Academic literature on the topic 'Series-books=2014-11-23'

Balleys C., Coll S. (2017). Being publicly intimate: Teenagers managing online privacy. Media, Culture & Society, Vol. 39(6), pp. 885–901.<br /><br />Bond R. M., Fariss C. J., Jones J. J., Kramer A. D. I., Marlow C., Settle J. E., Fowler J. H. (2012). A 61-million-person experiment in social influence and political mobilization, Nature, Vol. 489, pp. 295–298.<br /><br />Dencik L., Jansen F., Metcalfe, P. (2018). A conceptual framework for approaching social justice in an age of datafication, DATAJUSTICE project, https://datajusticeproject.net/2018/08/30/aconceptual-framework-for-approaching-social-justice-in-an-age-of-datafication/, 01.02.2019.<br /><br />Fuchs C. (2011). The Political Economy of Privacy on Facebook. Television & New Media, Vol. 13(2), pp. 139–159.<br /><br />Helmond A. (2015). The platformization of the web: Making web data platform ready. Social Media + Society, Vol. 1(2), pp. 1–11.<br /><br />Hillygus D. S., Shields T. G. (2009). The Persuadable Voter. Wedge Issues in Presidential Campaigns. Princeton University Press: Princeton.<br /><br />Hintz A., Dencik L., Wahl-Jorgensen K. (2019). Digital citizenship in a datafied society. Polity Press: Medford.<br /><br />Kramp L., Loosen W. (2017). The transformation of journalism: from changing newsroom cultures to a new communicative orientation? In A. Hepp, U. Hasebrink, A. Breiter (Eds.), Communicative Figurations: Rethinking mediatized transformations, Palgrave Macmillan: Basingstoke. pp. 205–239.<br /><br />Kruschinski. S., Haller A. (2017). Restrictions on data-driven political micro-targeting in Germany. Internet Policy Review, Vol. 6(4), pp. 1–23.<br /><br />Kunelius R., Heikkilä H., Russell A., Yagodin D. (Eds.). (2017). Journalism and the NSA Revelations:<br />Privacy, security, and the press. I.B. Tauris: London.<br /><br />Livingstone S. (2008). Taking risky opportunities in youthful content creation: Teenagers’ use of social networking sites for intimacy, privacy and self-expression. New Media & Society, Vol. 10(3), 393–411.<br /><br />Lokot T. (2018). Be Safe or Be Seen? How Russian Activists Negotiate Visibility and Security in Online Resistance Practices. Surveillance & Society, Vol. 16 (3), 332–346.<br /><br />Loosen W., Reimer J.; De Silva-Schmidt F. (2017). Data-Driven Reporting – an On-Going (R) Evolution? A Longitudinal Analysis of Projects Nominated for the Data Journalism Awards 2013–2015. Working Paper Series Hans-Bredow-Institut No. 41.<br /><br />Lyon D. (2002). Surveillance society: Monitoring everyday life (Repr). Issues in society. Open Uniersity Press: Buckingham.<br /><br />Marwick A. E., boyd d. (2014). Networked privacy: How teenagers negotiate context in social media. New Media & Society, Vol. 16(7), pp. 1051–1067.<br /><br />Möller J., von Rimscha M. B. (2017). (De)Centralization of the Global Informational Ecosystem. Media and Communication, Vol. 5(3), pp. 37–48.<br /><br />Nissenbaum H. (2004): Privacy as contextual integrity. Washington Law Review, Vol. 79(1), pp. 101–139.<br /><br />Nissenbaum H. (2010). Privacy in context: Technology, policy, and the integrity of social life. Stanford Law Books: Stanford.<br /><br />Nowak J., Möller J. E. (2018, November). Don’t hate the media. Act on media., Paper presented at the 7th ECREA Conference, Lugano, Switzerland.<br /><br />Sifry M. Facebook Wants You to Vote on Tuesday. Here’s How It Messed With Your Feed in 2012, Mother Jones, http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2014/10/can-voting-facebook-button-improve-voter-turnout, 31.10.2018.<br /><br />Trepte S. (2016). The paradoxes of online privacy. In M. Walrave, K. Ponnet, E. Vanderhoven, J. Haers, B. Segaert (Eds.), Youth 2.0: Social media and adolescence. Connecting, Sharing and Empowering, Springer International Publishing: Cham, pp. 103–115.<br /><br />Trepte S., Reinecke L., Ellison N. B., Quiring O., Yao M. Z., Ziegele M. (2017). A Cross-Cultural Perspective on the Privacy Calculus. Social Media + Society, Vol. 3(1), pp. 1–13.<br /><br />Von Pape T., Trepte S., Mothes C. (2017). Privacy by disaster? Press coverage of privacy and digital technology. European Journal of Communication, Vol. 32(3), pp. 189–207.<br /><br />Wahl-Jorgensen K. (2017). A manifesto of failure for digital journalism. In P. J. Boczkowski, C. W. Anderson (Eds.), Remaking the News: Essays on the Future of Journalism Scholarship in the Digital Age, Inside Technology, MIT Press, Cambrdige MA, pp. 251–266.<br /><br />Wahl-Jorgensen K., Bennett L., Taylor G. (2017). The normalization of surveillance and the invisibility of digital citizenship: Media debates after the Snowden revelations. International Journal of Communication, Vol. 11, pp. 740–762.<br /><br />Westin A. F. (2015). Privacy and Freedom. IG Publishing: New York.<br /><br />Whittaker Z. Facebook won’t let you opt out of its phone number ‘look up’ setting, Techcrunch, https://techcrunch.com/2019/03/03/facebook-phone-number-look-up/?guccounter=1&-guce_referrer_us=aHR0cHM6Ly9uZXR6cG9saXRpay5vcmcvMjAxOS9mYWNlYm9vay-1taXNzYnJhdWNodC1oYW5keW51bW1lcm4tenUtd2VyYmV6d2Vja2VuLw&guce_referrer_cs=qtabV8dO1eMJbuNvjSOyJQ, 03.03.2019.

RESUMENLa pretensión de este artículo es ofrecer una serie de reflexiones y valoraciones metodológicas sobre la historia medieval de la Iglesia y la religiosidad partiendo de algunos aspectos destacados de la producción historiográfica reciente y esbozar ciertas propuestas en la misma clave metodológica. Este ensayo reflexiona sobre temas, enfoques y perspectivas, sobre los niveles de estudio de lo religioso y sobre la integración de la historia de la Iglesia y la historia social, y aboga por una historiasocial de la Iglesia.PALABRAS CLAVE: Historia Medieval, Historia de la Iglesia y la vida religiosa en la Edad Media, Metodología histórica, Liturgia y sociedad, Tendencias historiográficas.ABSTRACTThe aim of this article is to offer a series of reflections and methodological evaluations on the medieval history of the Church and religiosity based on some outstanding aspects of recent historiographical production, and to outline certain proposals in the same methodological vein. This essay reflects on themes, approaches and perspectives, on the levels of study of the religious and on the integration of the history of the Church and social history, and advocates a social history of the Church.KEY WORDS: Medieval History, History of the Church and religious life in the Middle Ages, historical methodology, liturgy and society, historiographical trends. BIBLIOGRAFÍAAbad Ibáñez, J. A., La celebración del misterio cristiano, Pamplona, Eunsa, 1996.Andrés-Gallego, J., “Historia religiosa en España”, Anuario de historia de la Iglesia, 4 (1995), pp. 259-270.Araus Ballesteros, L. y Prieto Sayagüés, J. A. (coords.), Las tres religiones en la Baja Edad Media peninsular. Espacios, percepciones y manifestaciones, Madrid, La Ergástula, 2018.Arranz Guzmán, A., “Amores desordenados y otros pecadillos del clero”, en Carrasco Manchado, A. I. y Rábade Obradó, M. del P. (coords.), Pecar en la Edad Media, Madrid, Sílex, 2008, pp. 227-262.Asensio Palacios, J. 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(dir.): La espiritualidad y la configuración de los reinos ibéricos (siglos XII-XV), Madrid, Dykinson, 2018.Bricourt, H. Hélène y Klöckener, M. (eds.), Liturgie, pensée théologique et mentalités religieuses au haut Moyen Âge. Le témoignage des sources liturgiques, Munster, Aschendorff Verlag, 2016.Burke, P., ¿Qué es la historia cultural? Barcelona, Paidós Ibérica, 2006.Bynum, C., Christian Materiality: An Essay on Religion in Late Medieval Europe, Brooklyn, Zone Books, 2011.Carrasco Manchado, A. I. y Rábade Obradó, M. del P. (coords.), Pecar en la Edad Media, Madrid, Sílex, 2008.Carrero Santamaría, E. y Rico Camps, D., “La organización del espacio litúrgico hispánico entre los siglos VI y XI”, Antiquité tardive: revue internationale d’histoire et d’archéologie (Ejemplar dedicado a Isidore de Séville et son temps), 23 (2015), pp. 239-248.Cavero Domínguez, G., Martín Fernández, un obispo leonés del siglo XIII. 