Sianne Ngai’s concept of minor aesthetic categories was developed to think about “aesthetic experiences grounded in equivocal affects”. I worked to think through the concept of ‘meta’ as it circulates in popular culture as a similar minor aesthetic category. Like Ngai’s three examples — the cute, the zany, and the interesting — ‘meta’ is characterised […]
Category Archives: Media Studies
Towards a post-normative communication and media studies
Twitter has announced a call for research submissions that helps them “identify indicators of conversational health that are even more specific to Twitter and its impact.” I expressed my skepticism about this on Facebook and so I am writing up some notes here. ‘Conversations’ are one way to examine interactions on social media. We looked […]
Critical News Literacy and Young People
There is a study released today about news consumption habits by young people 8-12 and 13-16 years old: News and Australian Children: How Young People Access, Perceive and are Affected by the News. The first point made in the key findings of the report is about how young people receive news from family and friends, including […]
Breitbart and American Sniper
I scraped Breitbart’s all posts from Facebook page. This is a representation of all ‘engagement’ (likes, comments and shares) for each month. The first six months of 2015 saw tremendous growth in engagement and it would be worth exploring what actually happened in that period, so I did a search of the Nexis service for […]
Refugees and the Discourse of Compassion
The image of Aylan Kurdi washed ashore has had a dramatic impact on the character of the refugee debate in Australia and elsewhere. Most responses from across the political spectrum have recognised the need for greater compassion in rethinking policy. Radical conservatives like Australian politician Cory Bernardi or media commentator Andrew Bolt have isolated themselves to […]