What have Spreadable Media’s co-authors been up to of late?
In October, co-author Sam Ford joined CafePress VP of Digital Strategy Jason Falls and Word of Mouth Marketing Association President Suzanne Fanning in a Social Media Today webinar discussion moderated by Shelby County Schools (Memphis, TN) Chief Communications Officer Emily Yellin entitled “Spreadable Media: How to Make Word of Mouth Work for You.” The audio archive and slides are available here, while a recap of some of the Twitter activity during the Webinar is available here from Suzie McCarthy.
Co-author Henry Jenkins was interviewed for a New York Magazine story by Katie Van Syckle on the popularity of Grumpy Cat, where Henry notes that, “If the culture is going to be snarky, you need images that communicate snakiness.”
Co-author Sam Ford led a masterclass session about Spreadable Media via Skype for the National University of Tres de Febrero NEOTVLab’s VI International Summit on Nov. 1 in Buenos Aires.
Ford was on WKYU-PBS’s Kentucky OUTLOOK in September 2013 to discuss Spreadable Media and the implications of living in an era with greater freedom to share content, on the one hand, but also great concerns about privacy in an era of “Big Data” with host Barbara Deeb.
He also wrote a January 2014 piece for NYU Press’ From the Square on “Embracing Spreadability in Academic Publishing,” focused both on learnings from Spreadable Media, as well as his participation in the 2013 conference of the American Association of University Presses.
Dawn C. Chimielewski with The Los Angeles Times quotes co-author Sam Ford about the logic behind Netflix’s creation of various new series and mini-series as part of the Marvel comics film and television story world.
He also took part in an online video discussion with University of Oregon visiting scholar Helen De Michiel’s Fall 2013 Mass Media & Society “Participatory Media and Social Practice” class for the School of Journalism and Communication. The class posted a video of the class discussion here.
Chris Fleischer with Valley News in Lebanon, New Hampshire, includes comments from Sam Ford in their article about a popular online music video featuring patients from the Children’s Hospital at Dartmouth, discussing ethical considerations that are raised when content starts to spread widely online.
Co-author Sam Ford will take part in a workshop on March 22nd entitled “Rethinking Networked Culture, Media Audiences, and Media Content Through Spreadable Media” at the Society for Cinema & Media Studies annual conference in Seattle. The session will be chaired by DePaul University’s Paul Booth and will also include project contributors Xiaochang Li, Abigail De Kosnik, Ted Hovet, and Sharon Ross.
As we begin a new semester, here is a list of some of the places where Spreadable Media is being used in the classroom, along with links to the available online syllabi:
University of North Dakota Communication Professor Kyle Conway used Spreadable Media in his “Social Implications of an Information Society” course this semester. Find the syllabus, and class blog, here.
University of Oregon visiting scholar Helen De Michiel used Spreadable Media in her Mass Media & Society “Participatory Media and Social Practice” course for the School of Journalism and Communication. Find the syllabus, and class blog, here.
Suellen Adams includes Spreadable Media as a required text for her “Social Media for Information Specialists” class at the University of Texas at Austin’s School of Information.
Jacqueline Vickery included Spreadable Media as a required text for her “New Media Theories” class at the University of North Texas’ Department of Radio, Television, & Film.
Renira Rampazzo Gambarato, assistant professor of media communications at the National Research University Higher School of Economics in Russia, includes Spreadable Media as a “core source” for her “Transmedia Storytelling” course.
Southern Polytechnic State University’s Mark Nunes is using Spreadable Media in his “Media Theory & Practice” course for the Communiction department.
Victoria University of Wellington (New Zealand) lecturer Michael Daubs is using Spreadable Media for his “New Media: Theory and Practice“ class.
Drew University’s Sandra Jamieson includes Spreadable Media among the required reading for ENGL 219: “Blogs, Tweets, & Social Media: Writing with Clarity and Style in the New Millennium.”
Clayton State University’s Steve Spence includes Spreadable Media as a required text for his Communication and Media Studies “Social Media“ course.
New York University’s Melanie Kohnen includes excerpts and online pieces from Spreadable Media in her “Transmedia Television” senior seminar.
Kathi Inman Berens includes the introduction of Spreadable Media in her “Digital Humanities & New Media: An Introduction” class for Marylhurst University’s English Literature & Writing Department.