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Game of Thrones (GoT) has become the most popular way of referring to a universe that was previously known under the title A Song of Ice and Fire by fans of fantasy novels. Indeed, thanks to its huge success, the TV series is now the most common entry into what is today a complex narrative constellation. Game of Thrones began as a series of five novels written by George R. R. Martin (first published in 1996). It was adapted as a TV series by David Benioff and D.B. Weiss for HBO in 2011, as a comic book series (2011—2014), several video games (Blood of Dragons, 2007; A Game of Thrones: Genesis, 2011; Game of Thrones, 2012; Game of Thrones Ascent, 2013; Game of Thrones, 2014), as well as several prequel novellas, a card game (A Game of Thrones: The Card Game, 2002), and a strategy board game (2003), not to mention the promotional transmedia developed by Campfire to bring the novels’ fans to the TV series. Thus, the GoT ensemble does indeed look like a form of transmedia, at least at first sight.Game of Thrones’ UniverseGenerally, definitions of transmedia assemble three elements. First, transmedia occurs when the content is developed on several media, “with each new text making a distinctive and valuable contribution to the whole. … Each franchise entry needs to be self-contained so you don’t need to have seen the film to enjoy the game, and vice versa” (Jenkins 97-98). The second component is the narrative world. The authors of Transmédia Dans Tous Ses États notice that transmedia stories “are in some cases reduced to a plain link between two contents on two media, with no overall vision” (Collective 4). They consider these ensembles weak. For Gambarato, the main point of transmedia is “the worldbuilding experience, unfolding content and generating the possibilities for the story to evolve with new and pertinent content,” what Jenkins called “worldmaking” (116). The third ingredient is the audience. As the narrative extends itself over several platforms, consumers’ participation is essential. “To fully experience any fictional world, consumers must assume the role of hunters and gatherers, chasing down bits of the story across media channels” (Jenkins 21).The GoT constellation does not precisely match this definition. In the canonical example examined by Jenkins, The Matrix, the whole was designed from the beginning of the project. That was not the case for GoT, as the transmedia development clearly happened once the TV series had become a success. Not every entry in this ensemble unfolds new aspects of the world, as the TV series is an adaptation of the novels (until the sixth season when it overtook the books). Not every component is self-contained, as the novels and TV series are at the narrative system’s centre. This narrative ensemble more closely matches the notion of “modèle satellitaire” conceived by Saint-Gelais, where one element is the first chronologically and hierarchically. However, this statement does not devalue the GoT constellation, as the canonical definition is rarely actualized (Sepulchre “La Constellation Transmédiatique,” Philipps, Gambarato “Transmedia”), and as transmedia around TV series are generally developed after the first season, once the audience is stabilized. What is most noticeable about GoT is the fact that the TV series has probably replaced the novels as the centre of the ensemble.Under the influence of Jenkins, research on transmedia has often come to be related to fan studies. In this work, he describes very active and connected users. Research in game studies also shows that gamers are creative and form communities (Berry 155-207). However, the majority of these studies focused on hardcore fans or hardcore gamers (Bourdaa; Chen; Davis; Jenkins; Peyron; Stein). Usual users are less studied, especially for such transmedia practices.Main Question and MethodologyDue to its configuration, and the wide spectrum of users’ different levels of involvement, the GoT constellation offers an occasion to confront two audiences and their practices. GoT transmedia clearly targets both fiction lovers and gamers. The success of the franchise has led to heavy consumption of transmedia elements, even by fans who had never approached transmedia before, and may allow us to move beyond the classical analysis. That’s why, in that preliminary research, by comparing TV series viewers in general with a quite specific part of them, ordinary gamers of the videogame GOT Ascent, we aim to evaluate transmedia use in the GOT community. The results on viewers are part of a broader research project on TV series and transmedia. The originality of this study focuses on ordinary viewers, not fans. The goal is to understand if they are familiar with transmedia, if they develop transmedia practices, and why. The paper is based on 52 semi-structured interviews conducted in 2012 (11) and 2013 (41). Consumers of fictional extensions of TV series and fans of TV series were selected. The respondents are around twenty years old, university students, white, mostly female (42 women, 10 men), and are not representative outside the case study. Therefore, the purpose of this first empirical sample was simply to access ordinary GOT viewers’ behaviours, and to elaborate an initial landscape of their use of different media in the same world.After that, we focused our analysis on one specific community, a subset of the GOT’s universe’s users, that is, players of the GoT Ascent videogame (we use “gamers” as synonym for “players” and “users”). Through this online participative observation, we try to analyse the players’ attitudes, and evaluate the nature of their involvement from a user perspective (Servais). Focusing on one specific medium in the GOT constellation should allow us to further flesh out the general panorama on transmedia, by exploring involvement in one particular device more deeply. Our purpose in that is to identify whether the players are transmedia users, and so GoT fans, or if they are firstly players. During a three month in-game ethnography, in June-August 2013, we played Aren Gorn, affiliated to House Tyrell, level 91, and member of “The Winter is Dark and Full of Terrors” Alliance (2500 members). Following an in-game ethnography (Boellstorff 123-134), we explored gamers’ playing attitudes inside the interface.The Users, TV Series, and TransmediaThe respondents usually do not know what transmedia is, even if a lot of them (36) practice it. Those who are completely unaware that a narrative world can be spread over several media are rare. Only ten of them engage in fan practices (cosplay, a kind of costuming community, fan-fiction, and fan-vidding, that is fans who write fiction or make remix videos set in the world they love), which tends to show that transmedia does not only concern fans.Most of the ordinary viewers are readers, as 23 of them cite books (True Blood, Gossip Girl, Pretty Little Liars, Les Piliers de la Terre), one reads a recipe book (Plus Belle la Vie), and seven consume comics (The Walking Dead, Supernatural). They do not distinguish between novelisation (the novel adapted from a TV series) and the original book. Other media are also consumed, however a lot less: animation series, special episodes on the Internet, music, movies, websites (blogs, fictional websites), factual websites (about the story, the production, actors), fan-fiction, and cosplay.Transmedia does not seem to be a strong experience. Céline and Ioana respectively read the novels adapted from Plus Belle la Vie and Gossip Girl, but don’t like them. “It is written like a script … There’s no description, only the dialogues between characters” (Ioana). Lora watched some webisodes of Cougar Town but didn’t find them funny. Aurélie has followed the Twitter of Sookie Stackouse (True Blood) and Guilleaume D. sometimes consumes humoristic content on 9gag, but irregularly. “It’s not my thing” (Aurélie). The participants are even more critical of movies, especially the sequels of Sex and the City.That does not mean the respondents always reject transmedia components. First, they enjoy elements that are not supposed to belong to the world. These may be fan productions or contents they personally inject into the universe. Several have done research on the story’s topic: Alizée investigated mental disorders to understand United States of Tara; Guilleaume G. wandered around on Google Earth to explore Albuquerque (Breaking Bad); for Guilleaume D., Hugh Laurie’s music album is part of the character of Gregory House; Julie adores Peter Pan and, for her, Once Upon A Time, Finding Neverland, and Hook are part of the same universe. Four people particularly enjoy when the fictional characters’ couples are duplicated by real relationships between actors (which may explain all the excitement surrounding Kit Harrington and Rose Leslie’s real-life love story, paralleling their characters’ romance on GOT). If there is a transmedia production, it seems that there is also a kind of “transmedia reception,” as viewers connect heteroclite elements to build a coherent world of their own. Some respondents even develop a creative link to the world: writing fan-fiction, poetry, or building scale models (but that is not this paper’s topic, see Sepulchre “Les Constellations Narratives”, “Editorial”).A second element they appreciate is the GOT TV series. Approximately half of the respondents cite GoT (29/52). They are not fundamentally different from the other viewers except that more of them have fan practices (9 vs. 1), and a few more develop transmedia consumption (76% against 61%). To the very extent that there is consensus over the poor quality of the novels (in general), A Song of Ice and Fire seems to have seduced every respondent. Loic usually hates reading; his relatives have pointed out to him that he has read more with GoT than in his entire lifetime. Marie D. finds the novels so good that she stopped watching the TV series. Marine insists she generally reads fan-fiction because she hates the novelisations, but the GoT books are the only good ones. The novels apparently allow a deeper immersion into the world and that is the manifest benefit of consuming them. Guilleaume G. appreciates the more detailed descriptions. Céline, Florentin, Ioana, and Marine like to access the characters’ thoughts. Julie thinks she feels the emotions more deeply when she reads. Sometimes, the novels can change their opinions on a character. Emilie finds Sansa despicable in the TV series, but the books led her to understand her sensibility.Videogames & TransmediaThe vast majority of transmedia support from the GoT universe primarily targets “world lovers,” that is, users involved in media uses because they