Social Informatics and Media Studies

A first post is always a little daunting, especially when the focus of a community is a bit amorphous. But I thought I'd start out by explaining why I formed it, and what I hope can happen with it.

I am on the final leg of my dissertation in Library and Information Science, hoping to deposit in October. I am also not planning at this time to pursue a tenure-track position, although I am hoping to teach again in the near future. And it occurred to me that there may be others out there like me, either in their final stages of education, or job hunting, or just independent scholars who are looking for some conversation and discussion of their areas of interest. And there are also likely people who are in none of those positions but simply find it interesting to read about or discuss topics in the overlapping areas of entertainment, fan studies, and technology because those issues are relevant to their life. My own work so far covers these three areas and intermixes a bit of literary history, social informatics and media studies -- so SIM studies.

I realize I may end up being the only person posting and talking here, but hopefully not!

I thought I'd kick things off with a recent interview on Henry Jenkins blog about transmedia entertainment. I realized in trying to figure out a tag for this post that I was trying to decide what interested me about the topic. ( Read more... )