Fan Culture and Media Technology Shift

This year is my fourth year as an international student in Canada, so I’m already familiar with Canadian culture in general. Halloween is a fun holiday in my opinion because in my country we don’t have Halloween. So it is especially kind of interesting experience. This semester, after learning Chapter 8 “Media Fandom and Audience Subcultures” of audience study, I think Halloween can be related to fan culture from my point of view.

Sullivan (2013) states that “the popular culture materials that fans tend to spend their time thinking carefully about are seen by many to be culturally worthless or simply there for entertainment purpose”. For example, during Halloween this year I specifically looked at people who dressed up. I saw some people dress up as classic characters that are in movies and some little children dressed up as fairytale characters. So I guess them dressing up as what they are makes them part of a fandom? One of my friends took almost three days to think of what she should dress up as for Halloween. The reason why I know she took three days to think about is because she asked me almost every day. During Halloween, she finally decided she wanted to dress up like Harley Quinn, which is the movie character from the Suicide Squad movie. Because this year when the movie trailer for Suicide Squad came out, my friend just could not wait to see it and dragged me to accompany her when the movie was finally released. After the movie ended, she told me she liked Harley Quinn so much. I asked her why and she said “she’s so cool, look at her hairstyle one side is pink and another side is blue, also her clothing style is kind of like my ideal clothing style in mind, but I can’t dress up like that in daily life, however, Halloween gives me the chance to dressed up like her”. So I said, “oh, okay then, it’s interesting though”. After Halloween ended, I thought the meaning of Halloween had been shifted. It shifted like becoming more of a fandom thing that people want to represent. Because Halloween is a tradition originated from Celtic harvest festivals that may have pagan roots, particularly the Gaelic festival Samhain, and that this festival was Christianized as Halloween, but now it is more towards people dressing up like what fandom they are interested in.

Sullivan (2013) points out “the fan fiction is short stories often feature existing characters from media texts, or are written in the creative universe of the original text”. For example, my friend always likes to write some backstories of characters, or describing encounters between characters that were not seen on the screen. One of the stories that I know she wrote about is a Thailand movie. The name of this movie is The Love of Siam; it’s a romantic movie. In this movie, the two main characters didn’t stay together although they loved each other. So my friend was kind of sad about it, so she wrote a different end for them and posted online in a web fan club. So this leads to my next point, which is media technology shifts.

Sullivan (2013) states “digitalization refers to the standards by which media images and sounds are recorded and transmitted”. In the recent decade, the concept of digitalization has become clearer and is being noticed by audiences. For example, smartphones, tablets, laptops are being used more in the recent decade and replace paper newspapers, paper magazines in gradually because we can see online newspapers, online magazines now. Sullivan (2013) states “ convergence allows media content to be displayed on any number of different devices, but it has also enabled the simple reproduction of these media into computer file formats that can be easily distributed via the Internet, leading to widespread piracy of copyrighted material”. For example, when I work on my assignment with groups, we often use Google doc to edit it, because Google doc allows viewers assess and edit documents at the same time, and you can see the changes literally, also I can access to Google doc on my iPhone or iPad because I don’t bring my laptop everywhere.

Another term that Sullivan addresses is blogs. Sullivan (2013) addresses “blogs are daily or regularly updated online websites that appear in journal format”. But now, it evolves more branches, like Vlogs (Video blogs), Flogs (Fake blogs), Splogs (Spam blogs). For example, one of my friends Steven, he is the food culture club leader at Brock University. He posts Vlogs regularly updated in Chinese social media Wechat.

In conclusion, we are now living in a post-network era. This is an argument from Lotz (2009). I agree with this argument because we are now as active audiences are no longer constrained by network television schedules.

