Core Post IV -JAE-

 Core Post IV

This week’s readings explore ways in which audiences can be theorized, and how researchers interrogate or work with(in) audience samples, as well as how spaces impact the conversations and labor of audience members. Jenkins (1988) puts forth an argument, that is still oft cited in contemporary studies, that posits the participatory cultures of fandoms as “textual poachers” that appropriate meanings and symbolism from texts that primarily serve their politics as well as their goals. Seiter (2004) explores how the identities of researchers can flavor and impact the data that they may access from interviewees and other participants in a given study. Whereas Andrejevic (2008) builds on Jenkins’s, as well as other media and sociological theorists, to investigate how digital spaces and the conversations commencing within them can be exploitable labor for corporate benefit. I believe that the considerations put forth in Professor Ellen Seiter’s piece can also be helpful in questioning potential problematics in how corporate powers may displace and capitalize on the labor of the masses as observed in Adrejevic’s piece.

I have pondered my own (in)access, class, and identity standpoints in relation to the communities that I explore. I am a Black-American queer man among other things, but those four markers seem to have consistent and traceable tethers on my academic engagements in scholarship as well as socially. Especially as a person who often is engaging queer cultures across East Asian contexts and within language systems that I began learning in my mid-late twenties. Furthermore, this week’s readings resonate with me because I am concerned with minimizing the problematic reaches and potentials for harm in my research. Research where queerness is usually the greatest common denominator between myself and my communities of interest. Yet, Black-American queerness and East Asian counterparts are different. I am reminded of Dr. Giancarlo Cornejo’s (2014) essay on a “queer pedagogy of friendship” posits an iterative and collaborative methodological approach to pursue self-reflexivity akin to that mentioned by Professor Ellen Seiter in her essay. Though Dr. Cornejo’s methods are verily aided by Cornejo being a person from within the community they are studying. Nonetheless, the methods give me hope that I too can chart a course that will be compassionate towards the communities I engage, especially when they are outside of the realms I reside within, and that my own identities may yield fruitful conversations white counterparts might not be privy to. 

However, this week’s readings also make me curious about other contemporary media phenomena. How should we engage consumption and participation when the media’s author invokes rhetoric that additionally antagonize marginal groups like J.K. Rowling has done recently? Are we to think of transgender individuals, as well as other sexual and gender minorities, as being complicit in emotional violence for being fans of Harry Potter? And how do subscriptions, donations, and the giving of cryptocurrencies via Twitch, Patreon, Private SnapChats, OnlyFans, and other online experiences flavor the relationships of fans to actors? In sum, there is a lot to ponder, which is both exciting and worrisome to me.