scholarly journals The Web planet: How the changing Internet divided Doctor Who fan fiction writers

Author(s):  
Leora Hadas

This paper analyzes the debate that arose in online Doctor Who fandom surrounding the switch to moderated submissions for "A Teaspoon and an Open Mind," the fandom's main fan fiction archive. As has been the case with many classic texts of science fiction and fantasy, from The Lord of the Rings on, the new adaptation of the cult series Doctor Who was the cause of much tension and conflict within the fandom. It has opened up the franchise to a vast new audience unschooled in the fandom's ways or the ways of fandom at large, and the change in archive policy served as an arena where many of these tensions came to a head. An in-depth analysis of this debate leads to the argument that the cultural logics of fandom and of participatory culture might be more separate than they initially appear. Some fans wholly embrace the ideals of Web 2.0 and argue for the archive as a nonhierarchical, communal space where all content is equal regardless of what standards it might not meet. Yet while their rhetoric resembles the ideas of academia about the potential of fandom as an educational space, other, more veteran fans reject academia, instead using the discourse of private enterprise and property rights, more commonly associated with the producers of texts than with their fans and poachers, to argue for the rights of site moderators to regulate content.

Author(s):  
Christina Olin-Scheller ◽  
Patrik Wikström

In this chapter the authors discuss and informal learning settings such as fan fiction sites and their relations to teaching and learning within formal learning settings. Young people today spend a lot of time with social media built on user generated content. These media are often characterized by participatory culture which offers a good environment for developing skills and identity work. In this chapter the authors problematize fan fiction sites as informal learning settings where the possibilities to learn are powerful and significant. They also discuss the learning processes connected to the development of literacies. Here the rhetoric principle of “imitatio” plays a vital part as well as the co-production of texts on the sites, strongly supported by the beta reader and the power of positive feedback. They also display that some fans, through the online publication of fan fiction, are able to develop their craft in a way which previously have been impossible.


Author(s):  
Francesca Musiani

This essay explores writing practices in a fan community having to give life to a story deprived of an "official" version: the television series Earth 2. I argue that fan fiction writing for this prematurely canceled series exhibits peculiar features in comparison to fan writing for established series: for example, temporality, choice of protagonists, character pairings, and challenges to the original conception(s) of the series. Writing fan fiction for a canceled series is not about creating alternatives to an existing story, but about filling in gaps; it brings to light the ways in which fan fiction deals with closure. I take as a case study Earth 2, a series aired by NBC in the United States in 1994–95, whose first and only season ended in a cliffhanger episode hinting that a mysterious ailment had struck the main and most popular character. Shortly afterward, a significant number of Earth 2 Web sites, online conventions, and especially fan stories started developing; they explored what could have happened next and bore nostalgic but combative mottoes and titles such as "May the Journey Continue." I explore the specific features of Earth 2 fan fiction production and sharing by analyzing the main Earth 2 fan fiction archives on the Web and the responses to my email interviews of fan writers. Exemplars of the Earth 2 case are compared to those of other science fiction TV series, both prematurely canceled (Firefly, Space: Above and Beyond) and long-lived (Babylon 5, Star Trek: Deep Space 9).


Author(s):  
Roslyn Weaver

This chapter discusses the history of popular fiction in Australia. The question of place has always been central to Australian fiction, not only as a thematic element but also as a critical or political preoccupation. In part, this is because popular fiction writers, wanting to attract broad audiences, either exploited their Australian content to appeal to international readers or have excised the local to produce a generic and thus more readily accessible setting for outsiders. The chapter considers works by popular fiction writers who adopt a range of positions in relation to their focus on place, but often tackle many different aspects of Australian social and historical change. These novels cover various genres such as crime fiction, historical fiction and romance, science fiction and fantasy, and include Fergus Hume's The Mystery of a Hansom Cab (1886), Nevil Shute's On the Beach (1957), Damien Broderick's The Dreaming Dragons (1980), and Cecilia Dart-Thornton's The Ill-Made Mute (2001).


