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BLOG POST #3

Sullivan Chapter 8: Media fandom and audience subcultures (189-212). Navar-Gill, A. (2018). Fandom as symbolic patronage: Expanding understanding of fan relationships with industry through the Veronica Mars Kickstarter campaign.Popular Communication, 16(3), 211-224.

Week 9 revolved around the themes and ideas of media fandom, audience subcultures and symbolic patronage. Sullivan’s Chapter 8 discussed many different aspects of “fandom” as well as the stereotypes associated with fandoms. Sullivan cited Jenkins and stated that “The difference between watching a [television] series and becoming a fan lies in the intensity of their emotional and intellectual involvement.” (Sullivan, p. 198).

“Fandoms are associated with the cultural tastes of subordinated formations of the people, particularly those disempowered by any combination of gender, age, class and race”. Meanwhile “... fans are deeply engaged in their favorite media texts. Fans often reinterpret media content and create their own cultural productions in response”. This idea of a fandom community ties into the concept we learned called poaching.“Poaching”, which was forged by Michel de Certeau and later expanded upon by Henry Jenkins is basically the act of taking something that isn’t necessarily yours. For example, at conventions like Fan Expo, fans come and create costumes or merchandise of pre-existing characters from the show/video game/whatever they’re a fan of, (which they don’t own).  In lecture, we discussed that a form of poaching could be fan fiction. (Fan fiction is when fans write spinoff-like stories based on the original material/content). De Certeau also argues that audiences are not passive consumers, they are active interpreters. (Which can be related to Stuart Hall’s encoding/decoding model of communication). Poaching offers consumers the opportunity to create their own material based on their interpretations of the work, they can also interject their own imagination and personal touches which can also form a type of escape from reality into these fandom communities they’ve created. “Fans who outwardly and proudly claim their affirmation with their favourite popular culture texts, particularly when those media are generally considered to be ‘fluff’ or mindless distractions from reality, may be challenging the status quo through their activities” (Sullivan, p.196) The basis of Navar-Gill’s article discusses the relationship between fans and media industries, categorizing fans into either “affirmational fans” or “transformational fans”. This theory involved a kickstarter campaign that was made to help fund a follow-up film to the cult classic series of Veronica Mars. The campaign raised 5.7 million dollars from fans of the show that were interested in seeing the follow-up film. Seeing as the fans took on the role of financing the movie (which was typically the role of an executive producer) it was called into question what kind of role the fans would get in the making of this film since they were the ones sponsoring it.

“...while ‘audience power’ and the boundaries of participation in participatory culture are still contested concepts, symbolic patronage provides one measured example of a way in which audiences now have a greater ability to influence production and industry decision- making” (Navar-Gil, p. 223) This brings me to one of the ideas discussed this week; “patronage”. Patronage is like a sponsorship, funding or support that someone or some organization can receive or give to another organization/person.  “Patronage situates artistic work in hierarchies of quality and taste; the ability to gain a patron or patrons legitimates an artist.” Also in the article, the author stated that; “Though Veronica Mars Kickstarter backers provided start-up capital for the production of the film, as is often the case in patronage, the symbolic and cultural function of their support was more significant than the financial one.”She also said that; “…when corporate producers are seen as interfering with the vision of a creator who is strongly backed by symbolic fan patrons, they lose credibility in the eyes of the audience, which can be damaging to their brand. “ (Navar-Gill, p. 222) The author wanted to investigate how big of a role patronage concepts played in a role of the production of this kick-starter-founded film. This was where she conducted a series of interviews with some of the fans who sponsored this campaign. Professor Good discussed this in class but the jist of it can be summarized in this quote from the article: “Drawing on a series of interviews with Kickstarter backers who supported the Veronica Mars movie, I argue that the experiences and perspectives of Veronica Mars fans during the Kickstarter campaign demonstrate that these fans had a relationship with text and industry that cannot be cleanly understood as either celebratory or lovingly subversive [affirmational or transformational]” (Navar-Gil, p. 212)

Fandom’s aren’t always defined as either transformational or affirmational, sometimes they can engage in a combination of both of these through different fan communities. Depending on how fans treat media industries as well as original media texts dictates whether they are considered affirmational fans or transformational fans. Affirmational fans – “celebrate the text as is and accept industry guidelines for textual interpretation and participation.” In other words, they don’t challenge the creative decisions put in place by the producers or writers of said media texts. They discuss elements of the texts while still remaining firmly within the creators established storyline. Transformational fans – “tend to twist and reimagine the text in non-sanctioned ways through creative work, asserting a kind of moral ownership over the text.” So, these types of fans would challenge the original work and would twist and rewrite the text for their pleasure. An example of transformational fans would be fanfiction authors.

