Статті в журналах з теми "Podcasts – Fiction"

In current digital ecosystem, sound is gaining prominence through new formats such as podcasting, born in the era of mobility. Formats that can share elements, characteristics, dynamics of work and consumption with other traditional radio formats, such as reports, docudramas or the radio soap opera. This article aims to analyze whether the strength of human reach storytelling is a common starting point in analogic reports and in fictional and non-fiction podcasts, both on audio platforms and on conventional radio. For this, three podcast are proposed as case study: ‘Sin mi identidad’ (2018, COPE network), ‘Lo conocí en un Corpus’ (2017, Podium Podcast) and ‘Las tres muertes de mi padre’ (2017, Cuonda). The methodology is classified as descriptive and qualitative and includes semi-structured interviews with key subjects in the process of the three spaces considered as objects of study. In the analyzed cases it can be stated that, although reports and fiction and nonfiction podcasts are different products, they share similarities of production, documentation and recording. Also, all have as starting point a real story, even when podcasts are fiction. Key words: Docudrama; Podcast; Radio; Digital Radio; Radio Drama; Radio Reports.

Sound fiction genre takes a relevant position after the irruption of American productions such as Serial in the year 2014, whose success boosted its emission in other media as a series with the same title offered by HBO. In Spain, the conversion from podcast to television series hasn´t been produced yet, but we do have on stream podcasts that derive from television series, specifically, on RTVE platform. The objective of this work is to perform a formal comparative analysis and content of podcasts and series of television platforms in Spain and the United States applied to the first season of the following fictions: Homecoming and Dirty John podcasts, both of them broadcasted as series on Amazon and Netflix in the USA. In Spain, we analyze the podcast Carlos de Gante podcast comparing it with the series Carlos, el Emperador, and the podcast Bienvenido a la Pasarela with the TV series Estoy Vivo, on RTVE web platform. In the US, the sound acquires a new dimension both in its adaptation to the television format as an independent unit while in Spain, although it is a complement to the transmedia universe, it enjoys a quality and a projection that announces a rediscovery of the sound format. Keywords: Sound Fiction; Series; Television; Radio; Transmedia; Podcast.

This text seeks to provide an overview of the development and current production of non-fiction narrative podcasts in Brazil. To this end, it initially presents a definition of the genre, highlighting its origin in radio journalism in the United States. Next, this production is contextualized in relation to Brazilian radio and some of the pioneering or most influential productions are listed. Subsequently, we provide a sample of the most recent works. Through this sample, the text seeks to present both the main agents involved in this field of production (large local media groups and larger podcast producers) and the predominant topics of podcasts. The text also seeks to address the significant economic concentration present in this context, the social and political importance of independent production, and the need for its greater valorization and visibility.

Podcasts often blend journalistic investigation with personal reflection, from Serial to Switched on Pop. Their veneer of fiction-as-fact especially confounds representation when podcasts’ voice acting and sound design portray pop stars in caricatured dramatizations. This paper examines reenactments of Cher and Taylor Swift in podcasts that investigate popular music industries and technology. As I show, these stars often are ventriloquized on podcasts due to their respective ages and visibility as women. Podcasts interrogate them for being too old or too young and for trespassing onto the often-male domains of business and technology. To show how podcast hosts represent women pop stars in particularly gendered and ageist ways, I listen to the sonics of fictionalization of two episodes that mythologize Cher’s Auto-Tuning and Swift’s battle to take back her masters from record industry men. First, American Innovations reenacts Cher’s request to producers to create the Auto-Tune effect, but the male host’s ventriloquy of her voice reduces her artistic and technological prowess to parody as they make her seem outdated. Then, in Business Wars, multiple voice actors reenact Swift’s career from its beginning and depict her as a child who doesn’t know any better. These podcasts blur facts and public opinion with alluring dramatizations of what “really happened,” placing listeners in the scene with compelling voice acting and ambient sound effects. In these reenactments, podcasts’ affordances of intimacy and immersion—which hosts often herald as democratizing—perpetuate cultural mythologies about gender and age in popular music.

New media affords significant opportunities for audience feedback and participation, with the power to influence the creation and development of contemporary works of fiction, particularly when these appear in serialized instalments. With access to creators permitted via social media, and with online platforms facilitating the creation and distribution of audience paratexts, fans increasingly have the power to shape the fictional worlds and diversity of the characters found within the series they enjoy. A noteworthy and understudied example is fiction podcasting, an emerging form that draws on conventions of established media such as radio and television. Despite the recent surge in the popularity of podcasts, little scholarly attention has been given to the format, except to discuss it as either a continuation of radio programming or part of a transmedia landscape for texts which are centred in media such as television and film. This article argues that fiction podcasting offers unique affordances for creating serial works of fiction, taking The Adventure Zone as a case study which demonstrates the power of successful participatory culture. The podcast has grown from modest beginnings to acquire a considerable and passionate fan network, has diversified into other media forms, and, though available for free, is financially supporting its creators and raising substantial amounts of money for charities. Crucial in its success is the creators’ cultivation of an inclusive environment for fans, and a constant attempt to feature characters representative of a diversity of gender and sexual identities, particularly those typically excluded from other science fiction worlds. This article argues that The Adventure Zone and the format of fiction podcasting demonstrate a shift in contemporary culture, away from established mass media programming and towards a participatory, transmedia, fan-focused form of storytelling which utilizes the unique advantages of new media technologies in its creation, development, and distribution.

The incorporation of thematic and formal references to true-crime texts in recent British and Irish crime novels shows fiction authors acknowledging that they share an audience with true-crime podcasts, documentaries and books. At the same time, these authors assert the particular contribution that fiction makes to the raising of awareness of both real-world crime and its representations. Examples considered include novels by Ruth Rendell, Denise Mina and Catherine Ryan Howard.

La ficción sonora resurge en España con la irrupción de las plataformas sonoras como la red de podcasts Podium Podcast desde el año 2016, la innovación experimental sonora de la emisora pública RNE con el Laboratorio de Innovación Audiovisual de RTVE y la emisión puntual de audiodramas en las cadenas de radio convencionales, que difunden estos espacios en momentos especiales. En esta investigación se realiza un estudio de caso de diez ficciones radiofónicas de la emisora pública RNE, las emisoras privadas Ser y Onda Cero y las plataformas Podium Podcast y Spotify. Para ello se aplica una metodología mixta en la que se combina el análisis de contenido de la muestra de las ficciones seleccionadas con entrevistas en profundidad a ocho expertos en sonido conocedores el proceso de ejecución de las ficciones sonoras en distintas facetas. Los resultados de la investigación subrayan los rasgos distintivos del género en cada una de las plataformas y emisoras analizadas y cómo la distribución y el consumo a la carta posibilitan el resurgir de la ficción sonora con producciones muy cuidadas en el diseño sonoro y orientadas a un público habituado al audiovisual y el cine, que ha evolucionado con respecto al tradicional radioteatro.

<p class="Default"><strong><em>The purpose.</em></strong><em> The aim of the scientific research is to determine the functioning features the narrative podcasts of the audio projects of Public Broadcasting Company of Ukraine «Suspilne»: «Yak my vyzhyly» («How we survived»), «Poshramovanyi» («Scarred») and «Moia istoriia viiny» («My war story»). The research focuses on the peculiarities of narrative design, construction of meanings, structural organization uniqueness, ways and methods of historical information actualization, and its media coverage. </em></p><p class="Default"><strong><em>Research methodology.</em></strong><em> The author applies the following research methods: current scientific information analysis, monitoring and interpretation methods, descriptive and analytical as well as problem and topical methods, methods of systematization and generalization. The article proves that narrative podcasts creation makes it possible to record and archive various war experiences. The core genre is oral story (storytelling) makes the narratives realistic and actualized as well as it contributes to mentalising and strengthening of the emotional background of the story, due to above mentioned effects listeners manage to immerse themselves in the story, empathize with characters and be ready to understand the events as well as reflect.</em></p><p class="Default"><strong><em>Novelty. </em></strong><em>The novelty of the research implies the profound research of inefficiently studied aspects of the podcasting analysis: the specifics of its functioning, the genre potential as a convergent media product; analysis of the podcast as an author’s attempt at reinterpretation of historical topics, documentary materials.</em></p><p class="Default"><strong><em>Practical meaning.</em></strong><em> The practical application of the research results after analyzing the media projects of «Suspilne»: «Yak my vyzhyly» («How we survived»), «Poshramovanyi» («Scarred») and «Moia istoriia viiny» («My war story») can be used for the development of practical recommendations for improving the production of narrative podcasting, as well as its expressive specificity intensification.</em></p><p class="Default"><strong><em>Key words:</em></strong><em> podcast, narrative podcast, podcast journalism, media convergence, audience, non-fiction audio project, audio story.</em></p>

The article for the first time distinguishes between the functions of ekphrasis, narrative ekphrasis and metaekphrasis in Russian podcasts about plastic arts on the example of eight episodes dedicated to painters and architects. Episodes of podcasts “Art for Guys”, “Talk About Art”, “About History and Art. Project YaAndArt”, “Walls have ears”, “Art and Facts” have become the empirical material of the research. By reviewing the content of episodes, it is proved that polyfunctionality is inherent in both ekphrasis, including its narrative version, and metaekphrasis. In particular, the examples given in the text of the article illustrate how the problem of limited visuality of audio narratives is solved due to ekphrastic descriptions. It also analyzes the construction of narrative ekphrasis in relation to artifacts with a plot and non-plot basis and indicates the contradiction between the elements of fiction in the speech of the presenters and the verifiability of art history knowledge. Finally, the manifestation of meta-ekphrasis is considered from the point of view of comparing works of art within the same type and between different types, critical interpretation of the author and description of ideological, political-critical, social-constructive contexts.

Human readers comprehend vastly more, and in vastly different ways, than any existing comprehension test would suggest. An ideal comprehension test for a story should cover the full range of questions and answers that humans would expect other humans to reasonably learn or infer from a given story. As a step toward these goals we propose a novel test, the Crowdsourced Comprehension Challenge (C3), which is constructed by repeated runs of a three-person game, the Iterative Crowdsourced Comprehension Game (ICCG). ICCG uses structured crowdsourcing to comprehensively generate relevant questions and supported answers for arbitrary stories, whether fiction or nonfiction, presented across a variety of media such as videos, podcasts, and still images.

“Psycho”, “maniac”, and “madman” are all words that are found to be synonymous with serial killers and criminal activity. For decades, the media has perpetuated an extremely harmful image that those suffering from mental illness are violent and dangerous. These portrayals can be found across mediums from fictional books and movies to docuseries and podcasts. In the realm of fiction, specifically, some of the most harmful depictions can be found in horror films. These films tend to paint their villains to be caricatures of various psychiatric disorders including schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, dissociative identity disorder (formerly known as multiple personality disorder), and narcissistic personality disorder. These misrepresentations are not only grossly exaggerated but also highly inaccurate. In this piece, I will explore and expose the negative distortions of mental illness in various horror films. The scope will focus on two of the most influential psychological thrillers in the industry: Psycho and The Shining. These films each depict an antagonist who displays exaggerated traits indicative of mental illness. By deconstructing and comparing these traits with modern research on the mental illnesses they are meant to represent, I will expose the inaccuracies of these portrayals. Furthermore, I will outline the lasting impacts of these inaccuracies on both the public perceptions of mental illness, as well as help-seeking among individuals suffering from psychological disorders. Even if the characters in these popular films are fictional, the stigma they direct toward mental illness is very real and must be addressed.

Documentary podcasts are attracting people’s attention as a form of podcast. These non-fictional aural texts require substantial effort and time to produce, presenting true stories to the audience through the utilization of recording technology and sound design, resulting a distinct aesthetic. Taking Page Seven as a case study, the objective of this article is to examine the process of auditory scene interaction between the audience and the aural text in documentary podcasts. Page Seven was founded in 2012 and is recognized as the first audio documentary podcast in Mainland China. This article posits that documentary podcasts engage the audience’s visual perception in addition to their auditory perception. The realistic soundscape and the listener’s imagination merge to form the auditory scene. By applying the uses and gratification theory and narrative transportation, this study reveals that Page Seven allowed the audience to fulfil multiple needs, including affective needs. This study attempts to explain the communication process of documentary podcasts from three aspects: sensory, imagination and emotion, thereby enriching the cultural landscape within the realm of documentary podcasts.

The article offers an analysis of the frequency and quality of LGBTQ+ representation in fictional podcasts. I examine how frequently and with what intent LGBTQ+ characters are included in this medium. This research aims to fill the gap in academic work on LGBTQ+ representation in podcasts. Though scholars note an increase in representation in mainstream media, LGBTQ+ media consumers, especially young people, still look to other sources for validation of their identities. Many LGBTQ+ people look to fictional podcasts as a source of quality representation, especially because podcasts are small-scale and rely on the funding, and thus the opinion, of listeners (Bottomley, 2015). In this paper, I analyze four fictional podcast series for LGBTQ+ inclusivity. I note how many LGBTQ+ characters are included and in what proportion. I assess the quality of representation in four ways: diversity, depth, and the frequency and type of stereotypical LGBTQ+ tropes. My findings show a high frequency of LGBTQ+ characters and diversity of personalities and backgrounds, opportunities for these characters to express their sexual and/or gender identities as well as LGBTQ+ trope subversions. Thus, we see that fictional podcasts, as a medium that sustains itself by listeners’ patronage, present stories that their audience can relate to. As a result, fictional podcasts create more niche stories that make connections with smaller demographics of media consumers.

Fanfiction has a long and varied history in the Star Wars franchise since it began in 1977 with the debut of the first film, Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope. The decade of the 1970s created new possibilities for science fiction multiverses and metanarratives; science fiction became an adaptive film genre that could be reimagined with seemingly infinite narrational results. The myriad of genre films that were released in the mid-to-late 1970s revealed dynamic syntheses with horror (e.g. Alien, Invasion of the Body Snatchers and Close Encounters of the Third Kind), franchises that previously had existed solely on television (Star Trek: The Motion Picture) and musical theatre (The Rocky Horror Picture Show). Cinematic audiences became increasingly accustomed to science fiction tropes and themes in film; audience participation in the theatre (e.g. The Rocky Horror Picture Show) expanded to print zines (often with fanfiction) for multiple franchises as well as fan conventions. Fanfiction’s beginnings as an analogue culture dramatically changed with the advent of the internet and the evolution of fandoms as digital cultures. Web-based platforms such as FanFiction.net and Archive of Our Own (AO3) host sundry fan communities’ creative outputs including podcasts, art and, most frequently, fanfiction stories. The release of Star Wars: The Force Awakens in 2015 immediately captured the fandom’s imagination; the animosity and tension between the new villain Kylo Ren (Ben Solo) and protagonist Rey of Jakku particularly fascinated the young adult fans who were lately converted to the Star Wars fandom due to this pairing (known as Reylo within the fandom and within cinematic circles). The newest generations of fans were acclimated to audience participation and paratextual interactions due to their positions as digital natives. The Reylo fan phenomenon particularly erupted into fanfictions as critical data artefacts, even predicting Reylo as a romantic pairing years before the second and third films in the franchise trilogy Star Wars: The Last Jedi and Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker. The Reylo pairing is just one example of how online Star Wars fanfiction communities expand audience participation to autonomous collective identity formation. This article examines feminist fanfictions in the Star Wars fandom as gendered critical data artefacts, as collaborative communities of practice, and as counterpublic discourses that apply feminist critiques to conventional gender roles within the most recent film trilogy and the fandom itself.

The author analyzes the morphological features of the popular novel Barlaam Josaphat. The novel was translated by Udriște Năsturel from Slavonic into Romanian in 1648. The examples were extracted from the oldest copy of this writing, which is found In this study we explore ho w Damian Anfile, theologian, historian and cultural storytel ler, constructs a gravedigger ethos over the course of several podcasts in which he is a guest. We show that the work of identifying and understanding this ethos by podcast followers (of which the author of this article is a member) requires not only stere otypical (conceptual and imagistic) elements, but also information that can be drawn from literary works, dictionary articles, visual art and so on. In this way, not only is a fictional ethos cons tructed (among Damian Anfile’s other identities), but one th at is fuelled by fictional elements. We also try to highlight the role of co operative diagraphs in the construction of the fictional ethos and its relationship to Damian Anfile’s multiple identit ies.

Modern stoicism is becoming increasingly popular in the world: a large number of non-fiction books are published on this topic; many videos reveal the essence of this philosophy; podcasts, articles in magazines, etc. are also dedicated to stoicism. Thus, there is a need to study Stoicism at the scientific level. The study aims to provide an in-depth examination of the history of the Stoic doctrine, in the course of which it is necessary to determine the ideological origins of the Stoic doctrine and the contribution of the Stoics to the development of philosophy. One of the study objectives is to compare the philosophy of Stoicism with other schools of thought to fully reveal the purpose of the article. Analysis, analogy, systematisation, the philosophical pluralism method, synthesis, generalisation, and comparison were used in the study. The development of the Stoic doctrine in comparison with other philosophical concepts of the ancient times was studied. As a result of the analysis of philosophical texts, it was found that Stoicism arose from Kinism and developed on a par with this doctrine. Stoic philosophers had an important influence on philosophy by creating a system of dividing the world into three parts. The Stoics are the continuators of Socrates’ philosophy, and the pedagogical ideas of Stoicism are similar to the general ideas of that time. Stoicism is closely related to Epicureanism, and the Stoics also developed their method of self-analysis. The general trends in the development of this philosophy preserve ancient traditions. Stoicism, as a philosophical trend, developed over a long period and managed to preserve its basic principles unchanged. The study has created several scientific hypotheses that can be considered further at the scientific level, in particular, the following topics: the relationship between Stoicism and Epicureanism; pedagogical ideas of the Stoics; the Stoic method of introspection require further in-depth research by scholars. Such hypotheses can be useful for various groups of people interested in the philosophy of Stoicism and its application in the modern world and life, such as academics (philosophers, researchers), psychologists, managers, and ordinary people seeking personal development and a better understanding of themselves

The article serves as an analysis of Familia, a Polish independent fiction podcast from 2020 produced by the Teraz Poliż theatre as a response to increase of state supported homophobic propaganda in the recent years. By pointing out similarities and differences between the podcast in question and mainstream Polish audio series, as well as drawing comparisons to popular globally distributed independent audio fiction produced in English, the author aims to prove the unique position of Familia as a sole representative of a politically conscious podcast drama presenting a specifically Polish perspective on queer emancipation. The author then proceeds to analyse the narrative content of the podcast, presenting the ways in which the story plays with elements of traditional, Polish national identity, reframing them via a radical lens as potential symbolic tools for LGBTQ+ emancipation and antifascist resistance in everyday life, while at the same time warning of the limited scope of use for such tools.

Following the growth, since 2016, of new fiction and non-fiction sound series in a large part of Ibero America, thanks to podcast and radio on demand, the task of analyzing the history of radio theater as a genre in Chile, from its roots and sociocultural importance to the new ways of producing and thinking about the genre in the 21st century is conducted. On the basis of documentary information, consisting of press archives, audios of radio theater scripts and the few studies on radio and radio theater, three stages can be elucidated: the golden age (1940-1970); the rebirth of radio theater (2003-2015) and the genre current boom period (2016 to present). While there are certain continuities between the first and second period, despite the temporary and technological breakthrough, in the third stage there is a new way of creating and designing these productions, with plots that respond to social and political struggles of groups that are invisible or discriminated in the public space, as well as in the way of circulating and disseminating them, without the radio being the key place par excellence for transmission as happened with the old radio soap operas. Keywords: Radio Drama; Fiction; History; Chile; Podcast.

Abstract This article responds to McCloud's theoretical framework for comics and applies this framework to audio drama, which I argue is, like comics, a mono-sensory medium (one can only be seen in static image and the other can only be heard); both require a great degree of closure from the audience to frame together sequential narratives (of visual art and sound, respectively). To do this, it uses the case study of Marvel and Stitcher's Wolverine: The Long Night (2018), a 'scripted podcast' (audio drama). While comics are escaping from decades of critical disregard due to their status as a popular or lowbrow medium, radio and by extension audio drama still suffer from critical neglect. It is, therefore, one of the aims of the article to release audio drama theory from torpor by applying theory from comics. W:TLN has been chosen as a case study due to its status as a made-for-podcast story rather than an adaptation from an existing comic book; it also responds to trends within audio drama towards a non-fiction/fiction amalgamation influenced by true crime podcast conventions. This article argues that W:TLN's understanding of audio/radio as a mono-sensory medium is overdetermined in its use of blindness, darkness and radiogenics. It also discusses the ways in which comics and audio drama use time and space. The article also examines the reasons why the podcast medium has been deemed acceptable within the wider Marvel Comics Universe and the ways in which W:TLN responds to implied continuity through a transmedia conception of character attributes (e.g., how the continuity of the X-Men films influences the story and characters in W:TLN).

Ceallaigh S. Maccath-Moran is a PhD candidate in the Folklore Department at Memorial University of Newfoundland, a writer, a poet and a musician. Ceallaigh’s research interests include animal rights activism as a public performance of ethical belief, which is the topic of her dissertation, and creative applications of folkloristic scholarship for storytellers. Her Folklore & Fiction podcast, “where folklore scholarship meets storytelling craft”, launched in 2021.

This article investigates the contemporary fascination with true crime narratives, an subject which is fast becoming a central area of interest in crime fiction studies. As the overarching genre of crime fiction itself becomes the most read literature genre, not to mention its growing popularity in other popular cultural mediums – TV, film, documentary, podcast, blogs, etc., true crime – which has always been a popular sub-genre – is arguably moving centre stage aligned to our recent obsession with the real life figure of the serial killer. The usual discussions of both individual and collective obsession and fascination with such topics, is generally limited to arguments within conscious parameters of ethical choice, This paper will explore an alterative reading that introduces the Lacanian psychoanalytic concepts of the sinthome and jouissance, and argues that any reading of these topics cannot be contained within conceptions of rationality and ethical choice.

