*Most Recent Issues*
Over*Flow
Over*Flow: “Blonde is a Kind of Person”: A Cultural History of the Dumb Blonde
Kelly coyne / Northwestern University
Kelly Coyne dissects the racial and gender politics that underlie the “dumb blonde” stereotype.
Over*Flow: “Blonde is a Kind of Person”: A Cultural History of the Dumb Blonde
Kelly coyne / Northwestern University
Kelly Coyne dissects the racial and gender politics that underlie the “dumb blonde” stereotype.
Read moreRadio country
Morgan Bimm / ST. FRANCIS XAVIER UNIVERSITY
Dr. Morgan Bimm examines radio as a tool of nationalism and alienation.
Read moreMediating Emergency in Moments of Campus Tragedy
Elizabeth Ellcessor / University of Virginia
Dr. Elizabeth Ellcessor examines the emergency alert message in terms of its production and dissemination as constructed and negotiated texts. She considers the infrastructures and institutions of campus safety, emergency management, and policing.
Read moreDisrupting Screenplay Format’s Attachment to White Space
Jess King / DePaul University
Dr. Jess King explores how standardized rules for screenplay formatting constrain the representation of intersectional identities that are historically underrepresented. They note how disrupting the standardized white space of screenplays can make room for new characters, such as Vida’s Emma.
Read moreShudu and Her “Muses”: Stand-in Labor in Virtual Influencer Production
zizi li / University of California, Los Angeles
Zizi Li discusses Shudu and the practice of creating virtual 3-D Black models and influencers, exploring the post-racial politics and commodification of Black labor and femininity in fashion and social media.
Read moreThe One Where the Media Scholar Watches the Most Popular Show on TV
Emily West / University of Massachusetts Amherst
Dr. Emily West discusses the lacuna in scholarship about NCIS and argues for critical interrogation of popular and mainstream texts alongside “quality” and fan favorite content.
Read moreOver*Flow: Fan Demographics on Archive of Our Own
Lauren Rouse & Mel Stanfill / University of Central Florida
Lauren Rouse and Mel Stanfill present the results of a survey of users of popular fan fiction hosting site Archive of Our Own (AO3), providing updated statistics on fan fiction readers and writers.
Read moreBeauty, Branding, and Navigating the Crowdculture Boundaries of BeReal
Aidan Moir / University of Toronto Scarborough
Aidan Moir examines how the seemingly non-commercial platform BeReal has been utilized by beauty brands to interpolate users as authentic consuming citizens within their larger brand communities.
Read moreWorkers of the World BeReal!: BeReal and The Performance of Labor
Emily Lynell Edwards / St. Francis College
Emily Lynell Edwards explores how office or knowledge work is performed on BeReal. Edwards cautiously explores the consciousness-raising potentials of these performances of work within the platform to illustrate how BeReal reflects broader shifts in contemporary labor politics.
Read moreTime to Be Real?: Nostalgia, Authenticity, and the Digital Return to the Everyday
Jasmine Banks, Mel Monier, and Olivia Stowell / University of Michigan
Jasmine Banks, Mel Monier, and Olivia Stowell examine the desires for authenticity and nostalgia at the core of BeReal’s affordances. These authors argue that the staying power of this app is yet to be seen, the structures of feelings evoked and constructed through the app’s design points towards enduring subject-making processes of the digital.
Read more“Bonus point for the smile!”: The directive of happiness on BeReal
Taylor Annabell / King’s College London
Taylor Annabell examines how the platform BeReal encourages visibility through smiling selfies. Annabell argues this directive of happiness reveals how the construction of authenticity has particular implications for young women.
Read moreFormatting the Real
J.D. Swerzenski and Brendan McCauley/ University of Mary Washington and University of Massachusetts-Amherst
J.D. Swerzenski and Brendan McCauley examine how BeReal creates discursive boundaries of reality through its format and platform design. The authors argue BeReal shows how our contemporary conception of “real” is always already produced by and for screens.
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