One audience example that I would like to expand upon for this week would be a fandom convention like Fan Expo. Fan Expo is a Canadian fan convention where fans gather to appreciate their favourite shows, comic books, movies…etc.

https://www.fanexpocanada.com/en/home.html

This is a good example of some of the themes we touched upon this week because Fan Expo is literally made up of fandoms and fans, affirmational and transformational. It’s a convention for the most die-hard fans of certain media we see how big of a power this convention has solely because of the fans which could be connected to symbolic patronage in the sense that this convention is so popular and financially stable because of these fandoms/fans.

Sullivan Chapter 9: Online, interactive audiences in a digital media world (213-238). Wasike, B. (2013). Framing news in 140 Characters: How social media editors frame the news and interact with audiences via Twitter. Global Media Journal - Canadian Edition, 6(1), 5-23. Week 10, we discussed interactive audiences in our digital media world in Sullivan’s Chapter 9, as well as how social media editors frame the news and interact with audiences via Twitter in Wasike’s article. As discussed in lecture, we use Twitter as one of the most popular microblogging sites, its prime for audience interaction and it’s “prowess as an adept news breaking tool”, this is important when discussing audience interactions in this digital media world. In Wasike’s article, there was a mention of SMEs. SME’s are “the faces of the media agencies in the digital world, best positioned to control how news flows into the social media sphere.” (p.8). Sullivan discusses the online, interactive, digital media world. “... media audiences today have come to expect the ability to provide instant feedback to media producers and to other audiences. In this type of interactive media environment, where do media producers end and the audience begin? Is it even appropriate to speak of the “audience” as a distinct entity anymore?” (Sullivan). These days, with all the user-generated, we see and acknowledge the audiences power.

One audience experience that truly combines the power an audience has with audience interactions on Twitter would be the example that Professor Good touched on in class about Twitter attacking Trump for refusing to visit the cemetery to honor the US soldiers that died in France, because it was raining. The audience on Twitter “pelted” Trump with pictures of Obama trekking through the rain to visit that same cemetery. As quoted from the Huffington Post article about this: ”As many as 1,800 American soldiers killed in the World War I battle of Belleau Wood are buried in the French cemetery. But Trump ditched his planned visit and stayed in his hotel room because of unspecified “scheduling and logistical difficulties caused by the weather,” according to a White House statement. Instead, a delegation led by Chief of Staff John Kelly traveled to the cemetery 50 miles outside of Paris by car. Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, German Chancellor Angela Merkel and French President Emmanuel Macron were among the world leaders who made the trip.”

The twitter universe was outraged by this that they responded with hundreds of photos of former president Obama attending various events in the rain in order to make Trump feel incompetent. Many of the photos had captions praising Obama and slamming Trump, for example – user @Erik_Wells tweeted a collage of photos of Obama standing/speaking at events in the rain and captioned it: “A real leader supports our fallen men and women in uniform in the rain, snow, sun, day, night, at home or overseas. True leaders do this because it is not about them, but those who paid the ultimate sacrifice. Shame on you @realDonaldTrump. Thank you! @BarackObama”. This was an excellent example of how audiences used their power to convey a message across a larger sphere – seeing as this trend went on and people in different countries participated in criticizing Trump and commending Obama. We see first-hand how audiences and human interest can have a great impact on the economy and how that is all conveyed through technology (Twitter, to be exact).

https://www.huffingtonpost.ca/entry/twitter-pelts-trump-with-photos-of-%20barack-obama-in-the-rain_us_5be76113e4b0769d24cdebb7

Sullivan Chapter 10: Conclusion: Audience agency in new contexts (239-249). Athique, A. (2018). The dynamics and potentials of big data for audience research. Media, Culture and Society, 40(1), 59-74.