Narratives have been witnessing a state of enfoldment within the virtual world(s) since the proliferation of transmedia story worlds and new media art works. The aesthetics of enfoldment are discussed by Laura U. Marks within different trends in media art. She follows a genealogy of media art that has its roots in premodern Islamic concepts. Enfoldment is therefore situated as the broad framework of this paper’s discussion. Since the prevalence of the concept of transmedia storytelling, coined by Henry Jenkins in 2007, different franchises (be it in entertainment and others) have adopted certain narrative tropes to create a transmedia presence or universe. One of these tropes is the usage of multi-linear storytelling. Multi-linearity is one of the forms narrative storytelling that liberates a story from its temporal structure, making the consumption of narrative open to the end user. Parafiction, on the other hand, denotes instances when the lines between fact and fiction become blurry creating contemporary artworks where story worlds are essential for the dissemination of the works themselves. According to Lambert-beaty (2009) “the slew of recent writings trying to describe or explain this condition ranges from philosophical explorations of ‘the ethics of the lie’, to moralist warnings about our entry into ‘the post-truth era’” (Lambert-beatty, 2009). The following article aims at disseminating past scholarship on multi-linear and parafictional storytelling in trans and new media art in an attempt at shaping the theoretical framework of my doctoral thesis project; a podcast series intended for online dissemination that features conversations between a fictional character and non-fictional historical figures.

The modern directions of development of fan fiction as a media system that has acquired the characteristics of self-organization are actualized. Three stages of development of scientific views on the formation of the process of collective authorship are presented: from narrative criticism and isolation of media features of fandoms to comprehension of the facts of the reverse influence of fan fiction on culture and communication processes. On the example of the development of modern fan fiction space, the phenomena that express the communicative nature of the fan fiction community, as well as the network nature of its organization are proposed for analysis: creation of podcast systems; according to the logic of canonical blockbuster universes, the development of complex multi-story stories with the involvement of a large number of participants. The paradoxical phenomena that arise in this media system - the growth of original works not related to rethinking and implementing alternative lines of the canon, the emergence of the phenomenon of the passive spectator - are explained by the influence of general cultural trends and local national practices. Indirectly, the influence of fan-fiction activity is presented in various manifestations and trends: the phenomena of secondary and tertiary communication, the transformation of the fan into canonical texts for further fiction, the active departure of fans outside closed communities and the impact on modern cultural practices. Examples of the latter are illustrated by the use of fan fiction in writing scripts for series; creation of spin-products; taking into account fan thoughts when developing the plots of TV series and books. The prospects of communication research are motivated by the dynamics of growth of the object of study and the complexity of modern methods of analysis. The presence of contradictory tendencies and manifestations problematizes the finality and immutability of already established scientific approaches, forces to turn to technical approaches using big-date methods.

This paper analyses a transmedia universe featuring a web series revolving around interpersonal relations and gender issues, which was then expanded using a musical podcast and a live concert. The project aims to discover production and narrative development strategies that define a native transmedia production, and how it might be expanded to build stories around complex and multidimensional contemporary themes. An analysis model is proposed to identify the fundamental structural characteristics of the transmedia universe. The research is initially powered by a qualitative approach to ethnographic fieldwork by means of participant observation, and subsequently, the analysis of the interrelationship between the elements that make up the transmedia system. The results show the planning behind constructing transmedia storytelling that intertwines fiction and reality to assist in understanding complex and multidimensional topics such as gender identity or intergenerational relations. The conclusions show that the type of transmedia construction being presented and the position of the audio in that universe is motivated by reinforcing the creation of content that is covered in fiction, but with particular relevance in the real world.

Anledningen er den stigende interesse for kulturens lydlige sider og i særdeleshed den store opmærksomhed radio og audio drama har fået i de senere år: Vi går i radiobiograf, til radiodramafestival, vi lytter til audiodrama som podcast fra de store broadcastere eller fra uafhængige producenter som aldrig før. Hvad mere er, denne "auditive vending" efter mange års visuel dominans slår også igennem i scenedramatikken. Audiodramaet belyses fra dramaturgiske, mediehistoriske og kulturanalytiske vinkler og artiklerne spænder over emner og genrer som tysk og britisk radiodrama, fan fiction drama, stedsspecifik lyddramatik og improvistation. Dette er et første forsøg på at tegne et felt i sin vorden. Således håber vi at have ydet et bidrag til udviklingen af en fælles fagterminologi og et teoretisk apparat, som kan føre til en mere nuanceret redegørelse for fænomenet audiodramatik.

TThis research aims to investigate the production of horror contents in the INSENTIF podcast channel by Tirto.id, an Indonesian online news media. When journalistic media are involved in the production of ghost stories and mystery, it raises concerns about journalistic basic principles of providing verified information. To understand this phenomenon, we conducted a qualitative case study and interviewed three key informants from the INSENTIF production team. Using Giddens’ structuration theory as an analysis framework, we identify that the INSENTIF production crews still perceive their routine as part of journalistic works. In writing the script, they strive to rely on credible sources and actualise the discipline of verification although they admit that they insert some fictional horrific scenarios at the beginning of each episode as well. Thus, they mention a disclaimer, explaining that their journalism practice, specifically on horror episodes, is not the same as the regular Tirto.id’s standard journalism. This research argues that the agents, in this case, seem to follow and reproduce the existing structure, rather than resist it.

Oral history is experiencing something of a heyday in the public imagination. The past ten years have seen a proliferation of podcasts – Sarah Koenig's Serial, Brian Reed's S-Town, Jon Ronson's The Butterfly Effect – which revolve around the testimony of ordinary people. Many of their fictional counterparts, most overtly Archive 81, hinge around the very practice of documenting, archiving and interpreting oral histories. BBC radio's oral history The Century Speaks (1999) was broadcast to an audience of millions. In the same year, radio historian Susan Douglas presciently called for a return to orality: ‘a mode of communication reliant on storytelling, listening, and group memory’. Common to these cultural products is a desire to capture a zeitgeist in a peculiarly direct and interpersonal way: through the intimacy of hearing a witness's own voice, oral history media eludes writing and embraces the subjectivity of the spoken and unscripted. To listen to somebody's testimony is to foster a distinctive relationship with them and their past, to receive it in their words and in some sense relive it on their terms.

This text deals with Mormon conspiracism, the belief in conspiracies among members of the Mormon religion. I examine how conspiracy theories are reflected in Mormon culture, history, and faith and how they were influenced by the emergence of Denver Snuffer's modern neo-fundamentalist movement. Using the example of the new age movement and Mormon preppers, I show the growing influence of conspiracy thinking and its connection to Donald Trump and the QAnon theory. Using the story of Nathan Wayne Entrekin, one of the participants in the January 6, 2021, insurrection who came dressed as a warrior from the Book of Mormon, I elaborate on the fundamentalist and conspiracy roots of early Mormonism in the times of Joseph Smith. That is combined with multiple testimonies from John Dehlin's Mormon Stories Podcast as it reflected the apocalyptic Mormon milieu from 2010-2020. In the final part, I analyze Mormon neo-fundamentalism through the social myth theory of Radek Chlup, who describes three categories of myth (political, fictional, and conspirator) and how they affect the popularity of these myths.

Introduction to the paper raises the questions: what are the causes of today’s crisis faced by the “traditional,” which has lost its creative character, and if there are ways out of this crisis. Materials and methods. When searching for the answers to these questions, the study relies on the comparative analysis of the sources and shows how Russian teaching methodology experts of the 20th century solved the “essay problem,” what tasks were offered for the text written by students to be an original “answer” in their dialogue with the literary text. Bibliography overview. A whole host of the sources used impart the character of an analytical review to this part of the paper. It aims to convince the reader that the focus on “creative reading” (Abakumov) and “creative writing” (Abakumov) was one of the leading trends in the methodology of the 20th century. This section states that the literary creativity of students nowadays can and should be supported with digital tools. Digitalization of modern literary education, including the application of new creative tasks in the educational process, is a condition for its development in the 21st century. Results. This part of the paper presents possible multimedia creative tasks (podcast, book trailer, longread, video poetry, and others) and indicates that the latter performed using IT tools are not a rejection of conventional creative tasks but rather their development and transformation in the digital environment. The proposed thesis is illustrated by referring to fanfiction and showing what traditional creative task forms preceded fanfiction. These tasks (as opposed to writing a traditional essay) are shown to become valuable and meaningful for the students because they are characterized by convergence and participativeness. It is through these properties of the task’s students are involved in the participatory culture within which the texts of fiction live today. This section concludes that the proposed system of creative multimedia tasks should further be discussed, experimentally tested, and adjusted based on the testing results. In conclusion, according to the teaching methodology experts of the 20th century, who talked about student creativity as a necessary condition for understanding a literary text and a productive dialogue with it, the methodological science objectives to be set concerning the issue presented in the title of the paper are identified. These include: creating a glossary of terms that defines possible creative tasks of a multimedia nature and generating methodological recommendations that describe an algorithm for their development and the technology for including them in the educational process. Keywords: traditional and multimedia creative tasks, value and meaning, convergence and participation, fanfiction, classification of multimedia creative tasks

San Francisco, AK Press, 2007 Full Text You cannot buy the Revolution. You cannot make the Revolution. You can only be the Revolution. It is in your spirit, or it is nowhere. -Shevek, in The Dispossessed, by Ursula K. LeGuin In a testament to his ability to draw on diverse authors and theories, Bob Torres opens the final chapter of Making a Killing: The Political Economy of Animal Rights with a quote from a science fiction novel, and in so doing he successfully draws together many of the themes of his work. LeGuin's character Shevek hails from a society organized by property-less relationships, complete gender equality and communal living. Shevek travels to the capitalist planet Urras and finds a materially wealthy society plagued by repression, alienation and radical inequality. His revolutionary ideas are quickly shot down. For Torres, Shevek represents a social anarchist perspective that entails a daily commitment to living and embodying the principles that one wants to see practiced in the world. Far from beginning his academic career as an animal rights activist, Torres, assistant professor of sociology at St Lawrence University and co-host of the popular Vegan Freak Radio podcast, originally studied agricultural science. It was a "dairy production" class that initially led him to think more seriously about animal oppression, and the logistics of the commodification of sentient beings under capitalism. Torres was taught to view animals as producers. He learned how a farmer survives in the "go big or go home" world of agribusiness: by squeezing every last bit of production out of animals for the least possible input. Capitalism relies on alienation between "producers" (in this case, cows) and their "products" (their calves, their milk, and eventually, their own bodies), creating a mental distance between consumers and producers that obscures underlying power relations and exploitation. Torres' experiences with production agriculture disrupted this mental distance by revealing the process by which sentient beings become "living machines" for the profit and enjoyment of humans. Torres situates his analysis of animal exploitation and advocacy within broader discussions of Marxist political economy, social ecology, social anarchism, and abolitionist animal rights theory. He challenges all of his readers, regardless of their political inclinations and thoughts on the status of nonhuman animals, to make connections between different forms of oppression, and to examine the power relationships that underlie their attitudes and consumer choices. He implores the Left to consider animals within broader liberation struggles but reserves some of his most powerful critique for the "animal rights" movement itself. He chastises animal advocates who fail to work in solidarity with other anti-oppression movements and whose means are inconsistent with their desired ends. Torres maintains that if capitalism, commodification, and property relations are inextricably linked to animal exploitation, then working from within this paradigm is not a recipe for effective activism. According to Torres, the animal rights movement in its current incarnation as the "Animal Rights Industry" has lost sight of itself and its long-term goals and has been co-opted to the point where it can no longer target exploitation at its foundation. He argues that the movement has become dominated by multi-million dollar organizations with enormous operating budgets that work directly with agribusiness in pursuit of endless welfare reforms. He points to the ongoing "love affair" between animal protection organizations and corporations like Whole Foods, and argues that these alliances actually make animal exploitation more profitable. Despite all of the rhetoric about "compassion", corporations' primary responsibility is towards shareholders. For example, rather than encouraging concerned consumers to stop eating animal products, Whole Foods caters to a niche market willing to pay a premium for "happy meat". Drawing on the abolitionist animal rights theory of Gary Francione, Torres shows how this phenomenon actually perpetuates animal exploitation by reinforcing the idea that animals are property, thereby legitimating their commodification. As the (legal and conceptual) property of humans, animals' subjectivity, their interests in not suffering, and the fulfillment of their natural needs and behaviours all become secondary to the interests of property owners. For these reasons, welfare reforms and anti-cruelty laws inevitably fail to protect the interests of animals. Having argued that we cannot buy a revolution for animals by donating to our favourite animal protection corporation or by purchasing ever more "humane" animal products, Torres maintains that anyone can use their own strengths and talents to bring about social change - all that is needed is a commitment to making a change consistent with one's own principles. Torres empowers his readers to seek affinity with other social movements and to strive for fundamental societal change that strikes at the roots of all hierarchy and domination. Recognizing animal exploitation as a needless form of domination, Torres advocates veganism as a direct refusal to participate in the consumption, enslavement, and subjugation of animals for human ends. Veganism is a daily, lived expression of that ethical commitment, and it embodies the change that animal rights movement seeks to implement.

Podcasts are important sites of knowledge sharing and co-creation. As opportunities to discuss niche interests, podcasts are where individuals come together to discuss the things they love, and for fans, podcasts are often opportunities to critically engage with their franchise or work with others in the fandom. The conversational nature of podcasting means each party can bring forth new ideas and perspectives that shape how we engage with the work and fandom that’s grown around it. This paper shares the results of an exploratory study of the citational practices of science fiction fan podcasts. Initially intending to analyze transcripts of science fiction fan podcasts, barriers explored in the paper caused a pivot to analyzing show notes of podcasts, instead.