Thoughts about Man charged as Brock denounces hateful, violent nature of protest

On November 1^st last week, there was a man held a sign and protest in the Glenridge Ave, which is the only way to get to the Brock University, also a quick path that students in the International Center can easily access to Brock campus. On that day, after I done my seminar class at 4 pm when I access to my social media, which is called WeChat (assemble to WhatsApp Messenger) as usual, I consumed myself as a ritualized audience. In the chapter 5 Uses and Gratifications, Sullivan (2013, p. 117) states that ritualized audiences tended to use TV more habitually, watching in order to consume time or to be diverted from other activities. For myself, I was just getting tired after I took off the class, and the only thing I want to do is scrolling my iPhone screen and check the social media, even though I’m not interested in what people on social media are posting. The reason why I was doing this is because I just want to consume time and trying to avoid other coming up stuff for a moment, it’s just a habit. After I check out all the new posts from my friends I found out that this man’s protest is crazy passing through around the “moments” which is a space that friends can share photos and personal life experiences in it. By looking at the whole thing, there are some thoughts showed up on my mind.

The first thing come to my mind is this man is meeting Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs. In the chapter 5 Uses and Gratifications, according to Sullivan (2013, p. 115), Maslow outlined a basic need hierarchy as the foundation for the motivation of all human beings. From this point, I think this man is meeting the “higher order” need, which is self-actualization. This man may be dissatisfied with current living and job situation, because he said “Trump is right, bring our jobs back” in the sign, so he held sign and protest could satisfy himself in deep that after the protest, the way that he hoped things working on might become true.

Second, after this protest happened. I believe my friends and I is getting emotional hurt in certain ways because he uses the F word to against China and Mexico. For this point, I will use expectancy-value theory to explain. In the chapter 5 Uses and Gratifications, Sullivan (2013, p. 121) states that expectancy-value theory talks about individual approach new situations and information with a built-in set of beliefs and expectations, and these expectations in turn shape motivations in these new situations. There are three kinds of beliefs mentioned in the expectancy-value theory. I think my friends and I meet the informational beliefs. Informational beliefs are formed by accepting information from outside sources that has not been directly observed (Sullivan, 2013, p. 121). The reason why I choose Canada to study in first place is because Canada is a multinational and freedom country in my notion, which I get this information from outside sources, so I never think about this kind of protest will happen and it’s kind in the front of my eyes, I mean it was so close to me and influence my emotion. Second, after this man’s protest, it kind blows up in the WeChat “moments”, because people are thinking about he’s being racial discrimination.

Third, on November 2^nd, Brock News posts this news in the Brock website and clarifies the whole thing. It delays one day after this protest happened. I will use time-shifting to address the delay. In the chapter 7 Reception Contexts and Media Rituals, Sullivan (2013, p. 165) states that the rise of digital technologies such as Tivo and web-based forms of television and film distribution such as YouTube, audiences are more frequently time-shifting exposure. So this could explain why the protest happened on November 1^st, but Brock News posted online on November 2^nd. Also, time-shifting allows us to view this news at more convenient times and in a variety of media platforms because we can access to Brock website from computers, iPhones or tablets.

Why Transformers: Age of Extinction is so successful in China?

       The movie Transformers series showed up in China in 2007. At that time, China’s domestic film market was beginning to increase. Transformers caught people’s eyes for the first time on a large scale in society. I remember my dad said to me that Transformers was so fantastic. So from that time, I began to pay attention to this movie. After I watched it, I thought: oh okay it was cool, so many advanced technologies, no wonder so many people like it. After that, Transformers began to open the Chinese film market until the 4^th movie Transformers: Age of Extinction caused a great disturbance and successfully earned a great share in Chinese film market.

       Here are some reasons why I think Transformers: Age of Extinction is so successful in China. First of all, I will use terms in Chapter 2: Effects of Media Message to address it. The stereotypes as a marketing strategy were interpreted very clearly in the movie. According to Sullivan (2013, p. 36), stereotypes are described as the predominant method through which all individuals perceive the world. Obviously, there are good guys and bad guys in this movie. Such as the Autobot Optimus Prime as a “good guy” and Megatron as a “bad guy”. Being a Chinese audience member, I would like to say most of us often put the focus on identifying who is the good one and who is the bad one. This is the first point. The second point, media propaganda was used before Transformers: Age of Extinction was screened in China. Media propaganda refers to the meaning to “disseminate or promote particular ideas” (Sullivan, 2013, p. 36). When the whole film production team of this movie was shooting some scenes in China, they put a lot of propaganda in media through popular Chinese website like Tencent and Sina, also through the most popular app like Weibo (assemble to Twitter). They also held a lot of press conferences when they were shooting some scenes in different cities. I could say that this film production teams use the power of media to direct the Chinese public’s receiving of information. For example: when audiences in China see this information, we think oh this movie has a lot of scenes that were shot in China, it was fun. We might decide to take a look at this movie.