love the fantasy of the universe. However, only video games allow a personalized incarnation as a hero over a long term of time, and thus a customized active appropriation. This is in fact undoubtedly why the GoT universe’s transmedia galaxy has also been deployed in video games. GOT Ascent is a strategy game edited by Disruptor Beam, an American company specialising in TV games. Released in February 2013, the franchise attracted up to 9,000,000 players in 2014, but only 295,107 monthly active users. This significant difference between the accumulated number of players and those actually active (around 3 %) may well testify that those investing in this game are probably not a community of gamers.Combining role playing and strategy game, GoT Ascent is designed in a logic that deeply integrates the elements, not only from the TV series, but also from books and other transmedia extensions. In GoT Ascent, gamers play a small house affiliated to one of the main clans of Westeros. During the immersive game experience, the player participates in all the GoT stories from an insider’s point of view. The game follows the various GoT books, resulting in an extension whenever a new volume is published. The player interacts with others by PVE (Player versus Environment) or PVP (Player versus Player) alliances with a common chat and the possibility of sending goods to other members. With a fair general score (4,1 on 10), the game is evaluated weakly by the players (JeuxOnLine). Hence a large majority of them are probably not looking for that kind of experience.If we focus on the top players in GoT Ascent, likely representing those most invested, it is interesting to examine the names they choose. Indeed, that choice often reveals the player’s intention, either to refer to a gamer logic or the universe of GoT. During our research, we clearly distinguished two types of names, self-referential ones or those referring to the player’s general pseudonym. In concrete terms, the name is a declination of a pseudonym of more general avatars, or else refers to other video game worlds than GoT. In GoT Ascent, the second category of names, those very clearly anchored in the world of Martin, are clearly dominant.Is it possible to correlate the name chosen and the type of player? Can we affirm that people who choose a name not related to the GoT universe are players and that the others are GoT fans? Probably not obviously, but the consistency of a character’s name with the universe is, in the GoT case, very important for an immersive experience. The books’ author has carefully crafted his surnames and, in the game, assuming a name is therefore very clearly a symbolically important act in the desire to roleplay in that universe. Choosing one that is totally out of sync with the game world clearly means you are not there to immerse yourself in the spirit of GoT, but to play. In short, the first category is representative of the gamers, but the players are not restricted to those naming their avatar out of the world’s spirit.This intuition is confirmed by a review of the names related to the rank of the players. When we studied high-level players, we realized that most of them use humorous names, which are totally out of the mood of the GoT universe. Thus, in 2013, the first ranked player in terms of power was called Flatulence, a French term that is part of a humorous semantics. Yet this type of denomination is not limited to the first of the list. Out the top ten players, only two used plausible GoT names. However, as soon as one leaves the game’s elite’s sphere, the plausible names are quickly in the majority. There is a sharp opposition between the vast majority of players, who obviously try to match the world, and pure gamers.We found the same logic for the names of the Alliances, the virtual communities of players varying from a few to hundreds. Three Alliances have achieved the #1 rank in the game in the game’s first two years: Hear Me Roar (February 2013), Fire and Blood (January 2014), and Kong's Landing (September 2014). Two of those Alliances are of a more humoristic bent. However, an investigation into the 400 alliances demonstrates that fewer than 5 % have a clear humoristic signification. We might estimate that in GoT Ascent the large majority of players increase their immersive experience by choosing a GoT role play related Alliance name. We can conclude that they are mainly GoT fans playing the game, and that they seek to lend the world coherence. The high-level players are an exception. Inside GOT Ascent, the dominant culture remains connected to the GoT world.ConclusionA transmedia story is defined by its networked configuration, “worldmaking,” and users’ involvement. The GoT constellation is clearly a weak ensemble (Sepulchre, 2012). However, it has indeed developed on several platforms. Furthermore, the relationship between the novels and the TV series is quite unprecedented. Indeed, both elements are considered as qualitative, and the TV series has become the main entry for many fans. Thus, both of them acquire an equal authority.The GoT transmedia storyworld also unfolds a fictional world and depends on users’ activities, but in a peculiar way. If the viewers and gamers are analysed from fan or game studies perspectives, they appear to be weak users. Indeed, they do not seek new components; they are mainly readers and do not enjoy the transmedia experience; the players are not regular ones; and they are much less creative and humorous than high-level gamers.These weak practices have, however, one function: to prolong the pleasure of the fictional world, which is the third characteristic of transmedia. The players experiment with GoT Ascent by incarnating characters inserted into Alliances whose names may exist in the original world. This appears to be a clear attempt to become immersed in the universe. The ordinary viewers appreciate the deeper experience the novels allow. When they feed the world with unexpected elements, it is also to improve the world.Thus, transmedia appropriation by users is a reality, motivated by a taste for the universe, even if it is a weak consumption in comparison with the demanding, creative, and sometimes iconoclastic practices gamers and fans usually develop. It is obvious, in both fields, that they are new TV series fans (they quote mainly recent shows) and beginners in the world of games. For a significant part of them, GoT was probably their first time developing transmedia practices.However, GoT Ascent is not well evaluated by gamers and many of them do not repeat the experience (as the monthly number of gamers shows). Likewise, the ordinary viewers neglect the official transmedia components as too marketing oriented. The GoT novels are the exception proving the rule. They demonstrate that users are quite selective: they are not satisfied with weak elements. The question that this paper cannot answer is: was GoT a first experience? Will they persevere in the future? Yet, in this preliminary research, we have seen that studying ordinary users’ weak involvement (series viewers or gamers) is an interesting path in elaborating a theory of transmedia user’s activities, which takes the public’s diversity into account.ReferencesBerry, Vincent. L’Expérience Virtuelle: Jouer, Vivre, Apprendre Dans un Jeu Video. Rennes: UP Rennes, 2012.Boellstorff, Tom. “A Typology of Ethnographic Scales for Virtual Worlds.” Online Worlds: Convergence of the Real and the Virtual. Ed. William Sim Bainbridge. London: Springer, 2009.Bourdaa, Mélanie. “Taking a Break from All Your Worries: Battlestar Galactica et Les Nouvelles Pratiques Télévisuelles des Fans.” Questions de Communication 22 (2012) 2014. <http://journals.openedition.org/questionsdecommunication/6917>.Chen, Mark. Leet Noobs: The Life and Death of An Expert Player Group in World of Warcraft. New York: Peter Lang, 2012.Collective. Le Transmédia Dans Tous Ses États: Les Cahiers de Veille de la Fondation Télécom. Paris: Fondation Télécom, 2012. 29 Dec. 2017 <https://www.fondation-mines-telecom.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/01/2012-cahier-veille-transmedia.pdf\>.Davis, C.H. “Audience Value and Transmedia Products.” Media Innovations. Eds. T. Storsul and A. Krumsvik. Gothenburg: Nordicom, 2013. 179-190.Gambarato, Renira. “How to Analyze Transmedia Narratives?” Conference New Media: Changing Media Landscapes. Saint Petersburg, 2012. 2017 <http://prezi.com/fovz0jrlfsn0/how-to-analyze-transmedia-narratives>.Gambarato, Renira. “Transmedia Storytelling.” Serious Science, 2016. 2017 <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=thZnd_K8Vfs>.Jenkins, Henry. Convergence Culture. Where Old and New Media Collide. Updated ed. 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It happened 27 years ago, in the autumn of 1990, but I remember it as if it were yesterday. Having set apart some of the cash I’d been given for my seventeenth birthday, I caught a train into the city with only one thing in mind: buying a copy of the newly-released book The Secret Diary of Laura Palmer. Having breathlessly devoured the eight-episode first season of Twin Peaks as it was broadcast on BBC2 from 23 October until 11 December 1990 (BBC), acquiring a copy of the “actual” diary that potentially held vital clues to the series’ central mystery—who killed Laura Palmer?