Introduction For the past ten years, a transformative trend has emerged in the consumption of journalistic content, diverging significantly from its traditional engagement pathways. This evolution is characterised by the allure of serial journalistic podcasts such as Serial, which have seamlessly integrated narrative techniques typically reserved for fiction into journalistic storytelling (Kulkarni et al.). These podcasts have leveraged episodic structures, suspenseful build-ups, and dramatic climaxes to foster a level of engagement akin to fiction's grip on audiences. This shift towards addictive media consumption is eloquently linked to the binge-watching culture of on-demand television described by Dowling and Miller, situating such podcasts within a lineage of high-calibre television narratives (168). The concept of "binge-listening" (Krause and Uhrig 446) has emerged from this trend, signifying a consumption pattern where audiences, particularly those drawn to multi-part serial podcasts in genres like true crime, engage in extended listening sessions or eagerly anticipate new episodes. This pattern, reflective of an excessive indulgence in content, underscores the creators' success in crafting compelling narratives that captivate and retain audience interest. Illustrative of this phenomenon are listener testimonials for Die Mafiaprinzessin, a narrative podcast series by Süddeutsche Zeitung Magazine (part of Germany’s major quality newspaper), where users expressed their inability to disengage, consuming the entire series rapidly. One user stated, "I couldn't stop listening", and another, "I binged all episodes in two days" (quoted in Krause and Uhrig 447). But what makes serial storytelling podcasts in Germany so appealing, and which lessons can be drawn from this? This article provides answers through a historical lens and a focus on the creative process, distribution, and the transparency of journalistic research. Incorporating these sources and viewpoints, the discussion provides an overview of the cultural shift in media consumption towards serialised journalistic podcasts, highlighting their role in redefining audience engagement with media content. From Written to Spoken Storytelling Traditions The narrative-driven approach to audio journalism discussed in this article is typically unfolding over five to ten serialised podcast episodes of 30 to 45 minutes each, and diverges from shorter news snippets or dialogue-based formats, tackling complex topics through well-researched and dramatised storytelling. Kelleter defines serial storytelling as the delivery of continuation stories featuring consistent characters, produced and narrated in a mass-appealing, schematic manner (18). This definition, originally pertaining to fiction, aptly describes the serialised journalistic content's approach, emphasising that while the storytelling techniques may mirror fiction, the content remains firmly anchored in journalistic rigour and quality. It is neither based on a true story nor loosely associated with fiction. The podcast series that are the focus of this article are journalism in audio form, dedicated to journalism’s core values. This article aims to shed light on the development, cultural significance, and economic implications of such podcasts in Germany, specifically those produced by publishing houses as part of their digital strategy to gain digital subscriptions and hence turn readers into paying customers. The economic potential of such journalistic storytelling podcasts can be quite significant, as Newman describes in the 2023 Digital News Report: “podcasting may not yet be a mass market medium, but its audience profile is extremely interesting to publishers and to advertisers” (48). Newman continues to describe that podcast audiences generally have higher incomes, are more educated, and, notably, skew towards a younger demographic, making them an attractive demographic for publishers. While it is true that podcasts have achieved mass-market appeal on a global scale, the particular narratives that resonate with individual listeners can be highly specialised and varied, mirroring their diverse interests. This phenomenon is analogous to the realm of print magazines, which as a medium cater to a broad readership. However, individual publications often cater to distinct niches, attracting readers who share a specific set of interests. However, individual publications often target distinct niches, appealing to readers who share a specific set of interests. Podcasts in general appeal to a wide range of ages as a versatile medium, suitable for listening during various activities such as travel to and from work, dog walking, gym sessions, or while engaging in routine household chores like tidying up. Their capacity to build meaningful relationships with the audience is just beginning to be analysed. It has been found that “podcasts can provide informational and social gratifications to listeners” (Tobin and Guadagno 2). First Steps towards Serial Storytelling Podcasts in Germany The surge in serialised storytelling podcasts started shortly after the first season of the NPR podcast Serial in the English-speaking world, and was dubbed the medium’s “Golden Age” (Berry 170). These intricately produced journalistic podcasts became a new avenue for traditional media companies to market their in-depth research beyond print and online articles. And in many ways, this makes a lot of sense: with in-depth investigative research being one of the core values (and yet one of the most time-consuming, sometimes frustrating, and often very expensive assets) of any editorial medium, it makes economic sense to use as many channels as possible to publish the results of this research. In terms of content diversity, podcasts occupy a niche that is similar to what investigative journalism books or documentaries once did as a premium journalistic product where complex stories or investigations can be told in full, without the length constraints of typical journalistic formats (Krause and Uhrig 449). Podcasts have been distributed since 2005, but it took almost a decade for them to break away from the time limitations of linear radio slots. In Germany, serialised podcast storytelling arrived a year after Serial, with the Rundfunk Berlin-Brandenburg series Wer hat Burak erschossen? (Who Shot Burak?) from 2015, which many consider to be one of the first German podcast series in this new narrative tradition (Preger 7). Since then, the range of podcast series has diversified rapidly in Germany, just like in the US, in terms of both topics and providers. Following the already successful American themes of crime and terrorism, there were soon investigative research stories about topics ranging from the rise and fall of the former German economic powerhouse (and later notoriously fraudulent) Wirecard by Süddeutsche Zeitung or the popular media scandal about the publication of the fake diaries of Adolf Hitler by Stern Magazine in the 1980s, which the publishing house turned into a successful podcast series in 2020. And from 2021 onwards, there was an increase in biographically centred podcasts that combine elements of portraiture with investigative or contemporary historical elements such as the 2022 series Who the F*** Is Alice by Süddeutsche Zeitung Magazine, elaborating on the controversial work of Germany’s most popular first-generation feminist Alice Schwarzer. Yet, one of the most successful German storytelling podcasts is the episodic tale about the tragic descent of former radio host Ken Jebsen, from beloved (yet edgy) media personality to controversial conspiracy theorist, which was turned into a stunning tale in the series Cui Bono: WTF Happened to Ken Jebsen in 2021 (Eins 37), hitting a nerve in German society in times of Covid and the subsequent rise of populist conspiracy movements. Other notable German storytelling podcasts about prominent figures in Germany include the 2023 Series SchwarzRotGold: Mesut Özil zu Gast bei Freunden, about football player Mesut Özil and his complicated and highly political life story as an immigrant in Germany (published on RTL+), or Wild Wild Web: The Kim Dotcom Story from 2021 about Kim Dotcom, the controversial entrepreneur and founder of the now defunct file-sharing operator Megaupload, by Bayerischer Rundfunk. Specifics of Successful German Storytelling Podcasts While audio journalism has traditionally been a domain of public and private broadcasting companies in Germany, there has been a shift towards podcast productions from a more diverse set of media outlets. Approximately 66% of daily and weekly papers in Germany are currently producing podcasts, with 29% offering at least three different podcast series (Eins 104). This is a trend that is not limited to the big national subscription newspapers but can also be observed in smaller regional and local publications. According to a study by Wild & Wild, at least one third of the 308 regional and local subscription newspapers examined have incorporated podcasts into their offerings. The content of these podcasts primarily focusses on society and social issues (25%) and sports and leisure activities (20%) (175). What makes these podcasts specifically German (in contrast to series from other countries) is hard to answer and would require further research. What can be said, however, is that Germany has a vibrant scene for audio journalism and German audiences are rather familiar with the form of long-form audio reporting through the country's relatively strong public broadcasting system, which has been publishing quite elaborate forms of audio journalism since the 1950s. Even though many statistics and audience engagement metrics remain confidential, it has been written that audience engagement has been very good (Wild and Wild). It is evident that serial podcasts rank among the most successful digital offerings of large national media companies such as Süddeutsche Zeitung, fetching significant digital subscriptions with series like Wer ist Joni? (Who is Joni?), which was selected as one of the best podcasts in 2023 by the German newspaper Die Tageszeitung and was described as follows: Who is Joni? is a podcast about trust on the internet. We've all heard about marriage swindlers or people who extort money online. But Joni's case is different. It's particularly compelling because Christiane Lutz narrates it so personally. She contrasts her research with her own thoughts and feelings. She feels naïve, paranoid, angry, relieved, and all of this is completely relatable to the listener. (Fromm) As described here, the role of the host as the storyteller is paramount. The host serves as a convivial guide, offering subjective but meticulously researched narratives, sometimes paired with a serious sidekick for contrast. A recent study in Journalism Practice suggests that even news journalism benefits from narrative elements (Nee and Santana). Another study highlights two factors that enthral listeners: intimacy and emotion (Lindgren), which are prevalent across all podcast genres, including the often-criticised "chat podcasts" where two hosts discuss daily matters. At least in Germany, they are predominantly male, yet the masculine dominance has been challenged and reflected upon in recent discourse (Attig). These podcasts, which often rank highly on the German podcast charts on platforms such as Spotify, are quite different from the serial storytelling podcasts that many publishing houses see as a new way to engage with journalistic content. Common Ingredients of Successful German Storytelling Podcasts According to Schlütz, several characteristics distinguish narrative journalism as specific to podcasts, among them subjectivity, personalisation, contextualisation, and transparency (10). Building upon these findings, this article looks at various attributes of successful German podcasts from the serial storytelling variety. The selection of these podcasts was driven by their demonstrated popularity, as evidenced by reviews in newspapers, radio shows, or newsletters, as well as their recognition in the form of nominations or receipt of prestigious awards such as the German Reporter Prize and the German Podcast Prize. Such honours imply that these podcasts distinguish themselves by features like captivating storytelling, perceptive journalism, inventive production methods, or other exceptional qualities that have earned the respect and admiration of both their industry peers and listeners. Nevertheless, it should be acknowledged that this curated group does not represent an exhaustive overview of Germany's storytelling podcast landscape. The evaluation of the chosen podcasts was based on an analysis of their auditory content and the media's reception of them, including interviews with and reviews of both the podcasts and their creators. From this investigation, three principal insights emerged: Strong host figures who, in many cases, not only guide through the story, but become part of the story themselves. In the Norddeutscher Runkfunk production Eschede – 25 Jahre danach from 2023 (Eschede – 25 years after) the reporter Miriam Arndts researches the tragic accident that occurred in Eschede, Lower Saxony, in 1998, where a high-speed train derailed and collided with a bridge, resulting in the loss of 101 lives. Among the bereaved was Arndts, who lost her mother in the disaster. Making this podcast highly personal, Arndts engages with survivors and relatives of the victims, intertwining their accounts with her personal story, in line with Lindgren’s findings that “the involvement of the journalist (or host) in the story transcends self-reflexive metacommentary on journalistic practice to focus on the journalist as a private person” (10). Suspense and drama are leading elements of many of the successful podcasts: in Frauke Liebs – die Suche nach dem Mörder (Frauke Liebs – the search for the murderer) from the Magazine Stern, host and journalist Dominik Stawski embarks on a mission to solve a crime that he has been following for a good part of his career – addressing the murderer directly over the course of the episodes. This series could only be realised because of the reporter’s deep involvement in the story and his contacts with many of the people involved in the case, including the family of the victim. This is a good example of how such a series can be created from investigations that have already been published, but can now use the advantages of the longer form of serial storytelling in audio. The understanding of topical events and news is deepened by serial podcasts. As has been mentioned by Planer and Godulla, news stories can also be the drivers of in-depth audio storytelling (105). In Germany this can be exemplified by the popular series Die Flut – Warum musste Johanna sterben? (The flood – why did Johanna have to die?) from 2022, whose team of reporters from Westdeutscher Rundfunk investigates the circumstances of the tragic events of the deadly flood of the river Ahr in Germany that lead to many deaths in the summer of 2021. While this event is clearly of journalistic relevance, such tragedies are typically covered only for a short period by traditional news media. This podcast, in contrast, puts a lot of time and effort into trying to understand the consequences of such a natural disaster for those directly affected by it. The producers of the podcast describe their experience like this: During production, tears were shed more than once. And then, it is precisely this directness of emotion that makes the cruelty of the events tangible. It glosses over nothing, hides nothing. It makes the questions of responsibility directed at politicians even more pressing. (Beisenherz) These aspects show that – among others – these elements are recurring themes of storytelling podcasts in Germany. Of course, there are other factors that determine success of podcasts – the production (Preger 233), the distribution (Krause & Uhrig 457), and the marketing (Eins 169) being the most obvious ones. Current Trends and Economic Potential As Eins has pointed out, many leading publishers in Germany, including Der Spiegel, Süddeutsche Zeitung, and Handelsblatt, have in recent years created digital team positions to manage podcast productions (104). Audio studios have been established within publishing houses. Some editorial teams turn to external service providers, such as Die Zeit working with Pool Artists in Berlin for their podcasts or Süddeutsche Zeitung seeking external expertise for dramaturgy or sound design. The decision to manage podcasts in-house or to hire external providers depends on the available budget, expertise, and the complexity of the project (Eins 105). As Eins has pointed out, simple two-microphone interviews can be self-recorded by amateurs familiar with recording equipment and basic audio editing. However, sophisticated audio features with intricate sound design require teamwork, which is often sought from outside companies. German Media houses increasingly collaborate with external production companies. As podcast market competition grows, distinctive dramaturgy and sound may become crucial, especially for major media brands – this makes collaborations more interesting. For example, Süddeutsche Zeitung has produced elaborate investigative audio features, often in partnership with streaming services. The series Im Schattenkloster (2023/24) about a destructive religious cult in rural Bavaria has been produced in collaboration with Audible, an Amazon company. These podcast series sometimes continue the narrative of previously published investigations and articles in audio form, such as Der Spiegel's Made in Germany – das Flughafenfiasko BER or Going to Ibiza by Süddeutsche Zeitung, or they may be released as exclusive digital content like Narcoland by Aachener Zeitung. The appeal of producing serialised podcasts in an era where digital performance and the attraction of many paying customers to buy digital subscriptions is very important could be attributed to their relatively long production cycle (Krause and Uhrig 456). Unlike topical formats tied to release dates, complex storytelling podcasts retain significance over time in what is known as the Long Tail, described by Anderson, which encapsulated the concept of (digital) products that do not rely on high sales volume from a few mainstream products but achieve sales through a variety of niche products. And the numbers point in this direction: the 2020 podcast series Der Mörder und meine Cousine (The Murderer and My Cousin) produced by Bayerischer Rundfunk registered over 1.2 million plays between June 2020 and January 2022. Of these, 534,000 plays were recorded in the first two months following its release. Over the next 18 months, it garnered an additional 677,973 listens. Even in January 2022, more than 18 months post-release, the monthly play count exceeded 10,000, according to data from the provider's portal Spotify for Podcasters and the internal analysis tool MeFo Charts used by Bayerischer Rundfunk (Krause and Uhrig 457) Conclusion In the landscape of modern journalism in Germany, the advent of serial storytelling through podcasts has carved out a novel niche for high-quality narrative forms. Their appeal lies significantly in their adaptability, which has seen their popularity skyrocket and has made them an important asset in the sales strategy of digital subscriptions for publishing houses (Eins 106). By leveraging the power of audio, these formats not only captivate new demographics but also play a crucial role in shaping journalistic identities, presenting narratives in ways that resonate with the changing consumption patterns of listeners. These narratives, designed for on-the-go consumption, echo the episodic consumption trends set by intricate television and streaming shows, seamlessly fitting into the listener's lifestyle. Journalistically, these podcast series offer a compelling twist on storytelling (Krause and Uhrig 459), often expanding beyond traditional broadcast journalism principles to explore deeper, more intricate narratives, marking an exciting evolution in the way stories are told and consumed. This article has pointed out three aspects that storytelling podcasts in Germany have in common: strong host figures, suspense and drama, and a relation to current news and events, building bridges between classic news reporting and storytelling techniques exemplified by this article. It remains to be seen how these trends evolve in the future: the trend towards audio is described by the current Reuters Institute Digital News Report (Newman et al. 28) as “help[ing to] build loyal relationships, and ... good at attracting younger audiences”. Nevertheless, and despite all positive opportunities, there are of course limiting factors, such as the relatively high costs and long production cycles of such series, which require further investigation. References Anderson, Chris. The Long Tail: Why the Future of Business Is Selling Less of More. Hyperion, 2008. Attig, Christiane. "Männlich, Mittelalt, Gebildet – oder? Eine Charakterisierung deutschsprachiger Podcaster:Innen". Kommunikation@gesellschaft 21.2 (2020). Beisenherz, C. "Die Flut—Warum musste Johanna sterben?" 19 June 2023. <https://www1.wdr.de/podcast/die-flut-100.html>. Berry, Richard. "A Golden Age of Podcasting? Evaluating Serial in the Context of Podcast Histories." Journal of Radio & Audio Media 22.2 (2015): 170-178. Dowling, D.O., and K.J. Miller. "Immersive Audio Storytelling: Podcasting and Serial Documentary in the Digital Publishing Industry." Journal of Radio & Audio Media 26.1 (2019): 167-184. Eins, P. Podcasts im Journalismus: Eine Einführung für die Praxis. Springer Fachmedien, 2022. Fromm, A. "Recherche-Podcast ‘Wer ist Joni?’: Das einsame Mädchen." Die Tageszeitung, 22 Jan. 2023. <https://taz.de/!5907468/>. Kelleter, F. Populäre Serialität: Eine Einführung. Transcript Verlag, 2012. Krause, T., and K. Uhrig. "Journalismus zum Bingen: Potenziale und Funktionen serieller Podcasts für das digitale Storytelling." In Podcasts, eds. V. Katzenberger, J. Keil, and M. Wild. Wiesbaden: Springer Fachmedien, 2022. 445-460. Kulkarni, S., et al. "Innovating Online Journalism: New Ways of Storytelling." Journalism Practice 17.9 (2023): 845-1863. Lindgren, M. "Intimacy and Emotions in Podcast Journalism: A Study of Award-Winning Australian and British Podcasts." Journalism Practice 17.4 (2023): 704-719. Nee, R.C., and A.D. Santana. "Podcasting the Pandemic: Exploring Storytelling Formats and Shifting Journalistic Norms in News Podcasts Related to the Coronavirus." Journalism Practice 16.8 (2022) 1559-1577. Newman, N. "News Podcasts: Who Is Listening and What Formats Are Working?" In Reuters Institute Digital News Report 2023, eds. N. Newman et al. Oxford: Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism, 2023. 48-52. Planer, R., and A. Godulla. "Storytelling in Podcasts deutscher Medienhäuser: Echte Interaktion, geplante Spontanität." In Podcasts, eds. V. Katzenberger, J. Keil, and M. Wild. Wiesbaden: Springer Fachmedien, 2022. 101-118. Preger, S. Geschichten erzählen: Storytelling für Radio und Podcast. Wiesbaden: Springer Fachmedien, 2019. Schlütz, D. "Auditive ‘Deep Dives’: Podcasts als narrativer Journalismus." Kommunikation@gesellschaft 21.2 (2020). Tobin, S.J., and R.E. Guadagno. "Why People Listen: Motivations and Outcomes of Podcast Listening." PLOS ONE 17.4 (2022). Wild, M., and T. Wild. "Vermessung der Podcastlandschaft: Eine explorative Analyse der Podcastangebote der Lokal- und Regionalzeitungen in Deutschland." In Podcasts: Perspektiven und Potenziale eines digitalen Mediums, eds. V. Katzenberger, J. Keil, and M. Wild. Wiesbaden: Springer Fachmedien, 2022. 153-179.

Audio Fiction Making Noise: A Changing Genre in Children’s Literature This article is a study of contemporary audio fiction for children in Sweden, what is sometimes also called audio originals or born-audio books. Audio fiction is defined in the article as literature written to be recorded for audio and consumed through listening. It is a genre related to, and overlapping with, audiobooks, radio, and podcasts but obviously also with literature in printed books. While audio fiction has risen in production and popularity it is not a new phenomenon as such, but rather a kind of literature that has developed over time. The article gives historical examples of children’s audio fiction and situates the contemporary production in a larger context of a changing media world and the book market for children’s literature. The main examples used to understand the phenomenon are IJustWantToBeCool’s Sommarjobbarna (The Summer Workers, 2020­–2022) and Camilla Brinck’s series on the mice Musse & Helium (2017–). These are the most popular audiobooks for children in the last years and both series as well as authors are linked to other media such as Youtube, podcast, print, and music. The theoretical conjectures derive from book history and sociology of literature, arguing that changing media for literature has direct implications for literary form, function, and dissemination. Methodologically the article is a genre study using Alastair Fowler’s concept of genre as aggregated features. Thus, a comparison is made between the two examples and other formats such as children’s print books, audiobooks, and radio drama as well as literary genres such as adventure fiction, melodrama, and slapstick. Furthermore, narrative aspects of the two audio literature examples are analyzed in terms of metafiction, voice, and sound effects.

Podcast fiction storytelling is an underdeveloped area of new media studies. There is a wealth of texts available suitable for exploration. The example of The Adventure Zone in particular presents a strong argument that the medium possesses its own singular strengths for storytelling. The Adventure Zone is a fictional, audio-only, serialised podcast in which a narrative of both considerable length and depth is constructed through the playing of tabletop roleplaying game Dungeons & Dragons. It is hosted by the McElroy brothers, Griffin, Justin, and Travis, along with their father, Clint. The Adventure Zone demonstrates the unique qualities and noteworthy potential the podcast medium possesses. The McElroy family collaborates utilising comedy improv practices, which are strengthened by the game’s mechanics and rules. The line between characters and players – along with the line between textual and metatextual, canonical and non-canonical, diegetic and non-diegetic data – is significantly blurred through instances such as self-reflexivity and popular culture references. The fourth wall is inapplicable to The Adventure Zone. It is necessary to re-imagine it instead as a permeable curtain separating the players from the characters. The listeners are provided with a clear view of not only the story of The Adventure Zone, but the construction of its creation. There are few mediums in which the audience can so effectively and candidly witness the storytelling process. Comparisons drawn from the original text – The Adventure Zone podcast – to its ongoing adaptations – The Adventure Zone graphic novels – illustrates this fact further. The collaborative, improvisational, metafictional qualities of the dynamic audio-only medium of podcasts are absent from static visual mediums.

This adventure in audiography started as a conference presentation meant to introduce the database project PodcastRE (short for Podcast Research, http://podcastre.org), which aims to provide a searchable, researchable database of podcasts. Given the themes and issues Archive 81 – a fictional found footage horror/sci-fi podcast – presents, we thought it might be a suitable framework for our attempt at layered, embedded audiography.

For the past decade or so, internet radio, podcasts, mobile sound apps, and digital libraries of audio content have enjoyed increasing popularity among researchers and receivers of culture. Radio, similarly to other traditional media, often experiments with the opportunities offered by the new media technologies enabling the emergence of new communicational practices. As a starting point, I consider the contemporary audiosphere, which constitutes the auditory part of the audio-visual culture, and the influence of technological changes on radio communications, artists, and receivers. I attempt to answer the question, what happens at genre fringes? What are the characteristic features of the emerging forms? How, when one is faced with new technology, the multimedia world, and virtual reality, can one reach a reflection on the fiction and non-fiction genres on the radio? The expansive character of new technologies is often the source of inspiration for that which is traditional, thus renewing the object of its study. The inclusion of new phenomena within the widely understood auditoriness has a rescuing nature for traditional forms, and, at the same time, offers new opportunities for creators, and thus an area of research for literary scientists, media scientists and literary critics.

ABSTRACT During Bad Bugs Bookclub meetings, scientists and non-scientists discuss novels in which infectious disease forms part of the plot in order to encourage public understanding of, and engagement with, microbiology. The website presents meeting reports and reading guides for over 70 novels. The aim of this work was to raise awareness of the bookclub and increase website engagement. In 2019, events designed to reach new audiences maintained an increase in page views from the end of 2018 (around 200 per month). In 2020, the coronavirus pandemic forced bookclub meetings online (Zoom). These, with podcasts and some Twitter discussion, increased page views with a peak of 400 per month. Membership increased, and global ‘attendance’ was facilitated. Feelings and observations related to each book and the pandemic were noted in meeting reports. A survey of current and previous bookclub members carried out early in lockdown with the aim of determining the future direction of the bookclub revealed the continuing value of both literary and scientific experiences to members. The bookclub has engaged scientists and non-scientists in meaningful discussion about infectious disease. Reach is modest, but the resource is significant, with potential impact in education and engagement.

