Alexis Weedon

Crossing media boundaries: adaptations and new media forms of the book

It is necessary to continuously review the definition of the book moving from one bound by its material form to one determined by its function as a means of communication. The book’s social function as the high status vehicle for communicating new ideas and cultural expressions is being challenged by sophisticated systems of conveying meaning in other media. In this article, we report on two projects: electronic book (e-book) publication and reader forum for Nature Mage and the transmedia augmented reality (AR) fiction Sherwood Rise, which investigate these issues. Claudio Pires Franco’s work is based on the adaptation of a source work: Duncan Pile’s Nature Mage. The project aims to develop the book from e-book to a fan-produced enhanced digital book. Through this practice-based research, Franco investigates the definitions and classification of the e and i forms of the book and adaptation in new media; the role of the author in creative collaboration with readers through online forums; the extension of the story world through creative collaboration and reader participation while respecting and safeguarding creative properties. One remove from the traditional book, David Miller’s Sherwood Rise, research the user experience with AR to examine narrative problems and explore new storytelling aesthetics. These new media forms define the outer borders of the book system within which content is formed and moulded, and around which society is shaped.

Identity and social media

Given the quantity of data social networks produce – millions of data points and in some cases billions on the scale of big data analysis – how do we frame the quantitative analysis of this data in terms of theoretical models of identity? In 2008, Vincent Miller’s article in Convergence recognized in our ubiquitous and pervasive media the essential role of phatic communication which forms our connection to the here and now. Social media has become a native habitus for many and is a place to perform our various roles in our multimodal lives, as a professional, a parent, an acquaintance, and a colleague. The current generation has grown up with social media and like the 10-year-old Facebook, Twitter too has become part of some people’s everyday here and now. In this issue, Nicholas Carah, Sven Brodmerkel, and Lorena Hernandez focus on how Facebook works not just as a platform to harvest data but also as a platform to manage the circulation of affect and creation of social connections around brands. Looking specifically at drinking culture and Facebook, they argue that some social media engagement practices allow for circumventing regulatory regimes by prompting connections between mediations of drinking culture and the brand that would not be possible in other media channels. Yet do we understand the aspects and patterns of identity development in virtual worlds? As Margaretten and Gaber (2014) have proposed the concept of ‘authentic talk’ identified as ‘spontaneous, unrehearsed discourse’ on Twitter, in this issue Bernadett Koles and Peter Nagy offer an alternative conceptual model to researchers of a virtual identity developed to capture this complex conglomerate of personal, social, relational, and material aspects. While Tamara Shepherd and Thorsten Busch argue that Twitter has acquired the critical mass of users necessary to successfully establish a robust and financially viable social network. Employing a business ethics perspective, Shepherd and Busch examine Twitter’s ethos in relation to debates around democratic communication in relation to corporate social responsibility. ‘This issue becomes all the more pressing because online social networks to a certain extent have taken on the role of quasi-governmental bodies today, regulating what their users can and cannot do, thus raising questions of accountability and legitimacy’ (2014: 294).

The ‘lower classes are very hard readers’: Kidderminster Municipal Library 1855–1856

Abstract This article looks at the library borrowing records of Kidderminster Municipal Library at a time of economic decline in the main industry of the town — carpet weaving. It illustrates the limitations of the early libraries following the 1850 Public Libraries Act through a local study. It examines how the borrowing records recorded in a surviving issue book reflect trends in the popularity of reading materials and, in particular, growing interest in migration to London and emigration abroad.

Time well spent: the magazine publishing industry's online niche

This article compares the uses of the print and online versions of the same magazine by its readership. Combining surveys of the readership and commercial data from the publisher and web designer, the study examines how one magazine has developed an online publication for its readers. Group Leisure is a niche magazine which has been in print for over a decade and online for two years. This article analyses the usage of the magazine in terms of age, gender and modal occupation of its readers and examines how their understanding of spending and saving time on the magazine underpins their perceptions of its value. The results and conclusions of this research have relevance to the publishing industry and to the study of online journalism.

Reconfiguring Elinor Glyn: Ageing Female Experience and the Origins of the ‘It Girl’

Elinor Glyn (1864–1943) was a feted English author and celebrity figure of the 1920s who — while in her 50s and 60s — was constantly in the Hollywood press. She wrote articles for Cosmopolitan magazine on how to attract and keep men and ‘racy’ stories about love and romance, many of which were turned into films — most famously Three Weeks (Crosland, 1924)1 and It (Badger, 1927). Decades on, the idea of the ‘It Girl’ continues to be pertinent in the postfeminist discourses of the twenty-first century and has been applied by the world’s glamour press to up-and-coming young actresses and models from Marilyn Monroe and Edie Sedgwick to Alexa Chung and Kate Upton. However, many other contemporary stars, including both older women and men, such as Helen Mirren, Judi Dench, Diane Keaton, Meryl Streep, George Clooney and Matthew McConaughey, have also been credited with having ‘It’ on screen and off. This evokes Glyn’s original definition of ‘It’ where the sexual attraction and charisma was not linked to gender nor age, but to a person’s manner and sense of allure. Her formulation of the term was developed at the beginning of the century and became central to popular culture of the 1920s. Yet despite being a hugely influential and instrumental figure in her day, until very recently Glyn has been a peripheral figure in histories of this period, an older woman marginalised in accounts of the youth-centred ‘flapper era’.