Our final week (and the final chapter we read of Sullivan’s) was all about audience agency, as well as Athique’s article on big data and its relation to audience research. “as objects of media influence, as quantified constructions of institutions, as active users, and as subcultures and media producers. By now it should be clear that the definition of the term ‘audience’ has been contested throughout its history” (Sullivan, p.239) Sullivan discussers “audience shifts”. As audiences go from mobile platform experiences to transmedia experiences (transmedia, referring to the “-the coordinated use of multiple media platforms (or technologies) to craft a narrative. Unlike traditional storytelling in a single medium like television, film, or books, transmedia narratives open up the possibility for audience participation and dialogue with media producers.”) and finally transitioning into amateur “prosumer”/ ”produser” content where the audiences create and produce their own content for each other’s consumption. This chapter offers a collection of the ideas and theories from the previous chapters and how we take those theories when looking at every-changing audience studies in the 21stcentury.

“Thanks to the expansion of media texts and technological platforms, the independence of the audience from content providers is greater than ever before.

In the 21st century, audiences can access media whenever and wherever they desire, provided that they have broadband Internet access (Sullivan, p. 243)

Moving on to Athique’s article which dealt with themes of big data for audience research… Athique states:  “The numerological dimension of big data arises from the analysis of numerical trends in those inputs [e.g., social media use] in order to make inferences about the future [e.g., future audience behaviour]” (p. 62).

Acknowledging the fact that being able to see and interact with what people view/click on/watch is beneficial to collecting accurate data – is it an invasion of privacy? Yes. Throughout reading this article, one audience example I couldn’t help but think of was this idea that websites such as Facebook, Instagram, YouTube… etc create ads for YOU specifically based on what you say near your phone or what you search on your internet. I have heard countless stories of this happening, it has even happened to me once or twice. I could be talking to my friend about wanting to adopt a dog at an animal shelter and the next thing I know, I start seeing animal shelter ad’s coming up on my social media. When I noticed this started happening, I had discussed it with others only to find that they had noticed the same thing. They would speak about something and then the next day, there would be ads on their social media accounts about that topic. I found an article on Global News where they discussed this notion.

“You didn’t Google search it, or even write about it in a text. While the tech giants claim they don’t do it, the suspicion that your cellphone and smart devices eavesdrop on you has become common online chatter, prompting countless tweets and a lengthy Reddit thread.” (retrieved from globalnews.ca). This is a good example of how media uses their audiences to collect big data, whether it’s an invasion of privacy or not – it’s smart and it’s only going to get smarter.

https://globalnews.ca/news/4039276/smart-devices-facebook-listening/

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COMM 3P18 BLOG POST #2

For week 5, we read Sullivan Chapter 4: Media ratings and target marketing, as well as Buzzard’s article, “The rise of market information regimes and the historical development of audience ratings”. Buzzard’s article revolves around an interview made with “ratings pioneer” Arthur C Nielson Jr, in relation to the AC Nielson Company.

“This article contextualizes the rise of the A.C. Nielsen Company as part of a larger system of independent suppliers of information assessing market performance that are publicly available and are used by stakeholders in the market to assess their performance and the performance of their competitors, known as information regimes.”

In other words, AC Nielson is a company that gathers different types of data and information that other companies can receive in order to make marketing decisions about various things. They gather information to help companies know more about their statistics and ratings which ultimately help these companies know more about their audiences (how many people, who are the people…etc). The specific data supplied by the AC Nielson Company would help compare people’s views of different companies or how they compare to reliability thus allowing these companies to reach a broader audience once they know who they are trying to appeal to. This related to the lecture, we discussed the idea of operationalizing audiences in order to quantify audiences. “Audience size, known as exposure, literally serves as the currency for determining the cost paid by advertisers for network and spot advertising.” (Buzzard, 512) This is helpful because numbers are easy to understand, they are practical and help “streamline” audience diversity and numbers can also be put into any mathematical formula.

