Published on Brock University (http://www.brocku.ca)

Transmedia Research Network Members

Faculty of Social Sciences

Jeff BoggsAssociate Professor of Geography, MA Program in Popular Culture.Jeff Boggs studies the locational dynamics of media and other cultural industries and has published a related article, Cultural Industries and the Creative Economy in <a href="http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1749-8198.2009.00247.x/abstract">Geography Compass 3</a>, 2009. He is currently researching three transmedia inclined projects. The first explores the locational dynamics of North America's interactive digital media industry, which provides the background for understanding the career trajectory (and associated geography) of students in Brock's Interactive Arts and Sciences Program. The initial research phase is funded through a Brock CRISS grant and Brock's Experience Works program. The second project investigates the utility of inverted (or 'flipped') lecture and lab courses in a mandatory research methods courses. YouTube and PowerPoint mini-lectures, online quizzes, lab demonstrations and in-class scenarios and problem sets are employed to determine if an inverted methods course increases student learning and enables Geography majors to apply course content.In the current academic year, Jeff will continue this experiment while incorporating some limited gamification into his course design. His third project, with soundwalk designer Warren Jenkinson, focuses on the learning outcomes of incorporating a soundwalk into Jeff's GEOG 2P02 Economic Geography course. Warren's M.A. thesis in Geography provides the conceptual background (drawing on cognitive development, sonic geography and instructional design research) leading us to believe that soundwalks enhance students' ability to read and become aware of a landscape’s attendant soundscape. A 15 minute soundwalk through the Brock campus is designed to reveal Brock as a place of learning, but also a place of work, pregnant with social stratification, invisible labour, and synchronized flows. This project is funded by Brock's Centre for Pedagogical Innovation. [1]

Jacqueline Botterill Associate Professor, Department of Communication, Popular Culture and Film, MA in Popular CultureJacqueline Botterill is exploring transmedia developments in promotional and consumer cultures by way of two research trajectories. First, her studies of specific advertising sectors -- <a href="http://www.routledge.com/books/details/9780415966764/">fashion</a>, <a href="http://www.palgrave.com/products/title.aspx?pid=276452">personal finance</a>, <a href="http://www.oupcanada.com/catalog/9780195426625.html">food</a>, and <a href="http://www.routledge.com/books/details/9780415888011/">real estate</a> -- suggest that many advertising agencies, faced with the corporate reduction and redirection of promotional budgets, became transmedia innovators. Botterill is examining evidence of different instances of promotional transmedia phenomenon -- internet hoaxes, games, virtual object exchange -- to further understanding, public discussion and debate of contemporary advertising. Second, the topic of food excites a wide-ranging discussion and varied set of practices within consumer cultures. To broaden current food debates, Botterill is gathering data relating to contemporary eating practices, such as dinner parties, family meals, and eating in the car. The aspect of this research that explores how the political economy of media shapes the construction and circulation of particular versions of eating within advertising and television programming is relevant to transmedia studies. [2]

<div>Dale BradleyAssistant Professor, Chair, Department of Communication, Popular Culture and Film, MA in Popular Culture, MA in Social Justice and Equity Studies.Dale Bradley’s research interests focus on the ways in which the materiality of communication technologies informs sociocultural practices, spatial formations, and power relations. With regard to transmedia, he is concerned with two areas: 1) the role of the document in the constitution of transmediated discourse and, in particular, how online and physical archives provide a material basis for the circulation of knowledge, 2)  the relationship between transmedia, media ecology, and (cyber) subjectivity. Dale’s publications in the area of digital culture include articles on <a href="http://pi.library.yorku.ca/ojs/index.php/topia/article/view/2676/1881">IT and organizational forms</a>, <a href="http://www.cjc-online.ca/index.php/journal/article/view/1642">the free/open software movement</a>, <a href="http://journal.media-culture.org.au/0603/05-bradley.php">social media/file sharing communities</a>, and <a href="http://www.rochester.edu/in_visible_culture/Issue_10/title10.html">cybersubjectivity</a>.</div> [3]