—offered a temptation impossible for any fan to resist.Somewhat predictably, the actual rewards proved rather limited: while the diary’s contents certainly fleshed out Laura Palmer’s background and inner life as a character, thereby laying some of the groundwork for the prequel film Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me (1992), plot spoilers were carefully avoided by skipping over crucial entries with several blank pages marked as “page missing.” Thus, eager fans were simultaneously granted advance insight into future narrative developments while also being denied answers to key questions. Similarly, the publication of franchise novels The Autobiography of F.B.I. Special Agent Dale Cooper: My Life, My Tapes (1991) and Welcome to Twin Peaks: Access Guide to the Town (1991), as well as the audio cassette tape “Diane…” The Twin Peaks Tapes of Agent Cooper (1990), added further background and depth to the TV series’ ongoing storyworld by offering more details about characters, locations, and back story. Most crucially, these transmedia expansions in many ways foreshadowed the larger development of 21st-century transmedia serialisation practices.When American premium cable channel Showtime finally returned fans to the world of Twin Peaks in an 18-episode weekly series airing from 21 May to 3 September 2017, the franchise promised to revive the characters, locations, and mythology so fondly remembered by the show’s original viewers, as well as the later generations who had discovered Twin Peaks via reruns, VHS recordings, DVD and Blu-ray discs, or video streaming services. Identified variously as Twin Peaks: The Return, Twin Peaks: Season Three, and Twin Peaks: A Limited Event Series, the new series (hereafter Twin Peaks 2017) appeared in a media-industrial context where the revival of nostalgic television favourites has become fashionable and lucrative.In a hyper-competitive marketplace where many platforms are frantically vying for audience attention and engagement, reviving existing storyworlds with dedicated fan cultures offers an obvious advantage and competitive edge (Weinstock 14–16). At the same time, Twin Peaks seemed especially appropriate to revisit, having been singled out so often as an early paradigm for the 21st century’s alleged “Golden Age of Television” (Telotte 64). As a spectacularly short-lived pop-culture phenomenon, Twin Peaks quickly became a jealously guarded cult favourite watched over by a dedicated global fandom. Yet, its influence on 21st century television culture is often explained by the series’ combination of long-form storytelling and cinematic style with a complex and ever-expanding mythological deep structure, alongside its then-unusual emphasis on television authorship in the figure of auteurist film director David Lynch.However, more specifically related to the theme of this special issue, Twin Peaks has repeatedly adopted transmedia forms for serialised storytelling and world-building in ways that build upon the franchise’s own cultural legacy while also embracing contemporary media-industrial practices. While relatively limited in terms of the number of media texts, these practices illustrate the rich potential for the transmedia expansion of franchises that exist primarily within a single medium. In order to map out the key transmedia connections within this rich and surprisingly diverse franchise, I will first offer a few terms that help distinguish basic forms of transmedia multitexts (Parody 210–218) from each other, before moving on to a more detailed analysis of the transmedia forms that have come to surround, enhance, and enrich Twin Peaks 2017.Transmedia Models In his essay “Transmediality and the Politics of Adaptation,” Jens Eder develops a basic typology of transmedia multitexts (or “constellations”) that provides a helpful entrance for this discussion. While Henry Jenkins’ oft-cited but rather broadly worded description of transmedia storytelling gave media scholars a provocative starting point (97–98), it also clearly exaggerated the degree of organised and consistent cross-platform development of fictional storyworlds. Eder’s model adds a much-needed emphasis on the hierarchical structures that we inevitably encounter both within the various transmedia multitexts, and in the industries and audiences that engage with them. Eder’s typology distinguishes between four basic models (75–77).The form of transmedia storytelling that Jenkins foregrounded in Convergence Culture, with The Matrix (1999) as his primary example, constitutes what Eder’s essay describes as integration: the various media texts form a single and more or less coherent narrative whole, with each medium making the most of its medium-specific qualities and affordances. While this model is frequently cited as a kind of ideal or even default definition of transmedia storytelling, it is important to note that it is also fairly rare, as it requires a staggering amount of planning and coordination. Far more common is the expansion model, in which one primary media text (often referred to as the “mothership”) is expanded via a range of “satellite texts.” Most commonly, the mothership would be a costly, labour-intensive, and high-profile mass media production, like a feature film, television series, or AAA video game, while the expansions are much less expensive and clearly secondary texts that function simultaneously as world-building expansions and as entrance points to the franchise. A third model is the participation strategy, in which audience activity is integrated into the production cycle, as with game shows where audiences use apps, websites, or other satellite media to vote on or otherwise affect the ongoing narrative. Finally, multiple exploitation indicates a form of multitext in which a theoretically limitless number of transmedia texts exist alongside each other, without depending on any of the others to create meaning—for which a predominantly non-narrative transmedia brand like Hello Kitty may come to mind as an example.Clearly, these four paradigms are neither exhaustive nor mutually exclusive. But they do help to emphasise not only the diverse forms transmedia multitexts can take, but also that each of these is thoroughly embedded within media-industrial practices. Thus, Eder’s typology helpfully foregrounds the inherent connections between transmedia as a narrative form—transmedia storytelling—and the political economy in which it circulates—transmedia franchising (see Johnson). In the case of Twin Peaks 2017, the forms of transmedia expansion that were pioneered alongside the original series effectively combine transmedia storytelling forms with contemporary industrial practices and digital fandom (Booth 25).The production practices of the television industry at the time Twin Peaks 2017 was broadcast are defined in the first place by their transitional character. Since the early 2010s, both television networks and cable channels like Showtime face growing pressure from industrial “disruptors” like Netflix, Hulu, and Amazon, which offer increasingly competitive video-on-demand (VOD) services (Lotz 132–133). Besides the obvious advantages of accessibility, mobility, and individual control, a key innovation that many of these VOD services have embraced is the “full-drop season” (Mittell 41), which does away with the traditional week-long wait between episodes. Taken alongside the long-term decline of traditional television audiences, the rise of cable-cutting and other digital entertainment alternatives, and the ongoing growth of what Chuck Tryon has dubbed “on-demand culture” (5), broadcasters embedded within television’s traditional industrial framework are forced to innovate in order to attract sufficient advertisers and/or subscribers.Within this hyper-competitive media environment, traditional television networks have been using cross-platform strategies to lure viewers back to weekly programming. In her analysis of the transmedia campaign surrounding the niche-marketed breakout TV hit Glee, Valerie Wee showed how the clever combination of licensed Twitter accounts and carefully timed releases of musical tracks via Apple’s iTunes Store helped Fox transform the weekly episodes into minor media events (7–8). While social media and other new digital services are generally seen as obvious competitors with traditional media platforms like network television, Wee’s analysis of Glee’s innovative use of transmedia practices shows that they can also be used to increase viewers’ engagement with weekly broadcasts.Twin Peaks 2017: The NovelsAs a more recent high-profile television production designed to be a media phenomenon for the cultural elite, Twin Peaks 2017 used similar methods to facilitate what Matt Hills has described as “just-in-time fandom”: a carefully regulated form of fan culture in which the most invested viewers are constantly forced to keep up with shifting production and distribution practices in order to stay abreast of the cultural conversation (140–141). For Twin Peaks 2017, this involved not only the meticulous synchronisation of digital music releases, but also the publication of two separate novels that elegantly bookended the new season’s broadcast.The first of these books, The Secret History of Twin Peaks, was published in October 2016, a good six months ahead of the new season’s premiere. Rather than introducing any of the third season’s new characters or filling in the blanks between the original series and the revival, the book