“Media corporations must find some new ways to break into this private realm to measure and catalog consumers’ behaviors for commercial purposes. This corporate desire to penetrate the home made it necessary to develop sophisticated measurement practices to try to understand, quantify, and monitor the behaviors of the audience” (Sullivan) The reason why target marketing is so helpful is because it provides feedback based on the audience members themselves and since they are the ones providing these companies with business, it makes sense to reach out to them directly and understand their wants/needs. The constant stream of new competitors results in constant new demands and changing audiences, so you can see the importance in keeping up with their needs. “However, the reverse has also been true: new ratings competitors or demands by the broadcasting and advertising industry have led to changes in the necessary scope of information-gathering activities, whether through method (changes in sam- pling or sampling method), concept (demographic targeting, geographic targeting), or medium (radio, TV, computer, cell phone). (513)

In lecture for this week, there was brief mention of a new technology that was used to track someone’s interests and provide information on what people gravitate to. They were a set of glasses that tracked where your eye movement went when looking at a variety of things. This showed what attracted certain people to certain things thus creating a way for companies to see what their audiences are interested in. “Sophisticated surveillance mechanisms have been put into place in modern post-industrial economies to be able to measure and track individuals’ thoughts, attitudes, and behaviors. These tools are often used by powerful institutions and organizations to advance their own goals, thus bringing into play fundamental issues of power. (Sullivan)

One real life audience experience I can connect to this idea of media ratings and target marketing in order to reach a wider audience would be a sports stadium, let’s say the Rogers Centre downtown Toronto. Think about the marketing strategy that must go into sports and entertainment stadiums. They have hundreds of thousands of seats to fill – so how do they remain successful by filling the seats? They target their market by ensuring that every person of every income is able buy tickets. Instead of pricing every seat the same amount, they think about every scenario of fans that might attend. You have the fans who still want to come enjoy the show/game but might not want to spend a lot of money on a ticket so they’ll buy a cheaper ticket up in the nosebleeds. But then you also have to hardcore fans who want more luxurious experiences by staying in hotels/renting private suits and buying tickets with better access to the field and the players. The Rogers Centre offers different options of seating arrangements for any experience which ensures that the venue remains full of people.

After discussing media rating and target marketing, we move on to week 6, which dealt with uses and gratification that the audience receives. The readings this week was Sullivan’s Chapter 5: Uses and Gratification, as well as Sundar & Limperos’ article: “New gratifications for new media”. In lecture, it was noted that since uses and gratifications sees the audiences as “active, selective, discriminating and self-aware”, we must then think of our audiences as objects, as mass and as agents. This week was more focused on content and the different types of content in the media that attract different types of audiences. “Audience members are aware of their own individual needs and motivations in selecting certain media and are able to report their needs accurately to media researchers when asked. Scholars utilizing the uses and gratifications approach do not make value judgments about peoples’ media choices... they try to understand the audiences’ orientation to certain media ‘on their own terms”. (Sullivan).

Sundar & Limperos had stated: “It challenges the notion that all gratifications are borne out of innate needs, and proposes that affordances of media technology can shape user needs, giving rise to new and distinctive gratifications. A sample of new gratifications and potential measures for those are provided” (p. 504). They discussed 4 different types of gratifications that users experience through media related affordance that lead to user-fulfillment:

1.     Modality-Based Gratifications

This is associated with perceptual gratifications, it refers to the different ways available of presenting media content in order to appeal to different aspects of human perception (such as audio & pictures and seeing, hearing…etc). Appealing to different aspecrts of human perception allows you to spread information across multiple media models (thus creating the term “multimedia”. Everybody processes information differently so having different types of modalities reach broader audiences.

2.     Agency-based Gratifications

This gratification is related to gatekeeping (which is the activity of controlling access). We are all agents of information on on the internet as this is the rise of the user generated content such as Youtube, Facebook, Instagram... etc.“In general, agency-based gratifications such as agency-enhancement, community- building, bandwagon, filtering/tailoring, and ownness (Table 1) are made possible by a suite of new interface tools relating to customization and crowd-sourcing, serving mostly instrumental goals of highly motivated and involved users. “(p. 514).

