Glock with Drum Magazine

**Truculent Sheep** · Posted On: 7/19/2006 8:45pm

Originally Posted by DAYoung

English Cultural Studies or American Cultural Studies? Translated: informed by Birmingham school of critical theory, or by Derridean poststructuralism?

I'm actually doing something tied in with English (as in, literary theory) and American (Cultural) studies. In other words using high-end theory to discuss what is still mainly an American genre. (Its conventions being copied by everyone else - such as the rise of news-orientated blogging in Iran, China and elsewhere.) My main points of reference are Iser and Jauss, but also Hypertext theorists, such as Michael Joyce and Ted Nelson.

Originally Posted by DAYoung

What's it like?

I don't know - I'm actually at an institution accredited by Southampton, so while I'm doing my research degree in another faculty*, it's to Soton's standards and so it will be them that give me my degree (eventually). I hear Southampton is a nice University, though, and there's loads of cheapo student bars nearby.

* A particularly small and eccentric place formerly known as King Alfred's College and that's what I still refer to it as. Alas, the only official MA offered by the Union is XXXXing Aikido. They used to have Hapkido and Wing Chun lessons there too, which sums up the crappy options I have right now...

**DAYoung** · Posted On: 7/19/2006 8:54pm

Originally Posted by Truculent Sheep

I'm actually doing something tied in with English (as in, literary theory) and American (Cultural) studies. In other words using high-end theory to discuss what is still mainly an American genre. (Its conventions being copied by everyone else - such as the rise of news-orientated blogging in Iran, China and elsewhere.) My main points of reference are Iser and Jauss, but also Hypertext theorists, such as Michael Joyce and Ted Nelson.

Ok, gotcha. I don't know the theorists. Can you summarise their key arguments and points of departure (e.g. what theoretical tradition)?

I don't know - I'm actually at an institution accredited by Southampton, so while I'm doing my research degree in another faculty, it's to Soton's standards and so it will be them that give me my degree (eventually)

Right. What're the benefits of doing it that way? Is it distance, or cost, or...? No, it can't be distance - your country is smaller than my state.

**Truculent Sheep** · Posted On: 7/19/2006 9:11pm

Originally Posted by DAYoung

Ok, gotcha. I don't know the theorists. Can you summarise their key arguments and points of departure (e.g. what theoretical tradition)?

Iser and Jauss are both reader response theorists (and German, so very well esteemed - or at least, Jauss would be if he was still alive), which is to say, they see the reader as key to how a text (in this case, online news) is defined.

My argument is that Online News is a noumenon [a 'thing-in-itself' that exists as opposed to something that is only percieved] - a new and unique experience rather than just a newspaper on a monitor screen. The key to this is the reader and how he/she is interacting with the medium. In other words, print and broadcast media stimulate us in different ways, and so - now - does online news. The reader can now directly interact with the news, but is also subject to different sensations because of the electronic nature of the medium and so is conditioned to interpret the stimuli in a different manner.

And so on...

Nelson and Joyce, bless 'em, are Hypertext (ie electronic, linked lexical texts) theorists. Their outlook on what Hypertext can do is, alas, coloured by too much avant garde idealism and arguably it is online news with its mass audience and codified conventions, that has become the first truly workable Hypertext. (The 'Hyperfictions' they thought we'd all be using were little more than toys that leap from one lexia to another when you click a random word or image.)

Another Hypertext, btw, is right in front of you - Bullshido's forums are in many ways the closest to what these people have envisioned, but I bet they didn't imagine we'd be using it to say rude things about Ashida Kim or for the rest of the web to spew out the horrors Encyclopedia Dramatica records.

Originally Posted by DAYoung

Right. What're the benefits of doing it that way? Is it distance, or cost, or...? No, it can't be distance - your country is smaller than my state.

No - it's just my old college offered me a studentship, so I went back there. I'm lucky in the sense that I've already worked with everyone who's supervising me and I know the area well. It's just the city where my outfit is based (Winchester) is now infested with chavs as Sthmptn and Portsmouth's Councils keep moving their arseholes out there.

**DAYoung** · Posted On: 7/19/2006 10:04pm

Originally Posted by Truculent Sheep

Iser and Jauss are both reader response theorists (and German, so very well esteemed - or at least, Jauss would be if he was still alive), which is to say, they see the reader as key to how a text (in this case, online news) is defined.

My argument is that Online News is a noumenon [a 'thing-in-itself' that exists as opposed to something that is only percieved] - a new and unique experience rather than just a newspaper on a monitor screen. The key to this is the reader and how he/she is interacting with the medium. In other words, print and broadcast media stimulate us in different ways, and so - now - does online news. The reader can now directly interact with the news, but is also subject to different sensations because of the electronic nature of the medium and so is conditioned to interpret the stimuli in a different manner.

And so on...

You have a PM.