Marian BredinAssociate Professor, Department of Communication, Popular Culture and Film, MA in Popular CultureMarian Bredin’s research interests lie in the implications of transmedia texts and practices for the political economy of Canadian cultural industries and media policy. She is particularly interested in understanding how transmedia are emerging and developing within Aboriginal media, community media and social movements. Her co-edited collections <a href="http://www.wlu.ca/press/Catalog/bredin.shtml">Canadian Television: Text and Context</a> and <a href="http://uofmpress.ca/books/detail/indigenous-screen-cultures-in-canada">Indigenous Screen Cultures in Canada</a>  explore aspects of past and future formations of television in Canada. This past research connects to more recent work on how transmedia flows are shaping relations between Aboriginal people and other Canadians, presented at a recent UK workshop on <a href="http://www8.open.ac.uk/ccig/events/creating-publics-creating-democracies">Creating Publics, Creating Democracy</a> and published on the <a href="http://www.opendemocracy.net/marian-bredin/creation-of-publics-for-aboriginal-rights-in-canada">openDemocracy</a> website.  [4]

Tim Dun Associate Professor, Department of Communication, Popular Culture and Film, MA in Popular CultureTim Dun studies communication about parenting and families. In particular, he is interested in the ways that popular advice and narratives about parenting intersect with family members' understanding of themselves. Thus, his research emphasizes reception and interpretation, rather than production, of transmedia texts. His recent Research Development Grant from SSHRC funded interviews with new parents and grandparents about contrasting views of the transition to parenthood. In 2010, an initial report of this research, entitled “Turning Points in Parent-Grandparent Relationships during the Start of a New Generation,” was published in the <a href="http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/15267431.2010.489218">Journal of Family Communication, 10</a>.  [5]

Derek FosterAssociate Professor, Department of Communication, Popular Culture and Film, Director, MA in Popular CultureDerek Foster’s research focuses on visual rhetoric and popular media in the public sphere. His current transmedia projects take on two separate forms: First, he is examining the theming of spaces and extending immersive storytelling in museum and tourism contexts. Second, he has a number of ongoing projects investigating the application of a film or TV narrative to boost the image of a place and/or function as avatars of public memory. Popular media increasingly are becoming the foundation for ‘non-mediated’ experiences with local and material culture. Places such as Vulcan, Alberta, the ‘Cheers’ bar(s) in Boston and statues such as the ‘Bronze Fonz’ in Milwaukee, the setting for Happy Days, or the ‘King of Kensington’ in Toronto become resources for public recollection, place promotion, heritage and tourism production and secular pilgrimages for fans. These studies supplement the literature on the visual/material rhetoric of memorials by shifting attention to seemingly non-important artifacts of popular culture. They also expand the literature on public memory by focusing attention on non-traditional forms of commemoration. Finally, they will benefit transmedia studies by moving beyond media and examining TV in a context of non-mediated, material culture. These new directions extend Derek’s earlier work on <a href="http://www.cjc-online.ca/index.php/journal/article/view/2036">reality television on the CBC</a> and on the <a href="http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1542-734X.2010.00728.x/abstract">rhetoric of Wii-themed parties</a>.<o:p></o:p>  [6]

Jennifer GoodAssociate Professor, Department of Communication, Popular Culture and Film, MA in Popular Culture, MA in Social Justice and Equity Studies.Jennifer Good's research is underpinned by a desire to question the role of communication in environmental and social degradation. Her previous research has explored links between television, materialism and environmentalism. In 2007, her article "Shop 'til We Drop? Television, Materialism and Attitudes About the Natural Environment" was published in <a href="http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/15205430701407165">Mass Communication and Society, 10.</a> Jennifer interests in transmedia sit at the intersection of transmedia and social/environmental change. In particular, she is interested in exploring the ways in which transmedia texts and practices are contested terrain. How are digital mobile communication technologies facilitating new ways of thinking and doing? In what ways are these new technologies facilitating the entrenchment of "business as usual"? In her current research she surveys and interviews people with very different worldviews about how the use of transmedia technologies. She has also recently written some short articles in the Brock Press exploring implications for life in a transmedia age, such as the quality of the <a href="http://www.brockpress.com/opinion/conspiracy-theories-junk-science-and-kooks-oh-my-1.2769056#.T9Y50bCm92A">reporting of scientific evidence</a>, <a href="http://www.brockpress.com/opinion/should-professors-and-students-be-facebook-friends-1.2309051#.T9Y7G7Cm92A">social media and student-professor relations</a>, and debates over <a href="http://www.brockpress.com/opinion/the-future-of-university-education-according-to-who-1.2701635#.T9Y6drCm92A">the future of university education</a>.  [7]

Source URL: http://www.brocku.ca/social-sciences/undergraduate-programs/cpcf/transmedia/trn-members