3.    Interactivity-based Gratifications

This gratification is relateds to user activity and system responsiveness. “Interactivity is defined as the affordance that allows the user to make real-time changes to the content in the medium. The interactivity affordance goes to the heart of audience activity by allowing users to interact with and through the medium (515). By allowing users to interact with the medium it allows the audience to feel more connected and it also allows for the mediums to feel more relatable.

4.    Navigability-based Gratifications

This gratification caters to user movement in the space created by the medium. “We expect error messages and warnings before any drastic commitment is made on our behalf (e.g., "Are you sure you want to proceed?" "Clicking the Submit button will charge your credit card," and so on). The scaffolding gratification is a powerful one and probably drives the bulk of our commercial transactions on Internet-enabled media devices. “(p. 516) Allowing the audience to freely navigate from website to website results in a certain satisfaction while limiting user navigability (such as denying access to certain websites or requiring accounts and/or money in order to access) can lead to dissatisfaction.  

“How these newly developed gratifications impact user reception of traditional media as well as forthcoming media is an area of future research with rich theoretical potential. …. Best understood by investigating the various affordances offered by newer media, such as the four classes identified by the MAIN Model and discussed in this article. An understanding of how users engage the affordances of newer media will help researchers devise more specific

measures for capturing the nuanced and specific gratifications obtained from newer media.”

(p. 522)

I will connect my audience experience to an agency-based audience gratification. I drew upon the new rise of user generated content and instantly thought of Youtubers. YouTube has been around since the early-mid 2000’s and as the technology-driven generation grew up, we grew with YouTube. One YouTuber that stood out to me was Jenna Marbles – she created an entire career out of making comedic videos which ended up growing a very large following. She currently has over 6 billion viewers on YouTube and has a net worth of over 4 million. Her audience remains loyal to her as she interacts with them over social media making them feel connected and a part of her life, like a friend. Her fans/viewers are highly involved and motivated to keep her relevant. “The rise of user-generated content, in the form of such platforms and sites as YouTube and Facebook, has profoundly altered the sender-receiver equation of communication, but more importantly given rise to new gratifications. (p.514)

https://wealthygorilla.com/jenna-marbles-net-worth/

For week 7, we read Sullivan’s article about “interpreting and decoding mass media texts” as well as Granelli & Zenor’s article “Decoding The Code: Reception theory and moral judgment of Dexter”. This Granelli & Zenor article discusses the television show Dexter and examines how the audience interprets it in order to understand the dynamic between audiences, effects and the text itself. “The series followed the exploits of Dexter Morgan. By day, he is a blood-spatter analyst employed by Miami Metro Police Department. But at night, he is sociopathic serial killer who functions outside of the written law, and dispenses punishment to those who “deserve” it. (p. 5056). Dexter is based on this idea of “situational ethics” where he offers punishment to those who deserve it, similar to Robin Hood’s situational ethics of robbing from the rich to give to the poor. This article dives into how audiences decodes the violence and moral ambiguity of the show and discuss how if the audience watching the show cannot accept the moral ambiguity of the plot then they will most likely not have an enjoyable viewing. The studies in this article showed that if the viewers were big fans of the show and watched it often, they were more likely to have a positive experience watching it whether it lacked morality or not – fans of the show were more likely to look past the bad things the character was doing and justify it somehow. (We discussed in lecture that fans often viewed Dexter as a justified vigilante rather than a criminal/sociopath).

“Uses and gratifications relies upon the self-reports of individuals, information about individuals’ inner states of mind is only accurate insofar as they can readily identify their needs and can recall them” (Sullivan, p. 122)

In lecture, we discussed the decoding of messages to the audience. The decoding process refers to the “reception of the message by the audience (Sullivan, 141). We also discussed this idea of morality NOT simply being black and white. How do audiences relate to the protagonist of their favourite show if his actions conflict with their moral code? Decoding a message can happen in 3 different ways:

Dominant-hegemonic position, in which audience members accept the media message exactly how it is. They don’t question it, they just accept it.