Northwestern University’s Aymar Jean Christian includes a chapter from Spreadable Media in his “Power in Entertainment” class.
Daiane Scaraboto’s Social Media Marketing class at the Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile recently read and shared online questions/discussion about the If It Doesn’t Spread, It’s Dead white paper from the project that eventually led to the Spreadable Media book. See the class notes and reactions here.
Now that Spreadable Media is out in Italian and soon to be released in Portuguese, here is a glimpse at the book’s European “preview” last year. In Summer 2012, before Spreadable Media was released, co-author Henry Jenkins went on a speaking tour in Europe, where he talked about the book across a range of countries. Here are some of those talks, available online, as well as other key interviews, etc.:
Henry was the keynote speaker for the Center for Storytelling in Lucerne, Switzerland, discussing “How Content Gains Meaning and Value in the Era of Spreadable Media.”
Also, see Henry’s talk on similar issues at Central European University in Budapest, Hungary. Listen to the audio here, and find video here, here, here, here, here, here, and here.
He keynoted a symposium in Prague entitled “Transmedia Generation: On Empowered and Impassioned Audiences in the Age of Media Convergence.” Find his talk here. In addition, he joined a panel to discuss political and educational implications of his work, available via video here.
He spoke about Spreadable Media in London as part of the “Digital Transformations” series. The last part of his talk and the Q&A is available here.
In Stuttgart, Henry conducted a lecture as part of 5D’s transmedia storytelling track at the FMX 2012 conference. In addition, Henry joined production designer Alex McDowell, director Shekhar Kapur, and moderator Inga von Staden to talk “The Future of Storytelling in Transmedia” in a session that was recorded. Also, during Henry’s time in Germany, he talked with Transmedia Storytelling Berlin about “transmedia storytelling around the world.”
Henry talked with TheNextTV Channel in Rome about his research (here and here) while in town for a “Talking IED” event about “the transmedia generation” with the Istituto Europeo di Design.
Big news on the international front, as Editora Aleph has announced that the Portuguese-language version of Spreadable Media has a scheduled release date of November 10, 2013.
University of Pennsylvania Professor of Communication Elihu Katz recently wrote about his take on Spreadable Media–and what he felt the book missed. See Katz’s review for Public Books, and Spreadable Media co-author Sam Ford’s response, here.
BuzzFeed VP of Agency Strategy and Industry Development Jonathan Perelman recommends Spreadable Media on The MediaBriefing’s Summer Book Club list, calling it “a must read.”
Sam Ford was recently interviewed by Sabri Ben-Achour for a story for Marketplace on NPR about TV show strategies of engaging fans across multiple supplementary media texts, built around the return of AMC series Breaking Bad for its final episodes.
Also, Ford’s Peppercomm colleague Lauren Begley used concepts from Spreadable Media to analyze a variety of content created around Breaking Bad from a range of others, at The Innovation Mill.
Sam Ford recently weighed in on Deborah M. Todd’s Pittsburgh Post-Gazette story about a new study from University of Pittsburgh’s Andrew Stephen and Columbia University’s Olivier Toubia on what motivates people to tweet.
Gail Zahtz recently featured Ford on her “Health and Design Today” podcast on blogtalkradio to talk Spreadable Media and a range of its implications on the media industries, on citizenship, and on groups advocating for social change.
Ford also participated in the Carpool Health Chat #CPHC Twitter discussion on August 13th, talking about Spreadable Media‘s implications for healthcare industry and advocacy communities.
The Gordon Institute of Business Science at The University of Pretoria in Johannesburg, South Africa, highlights Spreadable Media among a dozen new titles in its library collection.
Todd Davies includes Spreadable Media on his recommended books for student-led discussions for his “ICT, Society, and Democracy” course at Stanford University’s Symbolic Systems program.
Max von Grafenstein, a doctoral candidate at the Alexander von Humboldt Institute for Internet and Society, shares his research addressing the question, “Can or should TV and other formats be copyright protected?” drawing on concepts from Spreadable Media.
Faye Woods, a lecturer with the Film, Theatre and Television Department at the University of Reading in the U.K., draws on concepts from Spreadable Media in her work, “The Show that Launched a Thousand Blogs: The Reception of Lena Dunham’s Girls,” presented at the Television for Women Conference at the University of Warwick in May 2013.
