Postmodern Media Communities: Signs, Symptoms, Visions of the Future (Leader: Ron Burnett)

Bibliography

Ron Burnett, "Postmodern Media Communities," in Cultures of Vision: Images, Media and the Imaginary, (Indiana University Press, 1995) pp. 278-335

Theresa M. Senft, "Baud Girls and Cargo Cults: A Story about Celebrity, Community, and Profane Illumination on the Web," in The World Wide Web and Contemporary Cultural Theory, Eds Andrew Herman and Thomas Swiss. Routledge, 2000 pp. 183-206

Mitra, A. & Cohen, E. (1999). Analyzing the Web: Directions and challenges. In S. Jones (Ed.). Doing Internet research: Critical issues and methods for examining the Net (pp. 179-202). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.

Mitra, A. (1999). Characteristics of the WWW text: Tracing discursive strategies. Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication, 5. [URL: http://www.ascusc.org/jcmc/vol5/issue1/mitra.html] (Aug. 18, 2000).

Mark Stefik "The Next Knowledge Medium: Networks and Knowledge Ecologies," in The Internet Edge: Social, Technical and Legal Challenges for a Networked World, (MIT Press, 1999) pp.133-161.

Catherine Waldby, The Visible Human Project: Informatic Bodies and Posthuman Medicine, (Routledge, 2000) Chapters 1 and 2.

1. http://www.ascusc.org/jcmc/vol5/issue1/mitra.html
   This paper considers the uniqueness of the texts and discourses produced by a specific group of World Wide Web (WWW) users. These characteristics include the intertextuality of the WWW text and the resulting formation of textual domains where no particular text can claim centrality. This decentering is reported as the result of a process of reciprocal intertextuality. These unique characteristics of the WWW text eventually produce an image of the group of people who write and read the text. The specific characteristics of the Web discourse suggests alternative ways of thinking of cyber-communities around the specific discursive strategies used by the authors.
   
   
2. http://www.ascusc.org/jcmc/vol3/issue2/lombard.html
   A number of emerging technologies including virtual reality, simulation rides, video conferencing, home theater, and high definition television are designed to provide media users with an illusion that a mediated experience is not mediated, a perception defined here as presence. Traditional media such as the telephone, radio, television, film, and many others offer a lesser degree of presence as well. This article examines the key concept of presence. It begins by noting practical and theoretical reasons for studying this concept. Six conceptualizations of presence found in a diverse set of literatures are identified and a detailed explication of the concept that incorporates these conceptualizations is presented. Existing research and speculation about the factors that encourage or discourage a sense of presence in media users as well as the physiological and psychological effects of presence are then outlined. Finally, suggestions concerning future systematic research about presence are presented.
   
   
3. http://development.civicnet.org/comtechreview/communications_policy_and_the_ne.htm
   Urban and rural FreeNets and community networks, of which there are many in Australia, Canada, the United States and Europe, have created a radically different public sphere, which is growing internationally. Emergence of this new public sphere presages a profound transformation where community media, for the first time, has begun to shape national and international information networks. Effects of this change on the policy environment will have a significant impact on the democratic rights of individuals and communities to pursue their visions for the future.
   
   
4. http://terminus.net.au/sfzines/
   Welcome to the home page of the SF Zines WebRing; a federation of science fiction and fantasy fanzines on the World Wide Web. The SF Zines WebRing is a free service designed to benefit both Web surfers and editors. For Web surfers, the SF Zines WebRing gives them an up-to-date catalogue of science fiction reading, without the need to bookmark each site. For editors, membership of the SF Zines WebRing is a great way increase your zine's exposure, and to maintain a self-updating list of complementary sites for your readers' enjoyment.
   
   
5. http://www.benton.org/Library/State/freenets.html
   Freenets -- privately run, nonprofit community computer systems -- represent a new application in computing. With freenets, a multiuser computer is established at a central location and connected to the telephone system through a series of modems. Running on the machine is a computer program that provides users with everything from email services to information about health care, education, technology, government, recreation, or whatever else the host operators want to place on the machine. Users interact by leaving postings or by sending email to one another. While some freenets are connected to the Internet, many are not and operate on a strictly local basis. Anyone in the community with access to a home, office, or school computer and a modem can dial in 24 hours a day. The menu-driven systems are easily understood by first-time users.
   
   
6. http://www.panasia.org.sg/nepalnet/education/video.htm
   The following article discusses the need of post-literacy in developing countries and the critical reflection on community video as a post-literacy activity. It also deals with conducive conditions to help the community video model function for consciousness raising in rural communities in Nepal.
   
   
7. http://www.leeds.ac.uk/ics/arts-dg1.htm
   A video project in Leeds provided five primary schools with equipment and assistance to enable children to produce videos, broadly on the theme of 'the environment'. This article discusses how the scheme gave children a valuable opportunity to discuss and evaluate their local community. The project encouraged cooperation, and the development of a balanced but expressive argument, as well as drawing in many areas of the curriculum. It is suggested that video production can be a powerful vehicle for intercultural education, and that when focused on the community can foster positive reflection on diversity. The contribution of practical video work to media education is also considered. Includes quotations from interviews with teaching and video-making staff; 13 references; two photographs.
   
   
8. http://www.ascusc.org/jcmc/vol5/issue1/liu.html
   This article presents a method based on Jones' "virtual settlement" theory for testing empirically for the presence of virtual community in Internet Relay Chatting (IRC), The conditions for virtual community proposed by Jones are related to the technological context of IRC and formulated as conceptual hypotheses. The author argues that sustained level of co-appearance and nickname stability should be included in testing. Interactivity analysis should include both verbal exchanges and action-simulating messages. Analysis of message references should be done in terms of message content as well as message syntax. Major issues related to research design and implementation are discussed in depth.
   
   
9. http://www.well.com/user/hlr/texts/VCcivil.html
   Community is an important aspect of life for most people. Cooley (1983) says that all normal humans have a natural affinity for community. He suggests that the primary factor inhibiting the formation of communities, no matter what their scale, is that they are difficult to organize. Extending the moral ideals inherent in nearly all individuals to the notion of community requires a system or institutional framework. The development and maintenance of such institutions sap the energy of the members of the would-be community and confuse the moral ideals inherent in the notion of community with the project of the institution itself. Thus enervated, the people lose their focus on the moral order they were trying to achieve.
   
   
10. http://www.feedmag.com/95.08dialog/95.08dialog1.html
    Let's start with something basic. Up until recently, communities were rooted in neighborhoods and fostered in certain kinds of places -- the park, the front stoop, the local bar, the back fence -- or they evolved from an issue that brought believers together -- Women's Lib and anti-war sentiment in the sixties and seventies, religion through the ages. These kinds of communities, though founded on a particular issue or common faith, traditionally occupied distinct spaces: political rallies and marches on Washington, churches, mosques and synagogues.
    
    In virtual communities, where space becomes a metaphor and emotions become icons, what happens? What is gained? Does the electropolis entail a loss of intimacy or offer a quicker route to it? Right now, virtual communities are largely built around text; is this a just a primitive, stop-gap solution to inadequate bandwidth, or is there something about carving out worlds with words that enhances or permits the development of community? And finally, should we be calling these things communities at all? Or are we witnessing the birth of a new kind of interaction that loosely resembles community but, in fact, merits a new, more descriptive name?

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