Negotiated position, “the individual would interpret the message with a ‘mixture of adaptive and oppositional elements” “viewers making negotiated readings of texts relate to and understand the dominant code, but also filter media content through the lens of their own individualized experiences and worldview” (p. 14).

And Oppositional position, which allows for a struggle against the message and/or it’s producers.

“While the scholars of the CCCS recognized the power of the text to structure potential interpretations, they also imagined audiences as active decoders of media texts, leaving conceptual room for them to challenge these meanings” (Sullivan).  

The real-life audience experience I chose for this week’s material was an add I saw on Facebook that received a lot of backlash and many different comments, mostly negative. It was an add for Egg Donors. This add was a good example of a decoding where audience took a primarily oppositional position on this message. The add was directed to women, saying all expenses were paid for and that they should donate their eggs. As I read the comments I noticed 3 main points that everyone seemed to be touching on; negativity came from homophobic people who assumed the add was directed mainly to the LGBT community who were interested in having children, others were concerned at the fact that they should be advertising adoption instead of egg donating because there are so many kids in foster care and should be looked after, and a lot of people also commented on how men get paid to donate sperm but women don’t get paid to donate eggs even though the process to donate eggs is far more invasive procedure.

This is an example of a message being decoded and the majority of the audience going against the message and its producers because they don’t agree with it. 

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Audience Studies (3P18) Blog Post #1

In the course so far we have dealt with three main ideas, in the first week we discussed the history and the concept of the audience alongside Livingstone’s article about the critical role of the interview in the history of audience research. Week 2 dove into the effects of media messages with Brown’s article on the four processes of audience involvement with media personae and last week was about public opinion and audience citizenship where we read Neubaum’s article which discussed the expected sanctions for expressing minority opinions online and offline. I will address all three of these weeks and give the first example of an audience experience that comes to mind with each topic.

It’s obvious that the history of audience research is key when thinking and discussing audiences and the experiences they bring/create. Livingstone spokethe importance of knowing your audience andof interviewing audiences as a way to open up new forms of analysis, (ethnographic research, if you will) he states “…it helped explain why the universalistic claims of media effects theories only ever apply contingently, for media influence always depends on the context. In short, drawing on a rich mixture of semiotic theory, cultural critique, anthropological methods, and the feminist revalorization of the ‘‘everyday,’’ audience reception studies, accompanied by audience ethnographies, launched a successful challenge to hitherto dominant theories of mass communication.”(Livingstone,2010, P.568). Figuring out what audiences think and understand is crucial to being able to use an audience to your advantage. We can use a Trump rally as an example of an audience experience for this topic. It’s no secret that President Donald Trump has expressed many (questionable) opinions to his audience, which is not only the United States but him becoming president has become such a strange and shocking moment in history that his presidency and unfortunately his ideologies have been expressed internationally through the media. His rallies are a good example of interviewing audiences to use them to his advantage because at these rally’s he interacts with different, large groups of people, majority of whom support him and his opinions (however negative and problematic they may me), but by interacting with them and meeting them it allows him to receive positive and negative feedback. He learns about what they agree with and like and what they don’t like, he seems how far he can push boundaries and ultimately learns what to do to become the highlight in the media thus bringing him more publicity and once again becoming a hot topic of conversation. In lecture for this week, we spoke of the Trump inauguration crowd photos which had been edited to show fewer amount of people present – we also touched on the “plaid shirt guy” who was removed from one of Trumps rallies due to his lack of enthusiasm. Things like this go viral, and going viral means you are now being spoken about and discussed internationally through media. “Outcome sees people as being acted upon by media. Typically, it reflects a concern about the power of media to produce detrimental effects on individuals, and by implication on society as a whole” (Sullivan) These Trump rallies created many viral videos and photos that were spoken of endlessly. CNN compiled a list of the most outrageous things Trump has said during his rallies and I will share the link to prove how absurd some of the things he has said to a mass audience has been. But his interviewing audience skills are so well that the people who back him up and support him will in return defend his honour against the rest of the world that thinks he’s a bit of a knob. One of the quotes from the CNN link show that Trump had said “We're building the wall. It's going up." – In relation to immigrants and not allowing them into the USA. He creates these negative ideologies and feeds them to his audience and since he knows that his audience accepts it, they just eat it up and all it does is create a mass audience of negativity and it’s scary. But that just goes to show the power of knowing your audience and knowing what to say to reach them.