Georgia Gwinnett College Writing and Digital Media student Morgan Nalley writes about the business model of Pandora and how it adheres to both the logics of stickiness and of spreadability, using the original white paper on spreadability that Henry Jenkins co-authored with Xiaochang Li and Ana Domb.
Athabasca University Women’s and Gender Studies professor Rhiannon Bury reviewsSpreadable Media for the latest edition of the International Journal of Communication. She writes that the authors “take pains to avoid simplistic pronouncements and instead offer an encompassing and engaged discussion of the complex and diverse ways in which various forms of media are circulated in the so-called Web 2.0 era.”
Spreadable Media co-author Sam Ford’s latest piece with Harvard Business Review draws on concepts from Spreadable Media, as he urges professional communicators to “Rediscover Your Company’s Humanity.”
IndieWire’s Bryce J. Renninger refers to Spreadable Media in his piece on The Asylum’s Sharknado on SyFy, questioning how the company might best listen to and change strategy based on the high level of online discussion about the film.
Miami University graphic design professor Helen Armstrong has been using Spreadable Media on her summer syllabus for “Design Plus Code: An Introduction.” See her full syllabus here.
Also, University of Southern California Annenberg Innovation Lab Fellow Kathi Inman Berens used Spreadable Media for her Spring 2013 Communications course, “Cultures of New Media.” See her syllabus here.
The Paris-based office of advertising agency DDB wrote about Spreadable Media in May, focusing on the book’s emphasis of the “phenomenon of circulation” of media content and fans’ roles as “translators, smugglers, curators, mediators.” (Excuse any bad French-to-English translations.)
Last month, Concordia University Ph.D. candidate Charlotte Fillmore-Handlon wrote for the Ampersand Lab about Spreadable Media in the trajectory of Henry Jenkins’ work.
Georgetown University Communication, Culture & Technology Program student Sara Anderson uses Spreadable Media and several other recent pieces of scholarship to explore “how virtual communities are structured.”‘
Scott Reed’s “Writing and Digital Media” class at Georgia Gwinnett College were charged with “creating spreadable media” around their class readings.
David Roberts, assistant professor of mass communication at Missouri Valley College, shares his summer reading list in the MVC Delta student newspaper, including Spreadable Media as one of his nine recommendations.
Co-author Henry Jenkins provides TIME‘s Lily Rothman with preview remarks from a forthcoming Cinema Journal roundtable about the Spreadable Media, for this article on Kindle Worlds.
Meanwhile, on his Kindle Chronicles podcast, Len Edgerly writes about how Kindle Worlds might impact the analysis of Spreadable Media and particularly its look at the relationship between fandoms and media properties.
Roy Christopher talks with danah boyd and others about their Summer Reading List. Among danah’s top choices? Spreadable Media.
Birgit Horvath-Muck also includesSpreadable Media among her “Non-Fiction Discoveries” at “The Book Garden.”
Carlos Scolari writes a follow-up blog post considering more takeaways from Spreadable Media (in Spanish).
Also, see this recent review of Spreadable Media (in Japanese).
Tama Leaver’s latest research on “Angry Birds as a Social Network Market” draws on Spreadable Media.
Agnès Jiyoung Yun at the Organic Media Lab writes (in Korean) about why Amazon is “social media,” both drawing on some concepts covered in Spreadable Media and also demonstrating how Amazon connected feedback from other customers into the purchase process.
Dave Vineberg references Henry Jenkins and the “spreadable media” argument in a piece about the obsession with discovering new status symbols and its ties to commercial culture, in this piece on the Madame Pickwick art blog.
Amazon customer reviewer Iain writes of Spreadable Media that, “for Media Studies teachers in particular, this book will not disappoint.”
Novelist Kate Pullinger also recently used Spreadable Media during her keynote at the Brave New World conference organized by the Australian Association for the Teaching of English (AATE) and Australian Literacy Educators’ Association (ALEA) on Saturday, July 6.
Novelist Kate Pullinger presenting at Brave New World 2013. Photo by Jon Callow.
