Week 9. Conversation & Control: Who started what?

We were categorized for class this week. Nothing discriminatory at all, just by our birth month and I evidently fell into group A, being a Summer bloomer it fitted well. Before each group were given a chance to evaluate set literature, we all discussed the one we had in common by Scolari*. What caught my attention about this particular literature was Scolari's particular approach to theories of mass communications surrounding the notion that over time, a paradigm develops in science which encompasses a theory which then gets overthrown by another theory and so on. Interestingly enough, the basis of conversations themselves were also enlightened. There is the impression that conversations are unstructured, free-forming and flowing is undermined by the notion that they actually are new ways of re-arranging ideas and re-interpreting news and answers. Scolari regards conversation as a major approach to media research. Evidently, it appears that by succumbing to be part of certain media, we are ALL participating in one global conversation.

Take fan and discussion pages for instance - and in this case book/novel clubs - fellow readers join to reflect on a literature they have in common. If you follow a discussion, you can define at what point people's moods and views start to change, you can distinguish those that have grasped the story better, who apposed to certain narrative styles and characters. People are voluntarily subjecting themselves to cyber-scrutiny, yet gaining an entrance into a new cyber-dimension where the book becomes the topic of here-say and public opinion. Not only does conversation start to flow off the given topic, it often becomes personalised, excited and exaggerated. It supports this understanding that although we are given the impression that we should be focussed on the given topic, the participants are shaping and shifting the information being processed. The book no longer becomes the item in common; it becomes the reason for this social network.




Here's some terrific examples from my favourite online book club, it's extremely popular and has some great threads. If you're a manic book worm like me, you'll be glued for hours!


Extensive discussion on Dan Brown's Da Vinci Code:

http://forums.onlinebookclub.org/viewtopic.php?t=34

The craze of the Twilight novels vs Harry Potter novels:

http://forums.onlinebookclub.org/viewtopic.php?t=1654

*Scolari, CA 2009, "Mapping Conversations About New Media: The Theoretical Field Of Digital Communication", New Media and Society, vol. 11, no. 6, pp.943--964