Synopses & Reviews
When user-generated content (UGC) emerged as a central facet of the BBC's digital presence, it seemed to engage directly with the public service remit in a modern and multi platform way.
Content Cultures examines this key moment of digital affluence and creativity as the BBC embraced user-generated content across the news, civic and creative spheres.
Based on original research, the book explores the resources generated using UGC, from Blast to Adventure Rock, from the BBC Hub to Newsround and The Archers message boards. Whether UGC referred to citizen journalism, oral and digital storytelling, civic, political or creative engagement of young people, disseminating stories from local communities, or reflecting on historical moments, it appeared to promote and transform longstanding BBC agendas into and within a digital era; the book also presents the lessons we need to carry forward as the digital and new media landscape evolves, and as the BBC continues to shape this terrain.
About the Author
Simon Popple is Senior Lecturer in Cinema and Director of Impact and Innovation in the Institute of Communications Studies at Leeds University, UK. He is founder and joint editor of the journal
Early Popular Visual Culture and his books include
Digging the Seam: Popular Cultures of the Miners' Strike (2012).
Helen Thornham is a Research Fellow in Transformations of Media at Leeds University. She is the author of Ethnographies of the Videogame (2011) and co-editor, with Elke Weissmann, of Renewing Feminisms: Radical Narratives, Fantasies and Futures in Media Studies (I.B. Tauris, 2013).
Table of Contents
Introduction; Simon Popple and Helen Thornham
1. Young People and the BBC
2. News, Children and Citizenship: User-Generated Content and the BBC's Newsround Website; Máire Messenger Davies, Cynthia Carter, Stuart Allan, and Kaitlynn Mendes
3. Fantasies of Creative Connectivity in BBC Blast; Helen Thornham and Angela McFarlane
4. Interview with John Millner
5. Fans, Fan Culture and the BBC
6. Mobilising Specialist Music Fans Online - Tim Wall
7. Making 'Quality', Class and Gender: Audiences and Producers of The Archers Negotiate Meaning Online; Lyn Thomas
8. Authorship, Citizenship and the BBC
9. 'A Public Voice': Access, Digital Story and Interactive Narrative; Mike Wilson and Hamish Fyfe
10. The New Golden Age?: Using UGC to Develop the Public Digital Space; Simon Popple
11. Interview with Claire Wardle
12. Locating the BBC
13. Enabling and Constraining Creativity and Collaboration: Some Reflections after Adventure Rock; David Gauntlett
14. Virtual Citizenship and Public Service Media; Petros Iosofidis
Index