IntroductionOver three days in November 2017, 400 people gathered for a conference at the Sam’s Town Hotel and Gambling Hall in Las Vegas, Nevada. The majority of attendees were fiction authors but the conference program looked like no ordinary writer’s festival; there were no in-conversation interviews with celebrity authors, no panels on the politics of the book industry and no books launched or promoted. Instead, this was a gathering called 20Books2017, a self-publishing conference about the business of fiction ebooks and there was expertise in the room.Among those attending, 50 reportedly earned over $100,000 US per annum, with four said to be earning in excess of $1,000,000 US year. Yet none of these authors are household names. Their work is not adapted to film or television. Their books cannot be found on the shelves of brick-and-mortar bookstores. For the most part, these authors go unrepresented by the publishing industry and literary agencies, and further to which, only a fraction have ever actively pursued traditional publishing. Instead, they write for and sell into a commercial fiction market dominated by a single retailer and publisher: online retailer Amazon.While the online ebook market can be dynamic and lucrative, it can also be chaotic. Unlike the traditional publishing industry—an industry almost stoically adherent to various gatekeeping processes: an influential agent-class, formalized education pathways, geographic demarcations of curatorial power (see Thompson)—the nascent ebook market is unmapped and still somewhat ungoverned. As will be discussed below, even the markets directly engineered by Amazon are subject to rapid change and upheaval. It can be a space with shifting boundaries and thus, for many in the traditional industry both Amazon and self-publishing come to represent a type of encroaching northern dread.In the eyes of the traditional industry, digital self-publishing certainly conforms to the barbarous north of European literary metaphor: Orwell’s ‘real ugliness of industrialism’ (94) governed by the abject lawlessness of David Peace’s Yorkshire noir (Fowler). But for adherents within the day-to-day of self-publishing, this unruly space also provides the frontiers and gold-rushes of American West mythology.What remains uncertain is the future of both the traditional and the self-publishing sectors and the degree to which they will eventually merge, overlap and/or co-exist. So-called ‘hybrid-authors’ (those self-publishing and involved in traditional publication) are becoming increasingly common—especially in genre fiction—but the disruption brought about by self-publishing and ebooks appears far from complete.To the contrary, the Amazon-led ebook iteration of this market is relatively new. While self-publishing and independent publishing have long histories as modes of production, Amazon launched both its Kindle e-reader device and its marketplace Kindle Direct Publishing (KDP) a little over a decade ago. In the years subsequent, the integration of KDP within the Amazon retail environment dramatically altered the digital self-publishing landscape, effectively paving the way for competing platforms (Kobo, Nook, iBooks, GooglePlay) and today’s vibrant—and, at times, crassly commercial—self-published fiction communities.As a result, the self-publishing market has experienced rapid growth: self-publishers now collectively hold the largest share of fiction sales within Amazon’s ebook categories, as much as 35% of the total market (Howey). Contrary to popular belief they do not reside entirely at the bottom of Amazon’s expansive catalogue either: at the time of writing, 11 of Amazon’s Top 50 Bestsellers were self-published and the median estimated monthly revenue generated by these ‘indie’ books was $43,000 USD / month (per author) on the American site alone (KindleSpy).This international publishing market now proffers authors running the gamut of commercial uptake, from millionaire successes like romance writer H.M. Ward and thriller author Mark Dawson, through to the 19% of self-published authors who listed their annual royalty income as $0 per annum (Weinberg). Their overall market share remains small—as little as 1.8% of trade publishing in the US as a whole (McIlroy 4)—but the high end of this lucrative slice is particularly dynamic: science fiction author Michael Anderle (and 20Books2017 keynote) is on-track to become a seven-figure author in his second year of publishing (based on Amazon sales ranking data), thriller author Mark Dawson has sold over 300,000 copies of his self-published Milton series in 3 years (McGregor), and a slew of similar authors have recently attained New York Times and US Today bestseller status.To date, there is not a broad range of scholarship investigating the operational logics of self-published fiction. Timothy Laquintano’s recent Mass Authorship and the Rise of Self-Publishing (2016) is a notable exception, drawing self-publishing into historical debates surrounding intellectual property, the future of the book and digital abundance. The more empirical portions of Mass Authorship—taken from activity between 2011 to 2015—directly informs this research and his chapter on Amazon (Chapter 4) could be read as a more macro companion to my findings below; taken together and compared they illustrate just how fast-moving the market is. Nick Levey’s work on ‘post-press’ literature and its inherent risks (and discourses of cultural capitol) also informs my thesis here.In addition to which, there is scholarship centred on publishing more generally that also touches on self-published writers as a category of practitioner (see Baverstock and Steinitz, Haughland, Thomlinson and Bélanger). Most of this later work focuses almost entirely on the finished product, usually situating self-publishing as directly oppositional to traditional publishing, and thus subordinating it.In this paper, I hope to outline how the self-publishers I’ve observed have enacted various tactical approaches that specifically strive to tame their chaotic marketplace, and to indicate—through one case study (Amazon exclusivity)—a site of production and resistance where they have occasionally succeeded. Their approach is one that values information sharing and an open-source approach to book-selling and writing craft, ideologies drawn more from the tech / start-up world than commercial book industry described by Thompson (10). It is a space deeply informed by the virtual nature of its major platforms and as such, I argue its relation to the world of traditional publishing—and its representation within the traditional book industry—are tenuous, despite the central role of authorship and books.Making the Virtual Self-Publishing SceneWithin the study of popular music, the use of Barry Shank and Will Straw’s ‘scene’ concept has been an essential tool for uncovering and mapping independent/DIY creative practice. The term scene, defined by Straw as cultural space, is primarily interested in how cultural phenomena articulates or announces itself. A step beyond community, scene theorists are less concerned with examining an evolving history of practice (deemed essentialist) than they are concerned with focusing on the “making and remaking of alliances” as the crucial process whereby communal culture is formed, expressed and distributed (370).A scene’s spatial dimension—often categorized as local, translocal or virtual (see Bennett and Peterson)—demands attention be paid to hybridization, as a diversity of actors approach the same terrain from differing vantage points, with distinct motivations. As a research tool, scene can map action as the material existence of ideology. Thus, its particular usefulness is its ability to draw findings from diverse communities of practice.Drawing methodologies and approaches from Bourdieu’s field theory—a particularly resonant lens for examining cultural work—and de Certeau’s philosophies of space and circumstantial moves (“failed and successful attempts at redirection within a given terrain,” 375), scene focuses on articulation, the process whereby individual and communal activity becomes an observable or relatable or recordable phenomena.Within my previous work (see Bennett and Rogers, Rogers), I’ve used scene to map a variety of independent music-making practices and can see clear resemblances between independent music-making and the growing assemblage of writers within ebook self-publishing. The democratizing impulses espoused by self-publishers (the removal of gatekeepers as married to visions of a fiction/labour meritocracy) marry up quite neatly with the heady mix of separatism and entrepreneurialism inherent in Australian underground music.Self-publishers are typically older and typically more upfront about profit, but the communal interaction—the trade and gifting of support, resources and information—looks decidedly similar. Instead, the self-publishers appear different in one key regard: their scene-making is virtual in ways that far outstrip empirical examples drawn from popular music. 20Books2017 is only one of two conferences for this community thus far and represents one of the few occasions in which the community has met in any sort of organized way offline. For the most part, and in the day-to-day, self-publishing is a virtual scene.At present, the virtual space of self-published fiction is centralized around two digital platforms. Firstly, there is the online message board, of which two specific online destinations are key: the first is Kboards, a PHP-coded forum “devoted to all things Kindle” (Kboards) but including a huge author sub-board of self-published writers. The archive of this board amounts to almost two million posts spanning back to 2009. The second message board site is a collection of Facebook groups, of which the 10,000-strong membership of 20BooksTo50K is the most dominant; it is the originating home of 20Books2017.The other platform constituting the virtual scene of self-publishing is that of podcasting. While there are a number of high-profile static websites and blogs related to self-publishing (and an emerging community of vloggers), these pale in breadth and interaction when compared to podcasts such as The Creative Penn, The Self-Publishing Podcast, The Sell More Books Show, Rocking Self-Publishing (now defunct but archived) and The Self-Publishing Formula podcast. Statistical information on the distribution of these podcasts is unavailable but the circulation and online discussion of their content and the interrelation between the different shows and their hosts and guests all point to their currency within the scene.In short, if one is to learn about the business and craft production modes of self-publishing, one tends to discover and interact with one of these two platforms. The consensus best practice espoused on these boards and podcasts is the data set in which the remainder of this paper draws findings. I have spent the last two years embedded in these communities but for the purposes of this paper I will be drawing data exclusively from the public-facing Kboards, namely because it is the oldest, most established site, but also because all of the issues and discussion presented within this data have been cross-referenced across the different podcasts and boards. In fact, for a long period Kboards was so central to the scene that itself was often the topic of conversation elsewhere.Sticking in the Algorithm: The Best Practice of Fiction Self-PublishingSelf-publishing is a virtual scene because its “constellation of divergent interests and forces” (Shank, Preface, x) occur almost entirely online. This is not just a case of discussion, collaboration and discovery occurring online—as with the virtual layer of local and translocal music scenes—rather, the self-publishing community produces into the online space, almost exclusively. Its venues and distribution pathways are online and while its production mechanisms (writing) are still physical, there is an almost instantaneous and continuous interface with the online. These writers type and, increasingly dictate, their work into the virtual cloud, have it edited there (via in-text annotation) and from there the work is often designed, formatted, published, sold, marketed, reviewed and discussed online.In addition to which, a significant portion of these writers produce collaborative works, co-writing novels and co-editing them via cooperative apps. Teams of beta-readers (often fans) work on manuscripts pre-launch. Covers, blurbs, log lines, ad copy and novel openings are tested and reconfigured via crowd-sourced opinion. Seen here, the writing of the self-publishing scene is often explicitly commercial. But more to the fact, it never denies its direct co-relation with the mandates of online publishing. It is not traditional writing (it moves beyond authorship) and viewing these writers as emerging or unpublished or indeed, using the existing vernacular of literary writing practices, often fails to capture what it is they do.As the self-publishers write for the online space, Amazon forms a huge part of their thinking and working. The site sits at the heart of the practices under consideration here. Many of the authors drawn into this research are ‘wide’ in their online retail distribution, meaning they have books placed with Amazon’s online retail competitors. Yet the decision to go ‘wide’ or stay exclusive to Amazon — and the volume of discussion around this choice — is illustrative of how dominant the company remains in the scene. In fact, the example of Amazon exclusivity provides a valuable case-study.For self-publishers, Amazon exclusivity brings two stated and tangible benefits. The first relates to revenue diversification within Amazon, with exclusivity delivering an additional revenue stream in the form of Kindle Unlimited royalties. Kindle Unlimited (KU) is a subscription service for ebooks. Consumers pay a flat monthly fee ($13.99 AUD) for unlimited access to over a million Kindle titles. For a 300-page book, a full read-through of a novel under KU pays roughly the same royalty to authors as the sale of a $2.99 ebook, but only to Amazon-exclusive authors. If an exclusive book is particularly well suited to the KU audience, this can present authors with a very serious return.The second benefit of Amazon exclusivity is access to internal site merchandising; namely ‘Free Days’ where the book is given away (and can chart on the various ‘Top 100 Free’ leaderboards) and ‘Countdown Deals’ where a decreasing discount is staggered across a period (thus creating a type of scarcity).These two perks can prove particularly lucrative to individual authors. On Kboards, user Annie Jocoby (also writing as Rachel Sinclair) details her experiences with exclusivity:I have a legal thriller series that is all-in with KU [Kindle Unlimited], and I can honestly say that KU has been fantastic for visibility for that particular series. I put the books into KU in the first part of August, and I watched my rankings rise like crazy after I did that. They've stuck, too. If I weren't in KU, I doubt that they would still be sticking as well as they have. (anniejocoby)This is fairly typical of the positive responses to exclusivity, yet it incorporates a number of the more opaque benefits entangled with going exclusive to Amazon.First, there is ‘visibility.’ In self-publishing terms, ‘visibility’ refers almost exclusively to chart positions within Amazon. The myriad of charts — and how they function — is beyond the scope of this paper but they absolutely indicate — often dictate — the discoverability of a book online. These charts are the ‘front windows’ of Amazon, to use an analogy to brick-and-mortar bookstores. Books that chart well are actively being bought by customers and they are very often those benefiting from Amazon’s powerful recommendation algorithm, something that expands beyond the site into the company’s expansive customer email list. This brings us to the second point Jocoby mentions, the ‘sticking’ within the charts.There is a widely held belief that once a good book (read: free of errors, broadly entertaining, on genre) finds its way into the Amazon recommendation algorithm, it can remain there for long periods of time leading to a building success as sales beget sales, further boosting the book’s chart performance and reviews. There is also the belief among some authors that Kindle Unlimited books are actively favoured by this algorithm. The high-selling Amanda M. Lee noted a direct correlation:Rank is affected when people borrow your book [under KU]. Page reads don't play into it all. (Amanda M. Lee)Within the same thread, USA Today bestseller Annie Bellet elaborated:We tested this a bunch when KU 2.0 hit. A page read does zip for rank. A borrow, even with no pages read, is what prompts the rank change. Borrows are weighted exactly like sales from what we could tell, it doesn't matter if nobody opens the book ever. All borrows now are ghost borrows, of course, since we can't see them anymore, so it might look like pages are coming in and your rank is changing, but what is probably happening is someone borrowed your book around the same time, causing the rank jump. (Annie B)Whether this advantage is built into the algorithm in a (likely) attempt to favour exclusive authors, or by nature of KU books presenting at a lower price point, is unknown but there is anecdotal evidence that once a KU book gains traction, it can ‘stick’ within the charts for longer periods of time compared to non-exclusive titles.At the entrepreneurial end of the fiction self-publishing scene, Amazon is positioned at the very centre. To go wide—to follow vectors through the scene adjacent to Amazon — is to go around the commercial centre and its profits. Yet no one in this community remains unaffected by the strategic position of this site and the market it has either created or captured. Amazon’s institutional practices can be adopted by competitors (Kobo Plus is a version of KU) and the multitude of tactics authors use to promote their work all, in one shape or another, lead back to ‘circumstantial moves’ learned from Amazon or services that are aimed at promoting work sold there. Further to which, the sense of instability and risk engendered by such a dominant market player is felt everywhere.Some Closing Ideas on the Ideology of Self-PublishingSelf-publishing fiction remains tactical in the de Certeau sense of the term. It is responsive and ever-shifting, with a touch of communal complicity and what he calls la perruque (‘the wig’), a shorthand for resistance that presents itself as submission (25). The entrepreneurialism of self-published fiction trades off this sense of the tactical.Within the scene, Amazon bestseller charts aren’t as much markers of prestige as systems to be hacked. The choice between ‘wide’ and exclusive is only ever short-term; it is carefully scrutinised and the trade-offs and opportunities are monitored week-to-week and debated constantly online. Over time, the self-publishing scene has become expert at decoding Amazon’s monolithic Terms of Service, ever eager to find both advantage and risk as they attempt to lever the affordances of digital publishing against their own desire for profit and expression.This sense of mischief and slippage forms a big part of what self-publishing is. In contrast to traditional publishing—with its long lead times and physical real estate—self-publishing can’t help but appear fragile, wild and coarse. There is no other comparison possible.To survive in self-publishing is to survive outside the established book industry and to thrive within a new and far more uncertain market/space, one almost entirely without a mapped topology. Unlike the traditional publishing industry—very much a legacy, a “relatively stable” population group (Straw 373)—self-publishing cannot escape its otherness, not in the short term. Both its spatial coordinates and its pathways remain too fast-evolving in comparison to the referent of traditional publishing. In the short-to-medium term, I imagine it will remain at some cultural remove from traditional publishing, be it perceived as a threatening northern force or a speculative west.To see self-publishing in the present, I encourage scholars to step away from traditional publishing industry protocols and frameworks, to strive to see this new arena as the self-published authors themselves understand it (what Muggleton has referred to a “indigenous meaning” 13).Straw and Shank’s scene concept provides one possible conceptual framework for this shift in understanding as scene’s reliance on spatial considerations harbours an often underemphazised asset: it is a theory of orientation. At heart, it draws as much from de Certeau as Bourdieu and as such, the scene presented in this work is never complete or fixed. It is de Certeau’s city “shaped out of fragments of trajectories and alterations of spaces” (93). These scenes—be they musicians or authors—are only ever glimpsed and from a vantage point of close proximity. In short, it is one way out of the essentialisms that currently shroud self-published fiction as a craft, business and community of authors. The cultural space of self-publishing, to return Straw’s scene definition, is one that mirrors its own porous, online infrastructure, its own predominance in virtuality. Its pathways are coded together inside fast-moving media companies and these pathways are increasingly entwined within algorithmic processes of curation that promise meritocratization and disintermediation yet delivery systems that can be learned and manipulated.The agility to publish within these systems is the true skill-set required to self-publish fiction online. It traverses specific platforms and short-term eras. It is the core attribute of success in the scene. Everything else is secondary, including the content of the books produced. It is not the case that these books are of lesser literary quality or that their ever-growing abundance is threatening—this is the counter-argument so often presented by the traditional book industry—but more so that without entrepreneurial agility, the quality of the ebook goes undetermined as it sinks lower and lower into a distribution system that is so open it appears endless.ReferencesAmanda M. Lee. “Re: KU Page Reads and Rank.” Kboards: Writer’s Cafe. 1 Oct. 2007 <https://www.kboards.com/index.php/topic,232945.msg3245005.html#msg3245005>.Annie B [Annie Bellet]. “Re: KU Page Reads and Rank.” Kboards: Writer’s Cafe. 1 Oct. 2007 <https://www.kboards.com/index.php/topic,232945.msg3245068.html#msg3245068>.Anniejocoby [Annie Jocoby]. “Re: Tell Me Why You're WIDE or KU ONLY.” Kboards: Writer’s Cafe. 1 Oct. 2007 <https://www.kboards.com/index.php/topic,242514.msg3558176.html#msg3558176>.Baverstock, Alison, and Jackie Steinitz. “Why Are the Self-Publishers?” Learned Publishing 26 (2013): 211-223.Bennett, Andy, and Richard A. Peterson, eds. Music Scenes: Local, Translocal and Virtual. Vanderbilt University Press, 2004.———, and Ian Rogers. Popular Music Scenes and Cultural Memory. Palgrave Macmillan, 2016.Bourdieu, Pierre. Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgement of Taste. Routledge, 1984.De Certeau, Michel. The Practice of Everyday Life. University of California Press, 1984.Haugland, Ann. “Opening the Gates: Print On-Demand Publishing as Cultural Production” Publishing Research Quarterly 22.3 (2006): 3-16.Howey, Hugh. “October 2016 Author Earnings Report: A Turning of the Tide.” Author Earnings. 12 Oct. 2016 <http://authorearnings.com/report/october-2016/>.Kboards. About Kboards.com. 2017. 4 Oct. 2017 <https://www.kboards.com/index.php/topic,242026.0.html>.KindleSpy. 2017. Chrome plug-in.Laquintano, Timothy. Mass Authorship and the Rise of Self-Publishing. University of Iowa Press, 2016.Levey, Nick. “Post-Press Literature: Self-Published Authors in the Literary Field.” Post 45. 1 Oct. 2017 <http://post45.research.yale.edu/2016/02/post-press-literature-self-published-authors-in-the-literary-field-3/>.McGregor, Jay. “Amazon Pays $450,000 a Year to This Self-Published Writer.” Forbes. 17 Apr. 2017 <http://www.forbes.com/sites/jaymcgregor/2015/04/17/mark-dawson-made-750000-from-self-published-amazon-books/#bcce23a35e38>.McIlroy, Thad. “Startups within the U.S. Book Publishing Industry.” Publishing Research Quarterly 33 (2017): 1-9.Muggleton, David. Inside Subculture: The Post-Modern Meaning of Style. Berg, 2000.Orwell, George. Selected Essays. Penguin Books, 1960.Fowler, Dawn. ‘‘This Is the North – We Do What We Want’: The Red Riding Trilogy as ‘Yorkshire Noir.” Cops on the Box. University of Glamorgan, 2013.Rogers, Ian. “The Hobbyist Majority and the Mainstream Fringe: The Pathways of Independent Music Making in Brisbane, Australia.” Redefining Mainstream Popular Music, eds. Andy Bennett, Sarah Baker, and Jodie Taylor. Routlegde, 2013. 162-173.Shank, Barry. Dissonant Identities: The Rock’n’Roll Scene in Austin Texas. Wesleyan University Press, 1994.Straw, Will. “Systems of Articulation, Logics of Change: Communities and Scenes in Popular Music.” Cultural Studies 5.3 (1991): 368–88.Thomlinson, Adam, and Pierre C. Bélanger. “Authors’ Views of e-Book Self-Publishing: The Role of Symbolic Capital Risk.” Publishing Research Quarterly 31 (2015): 306-316.Thompson, John B. Merchants of Culture: The Publishing Business in the Twenty-First Century. Penguin, 2012.Weinberg, Dana Beth. “The Self-Publishing Debate: A Social Scientist Separates Fact from Fiction.” Digital Book World. 3 Oct. 2017 <http://www.digitalbookworld.com/2013/self-publishing-debate-part3/>.

Abstract Background The American Association of Medical Colleges has called for incorporation of the health humanities into medical education, and many medical schools now offer formal programs or content in this field. However, there is growing recognition among educators that we must expand beyond empathy and wellness and apply the health humanities to questions of social justice – that is, critical health humanities. In this paper we demonstrate how this burgeoning field offers us tools for integrating social justice into medical education, utilizing the frameworks of critical consciousness and structural competency. Practice of health humanities Critical health humanities can be applied at multiple levels of learners, and in a variety of contexts. We are two physician-writers who have developed several educational programs that demonstrate this. We taught a seminar that introduced first-year and second-year undergraduates to concepts such as social determinants of health, intergenerational trauma, intersectionality, resilience, and cross-cultural care through works of fiction, poetry, film, podcasts, stand-up comedy, and more. Through creative projects and empathic reflection, students engaged with the complexities of structural forces that create and maintain health disparities. Medical students in their clinical years can engage in critical health humanities learning experiences as well. We teach several multidisciplinary electives that address social (in)justice in medicine, as well as mentor fourth-year students engaged in independent electives that foster critical awareness around health equity and ethics. Beyond the classroom, we have actively engaged in critical health humanities practices through story slams, literary journal clubs, conference presentations, and Grand Rounds. Through these activities we have included learners at GME and CME levels. These examples also demonstrate how community engagement and multidisciplinary partnerships can contribute to the practice of critical health humanities. Conclusion In this paper, we explore the growing field of critical health humanities and its potential for teaching health equity through narrative practices. We provide concrete examples of educational activities that incorporate critical consciousness and structural competency – frameworks we have found useful for conceptualizing critical health humanities as a pedagogical practice. We also discuss the strengths and challenges of this work and suggest future directions.

Este estudo se concentra no exame das reportagens “Viagem ao continente gelado” e “Maratona de Jerusalém”, lançadas pelo departamento de jornalismo da Record tv em 2023 (Brasil) e apoiadas em imagens esféricas, que se destacam por explorar um novo gênero do audiovisual imersivo de não ficção: o videocast 360°. Tal estética é inspirada nas premissas do podcast e do videocast, formas de entretenimento que têm recebido maior atenção recentemente. Em termos metodológicos, a investigação é classificada como um estudo de casos múltiplos, pautado na interpretação da estrutura transmidiática dos produtos e das escolhas referentes à linguagem 360°, contando também com o alicerce de entrevistas concedidas por profissionais da emissora de tv. Na seção de revisão bibliográfica, são apresentadas contribuições relacionadas à convergência no ambiente televisivo, à interatividade, ao telejornalismo e a suas conexões com conteúdos imersivos. Entre os resultados alcançados, pôde-se apurar que as obras avaliadas evidenciam arranjos distintos, mas que se conectam pela exploração de qr codes, de estratégias multiplataforma e de um novo modelo narrativo: o podcast/videocast 360°. Trata-se de opção que se soma ao leque de possibilidades existentes no campo das narrativas esféricas de não ficção, sendo capaz de enriquecer a experiência noticiosa da audiência.