instead expanded the storyworld in the opposite direction. Presented as an elaborate collection of annotated historical records, The Secret History of Twin Peaks begins with facsimiles of “historical documents” dating back to the early 19th century, before proceeding to map out a wide-ranging mythological superstructure for the franchise that spans two centuries of American history. Both foreshadowing the third season’s more expansive narrative framework and embellishing the franchise’s mythological superstructure, the book gave readers new information about the organisation of Twin Peaks’ storyworld without even hinting at the new season’s plot. Meanwhile, the simultaneous release of the audiobook featured the voices of several original cast members, thereby both authorising this transmedia expansion as consistent with the existing franchise and playing into the nostalgia that inevitably fuels most viewers’ interest in these television revivals.Almost a year later, and a mere six weeks after the final two episodes had been broadcast, the book’s companion volume Twin Peaks: The Final Dossier (2017) was published. Similar in form but also shorter and less ambitious in narrative scope and graphic design, this second novel consisted of a collection of written FBI files on all major characters. These files, diegetically written and compiled by third-season newcomer Special Agent Tammy Preston, give plentiful background information on events preceding the third season, as well as providing some obvious hints about its enigmatic finale. Taken together, the two books perfectly match Eder’s “expansion” model: they not only expand and enrich the existing storyworld through transmedia storytelling, but they do so in such a way that the contents are carefully synchronised with the release of a serialised television event. The first book broadened the mythological framework while providing a more elaborate history for the storyworld, but did so without “spoiling” narrative developments in the third season, or providing essential information that would disadvantage more casual viewers. In this sense, its obvious similarity to The Secret Diary of Laura Palmer also added further layers of nostalgia for forensic fans eager to re-immerse themselves in the Twin Peaks storyworld (Mittell 43).At the same time, the books also provided a convenient way to resolve a longstanding tension within Twin Peaks authorship (Abbott 175–176). While director David Lynch has most commonly been singled out as the defining “visionary” behind the franchise and its appeal, his co-writer Mark Frost has somewhat uncomfortably shared the credit for the series. Therefore, as Twitter campaigns and online fan activism demonstrated all too clearly that Lynch was indeed the single most vital ingredient for a return to Twin Peaks, the two books gave Frost an avenue to express his own claim to authorship in ways that were emphatically his. The occasional public interviews and other paratexts clearly illustrated this practical division of authorial labour, with Lynch commenting at one point that he hadn’t even read The Secret History of Twin Peaks, noting en passant that the book represents his (i.e. Frost’s) history of Twin Peaks—while the episodes are, by implication, primarily Lynch’s (Hibberd).While it is obviously quite possible to read both books after (or before, or during) one’s first viewing of Twin Peaks 2017, the books’ narrative contents and their publication dates were clearly synchronised with Showtime’s broadcast schedule in ways that enhance its serialised structure. As a franchise that has embellished the (more or less) linear narrative movement of its television “mothership” with transmedia expansions largely dedicated to the series’ pre-history, the novels bookending Twin Peaks 2017 underline the revival’s “event-ness” while also acknowledging and respecting the franchise’s spoiler-averse fan culture. For just as the almost comically oblique series promos reassured fans about the revival’s authenticity while refusing to give even the slightest indication of what would happen, the first novel offered a deep dive into the storyworld’s mythology without hinting at what lay ahead. By the same token, the second book offered forensic fans a post-broadcast coda with great narrative closure, while Frost’s ambiguous status as an author left them free to speculate about alternative meanings. Both novels thereby functioned as expansions that supported Showtime’s broadcast of weekly episodes through cross-platform transmedia serialisation.Twin Peaks 2017: The SoundtracksSimilarly, the release schedule of two soundtrack albums playfully participated in the strategy of encouraging fan speculation in response to Showtime’s weekly broadcast schedule. The two soundtracks did this in different ways, and for slightly different reasons. One album contained the instrumental score, while the other was filled with tracks by a wide variety of popular artists. For both albums, the track list was kept secret until the release date, which closely followed the final episode’s broadcast. However, fans who pre-ordered either of these albums via Apple’s iTunes Music Store would see new tracks become available on a week-by-week basis just after a new episode had aired. For the instrumental soundtrack, keeping the track list secret served a clear purpose with regard to spoiler culture: for instance, while actor Carel Struycken is a familiar face from the original two seasons, his appearance in the opening scene of Twin Peaks 2017 is decidedly ambiguous, and his character’s name is pointedly referred to in the episode’s end credits as a series of seven question marks. The explicit suggestion that this iconic actor’s return represented a new mystery strongly encouraged fan speculation, while teasing a reveal that may or may not be forthcoming as the series progressed.The question in this case was answered by the incremental release of the soundtrack album long before it was confirmed within the text of the series proper: the character’s second appearance, in episode eight, was again followed by end credits that identified him only with question marks. But the day after, a new track “The Fireman” became available to those who had pre-ordered the digital soundtrack. Forensic fans within online communities like welcometotwinpeaks.com and the Twin Peaks wiki were quick to decode the seven question marks as representing the seven letters of the word “Fireman”—and from there on, to theorise that his function within the franchise’s mythology must be to help combat the evil associated with fire (as expressed throughout the franchise with the phrase “Fire Walk With Me”). And indeed, these fan theories were validated after the character’s third appearance, in episode 14, where the end credits identified him definitively as “The Fireman.”For the other soundtrack album, containing vocal performances of tracks featured in the series, a similar release strategy further encouraged online engagement and just-in-time fandom. One of the ways in which Twin Peaks 2017 departed from the original series was the novelty of ending most episodes with a live performance at the Twin Peaks Roadhouse by a contemporary musical act. While several of the names had been surmised from the cast list that was circulated widely amongst fans months before the series premiered, it remained unknown at what point in the series any given artist would appear, and in what capacity. Thus, the appearance of high-profile artists like Nine Inch Nails and Eddie Vedder could be experienced as a legitimate surprise, while fans were also rewarded for their weekly engagement with access to the song the day after its appearance via its addition to the pre-ordered album tracks. Thus, in both cases, the soundtrack release strategy gave forensic fans another level of engagement with the series that benefited both Showtime’s industrial practice of weekly broadcasts and the digital sales of non-narrative franchise expansions as another form or transmedia serialisation.ConclusionWhile Twin Peaks has been understandably celebrated (and criticised) for its divergence from television conventions, the new series also serves as a helpful and vivid case study for industrial practices of transmedia serialisation. Following the innovative ways in which the original series expanded its storyworld between seasons through transmedia expansions, Twin Peaks 2017 adapted these practices for its own media-industrial context. The accompanying books and soundtracks strongly emphasised the new series’ “eventness,” while at the same time contributing to the season’s serialised structure. The first novel, preceding the third season, prepared forensic fans for the new series’ elaboration of the storyworld’s mythology, while the second, appearing right after the finale, tied up narrative loose ends and clarified the plot. Meanwhile, the soundtracks’ incremental digital releases encouraged fan speculation, while also rewarding viewers for watching the episodes as they were being broadcast. Thus, to quote the Fireman’s cryptic instruction from the first episode, Twin Peaks 2017 managed to kill two birds with one stone by using transmedia serialisation to combine digital fandom and on-demand culture with traditional broadcast schedules.ReferencesAbbott, Stacey. “‘Doing Weird Things for the Sake of Being Weird’: Directing Twin Peaks.” Return to Twin Peaks. Eds. Jeffrey Andrew Weinstock and Catherine Spooner. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2016. 175–191.BBC. “BBC Genome Project.” <http://genome.ch.bbc.co.uk>.Booth, Paul. Digital Fandom 2.0. New York: Peter Lang, 2016.Eder, Jens. “Transmediality and the Politics of Adaptation.” The Politics of Adaptation: Media Convergence and Ideology. Eds. Dan Hassler-Forest and Pascal Nicklas. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2015. 66–81.Frost, Mark. The Secret History of Twin Peaks. London: Flatiron Books, 2016.———. Twin Peaks: The Final Dossier. London: Flatiron Books, 2017. Frost, Scott. The Autobiography of F.B.I. Special Agent Dale Cooper: My Life, My Tapes. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1990.Hibberd, James. “Twin Peaks: David Lynch Holds a Weird Press Conference.” Entertainment Weekly 9 Jan 2017. 11 Jan 2018 <http://ew.com/tv/2017/01/09/twin-peaks-david-lynch-press-conference/>.Hills, Matt. Fan Cultures. London: Routledge, 2002.Jenkins, Henry. Convergence Culture: Where Old and New Media Collide. New York: New York UP, 2006.Johnson, Derek. Media Franchising: Creative License and Collaboration in the Culture Industries. New York: New York UP, 2013.Lotz, Amanda D. The Television Will Be Revolutionized. 2nd ed. New York: New York UP, 2014.Lynch, David, Mark Frost, and Richard Saul Wurman. Twin Peaks: An Access Guide to the Town. New York: Pocket Books, 1991.Lynch, Jennifer. The Secret Diary of Laura Palmer. London: Penguin Books, 1990.Mittell, Jason. Complex TV: The Poetics of Contemporary Television Storytelling. New York: New York UP, 2015.Parody, Clare. “Franchising/Adaptation.” Adaptation 4:2 (2011): 210–18.Telotte, J.P. “‘Complementary Verses’: The Science Fiction of Twin Peaks.” Return to Twin Peaks. Eds. Jeffrey Andrew Weinstock and Catherine Spooner. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2016. 161–174.Tryon, Chuck. On-Demand Culture: Digital Delivery and the Future of Movies. New Brunswick: Rutgers UP, 2013.Wee, Valerie. “Spreading the Glee: Targeting a Youth Audience in the Multimedia, Digital Age.” The Information Society 32:5 (2016): 1–12.Weinstock, Jeffrey Andrew. “Introduction: ‘It Is Happening Again’: New Reflections on Twin Peaks.” Return to Twin Peaks. Eds. Jeffrey Andrew Weinstock and Catherine Spooner. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2016. 1–28.

Over the past century, many books for general readers have styled sharks as “monsters of the deep” (Steele). In recent decades, however, at least some writers have also turned to representing how sharks are seriously threatened by human activities. At a time when media coverage of shark sightings seems ever increasing in Australia, scholarship has begun to consider people’s attitudes to sharks and how these are formed, investigating the representation of sharks (Peschak; Ostrovski et al.) in films (Le Busque and Litchfield; Neff; Schwanebeck), newspaper reports (Muter et al.), and social media (Le Busque et al., “An Analysis”). My own research into representations of surfing and sharks in Australian writing (Brien) has, however, revealed that, although reporting of shark sightings and human-shark interactions are prominent in the news, and sharks function as vivid and commanding images and metaphors in art and writing (Ellis; Westbrook et al.), little scholarship has investigated their representation in Australian books published for a general readership. While recognising representations of sharks in other book-length narrative forms in Australia, including Australian fiction, poetry, and film (Ryan and Ellison), this enquiry is focussed on non-fiction books for general readers, to provide an initial review. Sampling holdings of non-fiction books in the National Library of Australia, crosschecked with Google Books, in early 2021, this investigation identified 50 Australian books for general readers that are principally about sharks, or that feature attitudes to them, published from 1911 to 2021. Although not seeking to capture all Australian non-fiction books for general readers that feature sharks, the sampling attempted to locate a wide range of representations and genres across the time frame from the earliest identified text until the time of the survey. The books located include works of natural and popular history, travel writing, memoir, biography, humour, and other long-form non-fiction for adult and younger readers, including hybrid works. A thematic analysis (Guest et al.) of the representation of sharks in these texts identified five themes that moved from understanding sharks as fishes to seeing them as monsters, then prey, and finally to endangered species needing conservation. Many books contained more than one theme, and not all examples identified have been quoted in the discussion of the themes below. Sharks as Part of the Natural Environment Drawing on oral histories passed through generations, two memoirs (Bradley et al.; Fossa) narrate Indigenous stories in which sharks play a central role. These reveal that sharks are part of both the world and a wider cosmology for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people (Clua and Guiart). In these representations, sharks are integrated with, and integral to, Indigenous life, with one writer suggesting they are “creator beings, ancestors, totems. Their lifecycles reflect the seasons, the landscape and sea country. They are seen in the movement of the stars” (Allam). A series of natural history narratives focus on zoological studies of Australian sharks, describing shark species and their anatomy and physiology, as well as discussing shark genetics, behaviour, habitats, and distribution. A foundational and relatively early Australian example is Gilbert P. Whitley’s The Fishes of Australia: The Sharks, Rays, Devil-fish, and Other Primitive Fishes of Australia and New Zealand, published in 1940. Ichthyologist at the Australian Museum in Sydney from the early 1920s to 1964, Whitley authored several books which furthered scientific thought on sharks. Four editions of his Australian Sharks were published between 1983 and 1991 in English, and the book is still held in many libraries and other collections worldwide. In this text, Whitley described a wide variety of sharks, noting shared as well as individual features. Beautiful drawings contribute information on shape, colouring, markings, and other recognisable features to assist with correct identification. Although a scientist and a Fellow and then President of the Royal Zoological Society of New South Wales, Whitley recognised it was important to communicate with general readers and his books are accessible, the prose crisp and clear. Books published after this text (Aiken; Ayling; Last and Stevens; Tricas and Carwardine) share Whitley’s regard for the diversity of sharks as well as his desire to educate a general readership. By 2002, the CSIRO’s Field Guide to Australian Sharks & Rays (Daley et al.) also featured numerous striking photographs of these creatures. Titles such as Australia’s Amazing Sharks (Australian Geographic) emphasise sharks’ unique qualities, including their agility and speed in the water, sensitive sight and smell, and ability to detect changes in water pressure around them, heal rapidly, and replace their teeth. These books also emphasise the central role that sharks play in the marine ecosystem. There are also such field guides to sharks in specific parts of Australia (Allen). This attention to disseminating accurate zoological information about sharks is also evident in books written for younger readers including very young children (Berkes; Kear; Parker and Parker). In these and other similar books, sharks are imaged as a central and vital component of the ocean environment, and the narratives focus on their features and qualities as wondrous rather than monstrous. Sharks as Predatory Monsters A number of books for general readers do, however, image sharks as monsters. In 1911, in his travel narrative Peeps at Many Lands: Australia, Frank Fox describes sharks as “the most dangerous foes of man in Australia” (23) and many books have reinforced this view over the following century. This can be seen in titles that refer to sharks as dangerous predatory killers (Fox and Ruhen; Goadby; Reid; Riley; Sharpe; Taylor and Taylor). The covers of a large proportion of such books feature sharks emerging from the water, jaws wide open in explicit homage to the imaging of the monster shark in the film Jaws (Spielberg). Shark!: Killer Tales from the Dangerous Depths (Reid) is characteristic of books that portray encounters with sharks as terrifying and dramatic, using emotive language and stories that describe sharks as “the world’s most feared sea creature” (47) because they are such “highly efficient killing machines” (iv, see also 127, 129). This representation of sharks is also common in several books for younger readers (Moriarty; Rohr). Although the risk of being injured by an unprovoked shark is extremely low (Chapman; Fletcher et al.), fear of sharks is prevalent and real (Le Busque et al., “People’s Fear”) and described in a number of these texts. Several of the memoirs located describe surfers’ fear of sharks (Muirhead; Orgias), as do those of swimmers, divers, and other frequent users of the sea (Denness; de Gelder; McAloon), even if the author has never encountered a shark in the wild. In these texts, this fear of