swedish E-sport team Alliance together with a quantitative textanalysis of Tweets published by the interviewed. The data showed that the purposes of the teams communication by Twitter posts, to a large extent consisted of providing news and updates and to interact with their large fanbase, actively working for establish a good relationship with their fans.

En la actualidad, el uso del internet se ha convertido en parte de la rutina diaria de muchos, en especial en la de los jóvenes, particularmente cuando se trata de redes sociales o plataformas de streaming. Una serie que logró enlazar ambas fue Skam, una serie transmedia noruega que integró perfiles de Instagram de los personajes ficticios a su narrativa. Por ello, el presente trabajo de investigación tiene como objetivo analizar la relación del contenido transmedia de la serie noruega Skam con la generación de comunidades latinoamericanas de su fandom en redes sociales, específicamente en un grupo de fans en Facebook. Por esta razón, dentro del marco teórico se definirá la experiencia participativa de los fans con el contenido transmedia y la identificación de estos dentro del fandom. Por consiguiente, se ha utilizado una metodología de paradigma positivista con un enfoque cuantitativo, ya que se realizarán encuestas online a los miembros del grupo propuesto de Facebook, “SKAM- ALT ER LOVE” / Nowadays, the use of the internet has become part of the daily routine of many, especially young people, particularly when it comes to social media or streaming platforms. One series that managed to link the two was Skam, a Norwegian transmedia series that integrated Instagram profiles of its fictional characters into its narrative. Therefore, the following research work aims to analyze the relation of the transmedia content of the Norwegian series Skam with the generation of Latin American communities of its fandom on social media, specifically in a group of fans on Facebook. For this reason, within the theoretical framework, the participatory experience of fans with transmedia content and their identification within the fandom will be defined. Consequently, a positivist paradigm methodology has been used with a quantitative approach, since online surveys will be carried out to the members of the proposed Facebook group, “SKAM-ALT ER LOVE”. / Trabajo de investigación