Introduction Media and trauma cannot exist independently but are always caught in a cross-feedback loop. Depending on its mediating technology, trauma has always given rise to a different “technological unconscious” whereby the very conditions of trauma are tied to its form and technological dimensions (Johanssen 311). Our analysis explores this link, drawing on the case of the 2023 Greek TRAUMA podcast (Koukoumakas et al.), an audio documentary nested in iMEdD Lab, tracing seven disastrous events that have afflicted Greece in the last twenty-four years – from the Parnitha earthquake in 1999 to the Tempi train crash in 2023. This is a unique example of a quality news podcast that touches upon the ways collective trauma has built into the national identity of modern Greek people. There is a striking similarity in the way Amit Pinchevski describes how the Holocaust became a collectively shared trauma in Israel and how the TRAUMA podcast narrates the collective trauma in Greece. Without diminishing the experience of those directly involved and traumatised, TRAUMA weaves an audiography of a national body traversed with traumatic symptoms. Already from the title, TRAUMA bears a self-contradictory promise: to document that which essentially escapes documentation, or, in Amit Pinchevski’s apt words, to mediate a “failed mediation” (4). More specifically, trauma is being shaped by the technology through which it is mediated, and is tied to its form and technological dimensions (Johanssen 311). This is also the case in the present podcast, which (re)mediates seven stories of traumatic disaster in the acoustic language of voice and sound, and is necessarily bound and shaped by the very logics and limitations of the podcast medium. What concerns the present article is how, in the case of TRAUMA, podcasting logics tap on the existing media landscape of trauma coverage, negotiating and shaping trauma representation anew. Following current scholarship in the field, we read TRAUMA not only as a journalistic audio archive aiming to document and share traumatic narratives, but, rather, as essentially a(e)ffecting the way these stories are perceived. Far from aestheticising or sensationalising the “private drama of catastrophe”, as is often the perverse “lure” and the case with trauma coverage in traditional media, TRAUMA utilises podcast logics to create audibility platforms for otherwise lost voices, and thus, in an activist gesture, to draw attention to and raise concern about the painful repetition of tragic stories in the light of a non-(pro)active Greek state. Our analysis, framed in audio and content analysis of the TRAUMA podcast, minds a gap; there is little podcast-specific analysis of trauma mediation (Karathanasopoulou and Williams; Cardell and Douglas) even if the latter seems to flesh a recurrent thematic concern in podcast narratives (such as the podcast re-mediation of Holocaust narratives in 2019, titled “Those Who Were There: Voices from the Holocaust”, or Greek podcasts From a Wonder to a Trauma and iMEdD’s Mute). Individual Voice Testimonies in the TRAUMA Podcast In light of its unique characteristics (lo-fi, low-cost, amateur-friendly, open-source, and relatively content-free), podcasting has been read as potentially challenging and even transgressing mainstream media discourse (Park; Rae; McHugh; Tiffe and Hoffmann). In her work on podcasting and political listening, Maria Rae sees in podcasts the ability to intervene in and disrupt existing media structures of attention that determine who is heard and how. Upending such “regimes of attention”, they may invite us, instead, to retune, un-hear, or hear differently. In the case of TRAUMA, the work taps on topics which have cross-fed a barrage of images on social media platforms, and fuelled 24-hour news cycles on traditional visual media. To this trauma-casting, it juxtaposes its own audio logics of multiple, yet unified, voicing and of slow, engaged listening. Literally “opening the mic” for those unheard or only heard little, TRAUMA makers aspire to host what they term as “the ‘unedited experience’ of the disaster”. This, they see as a gesture away from existing media coverage of disasters in Greece that may silence, voice-over, aestheticise, or selectively frame (and un-frame) individual voicing. The “voyeurism lure” is mindfully addressed as TRAUMA podcast makers have published – parallel to their documentary work – a journalists’ code of conduct in cases of trauma coverage, addressing issues related to “privacy, legislation, and journalist ethics” (Voutsina et al.). At the same time, the silencing or voice-over tactics, often employed in cases of trauma coverage, are also actively counter-balanced as TRAUMA utilises verbatim testimonies and offers opportunities for direct earwitnessing of what surfaces less as a private catastrophe and more as shared, public wound for Greek citizens. The notion of earwitnessing encompasses a form of listening attuned to the specific social, cultural, and political manifestations of sound and voice. To “earwitness” is to listen to the history that unfolds and to become responsible for what you listen to (Rae et al.). Letting otherwise lost voices surface and having us listen to those accounts, TRAUMA actively gestures towards “acoustic justice”, defined by Brandon Labelle in his homonymous book as “the practices or gestures that seek to rework the distribution of the heard” (131). Such reworking of audibility norms is best served through emphasis on unheard testimonies. Testimonies are indeed the more extensive part of the text genres emerging in the TRAUMA podcast. A relatively large number of codes were created, and data revealed that two codes appeared more frequently: the codes referring to the Mati fires and the Tempi fatal train accident. There are a couple of reasons for this, as both accidents were severe: the Mati fires that took place in 2018 “would go on to become the second deadliest fire globally in the past 25 years. 104 lives were tragically lost in Mati”, as the narration script testifies. The train crash in the Tempi valley in February 2023 was the most recent tragic event, and one that involved the loss of very young people. In the case of both disasters, testimonies prevail, only carefully complemented by narrative voice-over, news clips, or accompanying music. The news clip chosen to inform listeners about the tragic accident in Tempi is short and sharp: “Intercity train collides with commercial train, resulting in three wagons derailing”. Most of the sparse news clips used to enhance the informative lens of the documentary adopt the same style: they are short, accurate, and show the core of the news story. They are like stamps of verification of what actually happened, without however overshadowing or emotionally framing the actual verbatim material featured in the piece. Narrative voice-over and music follow the same logic of only discreetly framing the testimonial material. The voice-over that is featured in the podcast, with an agonising tune playing in the background, carefully offers sharp and concrete information on disastrous facts, introducing testimonies or drawing links between voices. Music also plays a significant role, even if the focus of the audio documentary is on discourse and voice; the musical background sets a mysterious tone, adding to the audio experience of the listener when accompanying the narrative voice. Its notable absence when we move from the voice to the testimonies is also a clear documentation of the value that the TRAUMA podcast attributes to testimonies. With no accompanying music, testimonies retune us to the soundscape of the people involved, securing sharper focus on those voices and greater empathy on the part of the listener. Testimonies flesh out engaging, emotive narratives that also harbour accurate information of the stories involved (Theodosiadou). A multitude of intimacies exist in podcasting, and this intimacy contains the possibility to materially connect the listener to a story (fictional or factual; Karathanasopoulou). In the quote below there is a possible connection between the listener and the factual story as the narration becomes very realistic and absolutely grounded in the tragic events; the listener has a chance to envision the situation at the hospital, and this acoustic illustration possibly connects them more tightly to the actual story. From the Tempi train crash, the father of a young student-victim describes the most difficult moment while waiting that first night at the hospital: I dubbed that day 'a game of poker with death': in the hospital, whenever an ambulance arrived, everyone would rush towards it, hoping to find their loved ones injured or anxiously checking if the body bag was sealed, all racing to discover if their dear ones were dead. Victim relatives are heard sharing their private trauma-scapes and reporting on how difficult it has been to cope with such a traumatic event, and how these tragedies have influenced all their lives. Our attention, as podcast listeners deprived of any visual stimuli, is actively drawn both to the content of their sayings but also to the vocal utterances per se, in all their individual acoustic register of gaps or hesitations, of voice colour, pace, and rhythm: it was incredibly difficult to endure such a situation. Most of us struggled through five years without any medication. But there are so many others that rely on very strong medications to cope. Fig. 1: Visual installation 58 Nails in Tempi, by artist Georgios Koftis. Tempi Valley, January 2024 (photo by Georgios Koftis). “We believe that there are more and more of us people not having a voice, contrary to what is depicted in the media” — Georgios Koftis. From the Individual to the Collective TRAUMA hosts survivors’ and victim relatives’ testimonies, maintaining the force and intimacy of the individual witness, yet not letting them flesh out a singular, eccentric, private disaster drama. Not only are individual voices balanced out with other voices of the various field experts on whom the documentary draws, but they are also amplified in echoes as we listen on to more (and all the more similar) testimonies. In this sense, we move from the private to the collective, and the documentary escapes the risk of over-emphasising personal disaster or aestheticising the pain of those directly involved. On a similar note, we hear both a relative of a victim of the Tempi crash and a relative of a victim in the Mati fires become equally cynical and accepting of the inevitability of accidents in life: in the collective unconsciousness we exist within, it was inevitable. Whether it be a boat, a ship, a plane, or a power station, it was destined to occur somewhere, and undoubtedly, it will happen again. We have grown somewhat cynical. After the Tempi train crash, when we gather during court breaks, we quip, "What's next, a plane crash?" We even start placing bets. It may come across as cynical, but considering what we have experienced and what we are likely to experience again, that's just how it is. In the case of the Mati fire tragedy, many testimonies similarly focus on the absence of care or action from the Greek state and the feeling of aloneness in confronting such a preposterous disaster. Around 18:00, my mother gave me a call and informed me about a fire... There was no mention of it on TV. If only my family had been alerted just 5 minutes earlier, they could have jumped into the car and taken the route through Marathon Avenue, just like many others who managed to survive. We're talking about a mere distance of 500 metres, and the authorities had a clear view of the scene. They witnessed people burning, yet made no attempt to rescue them. There was no fire brigade in sight, not a single siren reached out ears, no loudspeakers blaring "Evacuate" to warn us, nothing at all. From the intense heat and lack of oxygen, we were beginning to lose our strength, my entire family. The relatives of the victims report on how difficult it has been to cope with such a traumatic event and how these tragedies have influenced all their lives. What can I say… The boy is seeing a psychologist to cope with the trauma. Whenever he sees us about to light a match, he thinks there’ll be a fire and quickly jumps to put it out. It’s so sad. These scars will never heal – they don't simply fade away no matter how much we wish they would. Joining voices from disparate disaster events, TRAUMA captures the “return and repeat” logics of trauma temporality, but, more importantly, meddles with and away from the “shock and freeze” effect of the singular event to reveal threads, echoes, re-doublings, and flashbacks that flesh a silently ongoing, collective trauma. Individual narratives of disaster are thus both solidified and pluralised in a sonic space that merges the private and the public, the singular and the plural, the rupture and the thread, allowing personal stories to open up into informed public conversations. Moving on in echoes and counterpoint polyphony, TRAUMA ultimately effects a “hearing different” of individual trauma testimonies, enabling the latter to surface less as closed echo chambers and more as resonant channels of shared wounds. The movement from the private to the collective is also repetitively referenced in the podcast per se. Both in the expert talks but also in the narrative script the notion of collective trauma is insistently mentioned: “erosion of trust in the state and the absence of catharsis” are considered to be the two main characteristics of collective trauma, according to the experts on the podcast and the journalist-narrator. This profound lack of trust that victims felt personally but also collectively surfaces as a resonant feeling, threading the two decades of fatal accidents that the TRAUMA podcast touches on. Collective trauma is what occurs when a community or society is stripped of its essential functions, such as democracy, institutions, social solidarity, and, most importantly, the preservation of social bonds. Negligence can never be equated with acts that are considered felonious. Felonies encompass acts where the outcome is a result of deliberate and conscious actions. It is not only the outcome that is condemned, but also the intentional and rational behavior of the perpetrator. Conclusion The TRAUMA podcast revolutionises auditory experience both in tapping to unmute individual voices and thus offering acoustic justice, but also in terms of activating political listening. The acts of podcast creation and “political listening” can reinforce the audience’s political opposition to unjust practices (Rae et al.). TRAUMA is an example of a podcast that attempts to raise awareness of the Greek state’s failure to take relevant action, thus sensitising and mobilising listeners in ethical responsibility. Re-tuning listeners to trauma narratives and turning them into earwitnesses may fashion a space of empowerment. Writing of post-9/11 trauma and mourning and the ways in which the latter was quickly dismissed by U.S. authorities to allow for militant action, Judith Butler questions the typical equation of grief and trauma with passive numbness or stillness, and aptly observes that “suffering can yield an experience of humility, of vulnerability, of impressionability and dependence, and these can become resources if we do not resolve them too quickly” (149-50). Staying with trauma voices, as enabled in the case of TRAUMA, may help for “mourning otherwise” or for what Athena Athanasiou terms “agonistic mourning”, opening quietly militant spaces of ethical response-ability and caring, and even re-orienting trauma rupture and paralysis in actively “contending with dominant and prevailing systems that make and unmake bodies” (LaBelle 564). In the case of TRAUMA, letting listeners linger in the aural intimacy of the private trauma transforms listening into active earwitnessing and political contestation. The originality of the documentary lies in the weaving of the personal to the collective trauma, as well as in how this pain intertwines and defines the national collective trauma. Maybe this is also a hidden message that TRAUMA conveys: a silent ‘activism’ to make listeners participate in the personal and collective trauma and activate them in a positive and empowering way towards taking responsibility and work in line with the collective good (Theodosiadou). This brings the podcast genre to a new epoch, an epoch that transcends from audio blogging to silent activism. This concluding remark aligns with Karathanasopoulou & Williams's findings that non-visual media can provide a safe environment to reveal deeply personal experiences and, in some cases, form an example of “quiet activism”. Future research should enlarge the lens of podcasting on traumatic events, through comparative research on podcasting in other countries, as well as through sustained analysis on how narration, sound, and music elements in podcasts (re)negotiate media representations of trauma. Acknowledgment Georgios Koftis made his visual memoriam in January 2024, almost a year after the Tempi accident, for the 57 people who tragically died in the Tempi train crash in February 2023 (also adding one more nail for the missing and injured people). He generously granted us the copyright both for the visual art and for his photograph of the 58 Nails in Tempi. We sincerely thank him for this as well as for making our voice heard. References Athanasiou, Athena. Agonistic Mourning: Political Dissidence and the Women in Black. Edinburgh: Edinburgh UP, 2017. Butler, Judith. Precarious Life: The Powers of Mourning and Violence. London: Verso, 2004. Cardell, Kylie, and Kate Douglas. “Okay to Laugh? Trauma, Memoir, and Teaching the Podcast Mum Says My Memoir Is a Lie.” a/b: Auto/Biography Studies 37.2 (2002): 299-315. DOI: 10.1080/08989575.2022.2136826. Johanssen, Jacob. “Amit Pinchevski, Transmitted Wounds: Media and the Mediation of Trauma.” Journal of Communication Inquiry 46.3 (2022): 311-315. Karathanasopoulou, E. “Audio within Audio: Story-Telling and the Evocation of Emotion in Podcasting.” In The Bloomsbury Handbook of Radio, eds. K. Mc Donald and H. Chignell. Bloomsbury, 2023. 226-242. Karathanasopoulou, E., and H. Williams. “Podcasting as a Feminist Space for the Disclosure of Trauma and Intimate Embodied Experience: The Heart as a Case Study of Quiet Activism.” Radio Journal: International Studies in Broadcast & Audio Media 21.1 (2023). Koukoumakas, Kostas, et al. Trauma. iMEdD Lab, 2023. <https://lab.imedd.org/en/trauma/>. LaBelle, Brandon. Acoustic Justice: Listening, Performativity and the Work or Reorientation. New York: Bloomsbury Academic, 2021. ———. LaBelle, Brandon. “Towards Acoustic Justice.” Law Text Culture 24.1 (2020): 550–72. 9 Feb. 2024 <https://ro.uow.edu.au/ltc/vol24/iss1/21>. McHugh, Siobhan "Truth to Power: How Podcasts Are Getting Political." The Conversation, 31 Aug. 2017. <https://theconversation.com/truth-to-power-how-podcasts-are-getting-political-81185>. Park, Chang Sup. “Citizen News Podcasts and Engaging Journalism: The Formation of a Counter-Public Sphere in South Korea.” Pacific Journalism Review 1.1 (2017): 245. DOI: 10.24135/pjr.v23i1.49. Pinchevski, Amit. “Archive, Media, Trauma.” In On Media Memory: Collective Memory in a New Media Age. Palgrave Macmillan, 2011. 253-64. ———. Transmitted Wounds: Media and the Mediation of Trauma. Oxford: Oxford UP, 2019. Pinchevski, Amit, and Michael Richardson. “Trauma and Digital Media: Introduction to Crosscurrents Special Section.” Media, Culture & Society (2022). <https://doi.org/10.1177/01634437221122244>. Rae, Maria. “Podcasts and Political Listening: Sound, Voice and Intimacy in the Joe Rogan Experience.” Continuum 37.2 (2023): 182-93. DOI: 10.1080/10304312.2023.2198682. Rae, Maria, et al. “Earwitnessing Detention: Carceral Secrecy, Affecting Voices, and Political Listening in the Messenger Podcast.” International Journal of Communication (2019): 13-20. Scomazzon, Giulia. “Amit Pinchevski, Transmitted Wounds: Media and the Mediation of Trauma. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2021.” Cinéma & Cie. Film and Media Studies Journal 22.39 (2023): 157–8. <https://doi.org/10.54103/2036-461x/19081>. Theodosiadou, Sofia. “Review of TRAUMA Audio Podcast: 24 years, Seven Tragedies: The Experience of Survivors and the Collective Trauma of an Entire Country”. RadioDoc Review, forthcoming 2024. Tiffe, Raechel, and Melody Hoffmann. “Taking Up Sonic Space: Feminized Vocality and Podcasting as Resistance.” Feminist Media Studies 17.1 (2017): 115-8. DOI: 10.1080/14680777.2017.1261464. Voutsina, Katerina, et al. Reporting on Traumatic Events: A Journalist’s Code of Conduct. iMedD, 2023. <https://lab.imedd.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/07/iMEdD_Trauma_Toolkit_for_Journalists_EN.pdf>.

Welcome to Night Vale (2012–) is an intertextual podcast in the tradition of popular horror and weird tales. Listeners are meant to be part of a (fictional) community, listening to the radio in the small desert town of Night Vale in the Southwestern United States, although neither the state nor the exact time are specified. We follow the host of the program, Cecil Palmer, as he describes the town's community life, although the events presented in the show are far from normal. The first episode was published online June 15, 2012, with no marketing to accompany the event. Many had first heard about Welcome to Night Vale through fan art available via social media, including Tumblr, Soup.io, blog communities, Facebook groups, and deviantArt. Although the production is available in English only, it has a Polish fandom. We describe the difference in perception of this popular text based on differences in the cultural background and literary knowledge of the listeners. We also attend to fan practices such as fan art surrounding Welcome to Night Vale because their content correlates with the creator's culture of origin, as well as the issue of funding the free podcast among fans from different countries and different economies.

Several years ago, my colleagues and I developed a project-based assignment where students create a fictional animal and predict its ability to thrive in a hypothetical environment by examining the interactions between different combinations of designs for selected body systems. This assignment, which was implemented at different types of institutions and for different levels of students, can be readily adapted to either lecture-based or laboratory courses. Here I describe how students design a fictional animal as a semester-long collaborative group project in an interactive lecture course on comparative animal physiology of vertebrates. The fictional animal project aligns with several course learning goals including 1) Acquire a fundamental knowledge of “how animals work” and 2) Exercise responsibility and teamwork. Students learn integration of body systems as they choose a random fictional animal, consider if this animal can survive in a specific environment, and create the animal. Creation of the animal, which cannot closely resemble an extant animal, is scaffolded throughout the semester as students complete question sets where they describe the structure and function of the systems and consider potential trade-offs and physiological constraints. At the end of the semester, we hold a fictional animal showcase where students share highlights about their animal and its environment. Student learning is assessed through the questions sets, which are submitted as homework, and the class presentation; this group project contributes to 25% of the overall course grade and replaces more traditional assessments such as exams. Examples of fictional animals demonstrate how students must consider interactions and functions between different systems in their design; in addition, they must think about the metabolic requirements of their animal as they decide its lifestyle. Reflection data from students strongly supports that designing a fictional animal helps them understand how physiological systems function together; students gain a new or deeper awareness and appreciation of trade-offs in function as well as constraints on physiological processes. As this project continues to evolve, students will have the freedom to choose a creative format for the fictional animal showcase, such as a recorded or live oral presentation, a podcast, a tri-fold brochure, a poster, an educational game, or an illustrated story. All protocols were approved by Rice University IRB (Protocol FY2017-294). Rice University Office of Undergraduate Research and Inquiry (OURI). This is the full abstract presented at the American Physiology Summit 2023 meeting and is only available in HTML format. There are no additional versions or additional content available for this abstract. Physiology was not involved in the peer review process.