2017 ◽  
Vol 10 (2-3) ◽  
pp. 109-132 ◽  
Author(s):  
Donatella Della Ratta

In this essay, I reflect on the aesthetic, political and material implications of filming as a continuous life activity since the beginning of the 2011 uprising in Syria. I argue that the blurry, shaky and pixelated aesthetics of Syrian user-generated videos serve to construct an ethical discourse (Ranciére 2009a; 2013) to address the genesis and the goal of the images produced, and to shape a political commitment to the evidence-image (Didi-Huberman 2008). However, while the unstable visuals of the handheld camera powerfully reconnect, both at a symbolic and aesthetic level, to the truthfulness of the moment of crisis in which they are generated, they fail to produce a clearer understanding of the situation and a counter-hegemonic narrative. In this article, I explore how new technologies have impacted this process of bearing witness and documenting events in real time, and how they have shaped a new understanding of the image as a networked, multiple object connected with the living archive of history, in a permanent dialogue with the seemingly endless flow of data nurtured by the web 2.0.


Author(s):  
Celine (Ha-Young) Song

A common question asked about the web 2.0 by the offline population is:  "What do people do there?" The paper addresses this question with respect to Paul Ricoeur's narrative theory of the self. According to his essay Life in Quest of Narrative, a person drifts through time experiencing events happening to them, but none of it is actually lived when it is not "recounted" or "storied". In this light, "storytelling may be said to humanise time by transforming it from an impersonal passing of fragmented moments into a patter, a plot ,a mythos". Blogs and sites like Facebook represent the most recent development in the human attempt to weave this "mythos". A profile page and a tweet are first and foremost stories that appear to its critics "truncated or parodied" by design "to the point of being called micro-narratives or post-narratives", and to it s advocates"multi-plotted, multi-vocal and multi-media". The paper introduces notions of e-Self and e-Narrative, examines their dangers and benefits, and concludes that "the advent of cyber-culture should be seen not as a threat to storytelling but as a catalyst for new possibilities of interactive, non-linear narration".


2021 ◽  
Vol 9 (4) ◽  
Author(s):  
Rumen Hristov

Low levels of listening comprehension skills in English is observed in many students. As a specific method, which can both cover mobile technologies and combine them with training, is the application of technology for podcasting and vidcasting/vodkasting. Podcasts and podcasts can provide authentic, up-to-date and easily accessible material, making them extremely useful when learning foreign languages. Their application makes learning freer and independent by introducing more interesting elements; gives greater freedom and independence to participants in the lesson. Students can listen to the material on the bus or while going to the gym.


Author(s):  
Carmen Domínguez-Falcón ◽  
Domingo Verano-Tacoronte ◽  
Marta Suárez-Fuentes

Purpose The strong regulation of the Spanish pharmaceutical sector encourages pharmacies to modify their business model, giving the customer a more relevant role by integrating 2.0 tools. However, the study of the implementation of these tools is still quite limited, especially in terms of a customer-oriented web page design. This paper aims to analyze the online presence of Spanish community pharmacies by studying the profile of their web pages to classify them by their degree of customer orientation. Design/methodology/approach In total, 710 community pharmacies were analyzed, of which 160 had Web pages. Using items drawn from the literature, content analysis was performed to evaluate the presence of these items on the web pages. Then, after analyzing the scores on the items, a cluster analysis was conducted to classify the pharmacies according to the degree of development of their online customer orientation strategy. Findings The number of pharmacies with a web page is quite low. The development of these websites is limited, and they have a more informational than relational role. The statistical analysis allows to classify the pharmacies in four groups according to their level of development Practical implications Pharmacists should make incremental use of their websites to facilitate real two-way communication with customers and other stakeholders to maintain a relationship with them by having incorporated the Web 2.0 and social media (SM) platforms. Originality/value This study analyses, from a marketing perspective, the degree of Web 2.0 adoption and the characteristics of the websites, in terms of aiding communication and interaction with customers in the Spanish pharmaceutical sector.


2009 ◽  
Vol 38 (4) ◽  
pp. 274-279 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jianwei Zhang

This article commenting on Greenhow, Robelia, and Hughes (2009) examines the potential strengths and weaknesses of Web 2.0 in supporting student collaborative creativity in light of sociocultural conditions of knowledge creation. Weaknesses and challenges are identified related to the embedded and dispersed representation of community knowledge, weak commitment and support to sustained progress, judging of contributions on the basis of popularity instead of advancement, and the conflict between the chaotic emergent Web and rigidly organized schooling. Discussion is extended to the use of the Web for supporting teacher learning and innovation. Research questions are identified calling for design-based research to advance both pedagogy and technology design.


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