       In this paragraph, I will use the term the audience commodity in Chapter 4: Media Ratings and Target Marketing to address the reason. Sullivan (2013, p. 81) shows the audience commodity lies in the fact that audiences perform labor for advertisers by learning about brands of consumer goods featured in the commercials, while we are socialized to think our media consumption is primarily a leisure-based activity. From this point, I could say that as an audience member seeing this movie in the movie theater it’s a leisure-based activity because when people go when they have time and they spend time to relax in the movie theater.

However, here is a bad thing I want to say. When I watched this movie in the movie theater, I saw a lot of product placement in it. As a communication student, I would like to say those product placements were so rigid. They put the product placement so intentionally, even I had other audience members say to me that there were so many product placements in this movie and they even used the term product placement! When I heard that, I thought that was so interesting.

       In conclusion, the reason why Transformer: Age of Extinction is so successful in China is because the film production team shot a lot of scenes in different cities in China, these places are all top-level scenic spots and there is a lot of product placements in the movie, and the products are from Chinese brands. For example the brand name Yili is a Chinese milk brand. Also, they invited famous and well-known Chinese celebrity like Bingbing Li to show up in the movie.

How I seeing myself as an audience start now on

Before I take this COMM 3P18 class, I didn’t realize that as a student I was being an audience basically all the time. Because every time we are listening to the lecture or participate in the seminar, we are audiences in certain ways. After the first two lectures of COMM 3P18, I start to know myself as an audience. I start to realize what is an audience and being an audience. Sullivan (2013, P.2) mentioned in the Introduction chapter in the textbook, audience has multiple meanings. For example, as a student in the COMM 3P19 lecture I was in the audience, this means that I was one of a number of individuals that listening to the lecture at the same time and place. So I was paying attention to the same lecture at the same time with other students. Second, I was part of the audience, because when I use laptop to access Sakai, I was viewing same media source as many of other students. But we were not located in the same place

In the textbook (Sullivan, 2013, P. 2), there are two notions. One is an information-based notion of the audience experience. For example, all Brock students use Sakai to check out daily-posted information and upload or download files. The transmission of view of the audiences emphasizes symbolic transaction between a speaker and a receiver. At this moment, I could say that Brock students and the webpage Sakai can be both in speaker and receiver, because when Brock students are speakers, it means we use Sakai to upload information, and Sakai as a media webpage receive the information that we upload. When Brock students are receivers, it means we use Sakai to download information. At this time, Sakai is the speaker.

In the textbook (Sullivan, 2013, P. 6), there are three models. The first is the audience-as-outcome. The textbook explains this model “sees people as being acted upon by media”; especially it reflects a concern about the power of media to produce detrimental effects on individuals, and by implication on society as a whole. I believe in this model, because I can see how the media effects on people in nowadays. Recently in China, there is a celebrity having depressive disorder I think its have been three or four years already, and suicide at his home just in September. This is shock news, because he was only 28. He as an audience, I can see that how the power of media affects on him, especially media violence is so rampant nowadays. He as a public figure and as an audience has to face all the comments and judgments from other people, no matter its bad or not. This is so stressed to a celebrity. The third model is audience-as-agent. I can use myself as an example. My daily habit is watching video on YouTube. I specific watch media content like Korean pop music video and horror movie introduction and narration. This is my interest it meets the definition selecting specific media content to fit their own needs and desires of the third model. 

This is how I start seeing myself as an audience in daily life after I have first two weeks lectures.