While Spreadable Media co-authors Henry Jenkins, Sam Ford, and Joshua Green were in Austin as featured speakers for South by Southwest Interactive this March, they shared some of their insights for lessons marketers and entrepreneurs might take away from the book:
Henry Jenkins on lessons to be learned from independent media creators.
Sam Ford on the distinction between hearing and listening.
Joshua Green on the importance of internal innovation within corporations.
Author Sam Ford recently spoke on a panel for the American Association of University Presses annual conference for 2013 in Boston. His panel, entitled “Reaching the World,” focused on how university presses might rethink themselves in an era where cultural and global borders are more malleable than before and where the distribution of academic work is increasingly driven through circulation from among interested audiences.
Authors Henry Jenkins and Sam Ford were recently interviewed for a piece by Sam’s Peppercomm colleague Steve Cody for the Arthur W. Page Society, about the purpose of Twitter and how the communications head at Twitter should best approach understanding how people use the platform.
Author Joshua Green recently spoke in New York City as part of a panel called “Sketch & Draft: Bridging the Gap between Content and Design,” drawing on concepts from the Spreadable Media project as part of an event organized by Undercurrent (where Joshua works) and LoyalCX.
Mark Anthony Neal (a fellow NYU Press author who recently released Looking for Leroy: Illegible Black Masculinities) writes about the need to pay attention to how independent black artists like Jasiri X are designing critical works to be circulated by their audiences in today’s digital age, drawing on concepts from Spreadable Media.
In a recent blog post, Mel Stanfill references Spreadable Media’s distinction between individual fans and fandoms, in relation to current conversations about how to understand Kindle Worlds vis-a-vis the fan fiction communities most frequently examined by traditional fan studies work.
Carlos Scolari shares some of his initial thoughts on Spreadable Media (in Spanish) via his Hipermediaciones blog. Also, the Open University of Catalonia recently interviewed Scolari about his work on changing relations between the media industries and fans, where Scolari referenced Spreadable Media‘s work about tensions between producers and fans and on the notion of surplus audiences.
Robin Honderich, a student in Curtain University’s Internet Studies program, created this great video illustrating some of the core concepts in the introduction of Spreadable Media.
Portuguese scholars João Pedro da Costa from the Institute for Comparative Literature and Rui Raposo from the University of Aveiro have been doing a textual analysis on what makes band OK Go’s music sharable, drawing on Spreadable Media‘s framework pushing back against viral media metaphors.
Josh Jarrett writes that Spreadable Media is “an extremely worthwhile and timely read into exactly what defines ‘spreadable’ material,” via his The Participating Resource blog.
See this student post about the book by Sara Anderson at Georgetown University.
Henry Jenkins was recently a guest on the PBS MediaShift Mediatwits podcast with Mark Glaser, Monica Guzman, and Andrew Lih, talking about “how media spreads and why.”
Sam Ford also recently spoke about the book project at the Berkeley Center for New Media at the University of California-Berkeley.
opensource.com’s Kendra Mack writes that Spreadable Media is worth reading as a corrective because “contemporary Web 2.0 rhetoric focuses so heavily on how we share media, that it overlooks something even more important–why we share.”
In his “Digital Bookshelf” post on USC’s 21st Century Scholar blog, Dr. Randy Clemens, Assistant Professor of Administrative and Instructional Leadership at St. John’s University, writes of Spreadable Media: “There is a glut of new writing about media that varies widely in terms of scholarly rigor. Start with this book.”
The genConnect team recently published a post about their South by Southwest interview with all three Spreadable Media authors.
In his recent Flow piece, Aymar Jean Christian references Spreadable Media and a range of other books that catalogue the state of how the logics of the media industries are evolving, in an essay looking at the balance between new models for media production and circulation from media conglomerates, alongside projects from independent producers.
Michael Franklin, at his Film Business Research site, includes Spreadable Media on his list of “Inspiring Work: The Stuff that’s Actually Really Good”. Franklin also further considers the book’s look at the complicated issues surrounding “privacy” and “fair use” that often get blurred in copyright discussions.
The latest Amazon review for Spreadable Media comes from Wilson Triviño.
At C4E Trends, Francisco Pereze Latre provides a take on Sam Ford’s recent Harvard Business Review piece related to the book (in Spanish).
Also, see recent posts on the book from USC graduate students at the “Multiplier” blog, here and here.