“What is the point of stories in such a moment”, asks author and critic James Bradley, writing about climate extinction: Bradley emphasises that “climatologist James Hansen once said being a climate scientist was like screaming at people from behind a soundproof glass wall; being a writer concerned with these questions often feels frighteningly similar” (“Writing”). If the impact of climate change asks humans to think differently, to imagine differently, then surely writing—and reading—must change too? According to writer and geographer Samuel Miller-McDonald, “if you’re a writer, then you have to write about this”. But how are we to do that? Where might it be done already? Perhaps not in traditional (or even post-) Modernist modes. In the era of the Anthropocene I find myself turning to non-traditional, un-real models to write the slow violence and read the deep time that is where we can see our current climate catastrophe.At a “Writing in the Age of Extinction” workshop earlier this year Bradley and Jane Rawson advocated changing the language of “climate change”—rejecting such neutral terms—in the same way that I see the stories discussed here pushing against Modernity’s great narrative of progress.My research—as a reader and writer, is in the fantastic realm of speculative fiction; I have written in The Conversation about how this genre seems to be gaining literary popularity. There is no doubt that our current climate crisis has a part to play. As Margaret Atwood writes: “it’s not climate change, it’s everything change” (“Climate”). This “everything” must include literature. Kim Stanley Robinson is not the only one who sees “the models modern literary fiction has are so depleted, what they’re turning to now is our guys in disguise”. I am interested in two recent examples, which both use the strongly genre-associated time-travel trope, to consider how science-fiction concepts might work to re-imagine our “deranged” world (Ghosh), whether applied by genre writers or “our guys in disguise”. Can stories such as The Heavens by Sandra Newman and “Anxiety is the Dizziness of Freedom” by Ted Chiang—which apply time travel, whether as an expression of fatalism or free will—help us conceive the current collapse: understand how it has come to pass, and imagine ways we might move through it?The Popularity of Time TravelIt seems to me that time as a notion and the narrative device, is key to any idea of writing through climate change. “Through” as in via, if the highly contested “cli-fi” category is considered a theme; and “through” as entering into and coming out the other side of this ecological end-game. Might time travel offer readers more than the realist perspective of sweeping multi-generational sagas? Time-travel books pose puzzles; they are well suited to “wicked” problems. Time-travel tales are designed to analyse the world in a way that it is not usually analysed—in accordance with Tim Parks’s criterion for great novels (Walton), and in keeping with Darko Suvin’s conception of science fiction as a literature of “cognitive estrangement”. To read, and write, a character who travels in “spacetime” asks something more of us than the emotional engagement of many Modernist tales of interiority—whether they belong to the new “literary middlebrow’” (Driscoll), or China Miéville’s Booker Prize–winning realist “litfic” (Crown).Sometimes, it is true, they ask too much, and do not answer enough. But what resolution is possible is realistic, in the context of this literally existential threat?There are many recent and recommended time-travel novels: Kate Atkinson’s 2013 Life after Life and Jenny Erpenbeck’s 2014 End of Days have main characters who are continually “reset”, exploring the idea of righting history—the more literary experiment concluding less optimistically. For Erpenbeck “only the inevitable is possible”. In her New York Times review Francine Prose likens Life after Life to writing itself: “Atkinson sharpens our awareness of the apparently limitless choices and decisions that a novelist must make on every page, and of what is gained and lost when the consequences of these choices are, like life, singular and final”. Andrew Sean Greer’s 2013 The Impossible Lives of Greta Wells also centres on the WorldWar(s), a natural-enough site to imagine divergent timelines, though he draws a different parallel. In Elan Mastai’s 2017 debut All Our Wrong Todays the reality that is remembered—though ultimately not missed, is more dystopic than our own time, as is also the way with Joyce Carol Oates’s 2018 The Hazards of Time Travel. Oates’s rather slight contribution to the subgenre still makes a clear point: “America is founded upon amnesia” (Oates, Hazards). So, too, is our current environment. We are living in a time created by a previous generation; the environmental consequence of our own actions will not be felt until after we are gone. What better way to write such a riddle than through the loop of time travel?The Purpose of Thought ExperimentsThis list is not meant to be comprehensive. It is an indication of the increasing literary application of the “elaborate thought experiment” of time travel (Oates, “Science Fiction”). These fictional explorations, their political and philosophical considerations, are currently popular and potentially productive in a context where action is essential, and yet practically impossible. What can I do? What could possibly be the point? As well as characters that travel backwards, or forwards in time, these titles introduce visionaries who tell of other worlds. They re-present “not-exactly places, which are anywhere but nowhere, and which are both mappable locations and states of mind”: Margaret Atwood’s “Ustopias” (Atwood, “Road”). Incorporating both utopian and dystopian aspects, they (re)present our own time, in all its contradictory (un)reality.The once-novel, now-generic “novum” of time travel has become a metaphor—the best possible metaphor, I believe, for the climatic consequence of our in/action—in line with Joanna Russ’s wonderful conception of “The Wearing out of Genre Materials”. The new marvel first introduced by popular writers has been assimilated, adopted or “stolen” by the dominant mode. In this case, literary fiction. Angela Carter is not the only one to hope “the pressure of the new wine makes the old bottles explode”. This must be what Robinson expects: that Ken Gelder’s “big L” literature will be unable to contain the wine of “our guys”—even if it isn’t new. In the act of re-use, the time-travel cliché is remade anew.Two Cases to ConsiderTwo texts today seem to me to realise—in both senses of that word—the possibilities of the currently popular, but actually ancient, time-travel conceit. At the Melbourne Writers Festival last year Ted Chiang identified the oracle in The Odyssey as the first time traveller: they—the blind prophet Tiresias was transformed into a woman for seven years—have seen the future and report back in the form of prophecy. Chiang’s most recent short story, “Anxiety is the Dizziness of Freedom”, and Newman’s novel The Heavens, both of which came out this year, are original variations on this re-newed theme. Rather than a coherent, consistent, central character who travels and returns to their own time, these stories’ protagonists appear diversified in/between alternate worlds. These texts provide readers not with only one possible alternative but—via their creative application of the idea of temporal divergence—myriad alternatives within the same story. These works use the “characteristic gesture” of science fiction (Le Guin, “Le Guin Talks”), to inspire different, subversive, ways of thinking and seeing our own one-world experiment. The existential speculation of time-travel tropes is, today, more relevant than ever: how should we act when our actions may have no—or no positive, only negative—effect?Time and space travel are classic science fiction concerns. Chiang’s lecture unpacked how the philosophy of time travel speaks uniquely to questions of free will. A number of his stories explore this theme, including “The Alchemist’s Gate” (which the lecture was named after), where he makes his thinking clear: “past and future are the same, and we cannot change either, only know them more fully” (Chiang, Exhalation). In “Story of Your Life”, the novella that the film Arrival is based on, Chiang’s main character-narrator embraces a future that could be seen as dystopic while her partner walks away from it—and her, and his daughter—despite the happiness they will offer. Gary cannot accept the inevitable unhappiness that must accompany them. The suggestion is that if he had had Louise’s foreknowledge he might, like the free-willing protagonist in Looper, have taken steps to ensure that that life—that his daughter’s life itself—never eventuated. Whether he would have been successful is suspect: according to Chiang free will cannot foil fate.If the future cannot be changed, what is the role of free will? Louise wonders: “what if the experience of knowing the future changed a person? What if it evoked a sense of urgency, a sense of obligation to act precisely as she knew she would?” In his “story notes” Chiang says inspiration came from variational principles in physics (Chiang, Stories); I see the influence of climate calamity. Knowing the future must change us—how can it not evoke “a sense of urgency, a sense of obligation”? Even if events play out precisely as we know they will. In his talk Chiang differentiated between time-travel films which favour free will, like Looper, and those that conclude fatalistically, such as Twelve Monkeys. “Story of Your Life” explores the idea that these categories are not mutually exclusive: exercising free will might not change fate; fatalism may not preclude acts of free will.Utopic Free Will vs. Dystopic Fate?Newman’s latest novel is more obviously dystopic: the world in The Heavens is worse each time Kate wakes from her dreams of the past. In the end it has become positively post-apocalyptic. The overwhelming sadness of this book is one of its most unusual aspects, going far beyond that of The Time Traveler’s Wife—2003’s popular tale of love and loss. The Heavens feels fatalistic, even though its future is—unfortunately, in this instance—not set but continually altered by the main character’s attempts to “fix” it (in each sense of the word). Where Twelve Monkeys, Looper, and The Odyssey present every action as a foregone conclusion, The Heavens navigates the nightmare that—against our will—everything we do might have an adverse consequence. As in A Christmas Carol, where the vision of a possible future prompts the protagonist to change his ways and so prevent its coming to pass, it is Kate’s foresight—of our future—which inspires her to act. History doesn’t respond well to Kate’s interventions; she is unable to “correct” events and left more and more isolated by her own unique version of a tortuous Cassandra complex.These largely inexplicable consequences provide a direct connection between Newman’s latest work and James Tiptree Jr.’s 1972 “Forever to a Hudson Bay Blanket”. That tale’s conclusion makes no “real” sense either—when Dovy dies Loolie’s father’s advisers can only say that (time) paradoxes are proliferating—but The Heavens is not the intellectual play of Tiptree’s classic science fiction: the wine of time-travel has been poured into the “depleted” vessel of “big L” literature. The sorrow that seeps through this novel is profound; Newman apologises for it in her acknowledgements, linking it to the death of an ex-partner. I read it as a potent expression of “solastalgia”: nostalgia for a place that once provided solace, but doesn’t any more—a term coined by Australian philosopher Glen Albrecht to express the “psychic or existential distress caused by environmental change” (Albrecht et al.). It is Kate’s grief, for a world (she has) destroyed that drives her mad: “deranged”.The Serious Side of SpeculationIn The Great Derangement Ghosh laments the “smaller shadow” cast by climate change in the landscape of literary fiction. He echoes Miéville: “fiction that deals with climate change is almost by definition not the kind that is taken seriously by serious literary journals; the mere mention of the subject is often enough to relegate a novel or short story to the genre of science fiction” (Ghosh). Time-travel tales that pose the kind of questions handled by theologians before the Enlightenment and “big L” literature after—what does it mean to exist in time? How should we live? Who deserves to be happy?—may be a way for literary fiction to take climate change “seriously”: to write through it. Out-of-time narratives such as Chiang and Newman’s pose existential speculations that, rather than locating us in time, may help us imagine time itself differently. How are we to act if the future has already come to pass?“When we are faced with a world whose problems all seem ‘wicked’ and intractable, what is it that fiction can do?” (Uhlmann). At the very least, should writers not be working with “sombre realism”? Science fiction has a long and established tradition of exposing the background narratives of the political—and ecological—landscapes in which we work: the master narratives of Modernism. What Anthony Uhlmann describes here, as the “distancing technique” of fiction becomes outright “estrangement” in speculative hands. Stories such as Newman and Chiang’s reflect (on) what readers might be avoiding: that even though our future is fixed, we must act. We must behave as though our decisions matter, despite knowing the ways in which they do not.These works challenge Modernist concerns despite—or perhaps via—satisfying genre conventions, in direct contradiction to Roy Scranton’s conviction that “Narrative in the Anthropocene Is the Enemy”. In doing so they fit Miéville’s description of a “literature of estrangement” while also exemplifying a new, Anthropocene “literature of recognition” (Crown). These, then, are the stories of our life.What Is Not ExpectedChiang’s 2018 lecture was actually a PowerPoint presentation on how time travel could or would “really” work. His medium, as much as his message, clearly showed the author’s cross-disciplinary affiliations, which are relevant to this discussion of literary fiction’s “depleted” models. In August this year Xu Xi concluded a lecture on speculative fiction for the Vermont College of Fine Arts by encouraging attendees to read—and write—“other” languages, whether foreign forms or alien disciplines. She cited Chiang as someone who successfully raids the riches of non-literary traditions, to produce a new kind of literature. Writing that deals in physics, as much as characters, in philosophy, as much as narrative, presents new, “post-natural” (Bradley, “End”) retro-speculations that (in un- and super-natural generic traditions) offer a real alternative to Modernism’s narrative of inevitable—and inevitably positive—progress.In “What’s Expected of Us” Chiang imagines the possible consequence of comprehending that our actions, and not just their consequence, are predetermined. In what Oates describes as his distinctive, pared-back, “unironic” style (Oates, “Science Fiction”), Chiang concludes: “reality isn’t important: what’s important is your belief, and believing the lie is the only way to avoid a waking coma. Civilisation now depends on self-deception. Perhaps it always has”. The self-deception we need is not America’s amnesia, but the belief that what we do matters.ConclusionThe visions of her “paraself” that Nat sees in “Anxiety Is the Dizziness of Freedom” encourage her to change her behaviour. The “prism” that enables this perception—a kind of time-tripped iPad that “skypes” alternate temporal realities, activated by people acting in different ways at a crucial moment in their lives—does not always reflect the butterfly effect the protagonist, or reader, might expect. Some actions have dramatic consequences while others have minimal impact. While Nat does not see her future, what she spies inspires her to take the first steps towards becoming a different—read “better”—person. We expect this will lead to more positive outcomes for her self in the story’s “first” world. The device, and Chiang’s tale, illustrates both that our paths are predetermined and that they are not: “our inability to predict the consequences of our own predetermined actions offers a kind of freedom”. The freedom to act, freedom from the coma of inaction.“What’s the use of art on a dying planet? What’s the point, when humanity itself is facing an existential threat?” Alison Croggon asks, and answers herself: “it searches for the complex truth … . It can help us to see the world we have more clearly, and help us to imagine a better one”. In literary thought experiments like Newman and Chiang’s artful time-travel fictions we read complex, metaphoric truths that cannot be put into real(ist) words. In the time-honoured tradition of (speculative) fiction, Chiang and Newman deal in, and with, “what cannot be said in words … in words” (Le Guin, “Introduction”). These most recent time-slip speculations tell unpredictable stories about what is predicted, what is predictable, but what we must (still) believe may not necessarily be—if we are to be free.ReferencesArrival. Dir. Dennis Villeneuve. Paramount Pictures, 2016.Albrecht, Glenn, et al. “Solastalgia: The Distress Caused by Environmental Change.” Australasian Psychiatry (Feb. 2007): 41–55. Atwood, Margaret. “The Road to Ustopia.” The Guardian 15 Oct. 2011 <https://www.theguardian.com/books/2011/oct/14/margaret-atwood-road-to-ustopia>.———. “It’s Not Climate Change, It’s Everything Change.” Medium 27 July 2015. <https://medium.com/matter/it-s-not-climate-change-it-s-everything-change-8fd9aa671804>.Bradley, James. “Writing on the Precipice: On Literature and Change.” City of Tongues. 16 Mar. 2017 <https://cityoftongues.com/2017/03/16/writing-on-the-precipice-on-literature-and-climate-change/>.———. “The End of Nature and Post-Naturalism: Fiction and the Anthropocene.” City of Tongues 30 Dec. 2015 <https://cityoftongues.com/2015/12/30/the-end-of-nature-and-post-naturalism-fiction-and-the-anthropocene/>.Bradley, James, and Jane Rawson. “Writing in the Age of Extinction.” Detached Performance and Project Space, The Old Mercury Building, Hobart. 27 July 2019.Chiang, Ted. Stories of Your Life and Others. New York: Tor, 2002.———. Exhalation: Stories. New York: Knopf, 2019.Carter, Angela. The Bloody Chamber. London: Gollancz, 1983. 69.Croggon, Alison. “On Art.” Overland 235 (2019). 30 Sep. 2019 <https://overland.org.au/previous-issues/issue-235/column-on-art/>.Crown, Sarah. “What the Booker Prize Really Excludes.” The Guardian 17 Oct. 2011 <https://www.theguardian.com/books/booksblog/2011/oct/17/science-fiction-china-mieville>.Driscoll, Beth. The New Literary Middlebrow: Tastemakers and Reading in the Twenty-First Century. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014.Erpenbeck, Jenny. Trans. Susan Bernofsky. The End of Days. New York: New Directions, 2016.Gelder, Ken. Popular Fiction: The Logics and Practices of a Literary Field. London: Routledge, 2014.Ghosh, Amitav. The Great Derangement: Climate Change and the Unthinkable. India: Penguin Random House, 2018.Le Guin, Ursula K. “Introduction.” The Left Hand of Darkness. New York: Ace Books, 1979. 5.———. “Ursula K. Le Guin Talks to Michael Cunningham about Genres, Gender, and Broadening Fiction.” Electric Literature 1 Apr. 2016. <https://electricliterature.com/ursula-k-le-guin-talks-to-michael- cunningham-about-genres-gender-and-broadening-fiction-57d9c967b9c>.Miller-McDonald, Samuel. “What Must We Do to Live?” The Trouble 14 Oct. 2018. <https://www.the-trouble.com/content/2018/10/14/what-must-we-do-to-live>.Oates, Joyce Carol. Hazards of Time Travel. New York: Ecco Press, 2018.———. "Science Fiction Doesn't Have to be Dystopian." The New Yorker 13 May 2019. <https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2019/05/13/science-fiction-doesnt-have-to-be-dystopian>.Prose, Francine. “Subject to Revision.” New York Times 26 Apr. 2003. <https://www.nytimes.com/2013/04/28/books/review/life-after-life-by-kate-atkinson.html>.Robinson, Kim Stanley. “Kim Stanley Robinson and the Drowning of New York.” The Coode Street Podcast 305 (2017). <http://www.jonathanstrahan.com.au/wp/the-coode-street-podcast/>.Russ, Joanna. “The Wearing Out of Genre Materials.” College English 33.1 (1971): 46–54.Scranton, Roy. “Narrative in the Anthropocene Is the Enemy.” Lithub.com 18 Sep. 2019. <https://lithub.com/roy-scranton-narrative-in-the-anthropocene-is-the-enemy/>.Suvin, Darko. Metamorphoses of Science Fiction: On the Poetics and History of a Literary Genre. New Haven: Yale UP, 1979. Walton, James. “Fascinating, Fearless, and Distinctly Odd.” The New York Review of Books 9 Jan. 2014: 63–64.Uhlmann, Anthony. “The Other Way, the Other Truth, the Other Life: Simpson Returns.” Sydney Review of Books. 2 Sep. 2019 <https://sydneyreviewofbooks.com/macauley-simpson-returns/>. Xu, Xi. “Speculative Fiction.” Presented at the International MFA in Creative Writing and Literary Translation, Vermont College of Fine Arts, Vermont, 15 Aug. 2019.

