Music

The next session at AoIR 2012 starts with Catherine Knight Steele, whose focus is on the online expression of grief following the death of Whitney Houston. Many of the messages being posted following her death seemed more like the support offered to family members than a public expression of fandom. The same was not true in the same way following the death of Michael Jackson, when many more critical responses were aired.

The grieving online following Houston's death can be understood as ritual – there was no documentation of news, but a reflection on who we are, how we express …

The final presenters in this AoIR 2012 session are Camila Monteiro, Raquel Recuero, and Adriana Amaral, who begin by noting the demographics of Twitter in Brazil: there are some 33 million Brazilian Twitter users, most of whom are adolescents. Their interest in this paper is especially in fandom and anti-fandom around the pop band Restart, and in the social capital which such activities create and maintain.

Many of the trending topics in Brazil are focussed on popular music, in fact, and fans seem to artificially attempt to create such trending topics. The researchers engaged in interviews with fans as well …

Next up at AoIR 2012 it's Tim Highfield and me again, presenting a paper co-authored with our colleague Stephen Harrington. Here are the slides; audio to follow. and audio.

#Eurovision: Twitter as a Technology of Fandom from Axel Bruns

Gothenburg.
The last keynote at AoIR 2010 is by the fabulous Nancy Baym, whose recent work has focussed especially on the Swedish independent music industry. Nancy’s based in Kansas, but is now well connected with the Swedish music scene – and that’s just one example of the international cultural interconnections which we’re now seeing.

Her initial interest in Swedish music stems from exposure to independent music stores in the US which import overseas music; most of these stores are labours of love rather than significantly successful commercial enterprises – and they are now also selling music back to Sweden, in …

Gothenburg.
The next AoIR 2010 session I’m in is a panel on sustainable entertainment, which involves Wenche Nag from the Norwegian telecommunications company Telenor, Mia Consalvo, Jean Burgess, Patrick Wikström, and Martin Thörnkvist. Patrick begins by noting the transformations in the music industry, for example, where the largest company now no longer is a record label but a live music company. iTunes and similar models are also making a significant impact, of course. Much of this is now based on artist/audience relationships that are based on passion and substantial emotional investment – which works for some entertainment industries, of course …

With the Internet Turning 40 and International Communication Association conferences completed, I'm briefly back in Brisbane, before setting off for the Australia/New Zealand Communication Association (ANZCA) conference in Canberra next week (hopefully with a recharged audio recorder!).

In the meantime, here's a quick update on some new publications I've been involved in - a number of my recent book chapters on a range of topics have now been published:

First, with a chapter on "News Blogs and Citizen Journalism" in e-Journalism: New Media and News Media I'm introducing my work on gatewatching and citizen journalism to an Indian readership - the book was edited by Kiran Prasad, who was my office mate at the University of Leeds while I was there in 2007 to do some research for the produsage book, and was published by B.R. Publishing in Delhi. I don't think the publisher actually has a Website - but there's a good overview of the collection at Cyberjournalist, and it also includes contact details for BR Publishing.