The special relationship and the allure of transatlantic travel in the work of Elinor Glyn

Abstract Winston Churchill famously said that the United Kingdom and the United States of America had a ‘special relationship’. This article takes a look at Elinor Glyns Atlantic travel in her life and in her novels, and her visits to the United States, drawing on her archives, her memoir, magazine articles and contemporary newspaper reports of her trips. Her novel Six Days (1924) was adapted into a popular silent film which was exhibited in Europe and the United States. It is a combination of love and romance, transatlantic travel on a Cunard liner, a secret military mission and political cooperation, and is taken as an example of how the special relationship between the United States and the United Kingdom has been depicted in romance novels. It draws parallels between the movies 6 Days (1923) and Titanic (1997). This article was the keynote address at the Love Across the Atlantic Conference at the University of Roehampton in June 2017.

An introduction to Elinor Glyn : her life and legacy

Abstract This special issue of Women: A Cultural Review re-evaluates an author who was once a household name, beloved by readers of romance, and whose films were distributed widely in Europe and the Americas. Elinor Glyn (1864–1943) was a British author of romantic fiction who went to Hollywood and became famous for her movies. She was a celebrity figure of the 1920s, and wrote constantly in Hearsts press. She wrote racy stories which were turned into films—most famously, Three Weeks (1924) and It (1927). These were viewed by the judiciary as scandalous, but by others—Hollywood and the Spanish Catholic Church—as acceptably conservative. Glyn has become a peripheral figure in histories of this period, marginalized in accounts of the youth-centred ‘flapper era’. Decades on, the idea of the ‘It Girl’ continues to have great pertinence in the post-feminist discourses of the twenty-first century. The 1910s and 1920s saw the development of intermodal networks between print, sound and screen cultures. This introduction to Glyns life and legacy reviews the cross-disciplinary debate sparked by renewed interest in Glyn by film scholars and literary and feminist historians, and offers a range of views of Glyns cultural and historical significance and areas for future research.

Negotiating freedoms in the convergent mediascape

The research in this issue questions whether media convergence is opening new possibilities for a greater range of voices to be heard or threatening to close down channels through which diversity and democracy is being expressed. Ross Tapsell argues that convergence is both contributing to and undermining freedom in Indonesia. He observes that scholars have viewed media freedom as threatened and explores the factors that have led technological convergence to commercial convergence. In comparison, Sarah Harris’ analyses of two cases of digital activism in Turkey evidence how censorship is a systematic process grounded in legal and media infrastructures. Her case studies show the effect of erasure on both public and individual discourse; for example, Blocked Web collects and organizes data on state-classified website bans, whilst Interactive Mass Grave Map marks the locations of hundreds of unmarked graves in which disappeared citizens are thought to be buried. Both are unpleasant reminders of the attempts of the powerful to shut down voices of dissent. Beyond state and media infrastructures media creators are exploring the textual and linguistic borderlands provided by new technologies for spaces for discourses of diversity and formation of new meaning. Megan Condis cites BioWare’s decision to include diversity in games like Star Wars: The Old Republic and Dragon Age II, by adding the option to play as a gay male character. Through her analysis she questions how titles such as ‘fan’ or ‘gamer’ are being contested along the lines of gender and sexuality. Aylish Wood on the other hand examines how virtual spaces afford new locations for meaning construction. Her examples are the three-dimensional (3D) cinematic space in Hugo and the IMAX format in The Dark Knight. Such a space offers multiple points of engagement for an audience. Both articles focus on case studies that extend the vocabulary of their media discourse. The new media aesthetics of 3D cinema previously featured in a guest-edited special section of Convergence (November 2013, Vol. 19, issue 4). Wood’s article follows on from this and extends

Media literacy and transmedia storytelling

In the United Kingdom there is a debate about how media studies should be taught to 16 to 18 year olds. Should they be studying the artefacts as literature students do with canonical readings of Austen and Shakespeare or the institutions and hegemonic structures of the means of production? If they are to study artefacts then what artefacts should these be? BBC news and the much exported period drama Downton Abbey or popular television franchises which have worldwide take-up such as Who Wants To Be A Millionaire? (ITV 1998-) The problem with this debate is that it misunderstands the ontological basis of media studies. Media studies have claimed the realms of television, newspapers, cinema, radio and audiovisual texts, their forms, the industries that produce them and the means of distribution and consumption as its object of study. New media researchers have added identity, interactivity, geolocation, engagement, affectivity, sharing, creativity and fan crowd and other forms of online and real life community building through new communications technologies. Ontologically we accept as a basis of our field that as humans we construct and visualize stories – both from fact and fiction – to make sense of the world around us and that by analysing and deconstructing these narratives as researchers we review, challenge or change erroneous or simply dominant knowledge paradigms. Contrary to this basis of media studies, in this debate we are being asked to give dominance to the best of the type. For students and early career researchers this is confusing and we swiftly fall into a definitional mele: is this the form of the period drama or the industry format of the game show or the professional procedures that provenance and verify news stories we are required to study? Educationalists may refer to the canon of English literature, yet new media critics will cite the fans’ definition of the canon as the storyworld or the storyworld’s ‘bible’ or past set characters, storylines and rules. Just consider for a moment the array of attempts to define and revise the definition of transmedia storytelling. Researchers have found it easier to state the platforms and channels for transmedia stories – the book, periodical, game, television, Web, cinema, mobile app., radio and event – than to say comprehensively and decisively what it is. Like much of new media, transmedia storytelling is participatory, often soliciting creative contributions, it is user-led and

Working-Class Women's Education in Huddersfield: A Case Study of the Female Educational Institute Library, 1856–1857

The Huddersfield Female Educational Institute claimed to be the first in England established for working-class women. It had close ties to the men’s Mechanics’ Institute, and its origins lie in that nineteenth-century movement for British working-class education. The article adds to existing research on gender and library use by examining the factors that shaped working-class women’s education in the 1850s. Using the Female Institute’s library records from 1856 and 1857, the authors analyze the borrowing habits of its members. They compare the origins of the Female Institute with its male equivalent and demonstrate how middle-class definitions of working-class masculinity and femininity shaped education.