Introduction Despite the expansive and multimodal realm of Chinese Boys’ Love (BL) culture (also known as danmei in Chinese), audio works have been notably absent from scholarly discussions, with the focus predominantly being on novels (e.g. Bai; Zhang). This article aims to fill this gap by delving into the transformative impact of sound on narrative engagement within the Chinese BL culture. Focussing on the audio drama adaptations of Grandmaster of Demonic Cultivation (modao zushi, hereafter Grandmaster), originally a serialised Chinese BL novel, this analysis aims to unravel the meticulously crafted BL fantasy in these auditory renditions. The audio drama format delivers an intimate storytelling experience directly to the listener’s ears. Unlike textual media, audio dramas allow listeners to immerse themselves in narratives during various daily activities, deepening their connection with the content. The audio drama Grandmaster, produced by the renowned Chinese platform MissEvan, has garnered a vast fan base and over 640 million plays across three seasons (the episodes and numbers of plays can be found on MissEvan: Season 1, Season 2, and Season 3). Unlike the serialised Web-drama adaption diluted by censorship regulations, the audio drama retains the utmost BL fidelity to the original novel, highlighting the significant potential of this medium in the Chinese BL culture. BL culture has surged in popularity within China, partly due to the export of Japanese culture and the burgeoning Chinese Internet accessibility (Feng). The BL genre encompasses diverse media forms such as novels, fanfiction, comics, animation, and audio/Web dramas, rooted in shared fantasies of romantic love between men. The growing interest in BL culture reflects a response to societal structures like Confucianism and the oppressive education system, which, due to their restrictedness, inadvertently foster the exploration of alternative narratives and identities within the genre (Kwon). While initially inspired by Japanese subculture, Chinese BL has evolved under diverse global influences, including American and other Asian subcultures (Lavin et al.). Chinese BL narratives delve into themes of identity, sexuality, power dynamics, and societal norms, reflecting a rich blend of modern and traditional Chinese culture (Madill and Zhao). Moreover, the rise of BL fandom has empowered female readers to engage in questions about gendered politics, questions that enable them to turn a voyeuristic gaze upon men (Zhang). The versatility of Chinese BL media reflects not only the evolving nature of the genre but also its enduring appeal and cultural significance within contemporary Chinese society. This article initiates a concise review of audio drama in China and the transformative impact of earphone technology, shifting listening experiences from public to intimate settings. It subsequently explores the intricate interplay between Chinese BL novels and audio dramas, elucidating the unique dynamics involved. The analysis then examines specific scenes from Grandmaster, providing insights into its role in facilitating a mesmerising BL audio fantasy. Grandmaster, originating as an Internet novel, has gained a dedicated following. MissEvan, recognising its potential, secured copyrights and commissioned Triones Penguin Studio for a radio drama adaptation in Mandarin. This full-cast dramatisation involves skilled editors, playwrights, and composers, thereby enriching character portrayals and interactions. The professional teamwork and meticulous oversight at each production stage guaranteed regular updates and high audio quality (Shao). Despite the collaborative nature of teamwork, I argue that the power of sound technology personalises the auditory journey as it creates an immersive experience for individual listeners. My analyses mainly rely on research involving actual listeners, along with examinations of specific content within Grandmaster with an idealised listener in consideration, to elucidate the factors contributing to its auditory allure. This examination contributes to a nuanced understanding of Chinese BL culture and its constitutive relationship to audio. From Public Broadcasting to Intimate Voicing: Audio Drama in China Radio broadcasting in China, with roots dating back to the early twentieth century, initially served as a propaganda instrument for mass mobilisation and communication. Chinese storytelling, rooted in acoustics, emphasises the sensory appeal of sound (Chan). It intertwines oral and written traditions in classical literature, particularly fiction and drama (Børdahl). Local vernaculars commonly feature in oral storytelling traditions, whereas Chinese radio programs adopt Mandarin to foster a cohesive national identity via linguistic uniformity. The Communist Party tactically expanded its audience through a radio reception network, establishing a wired broadcasting infrastructure with over 100 million loudspeakers by the 1970s. This revolutionised politics, everyday life, and perceptions of time and space (Li). The interplay between radio and social change reflected China’s pursuit of modernity, as the Communist Party utilised radio to institute a national communication system and monopolise news production. Radio thus served as a crucial tool for constructing and sustaining revolutionary fervor (Lei; He). Radio dramas, often cross-media adaptations from edited films in the 1970s, contributed to everyday sensory pleasure amidst a totalising revolutionary soundscape (Huang). The growth of radio and loudspeaker infrastructure played diverse roles in the revolution, fostering political communication, labour mobilisation, propaganda, surveillance, and even nurturing the Mao cult, turning radio drama into a potent tool for mass mobilisation and communication (Li). As a result, before the widespread availability of televisions in the 1990s, radio structured Chinese people’s daily activities and served as the primary information medium. Technological advancements in earphones, transitioning from larger wired headphones to smaller wireless earbuds like AirPods, have shifted auditory experiences in China from a collective identity tool used in political propaganda to a medium for individualistic entertainment. This change is marked by the personal nature of headphone usage, which can extend social interactions in and beyond physical dimensions (Grusin). The transition from wired headphones to wireless earbuds implements the interiorisation of one person’s body/voice within another, initiating a profound connection that transcends physical limitations (Stankievech). Since 2018, wireless earbuds have exceeded wired headphones in output value in China (Insight and Info), with the online audio market surging to 22 billion yuan in 2021, a 67.9% increase year-on-year. Audiobooks and audio dramas are the most popular genres, with a predominantly female audience under forty who prefer listening at night after work (iimedia). Among audio dramas, BL works generate the most traffic and revenue in China (Y. Wang). Along with such content, putting wireless earbuds inside the ear intensifies the intimacy of listening, transmitting voices directly into the listener’s head and sitting alongside their thoughts (Weldon). This physical closeness underscores the exclusive bond between the listener and the audio content, redefining oral narratives and transforming public and political audio content into a more personal and intimate medium. The use of wireless earbuds even extends listening beyond mere auditory experience, empowering haptic sensations that create an intimate bond. The acousmatic voice envelops the listener’s ears, establishing a connection even before the message’s content is considered (Madsen and Potts). The ear’s sensitivity prompts consciousness and memory, unlocking the imaginative world (C. Wang 91-94). This sensory engagement surpasses traditional auditory limits, resembling a physical encounter where listeners feel like their body has joined with the body of sound. Dermot Rattigan, discussing radio drama, notes how listeners fill the void with mental visualisations and imagination, entering a state of individual ‘virtual reality’ through aural stimulation (Rattigan 118). Drawing from visual psychology, Shaffer likens the soundscape to a dynamic landscape painting, emphasising the fluidity of auditory experiences (Schafer). Listening becomes a multi-dimensional journey involving the entire body and mind, a compelling tool for reception and connection that transcends reality’s boundaries. The advent of MP3 technologies and the podcasting boom also extends the former spatial and temporal limitations of listening. In contrast to traditional real-time broadcasting, MP3 technologies enable voices to persist indefinitely into the future (Madsen and Potts). This temporal flexibility further builds a private sound sphere for listeners (Euritt). Listeners no longer need to share time and space with others around loudspeakers or radios, so they can freely indulge in their subcultural preferences, such as BL stories, without concern for societal judgment. Many listeners strategically incorporate audio dramas into their daily schedule, choosing moments of solitude such as before sleep or upon waking, where they can detach from the expectations of their physical space and identity roles. This is particularly evident among devoted fans of Chinese BL audio dramas, who carve out personal time for these works and seek a quiet space for focussed engagement (Wang 55). This intentional, focussed engagement differs from the typical mode of everyday radio listening as it serves an expanded, widespread dissemination environment that is also highly intimate (Madsen and Potts). Thus, the convergence of temporal flexibility and immersive technology shapes listener engagement and interaction dynamics. The fusion of intimacy, physical closeness, and temporal flexibility heightens the allure of the voice in programs with erotic undertones, such as BL audio dramas. Euritt introduces the concept of ‘breathing out into you’ to explain queer eroticism in podcasts, emphasising shared breaths and potential haptic exchanges that enhance the sensual dimensions of sound (Euritt 27-53). This wireless, intimately riveting auditory experience transforms the soundscape and reshapes contemporary social interactions. This shift is particularly noteworthy for popular Chinese radio and audio content as they began as a public, propaganda-oriented tool and transitioned into forms as novel as the intimate domain of BL audio dramas. This change underscores the transformative power of sound in shaping interactions, surpassing conventional storytelling boundaries, and ushering in a new era of engaging narratives. The 2.5-Dimensional: Auralising Chinese Boys’ Love Fiction The BL genre emerges as a cultural and social force that can potentially challenge traditional Chinese values. Its focus on male-male love inherently questions societal expectations around gender and sexuality in ways that disrupt Confucian ideology’s emphasis on heterosexual marriage and lineage (Welker). Furthermore, the genre’s similarity to the melodramatic ‘soap opera’ storytelling style resonates with Western ideals of individualism and aligns more with a feminist viewpoint that contrasts with the male-dominant heterosexism often found in traditional Chinese narratives (Mumford). This emphasis on individual desires also implicitly disputes the collectivist and socialist values, as well as the importance of the extended family, traditionally embraced in Chinese cultures. In short, the love, sex, and romance depicted in BL represent a departure from traditional Chinese values, positioning the BL genre as a vehicle for cultural exchange and societal transformation in terms of gender norms. The surge of Internet radio and social media in the 2010s has substantially contributed to the professionalisation and commercialisation of Chinese BL audio dramas. MissEvan, a prominent barrage-audio and live-broadcasting Website, has been crucial to this proliferation (Hu et al.). Before the advent of commercial dubbing, enthusiasts of BL novels voluntarily recorded non-profit Chinese audio dramas and disseminated them online. The popularity of BL novels subsequently prompted their adaptation into animation and television dramas, creating a demand for dubbing services. This demand inaugurated a niche for professional voice actors to hone and showcase their skills. The integration of technology and capital by commercial production teams has markedly elevated the quality of Chinese BL audio dramas. Amidst tightening censorship in 2021, Chinese BL online novels and their television/Web-drama adaptations faced restrictions. Audio drama emerged as a less restrictive medium, which can relatively directly present explicit gay relationships (Hu et al.). Listeners of Chinese BL audio dramas typically read the online novel beforehand, engaging in dual consumption for pleasure in both reading and listening (Wang 58). Their engagement transcends plot comprehension, focussing instead on appreciating sophisticated voice performances. Exploring how audio dramas derived from novels can transcend textual narratives and captivate audiences has become a central focus in the production process, highlighting the flourishing landscape of audio drama. The listening process provides informed listeners with a re-experience, offering multiple sensory and emotional pleasures by translating words into voice and sounds. Unlike film and television dubbing, which requires synchronisation with actors’ lip movements and speech rhythms, dubbing for animation, audio dramas, and games gives greater creative autonomy to voice actors. The thriving market for audio dramas has shaped the Chinese dubbing industry, cultivating a devoted fan base for previously overlooked voice actors. The character voices (CVs, also known as voice actors, or VAs) have emerged as central figures, attracting fans and driving media traffic. In the late 2010s, collaborations between MissEvan and renowned CVs resulted in the adaptation of popular online fiction into paid audio dramas, exemplified by Grandmaster, which aired in 2017 and 2018 (Hu et al.). Fans’ motivation for engaging with BL audio dramas extends beyond intertextual and trans-media entertainment but incorporates an appreciation for their beloved CVs, thereby fostering a culture of support within the burgeoning Chinese BL audio drama market. In the storytelling of aural media, CVs are crucial in bridging the auditor’s BL imagination between the text and the characters as their performances breathe life into characters. CVs fill a gap between two-dimensional works (fiction, comic, and animation) and the three-dimensional real world, forging ‘2.5-dimensional’ content. This term originated in the 1970s-80s to describe anime voice actors, who imbue two-dimensional characters with a sense of existence and generate interrelations between the real, fictional, and cyber worlds (Sugawa-Shimada and Annett). In BL audio dramas, CVs commonly stimulate listeners’ sensations through male moans that facilitate an erotic flow between sound and body, arousing desire through the auditory channel. The incorporation of scenes with sexual innuendo between the male protagonists creates a space for listeners to indulge in these moments with earphones on, enveloped in their own private, eroticised sphere of engagement between fiction and reality. The deliberate pauses, gasps, and panting become the silent dialogue that intertwines inner voices with external narratives, enhancing comprehensive sensory engagement for listeners. Audio Fantasy in Grandmaster of Demonic Cultivation Grandmaster is a seminal Chinese BL novel that blends martial arts, supernatural fantasies, and emotional depth. Set in a richly imagined world where immortal cultivation techniques bestow individuals with extraordinary powers, the story follows protagonists Wei Wuxian’s and Lan Wangji’s intertwined fates. Its captivating narrative and nuanced characters have garnered a global fanbase, solidifying its place as a cornerstone of Chinese BL literature and media. The audio drama Grandmaster faithfully mirrors the novel’s narrative structure, unfolding from the protagonist Wei’s perspective after his reincarnation, weaving memories of his past and present life, including his romantic involvement with Lan. Wei’s establishment of the forbidden Demonic Path leads to his death, but he is reincarnated thirteen years later and reunites with Lan. After his reincarnation, Wei gradually realises Lan’s concealed profound affection and scarification for him. Diverging from the television/Web-drama adaptation, which replaces the romance with platonic ‘bromance’ due to censorship (Lei), the audio drama accentuates the impassioned soundscapes of their relationship. The three-season series, comprising episodes of 30-40 minutes, offers the first three episodes for free, with subsequent content requiring payment (approximately four to six dollars per season). Impressively, the series has driven earnings exceeding $1.5 million (Asia Business Leaders). This success highlights the captivating and profitable potential of audio dramas as a BL storytelling medium. Unlike the original novel, which uses an omniscient narrator, the audio drama advances the plot solely through character dialogue. Consequently, listeners navigate the storyline guided by the rhythm of the CVs’ delivery and the accompanying music. Different from Japanese BL audio dramas that feature as ‘voice porn’ for women (Ishida), Grandmaster subtly implies the romance between Lan and Wei, with the most intimate interactions limited to kisses. Rather than sexually explicit content, the drama focusses on the characters’ affective fulfillment after a prolonged thirteen-year anticipation. For instance, in Season 1, Episode 4, Wei attempts to hide his identity and flee from Lan. When Wei creeps back towards Lan’s bed to steal the pass for exiting Lan’s residence, Lan catches him. Rather than simply saying ‘Get off’ as in the novel, Lan instructs Wei in the audio drama to ‘Get off from my body,’ offering listeners additional physical contact cues (the quotes from the novel and audio drama in this article are translations from Chinese to English). Following Wei’s intentional refusal, the CV Wei Chao, portraying Lan, strategically breathes before his next line, ‘then stay like this for the whole night’. The breath conveys Lan’s deep, restrained affection and evokes the listener’s nuanced emotional resonance. To represent Lan’s affection within his minimal and often monosyllabic lines requires the CV to convey emotions through breaths and intonations, which commonly elicit an autonomous sensory meridian response (ASMR) in listeners. ASMR is a tingling sensation often triggered by soft low-tone spoken or whispered voices (Barratt and Davis). Wei Chao intentionally lowers his voice to interpret how Lan’s sighs encapsulate unspoken sentiments (Wei). In contrast, the CV Lu Zhixing employs a playful and sweet tone in his portrayal of Wei Wuxian. When Lu delivers flirtatious lines, online real-time comments frequently express listeners’ admiration, suggesting that his voice is even more captivating than women’s. The contrasting restraint and playfulness intensify the listener’s empathy for Lan’s unspeakable passion. Thus, Lan’s subtle expressions of his restrained love become the primary attraction for listeners (KikuHonda). The high-quality sound further amplifies the breath sounds, making each of Lan’s ‘hmm’ responses—indifferent, melancholy, or indulgent—a nuanced emotional trigger. Listeners, through their wireless earbuds, engage in the meticulously crafted expressions of Lan within a profoundly personal soundscape. This listening mode is a crucial component of the overall enthralling auditory voyage, augmenting the appreciation of the characters’ subdued emotions. The layered integration of music and sound in Grandmaster constructs a three-dimensional sonic storytelling landscape. Effective soundscapes for storytelling are crafted by multiple dimensions: sound source, temporal progression, simultaneous layers, and spatialisation. Sound editing allows for source selection, with listeners experiencing these dimensions as integrated, not separate or sequential (Stedman et al.). The audio drama Grandmaster distinguishes itself from the novel by using voice flashbacks for narrative enhancement. In Season Three, Episode 12, when Lan’s brother recounts Lan’s sacrifice for Wei, particularly the moment when Lan endured severe punishment to save Wei thirteen years ago, the soundscape instantly transports listeners to that intense scene. Listeners vividly hear the swishing force of the whip and its impact, immersing them in the sounds of Lan’s anguish and unwavering love. This direct auditory impact allows listeners to feel as if they are experiencing the events firsthand, physically sensing the hardships encountered by the protagonists in understanding each other’s affection, intensifying their hard-won love. The musical orchestration and vocal interplay are also pivotal to conveying the story. In the storyline, Wei and Lan showcase proficiency in their respective instruments: Wei with the flute and Lan with the guqin (a seven-string Chinese zither). The tonal features of these instruments—the flute’s melodious brightness and the guqin’s deep lingering resonance—symbolise the protagonists’ distinct personalities, adding ingenious layers to their relationship. In the Guanyin Temple scene (Season Three, Episode 13), as Wei confesses to Lan, the initial background music features the flute, guqin, and rain sounds, foreshadowing the confessional moment with Wei’s worries that Lan will not believe his words. As Wei promises to remember Lan’s every word from now on, the music incorporates the guzheng, a Chinese string instrument with a brighter timbre than guqin. The tremolo technique of guzheng is reminiscent of the characters’ heartstring vibrations. Through auditory cues, the narrative climaxes with Wei’s heartfelt confession of love for Lan. When Wei straightforwardly confesses, ‘I fancy you, I love you, I want you, I cannot leave you. … I do not want anyone but you—it cannot be anyone but you’ (Season Three, Episode 13), his heartfelt words are accompanied by layered sounds, including the duet of the flute and guqin, and the sound of thunder and rain, accelerating the affective climax. Lan echoes Wei’s words, underscored by erhu, thereby showing how this string instrument resembles humans’ sobbing voices through its sliding technique, rendering the touching melody. The heartbeat and rain sound with Lan’s panting highlight the painful loneliness of Lan’s thirteen-year wait. The intricate fusion of musical and vocal elements enables listeners to not only hear but also to feel the mutual affection between the characters, culminating in a sense of delight upon the disclosure of their reciprocal love following numerous adventures. Using earbuds amplifies listeners’ capacity to fully receive auditory details and stereo effects, thereby contributing to the popularity of BL audio dramas that skillfully convey unspoken love through detailed soundscapes. Epilogue The Grandmaster audio dramas provide crafted episodes that fulfill fans’ passionate needs that exceed the novel’s scope. In addition to adapting the novel, the team has conceived original mini-dramas that enrich the character images. Listeners can access additional content such as iconic quotes, ringtones, and ‘lullaby’ episodes recorded by the leading CVs, maximising the captivating power of sound and justifying listeners’ investment. The multi-layered use of sounds and instrumental arrangements effectively constructs a three-dimensional soundscape, reinforcing the audience’s understanding of the story and characters. Unlike television/Web-drama adaptations, the audio drama fully amplifies the tragic elements of the novel, pushing the immersed listener’s imagination past textual limitations. While casting choices and modelling in visual adaptions may disappoint viewers’ expectations at times, the audio drama leverages the power of sound to stimulate listeners’ imaginations, encouraging them to visualise their own specific character images. Skillful orchestration, along with sound effects, breaths, and dialogues in Grandmaster intensifies emotional expression, forming a rich and dimensional soundscape and unlocking new possibilities for audio drama artistic expression for Chinese BL fantasy. 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Introduction Documentary film has grown significantly in the past decade, with high profile films such as Fahrenheit 9/11, Supersize Me, and An Inconvenient Truth garnering increased attention both at the box office and in the news media. In addition, the rising prominence of web-based media has provided new opportunities for documentary to create social impact. Films are now typically released with websites, Facebook pages, twitter feeds, and web videos to increase both reach and impact. This combination of technology and broader audience appeal has given rise to a current landscape in which documentary films are imbedded within coordinated multi-media campaigns. New media have not only opened up new avenues for communicating with audiences, they have also created new opportunities for data collection and analysis of film impacts. A recent report by McKinsey and Company highlighted this potential, introducing and discussing the implications of increasing consumer information being recorded on the Internet as well as through networked sensors in the physical world. As they found: "Big data—large pools of data that can be captured, communicated, aggregated, stored, and analyzed—is now part of every sector and function of the global economy" (Manyika et al. iv). This data can be mined to learn a great deal about both individual and cultural response to documentary films and the issues they represent. Although film has a rich history in humanities research, this new set of tools enables an empirical approach grounded in the social sciences. However, several researchers across disciplines have noted that limited investigation has been conducted in this area. Although there has always been an emphasis on social impact in film and many filmmakers and scholars have made legitimate (and possibly illegitimate) claims of impact, few have attempted to empirically justify these claims. Over fifteen years ago, noted film scholar Brian Winston commented that "the underlying assumption of most social documentaries—that they shall act as agents of reform and change—is almost never demonstrated" (236). A decade later, Political Scientist David Whiteman repeated this sentiment, arguing that, "despite widespread speculation about the impact of documentaries, the topic has received relatively little systematic attention" ("Evolving"). And earlier this year, the introduction to a special issue of Mass Communication and Society on documentary film stated, "documentary film, despite its growing influence and many impacts, has mostly been overlooked by social scientists studying the media and communication" (Nisbet and Aufderheide 451). Film has been studied extensively as entertainment, as narrative, and as cultural event, but the study of film as an agent of social change is still in its infancy. This paper introduces a systematic approach to measuring the social impact of documentary film aiming to: (1) discuss the context of documentary film and its potential impact; and (2) argue for a social science approach, discussing key issues about conducting such research. Changes in Documentary Practice Documentary film has been used as a tool for promoting social change throughout its history. John Grierson, who coined the term "documentary" in 1926, believed it could be used to influence the ideas and actions of people in ways once reserved for church and school. He presented his thoughts on this emerging genre in his 1932 essay, First Principles of Documentary, saying, "We believe that the cinema's capacity for getting around, for observing and selecting from life itself, can be exploited in a new and vital art form" (97). Richard Barsam further specified the definition of documentary, distinguishing it from non-fiction film, such that all documentaries are non-fiction films but not all non-fiction films are documentaries. He distinguishes documentary from other forms of non-fiction film (i.e. travel films, educational films, newsreels) by its purpose; it is a film with an opinion and a specific message that aims to persuade or influence the audience. And Bill Nichols writes that the definition of documentary may even expand beyond the film itself, defining it as a "filmmaking practice, a cinematic tradition, and mode of audience reception" (12). Documentary film has undergone many significant changes since its inception, from the heavily staged romanticism movement of the 1920s to the propagandist tradition of governments using film to persuade individuals to support national agendas to the introduction of cinéma vérité in the 1960s and historical documentary in the 1980s (cf. Barnouw). However, the recent upsurge in popularity of documentary media, combined with technological advances of internet and computers have opened up a whole new set of opportunities for film to serve as both art and agent for social change. One such opportunity is in the creation of film-based social action campaigns. Over the past decade, filmmakers have taken a more active role in promoting social change by coordinating film releases with action campaigns. Companies such as Participant Media (An Inconvenient Truth, Food Inc., etc.) now create "specific social action campaigns for each film and documentary designed to give a voice to issues that resonate in the films" (Participant Media). In addition, a new sector of "social media" consultants are now offering services, including "consultation, strategic planning for alternative distribution, website and social media development, and complete campaign management services to filmmakers to ensure the content of nonfiction media truly meets the intention for change" (Working Films). The emergence of new forms of media and technology are changing our conceptions of both documentary film and social action. Technologies such as podcasts, video blogs, internet radio, social media and network applications, and collaborative web editing "both unsettle and extend concepts and assumptions at the heart of 'documentary' as a practice and as an idea" (Ellsworth). In the past decade, we have seen new forms of documentary creation, distribution, marketing, and engagement. Likewise, film campaigns are utilizing a broad array of strategies to engage audience members, including "action kits, screening programs, educational curriculums and classes, house parties, seminars, panels" that often turn into "ongoing 'legacy' programs that are updated and revised to continue beyond the film's domestic and international theatrical, DVD and television windows" (Participant Media). This move towards multi-media documentary film is becoming not only commonplace, but expected as a part of filmmaking. NYU film professor and documentary film pioneer George Stoney recently noted, "50 percent of the documentary filmmaker's job is making the movie, and 50 percent is figuring out what its impact can be and how it can move audiences to action" (qtd. in Nisbet, "Gasland"). In his book Convergence Culture, Henry Jenkins, coined the term "transmedia storytelling", which he later defined as "a process where integral elements of a fiction get dispersed systematically across multiple delivery channels for the purpose of creating a unified and coordinated entertainment experience" ("Transmedia"). When applied to documentary film, it is the elements of the "issue" raised by the film that get dispersed across these channels, coordinating, not just an entertainment experience, but a social action campaign. Dimensions of Evaluation It is not unreasonable to assume that such film campaigns, just like any policy or program, have the possibility to influence viewers' knowledge, attitudes, and behavior. Measuring this impact has become increasingly important, as funders of documentary and issue-based films want look to understand the "return on investment" of films in terms of social impact so that they can compare them with other projects, including non-media, direct service projects. Although we "feel" like films make a difference to the individuals who also see them in the broader cultures in which they are embedded, measurement and empirical analysis of this impact are vitally important for both providing feedback to filmmakers and funders as well as informing future efforts attempting to leverage film for social change. This type of systematic assessment, or program evaluation, is often discussed in terms of two primary goals—formative (or process) and summative (or impact) evaluation (cf. Muraskin; Trochim and Donnelly). Formative evaluation studies program materials and activities to strengthen a program, and summative evaluation examines program outcomes. In terms of documentary film, these two goals can be described as follows: Formative Evaluation: Informing the Process As programs (broadly defined as an intentional set of activities with the aim of having some specific impact), the people who interact with them, and the cultures they are situated in are constantly changing, program development and evaluation is an ongoing learning cycle. Film campaigns, which are an intentional set of activities with the aim of impacting individual viewers and broader cultures, fit squarely within this purview. Without formulating hypotheses about the relationships between program activities and goals and then collecting and analyzing data during implementation to test them, it is difficult to learn ways to improve programs (or continue doing what works best in the most efficient manner). Attention to this process enables those involved to learn more about, not only what works, but how and why it works and even gain insights about how program outcomes may be affected by changes to resource availability, potential audiences, or infrastructure. Filmmakers are constantly learning and honing their craft and realizing the impact of their practice can help the artistic process. Often faced with tight budgets and timelines, they are forced to confront tradeoffs all the time, in the writing, production