sharks is often traced to viewing Jaws, and especially to how the film’s huge, bloodthirsty great white shark persistently and determinedly attacks its human hunters. Pioneer Australian shark expert Valerie Taylor describes such great white sharks as “very big, powerful … and amazingly beautiful” but accurately notes that “revenge is not part of their thought process” (Kindle version). Two books explicitly seek to map and explain Australians’ fear of sharks. In Sharks: A History of Fear in Australia, Callum Denness charts this fear across time, beginning with his own “shark story”: a panicked, terror-filled evacuation from the sea, following the sighting of a shadow which turned out not to be a shark. Blake Chapman’s Shark Attacks: Myths, Misunderstandings and Human Fears explains commonly held fearful perceptions of sharks. Acknowledging that sharks are a “highly emotive topic”, the author of this text does not deny “the terror [that] they invoke in our psyche” but makes a case that this is “only a minor characteristic of what makes them such intriguing animals” (ix). In Death by Coconut: 50 Things More Dangerous than a Shark and Why You Shouldn’t Be Afraid of the Ocean, Ruby Ashby Orr utilises humour to educate younger readers about the real risk humans face from sharks and, as per the book’s title, why they should not be feared, listing champagne corks and falling coconuts among the many everyday activities more likely to lead to injury and death in Australia than encountering a shark. Taylor goes further in her memoir – not only describing her wonder at swimming with these creatures, but also her calm acceptance of the possibility of being injured by a shark: "if we are to be bitten, then we are to be bitten … . One must choose a life of adventure, and of mystery and discovery, but with that choice, one must also choose the attendant risks" (2019: Kindle version). Such an attitude is very rare in the books located, with even some of the most positive about these sea creatures still quite sensibly fearful of potentially dangerous encounters with them. Sharks as Prey There is a long history of sharks being fished in Australia (Clark). The killing of sharks for sport is detailed in An American Angler in Australia, which describes popular adventure writer Zane Grey’s visit to Australia and New Zealand in the 1930s to fish ‘big game’. This text includes many bloody accounts of killing sharks, which are justified with explanations about how sharks are dangerous. It is also illustrated with gruesome pictures of dead sharks. Australian fisher Alf Dean’s biography describes him as the “World’s Greatest Shark Hunter” (Thiele), this text similarly illustrated with photographs of some of the gigantic sharks he caught and killed in the second half of the twentieth century. Apart from being killed during pleasure and sport fishing, sharks are also hunted by spearfishers. Valerie Taylor and her late husband, Ron Taylor, are well known in Australia and internationally as shark experts, but they began their careers as spearfishers and shark hunters (Taylor, Ron Taylor’s), with the documentary Shark Hunters gruesomely detailing their killing of many sharks. The couple have produced several books that recount their close encounters with sharks (Taylor; Taylor, Taylor and Goadby; Taylor and Taylor), charting their movement from killers to conservationists as they learned more about the ocean and its inhabitants. Now a passionate campaigner against the past butchery she participated in, Taylor’s memoir describes her shift to a more respectful relationship with sharks, driven by her desire to understand and protect them. In Australia, the culling of sharks is supposedly carried out to ensure human safety in the ocean, although this practice has long been questioned. In 1983, for instance, Whitley noted the “indiscriminate” killing of grey nurse sharks, despite this species largely being very docile and of little threat to people (Australian Sharks, 10). This is repeated by Tony Ayling twenty-five years later who adds the information that the generally harmless grey nurse sharks have been killed to the point of extinction, as it was wrongly believed they preyed on surfers and swimmers. Shark researcher and conservationist Riley Elliott, author of Shark Man: One Kiwi Man’s Mission to Save Our Most Feared and Misunderstood Predator (2014), includes an extremely critical chapter on Western Australian shark ‘management’ through culling, summing up the problems associated with this approach: it seems to me that this cull involved no science or logic, just waste and politics. It’s sickening that the people behind this cull were the Fisheries department, which prior to this was the very department responsible for setting up the world’s best acoustic tagging system for sharks. (Kindle version, Chapter 7) Describing sharks as “misunderstood creatures”, Orr is also clear in her opposition to killing sharks to ‘protect’ swimmers noting that “each year only around 10 people are killed in shark attacks worldwide, while around 73 million sharks are killed by humans”. She adds the question and answer, “sounds unfair? Of course it is, but when an attack is all over the news and the people are baying for shark blood, it’s easy to lose perspective. But culling them? Seriously?” (back cover). The condemnation of culling is also evident in David Brooks’s recent essay on the topic in his collection of essays about animal welfare, conservation and the relationship between humans and other species, Animal Dreams. This disapproval is also evident in narratives by those who have been injured by sharks. Navy diver Paul de Gelder and surfer Glen Orgias were both bitten by sharks in Sydney in 2009 and both their memoirs detail their fear of sharks and the pain they suffered from these interactions and their lengthy recoveries. However, despite their undoubted suffering – both men lost limbs due to these encounters – they also attest to their ongoing respect for these creatures and specify a shared desire not to see them culled. Orgias, instead, charts the life story of the shark who bit him alongside his own story in his memoir, musing at the end of the book, not about himself or his injury, but about the fate of the shark he had encountered: great whites are portrayed … as pathological creatures, and as malevolent. That’s rubbish … they are graceful, mighty beasts. I respect them, and fear them … [but] the thought of them fighting, dying, in a net upsets me. I hope this great white shark doesn’t end up like that. (271–271) Several of the more recent books identified in this study acknowledge that, despite growing understanding of sharks, the popular press and many policy makers continue to advocate for shark culls, these calls especially vocal after a shark-related human death or injury (Peppin-Neff). The damage to shark species involved caused by their killing – either directly by fishing, spearing, finning, or otherwise hunting them, or inadvertently as they become caught in nets or affected by human pollution of the ocean – is discussed in many of the more recent books identified in this study. Sharks as Endangered Alongside fishing, finning, and hunting, human actions and their effects such as beach netting, pollution and habitat change are killing many sharks, to the point where many shark species are threatened. Several recent books follow Orr in noting that an estimated 100 million sharks are now killed annually across the globe and that this, as well as changes to their habitats, are driving many shark species to the status of vulnerable, threatened or towards extinction (Dulvy et al.). This is detailed in texts about biodiversity and climate change in Australia (Steffen et al.) as well as in many of the zoologically focussed books discussed above under the theme of “Sharks as part of the natural environment”. The CSIRO’s Field Guide to Australian Sharks & Rays (Daley et al.), for example, emphasises not only that several shark species are under threat (and protected) (8–9) but also that sharks are, as individuals, themselves very fragile creatures. Their skeletons are made from flexible, soft cartilage rather than bone, meaning that although they are “often thought of as being incredibly tough; in reality, they need to be handled carefully to maximise their chance of survival following capture” (9). Material on this theme is included in books for younger readers on Australia’s endangered animals (Bourke; Roc and Hawke). Shark Conservation By 1991, shark conservation in Australia and overseas was a topic of serious discussion in Sydney, with an international workshop on the subject held at Taronga Zoo and the proceedings published (Pepperell et al.). Since then, the movement to protect sharks has grown, with marine scientists, high-profile figures and other writers promoting shark conservation, especially through attempts to educate the general public about sharks. De Gelder’s memoir, for instance, describes how he now champions sharks, promoting shark conservation in his work as a public speaker. Peter Benchley, who (with Carl Gottlieb) recast his novel Jaws for the film’s screenplay, later attested to regretting his portrayal of sharks as aggressive and became a prominent spokesperson for shark conservation. In explaining his change of heart, he stated that when he wrote the novel, he was reflecting the general belief that sharks would both