https://www.cnn.com/2018/10/03/politics/donald-trump-mississippi-speech-christine-blasey-ford/index.html

Now, I’m going to use the same audience experience for week 2 and 3 because I have a lot to say about it as it was HUGE in the media and is still continuing to be relevant. “Cooley was one of the first intellectuals to link the development of individuals’ psyches and worldviews with their immediate surroundings, including social feedback from peers, parents, and other authority figures; and messages carried by communications media via print, telegraph, telephones, to name a few” (Sullivan, p. 27).  These two weeks dealt with a common theme of public opinion, the effects of media messages and the overall power of an audience when it comes to expressing opinions. Brown’s article touched on the influence that well-known people (such as celebrities) can have on audiences and the emotional and psychological participation these audiences share with these personae’s. He examined four main ideas:Transportationwhich Brown describes as “the involvement in a story and involvement with the characters of a story, noting that attachment to characters may play a critical role in narrative-based belief change” (Brown, 2015, P. 262). He also used the phrase “transportation into a narrative world”. Parasocial Interactionwhich he describes as a “self-defined one-way relationship” in a self-made imaginary interaction created between the audience member and the personae they admire. Identificationis what Brown describes as “the internalization of the attitudes, beliefs, and values of the object of identification by the person who is being influenced”. And finally, worship which he says is “the most recently conceptualized and most intense form of involvement with media personae is identified as worship. Focusing on audience involvement with celebrities and how media consumers tend to idolize celebrity personae, even to degree that they consider such involvement to emulate worship”. (Brown, 2015, P. 266).

In Neubaum’s article about expressing minority opinions in offline and online communities, he discusses the fear people may have in expressing a minority opinion across social media or in social situations and the fear people have in general of voicing their opinions. Surely by this point we have all heard about the #MeToo movement. The Me-Too movement started as a hashtag on social media in late 2017 which was used to create a movement against sexual harassment and sexual assault. People would share their personal stories of struggle and abuse and overcoming and would hashtag #MeToo. It went viral and before you knew it, it had millions of people backing it and contributing – as well as celebrities. It became a support system for people who have shared these experiences and were brave enough to come forward and speak about it. A lot of the people coming forward were of minority groups – including LGBT, women of colour and women in general which is how I connected it to week 3’s theme of public opinion and minority opinions expressed online and in the media. The Me Too movement recieved a lot of back lash from anti-liberals, sexists, racists and I hate to say it but unfortunately a lot of them were men who didn’t see the point in this movement. So, some of these victims might have been afraid to come forward and spread their stories online hashtagging #MeToo because it was so viral that someone who might already be sensitive to cruel words and has already dealt with a lot of struggle and abuse in their life would get the courage to tell their story only to have it be scrutinized online by some internet trolls. I understand the fear in being vulnerable, however, there were more people being positive about the Me-Too movement then there were people being negative. Since many celebrities (Lady Gaga, Sophia Bush, Rosario Dawson…to name a few) had come forward with their stories and their support of the Me Too movement online, a lot of their audience had seen that as inspiring and helped themselves come forward as well. This connects to week 2’s idea of media messages, media personae and audience involvement. Lady Gaga was a huge member of this movement and did a lot of great things to help inspire and support #MeToo. Lady Gaga also has an incredibly large following, he fans are so devout and loyal, they even have a specific name – they call themselves her “Monsters”. Her fans, or her “monsters” are an excellent example of Brown’s four processes of audience involvement, specifically worshipand identification because her fans treat Lady Gaga like their lord and savior and whatever she does, they do. She has that much power and she uses the power she has over her audience for good and promoting postivie things such as the Me Too movement.

https://metoomvmt.org

https://www.avclub.com/an-incomplete-depressingly-long-list-of-celebrities-se-1819628519

These audience experiences connected well to the readings and the lectures. It’s clear that there are many example of audience experiences for each topic we’ve covered so far in class – however these were the two that I thought of as soon as I heard about this assignment.