and post-production process. Understanding where they are having impact can improve their decision-making, which can help both the individual project and the overall field. Summative Evaluation: Quantifying Impacts Evaluation is used in many different fields to determine whether programs are achieving their intended goals and objectives. It became popular in the 1960s as a way of understanding the impact of the Great Society programs and has continued to grow since that time (Madaus and Stufflebeam). A recent White House memo stated that "rigorous, independent program evaluations can be a key resource in determining whether government programs are achieving their intended outcomes as well as possible and at the lowest possible cost" and the United States Office of Management and Budget (OMB) launched an initiative to increase the practice of "impact evaluations, or evaluations aimed at determining the causal effects of programs" (Orszag 1). Documentary films, like government programs, generally target a national audience, aim to serve a social purpose, and often do not provide a return on their investment. Participant Media, the most visible and arguably most successful documentary production company in the film industry, made recent headlines for its difficulty in making a profit during its seven-year history (Cieply). Owner and founder Jeff Skoll reported investing hundreds of millions of dollars into the company and CEO James Berk added that the company sometimes measures success, not by profit, but by "whether Mr. Skoll could have exerted more impact simply by spending his money philanthropically" (Cieply). Because of this, documentary projects often rely on grant funding, and are starting to approach funders beyond traditional arts and media sources. "Filmmakers are finding new fiscal and non-fiscal partners, in constituencies that would not traditionally be considered—or consider themselves—media funders or partners" (BRITDOC 6). And funders increasingly expect tangible data about their return on investment. Says Luis Ubiñas, president of Ford Foundation, which recently launched the Just Films Initiative: In these times of global economic uncertainty, with increasing demand for limited philanthropic dollars, assessing our effectiveness is more important than ever. Today, staying on the frontlines of social change means gauging, with thoughtfulness and rigor, the immediate and distant outcomes of our funding. Establishing the need for evaluation is not enough—attention to methodology is also critical. Valid research methodology is a critical component of understanding around the role entertainment can play in impacting social and environmental issues. The following issues are vital to measuring impact. Defining the Project Though this may seem like an obvious step, it is essential to determine the nature of the project so one can create research questions and hypotheses based on a complete understanding of the "treatment". One organization that provides a great example of the integration of documentary film imbedded into a larger campaign or movement is Invisible Children. Founded in 2005, Invisible Children is both a media-based organization as well as an economic development NGO with the goal of raising awareness and meeting the needs of child soldiers and other youth suffering as a result of the ongoing war in northern Uganda. Although Invisible Children began as a documentary film, it has grown into a large non-profit organization with an operating budget of over $8 million and a staff of over a hundred employees and interns throughout the year as well as volunteers in all 50 states and several countries. Invisible Children programming includes films, events, fundraising campaigns, contests, social media platforms, blogs, videos, two national "tours" per year, merchandise, and even a 650-person three-day youth summit in August 2011 called The Fourth Estate. Individually, each of these components might lead to specific outcomes; collectively, they might lead to others. In order to properly assess impacts of the film "project", it is important to take all of these components into consideration and think about who they may impact and how. This informs the research questions, hypotheses, and methods used in evaluation. Film campaigns may even include partnerships with existing social movements and non-profit organizations targeting social change. The American University Center for Social Media concluded in a case study of three issue-based documentary film campaigns: Digital technologies do not replace, but are closely entwined with, longstanding on-the-ground activities of stakeholders and citizens working for social change. Projects like these forge new tools, pipelines, and circuits of circulation in a multiplatform media environment. They help to create sustainable network infrastructures for participatory public media that extend from local communities to transnational circuits and from grassroots communities to policy makers. (Abrash) Expanding the Focus of Impact beyond the Individual A recent focus has shifted the dialogue on film impact. Whiteman ("Theaters") argues that traditional metrics of film "success" tend to focus on studio economic indicators that are far more relevant to large budget films. Current efforts focused on box office receipts and audience size, the author claims, are really measures of successful film marketing or promotion, missing the mark when it comes to understanding social impact. He instead stresses the importance of developing a more comprehensive model. His "coalition model" broadens the range and types of impact of film beyond traditional metrics to include the entire filmmaking process, from production to distribution. Whiteman (“Theaters”) argues that a narrow focus on the size of the audience for a film, its box office receipts, and viewers' attitudes does not incorporate the potential reach of a documentary film. Impacts within the coalition model include both individual and policy levels. Individual impacts (with an emphasis on activist groups) include educating members, mobilizing for action, and raising group status; policy includes altering both agenda for and the substance of policy deliberations. The Fledgling Fund (Barrett and Leddy) expanded on this concept and identified five distinct impacts of documentary film campaigns. These potential impacts expand from individual viewers to groups, movements, and eventually to what they call the "ultimate goal" of social change. Each is introduced briefly below. Quality Film. The film itself can be presented as a quality film or media project, creating enjoyment or evoking emotion in the part of audiences. "By this we mean a film that has a compelling narrative that draws viewers in and can engage them in the issue and illustrate complex problems in ways that statistics cannot" (Barrett and Leddy, 6). Public Awareness. Film can increase public awareness by bringing light to issues and stories that may have otherwise been unknown or not often thought about. This is the level of impact that has received the most attention, as films are often discussed in terms of their "educational" value. "A project's ability to raise awareness around a particular issue, since awareness is a critical building block for both individual change and broader social change" (Barrett and Leddy, 6). Public Engagement. Impact, however, need not stop at simply raising public awareness. Engagement "indicates a shift from simply being aware of an issue to acting on this awareness. Were a film and its outreach campaign able to provide an answer to the question 'What can I do?' and more importantly mobilize that individual to act?" (Barrett and Leddy, 7). This is where an associated film campaign becomes increasingly important, as transmedia outlets such as Facebook, websites, blogs, etc. can build off the interest and awareness developed through watching a film and provide outlets for viewers channel their constructive efforts. Social Movement. In addition to impacts on individuals, films can also serve to mobilize groups focused on a particular problem. The filmmaker can create a campaign around the film to promote its goals and/or work with existing groups focused on a particular issue, so that the film can be used as a tool for mobilization and collaboration. "Moving beyond measures of impact as they relate to individual awareness and engagement, we look at the project's impact as it relates to the broader social movement … if a project can strengthen the work of key advocacy organizations that have strong commitment to the issues raised in the film" (Barrett and Leddy, 7). Social Change. The final level of impact and "ultimate goal" of an issue-based film is long-term and systemic social change. "While we understand that realizing social change is often a long and complex process, we do believe it is possible and that for some projects and issues there are key indicators of success" (Barrett and Leddy, 7). This can take the form of policy or legislative change, passed through film-based lobbying efforts, or shifts in public dialogue and behavior. Legislative change typically takes place beyond the social movement stage, when there is enough support to pressure legislators to change or create policy. Film-inspired activism has been seen in issues ranging from environmental causes such as agriculture (Food Inc.) and toxic products (Blue Vinyl) to social causes such as foreign conflict (Invisible Children) and education (Waiting for Superman). Documentary films can also have a strong influence as media agenda-setters, as films provide dramatic "news pegs" for journalists seeking to either sustain or generation new coverage of an issue (Nisbet "Introduction" 5), such as the media coverage of climate change in conjunction with An Inconvenient Truth. Barrett and Leddy, however, note that not all films target all five impacts and that different films may lead to different impacts. "In some cases we could look to key legislative or policy changes that were driven by, or at least supported by the project... In other cases, we can point to shifts in public dialogue and how issues are framed and discussed" (7). It is possible that specific film and/or campaign characteristics may lead to different impacts; this is a nascent area for research and one with great promise for both practical and theoretical utility. Innovations in Tools and Methods Finally, the selection of tools is a vital component for assessing impact and the new media landscape is enabling innovations in the methods and strategies for program evaluation. Whereas the traditional domain of film impact measurement included box office statistics, focus groups, and exit surveys, innovations in data collection and analysis have expanded the reach of what questions we can ask and how we are able to answer them. For example, press coverage can assist in understanding and measuring the increase in awareness about an issue post-release. Looking directly at web-traffic changes "enables the creation of an information-seeking curve that can define the parameters of a teachable moment" (Hart and Leiserowitz 360). Audience reception can be measured, not only via interviews and focus groups, but also through content and sentiment analysis of web content and online analytics. "Sophisticated analytics can substantially improve decision making, minimize risks, and unearth valuable insights that would otherwise remain hidden" (Manyika et al. 5). These new tools are significantly changing evaluation, expanding what we can learn about the social impacts of film through triangulation of self-report data with measurement of actual behavior in virtual environments. Conclusion The changing media landscape both allows and impels evaluation of film impacts on individual viewers and the broader culture in which they are imbedded. Although such analysis may have previously been limited to box office numbers, critics' reviews, and theater exit surveys, the rise of new media provides both the ability to connect filmmakers, activists, and viewers in new ways and the data in which to study the process. This capability, combined with significant growth in the documentary landscape, suggests a great potential for documentary film to contribute to some of our most pressing social and environmental needs. A social scientific approach, that combines empirical analysis with theory applied from basic science, ensures that impact can be measured and leveraged in a way that is useful for both filmmakers as well as funders. In the end, this attention to impact ensures a continued thriving marketplace for issue-based documentary films in our social landscape. References Abrash, Barbara. "Social Issue Documentary: The Evolution of Public Engagement." American University Center for Social Media 21 Apr. 2010. 26 Sep. 2011 ‹http://www.centerforsocialmedia.org/›. Aufderheide, Patricia. "The Changing Documentary Marketplace." Cineaste 30.3 (2005): 24-28. Barnouw, Eric. Documentary: A History of the Non-Fiction Film. New York: Oxford UP, 1993. Barrett, Diana and Sheila Leddy. 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In March 2020, co-authors burrough and Starnaman with Technical Director Dale MacDonald had just finished collaborating on a work of computational art, A Kitchen of One’s Own, for The Photographers’ Gallery in London. In this essay we discuss the genealogy of our Zoom performance, Epic Handwashing for Synchronous Participation, which was an extension of two earlier projects—one that was derailed due to COVID-19, and the other that resulted from our pivot towards reflecting on the pandemic experience. Our performance was a response to, and offered a collaborative moment of reflection on, the uncertain moment in time of living in a global pandemic and understanding our experience through participatory art. A Kitchen of One’s Own was commissioned for “Data/Set/Match”—a year-long program dedicated to analysing, interpreting, and visualising image datasets (burrough, Starnaman, and MacDonald). The image dataset we interpreted is Epic Kitchens’ 2018 collection. Epic Kitchens is a dataset of videos collected by a group of researchers whose participants create non-scripted recordings of daily activities in kitchens. It is the largest known dataset produced using first-person vision. Researchers assign each recorded action with a verb like “wash”, “peel”, “toast”, or “rub” to describe and categorise the event. Our project juxtaposed the videos from Epic Kitchens with quotes from a dataset created by Starnaman with research assistant Alyssa Yates. This work was scheduled for installation on the approximately nine by nine-foot media wall, viewable to the public inside the gallery and to passersby on the street in London’s SoHo neighborhood. However, the work was not sent until May because of the COVID-19 lockdowns in London and Dallas. Thus, feeling trapped and frustrated in our respective homes, totally separated by quarantine, but close in distance, we responded to our historical moment with art. Figure 1: xtine burrough and Sabrina Starnaman with technical direction by Dale MacDonald, A Kitchen of One’s Own, single frame on the media wall seen from Ramilles Street. The Photographers’ Gallery, London, October 2020. A Kitchen of One’s Own explored personal and domestic kitchen spaces as mundane, politically-charged, and inspirational (fig. 1). The familiar, comforting space of the home kitchen became charged with domestic tropes of the pandemic: hand washing, sanitising, and cooking. We explained, A Kitchen of One’s Own is a speculative remix that confronts Epic Kitchens, a dataset of first-person cooking videos, with quotes from articles and social media posts on sexual harassment in professional and domestic kitchens, podcasts about the kitchen as a political space, and reflective texts by women authors about food and cooking. (burrough, Starnaman, and MacDonald, “Kitchen”) Taking inspiration from our Kitchen project, we pivoted for audiences online with a browser-based project, Epic Hand Washing in a Time of Lost Narratives. This project (fig. 2) showcases 68 videos found in Epic Kitchens’ 2018 dataset that had been tagged by researchers with the keywords “wash” or “hand”, which burrough and MacDonald optimised for the web browser and republished in a showcase on Vimeo (burrough, Starnaman, and MacDonald, “Epic”). Starnaman and burrough developed a new dataset of complementary quotes for this iteration including selections from literature written during or about pandemics such as the bubonic plague and the global influenza pandemic of 1918-19. Figure 2: Epic Hand Washing in a Time of Lost Narratives. Browser-based project for The Photographers’ Gallery and Unthinking Photography. March 2020 (https://unthinking.photography/projects/epichandwashing/). We developed Epic Hand Washing for Synchronous Participation (fig. 3) as a Zoom performance of our browser-based project for a virtual engagement session at the Electronic Literature Organization’s (ELO) conference in the summer of 2020 (burrough and Starnaman, “Epic”). In this article, we illustrate these projects as a series of interrelated investigations, and centre on the Zoom performance, Epic Hand Washing for Synchronous Participation. We then reflect on the way these works engage a range of public audiences and participants. Figure 3: xtine burrough and Sabrina Starnaman, Epic Hand Washing for Synchronous Participation. Virtual engagement session and participatory performance hosted on Zoom for the ELO conference. This still frame shows a final group performance of hand washing at 21:56 (the complete session was 27:32). July 2020. Blurring Boundaries: Audiences, Participants, Maintenance, and Labour Our past projects demonstrate our commitment to participatory creative practices in which the boundary between audience members, performers, and participants is blurred in the generation of the work of art. Our earliest collaboration, The Laboring Self, was an installation of cardboard cut to the shape of virtual workers’ hands. We collected tracings of hands from workers on Amazon.com’s Mechanical Turk work platform and laser-cut them from recycled Amazon boxes. In the gallery we invited participants to inscribe or embroider the hands with statements about work before adding them to The Laboring Self installation. Audience members shared their stories, sentiments, anxieties, and hopes about the labour they perform in their everyday lives on hands that crowded a wall space during the span of the exhibition (fig. 4). This work was inspired by Mierle Laderman Ukeles's 1970s feminist performances in maintenance art, which elevated care-taking and everyday “maintenance” activities to the platform of fine art. In Manifesto for Maintenance Art 1969!, Ukeles confronts the boundary between her everyday performance as a mother, woman, and artist. In particular, with regard to maintenance, Ukeles proposes to “simply do these maintenance everyday things, and flush them up to consciousness, exhibit them, as Art” (qtd. in Burnham). So too, we exhibited the hands of hidden workers to bring visibility to the invisible and asked audience members to become participants by putting on view their own reflections on the various forms of labour they embody. Figure 4: xtine burrough and Sabrina Starnaman, The Laboring Self, installation view approximately 8 by 10 feet. The Dallas Museum of Art Center for Creative Connections. October 2017-January 2018. For our more recent Zoom-based performance, Epic Hand Washing for Synchronous Participation, we again focus on the hands of our audience members-turned participatory performers. As Ukeles used her hands to wash the steps of an urban museum, turning often invisible labour visible through performance, we sought to make the private act of hand washing—an act of personal protection and civic duty—a public performance in the digital town square. The individual hand, which has been central to our work in the past, synecdochally represents the worker, or in this case the person-turned-public-health-citizen. In a world of ubiquitous Zoom calls, the focus is almost always on our faces, our bodies cut off around the shoulders or mid-torso. Hands are but a fleeting on-screen guest. Yet, for this performance, our hands were at the centre of the screen, standing in for our physical effort and existential fear. Directions for Participants Before our performance, we shared this set of directions with participants: Prepare to wash your hands on Zoom in real time by setting up a camera to live stream or recruit a person to film you near your sink. Log into the Zoom link provided. Wash your hands on camera for 20 seconds while we read along with your performance. Notes from the Live Event On 18 July 2020, about 24 people participated in our event as solo participants, as couples, and as families on one Zoom call. The invitation to this project included the instruction to be camera-ready for hand washing at any household sink, so our participatory public entered the call from their kitchens and bathrooms. Before our formal introduction, a couple of tech-savvy kids drew on the Zoom screen (fig. 5), initiating a spirit of playfulness that the adults on the call stepped right into. While we had anticipated this event would elicit a sense of communal action, we were not prepared for just how community- and play-starved we all were. Figure 5: Opening Title Slide, Epic Hand Washing for Synchronous Participation. ELO Virtual Engagement Session. 18 July 2020. We set the stage for the performance by introducing Epic Hand Washing in a Time of Lost Narratives, our spring 2020 browser-based project, and gave participants a moment to click through it and to read the texts we had culled for our database of “pandemic quotes” (burrough and Starnaman, “Epic Hand Washing Text Dataset”). Then we explained that our facilitator and Zoom host, John Murray, would be calling on the participants one at a time to wash their hands, while we took turns reading quotes from our archive. The first participant quietly washed their hands, and the pairing of our first quote created a serious tone: “so, at the bidding of the queen, they washed their hands, and all took their places…” (Boccaccio 26). However, the rhythm of the call and response, and the joy of witnessing each other in our various households across the globe, lightened the experience. We, along with participants, reveled in the intimate hygienic dance of hand washing at kitchen sinks and bathroom vanities; one after another we shifted our presence to another person’s living quarters and joined them at the sink. This was a truly mixed, global group. Scholars and artists for whom ELO is a disciplinary home rubbed virtual shoulders with our friends and their own friends who would not have attended ELO otherwise. This event replicated the same kind of shared experience across time and space that the archive of pandemic and hand washing texts elicited. These texts bring humanity together through the calamity of plague and disease, allowing for a sense of larger community, and that is exactly what we saw on the screen: human experience mediated by the screen in conversation with writers across time and connected by the word. Moreover, this event took place in July 2020, a time of “early pandemic”, a time when the complete unknown of the epidemic had given way to the acceptance of quarantining, but before the exhaustion and cynicism of The Long Confinement and Zoom fatigue had fully set in. Thus, we saw an enthusiasm to connect and play with the medium in a way that might have been impossible eight months later. Synchronous Participation as a Performance While the complete performance is archived on the ELO website, we have excerpted a clip from the performance for analysis (burrough and Starnaman, “Excerpt”). It is a 2:15 clip from the middle of the performance, during which we took turns reading quotes from our database while participants washed their hands on camera, one at a time. We showcase this selection of the performance to highlight the repetition embedded in the script. Our directions for participants and our moderator, John Murray, became repetitive mantras throughout the performance, while the reading of the quotes gave participants space to wash their hands. We read four quotes for each participant, which we measured to leave approximately thirty seconds of time for hand washing. We wanted participants to wash their hands for at least 20 seconds, following the Centers for Disease Control’s (CDC) guidelines, and we predicted that there would be moments when we would begin reading but participants would not yet be washing their hands. Since their performances were out of our control, we decided to read for slightly more than twenty seconds for each participant. From 0 to 22 seconds, Sabrina and our moderator, John Murray, enact the transitional directions between participants. At the start of the clip, Sabrina thanks the participants who have just finished washing their hands—our friends’ twin children, Cora and Henry, who fill the screen in Zoom’s Spotlight mode until eight seconds. The twins are at a double-vanity, washing their hands in coordinated outfits, and moving towards separate towels at the left and right sides of the screen at six seconds. At eight seconds Sabrina is spotlighted. She directs our moderator with the same “set-up phrase” that we repeat throughout the performance: “please mute everyone but us and the next selected hand washer, and don’t forget to change the spotlight to them. When you’re ready, announce who will begin washing their hands.” From 12 to 22 seconds participants are visible in Gallery View while John announces that Tina Escaga will wash their hands next (fig. 6). From 0:22 to 1:07 Tina appears in Spotlight mode. The screen is filled with Tina in the bathroom washing their hands with a white bar of soap. The next set of four quotes are read by xtine, as we watch Tina perform hand washing: "Can we not contrive that he somehow wash himself a little, that he stink not so shrewdly?” (Boccaccio 149). “We are now close to a well, which is never without the pulley and a large bucket; ’tis but a step thither, and we will wash him out of hand” (Boccaccio 149). “Among the drawbacks of illness as matter for literature there is the poverty of the language” (Woolf 33). “English, which can express the thoughts of Hamlet and the tragedy of Lear, has no words for the shiver and the headache” (Woolf 34). Figure 6: Tina washes their hands at the sink with a white bar of soap. From 1:01 to 1:29 xtine thanks Tina, repeats the set-up phrase to John, and John announces that Renee Carmichael is the next performer. The spotlight shifts from Tina to xtine to Gallery View to Renee. From 1:29 to 2:00 Renee appears at their kitchen sink and washes their hands in Spotlight mode as Sabrina can be heard reading the following four quotes: “We’ve not seen anything of the sort before...” (Camus 6). “The truth is that everyone is bored, and devotes himself to cultivating habits” (Camus 1). “It becomes strange indeed that illness has not taken its place with love, battle, and jealousy among the prime themes of literature” (Woolf 32). “They determined to attach him to the rope, and lower him into the well, there to wash himself...” (Boccaccio 149). From 2:00 to 2:15 Sabrina thanks Renee, repeats the set-up phrase, and John announces “OK, next up, Leo”. From 2:00 to 2:07 we see Sabrina in Spotlight mode, at 2:07 to 2:15 participants are visible in Gallery View, and though this clip ends at 2:15, in the full-length documentation of the performance, Leo is next seen in the Spotlight. In this short clip, it is evident that the repetition of the performance directions sets the stage for our audience / guests / performers, who voluntarily came to this ELO virtual engagement without prior rehearsal. Cora and Henry, Tina, and Renee are prepared with the camera near their sinks and wash their hands for the complete duration of our reading. Tina and Renee (and all of our adult participants) are seen in the video wearing headphones or earbuds for their performance. Our directions did not advise this, but we were encouraged to see that the participants thought ahead about their technical engagement. We also did not advise participants to turn off the water while they were scrubbing their hands. If we were to restage the event, we would include this for water sustainability purposes. It should not be so surprising to us, but we are still amazed at how thoroughly all of our participants washed their hands. Clearly, our performers had watched the directions provided by the CDC for washing viral matter from our bodies. Conclusion Our original project A Kitchen of One’s Own had viewers peering into the recorded kitchen scenes of anonymous participants in person at The Photographers’ Gallery or through the gallery window on Ramillies Street in SoHo, London. Viewers watched the private actions of strangers in their kitchens while being presented with various texts. Some offered descriptions of sexual harassment in often famous professional kitchens and others, the meditations of women about the significance of creation in their home kitchen. This developed an exploration of the significance of women’s experience in place. While fewer people were able to visit the gallery installation, A Kitchen of One’s Own, in London due to the pandemic, many people viewed Epic Hand Washing in a Time of Lost Narrative online. Epic Hand Washing for Synchronous Participation put the audience in the domestic space while sharing the historic, traumatic experience of a pandemic, dislocated across time. It invited an entirely online audience to experience a live performance of hand washing at the sinks of strangers and friends, fully mediated through screens on both sides. Epic Hand Washing for Synchronous Participation did exactly what we named it to do—engage people in a live, synchronous elevation of a mundane human action in a personal, yet ubiquitous space to a work of art, while experiencing the asynchronous voices of people who had already lived through global pandemics. This iteration offered us the embodied experience we had originally envisioned for A Kitchen of One’s Own. As a result of the pandemic, people in technologically connected communities are intimately familiar with the online interactive public that was once the realm of digitally savvy producers and users. This reality thus broadens the audience for our online projects. Our previous browser-based art and archive project An Archive of Unnamed Women was largely visited at workshops and conference presentations that we hosted. In previous projects like The Laboring Self, which was installed at the DMA and in the lobby of the California State University, San Marcos library, we transformed library patrons into a participatory-art public. In a moment of transformation, Epic Hand Washing for Synchronous Participation reinvented the pedestrian action of hand washing, like turning an ordinary visit to the library into an encounter with art. Similarly, it reinvented the ubiquitous act of hand washing into a live-for-Zoom performance. We are intrigued by transformation, and this shows in the way we accompany a project though many different forms before moving on to something completely different; our work is iterative by nature. A Kitchen of One’s Own germinated from our project An Archive of Unnamed Women, which pairs images of unnamed women from the New York Public Library with textual selections from fiction by women about women (“Archive of Unnamed Women”). That project engaged the archive and sought to reclaim these women from the obscurity of history. A Kitchen of One's Own took us into the kitchen, exploring what it means for women to labour and create in kitchens, both in ease and amid the duress of sexism and sexual harassment, through videos paired with text. With the pandemic arising in the U.S. and Europe in Spring 2020, we were swept up into the shared confusion, and like so many, we sought to make sense of a moment so catastrophic. We turned to writers of the past who had endured plagues and epidemics to help us gain clarity, creating a video and text synthesis that again allows for speculative meaning-making through fortuitous pairings. Presently, we are evolving this project from pandemic to enlightenment, with an iteration that takes up as inspiration the Instructions for the Zen Cook by thirteenth century Zen Master Eihei Dōgen Zenji. Epic Hand Washing for Synchronous Participation is an iterative work arising from the tensions of a time in transformative upheaval. It was one way we sought to make sense and bring people together in a playful experience that was beyond easy understanding. References Boccaccio, Giovanni. The Decameron. Filippo and Bernardo Giunti: 1370-71. Coradella Collegiate Bookshelf Edition. <http://flc.ahnu.edu.cn/__local/7/E7/75/6AB8DEBA692DD0CF6790CA70701_26DE4EC2_17EED4.pdf?e=.pdf>. Burnham, Jack. “Problems of Criticism IX: Art and Technology.” ArtForum (Jan. 1971). <http://www.artforum.com/print/197101/problems-of-criticism-ix-art-and-technology-38921>. burrough, xtine, and Sabrina Starnaman. “Epic Hand Washing for Synchronous Participation.” Electronic Literature Organization Virtual Engagement Session. July 2020. <http://stars.library.ucf.edu/elo2020/live/events/12>. ———. “Excerpt of ELO Virtual Engagement, ‘Epic Hand Washing for Synchronous Participation’ (2:15).” Vimeo, 19 May 2021. <http://vimeo.com/xtineburrough/elo-zoom>. ———. The Laboring Self. Dallas Museum of Art Center for Creative Connections. Oct. 2017 to Jan. 2018. <http://dma.org/visit-center-creative-connections-community-projects/laboring-self>. ———. Epic Hand Washing in a Time of Lost Narratives: Text Dataset. Mar. 2020. <http://drive.google.com/file/d/1hSV-9l_ETTOruBpI-NCOChjuPtprlZue/view>. ———. An Archive of Unnamed Women. Browser-based project. Oct. 2019. <http://visiblewomen.net/unnamed-women/index.html>. burrough, xtine, and Sabrina Starnaman, with Technical Direction from Dale MacDonald. “A Kitchen of One’s Own.” The Photographers’ Gallery, 1-28 Oct. 2020. <http://thephotographersgallery.org.uk/akitchenofonesown>. ———. “Epic Hand Washing.” Vimeo. <https://vimeo.com/showcase/4611141>. Camus, Albert. The Plague. Gallimard, 1947. <http://antilogicalism.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/03/the-plague.pdf>. Woolf, Virginia. “On Being Ill.” The Criterion, 1926. <http://thenewcriterion1926.files.wordpress.com/2014/12/woolf-on-being-ill.pdf>.