A little over a year ago, JOBEM editor Zizi Papacharissi approached me, R. Stuart Geiger (UC Berkeley) and Stacy Blasiola (University of Illinois at Chicago) with the idea of a JOBEM special issue hat would be edited and authored by graduate students. We were excited to accept the invitation and set out for the adventure.
The resulting special issue, titled Old Against New, or a Coming of Age? Rethinking Broadcasting in an Era of Electronic Media, has now been published. We are proud to present this issue that begins a new thread in the longstanding conversation about what it means for media to be ‘‘old’’ and ‘‘new.’’ While this distinction is not one we should take for granted, the articles in this issue all demonstrate how we can strategically approach the intricate intersections and interconnections of different media—both old and new.
We were very impressed by the thoughtful and provocative work graduate students across many disciplinary fields contributed in response to our call. Presenting a wide range of international scholarship from graduate students across many different disciplinary backgrounds, topical literatures, methodological approaches, and theoretical frameworks, this special issue represents an emerging approach to what it means to study broadcasting in an era of electronic media.
The guest-edited issue features the following seven articles, along with our Introduction:
- Building Buzz and Episodes with Bite-Sized Content: Portlandia’s Formula for Turning a Video Project into a Television Series by Elia Powers
- Extending the Broadcast: Streaming Culture and the Problems of Digital Geographies by Benjamin Burroughs & Adam Rugg
- Giving the “Viewser” a Voice? Situating the Individual in Relation to Personalization, Narrowcasting, and Public Service Broadcasting by Tanya Kant
- Something Old, Something New, Something Borrowed From Something Blue: Experiments on Dual Viewing TV and Twitter by Jaclyn Cameron & Nick Geidner
- Talking to the Broadcasters on Twitter: Networked Gatekeeping in Twitter Conversations with Journalists by Weiai Wayne Xu & Miao Feng
- Changing the Game: The Role of Social Media in Overcoming Old Media’s Attention Deficit Toward Women’s Sport by Portia Vann
- Going Mental: Podcasting, Authenticity, and Artist–Fan Identification on Paul Gilmartin’s Mental Illness Happy Hour by Vincent M. Meserko
We hope that you’ll find the collection inspiring and productive, and we invite you to share them with others who might enjoy them too!
Last but not least, if you are coming to IR15 in a few weeks, we hope to see you at the similarly named fishbowl on the first day of the conference. This will be an opportunity to take the conversation further, together with the community of Internet researchers!