seek out human prey and attack boats, but he later discovered this to be untrue (Benchley, “Without Malice”). Many recent books about sharks for younger readers convey a conservation message, underscoring how, instead of fearing or killing sharks, or doing nothing, humans need to actively assist these vulnerable creatures to survive. In the children’s book series featuring Bindi Irwin and her “wildlife adventures”, there is a volume where Bindi and a friend are on a diving holiday when they find a dead shark whose fin has been removed. The book not only describes how shark finning is illegal, but also how Bindi and friend are “determined to bring the culprits to justice” (Browne). This narrative, like the other books in this series, has a dual focus; highlighting the beauty of wildlife and its value, but also how the creatures described need protection and assistance. Concluding Discussion This study was prompted by the understanding that the Earth is currently in the epoch known as the Anthropocene, a time in which humans have significantly altered, and continue to alter, the Earth by our activities (Myers), resulting in numerous species becoming threatened, endangered, or extinct. It acknowledges the pressing need for not only natural science research on these actions and their effects, but also for such scientists to publish their findings in more accessible ways (see, Paulin and Green). It specifically responds to demands for scholarship outside the relevant areas of science and conservation to encourage widespread thinking and action (Mascia et al.; Bennett et al.). As understanding public perceptions and overcoming widely held fear of sharks can facilitate their conservation (Panoch and Pearson), the way sharks are imaged is integral to their survival. The five themes identified in this study reveal vastly different ways of viewing and writing about sharks. These range from seeing sharks as nothing more than large fishes to be killed for pleasure, to viewing them as terrifying monsters, to finally understanding that they are amazing creatures who play an important role in the world’s environment and are in urgent need of conservation. This range of representation is important, for if sharks are understood as demon monsters which hunt humans, then it is much more ‘reasonable’ to not care about their future than if they are understood to be fascinating and fragile creatures suffering from their interactions with humans and our effect on the environment. Further research could conduct a textual analysis of these books. In this context, it is interesting to note that, although in 1949 C. Bede Maxwell suggested describing human deaths and injuries from sharks as “accidents” (182) and in 2013 Christopher Neff and Robert Hueter proposed using “sightings, encounters, bites, and the rare cases of fatal bites” (70) to accurately represent “the true risk posed by sharks” to humans (70), the majority of the books in this study, like mass media reports, continue to use the ubiquitous and more dramatic terminology of “shark attack”. The books identified in this analysis could also be compared with international texts to reveal and investigate global similarities and differences. While the focus of this discussion has been on non-fiction texts, a companion analysis of representation of sharks in Australian fiction, poetry, films, and other narratives could also be undertaken, in the hope that such investigations contribute to more nuanced understandings of these majestic sea creatures. 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Now in its thirtieth season, in 2018, The Simpsons is a popular culture phenomenon. The series is known as much for its social commentary as its humour and celebrity appearances. Nonetheless, The Simpsons’ ratings have declined steadily since the early 2000s, and fans have grown more vocal in their calls for the program’s end. This article provides a case study of episode “That 90s Show” (S19, E11) as a flashpoint that exemplifies fan desires for the series’ conclusion. This episode is one of the most contentious in the program’s history, with online outrage at the retconning of canon and both fans and anti-fans (Gray) of The Simpsons demanding its cancellation or “fan euthanasia”. The retconning of the canon in this episode makes evident the perceived decline in the quality of the series, and the regard for fan desires. “That 90s Show” is ultimately a failed attempt to demonstrate the continued relevance of the series to audiences, and popular culture at large, via its appeal to 1990s nostalgia.“That 90s Show”“That 90s Show” begins with Bart and Lisa’s discovery of Marge’s Springfield University diploma. This small incident indicates an impending timeline shift and “retcon”; canonically Marge never attended college, having fallen pregnant with Bart shortly after completing high school. The episode then offers an extended flashback to Marge and Homer’s life in the 1990s. The couple are living together in the Springfield Place apartment complex, with Homer working a variety of menial jobs to support Marge while she attends college. Homer and Marge subsequently break up, and Marge begins to date Professor Stephan August. In his despair, Homer can no longer perform R & B ballads with his ensemble. The band changes genres, and their new incarnation, Sadgasm, are soon credited with initiating the grunge movement. Sadgasm gain worldwide fame for their songs “Margerine” (a version of “Glycerine” by Bush), and “Politically Incorrect/Shave Me” (set to the melody of “Rape Me” by Nirvana) – which is later parodied in the episode by guest star Weird Al Yankovic as “BrainFreeze”. Homer develops an addiction to oversized, sweetened Starbucks coffee, and later, insulin, becoming a recluse despite the legion of fans camped out on his front lawn.Marge and Professor August soon part company due to his rejection of heteronormative marriage rituals. Upon her return to campus, Marge observes an MTV report on Sadgasm’s split, and Homer’s addiction, and rushes to Homer’s bedside to help him through recovery. Marge and Homer resume their relationship, and the grunge movement ends because Homer claims he “was too happy to ever grunge again.”While the episode rates a reasonable 6.1 on IMDB, fan criticism has largely focused on the premise of the episode, and what has been perceived to be the needless retconning of The Simpsons canon. Critic Robert Canning notes: “…what ‘That 90s Show’ did was neither cool nor interesting. Instead, it insulted lifelong Simpsons fans everywhere. With this episode, the writers chose to change the history of the Simpson family.” Canning observes that the episode could have worked if the flashback had been to the 1980s which supports canonicity, rather than a complete “retcon”. The term “retcon” (retroactive continuity) originates from narrative devices used in North American superhero comics, and is now broadly applied to fictional narrative universes. Andrew Friedenthal (10-11) describes retconning as “… a revision of the fictional universe in order to make the universe fresh and exciting for contemporary readers, but it also involves the influence of the past, as it directly inscribes itself upon that past.” While Amy Davis, Jemma Gilboy and James Zborowski (175-188) have highlighted floating timelines as a feature of long running animation series’ where characters remain the same age, The Simpsons does not fully adhere to this trope: “… one of the ‘rules’ of the ‘comic-book time’ or ‘floating timeline’ trope is that ‘you never refer to specific dates’… a restriction The Simpsons occasionally eschews” (Davis, Gilboy, and Zborowski 177).For many fans, “That 90s Show” becomes abstruse by erasing Marge and Homer’s well-established back story from “The Way We Was” (S2, E12). In the established narrative, Marge and Homer had met, fell in love and graduated High School in 1974; shortly after Marge fell pregnant with Bart, resulting in the couple’s shotgun wedding. “That 90s Show” disregards the pre-existing timeline, extending their courtship past high school and adding the couple’s breakup, and Homer’s improbable invention of grunge. Fan responses to “That 90s Show” highlight this episode of The Simpsons as a flashpoint for the sharp decline of quality in the series (despite having long since “jumped the shark”); but also, a decline in regard for the desires of fans. Thus, “That 90s Show” fails not only in rewriting its canon, and inserting the narrative into the 1990s; it also fails to satiate its loyal audience by insisting upon its centrality to 1990s pop culture.While fans have been vocal in online forums about the shift in the canon, they have also reflected upon the tone-deaf portrayal of the 1990s itself. During the course of the episode many 90s trends are introduced, the most contentious of which is Homer’s invention of grunge with his band Sadgasm. While playing a gig at Springfield University a young man in the audience makes a frantic phone call, shouting over the music: “Kurt, it’s Marvin. Your cousin, Marvin Cobain. You know that new sound you’re looking for…?,” thrusting the receiver towards the stage. The link to Nirvana firmly established, the remainder of the episode connects Homer’s depression and musical expression more and more blatantly to Kurt Cobain’s biography, culminating in Homer’s seclusion and near-overdose on insulin. Fans have openly debated the appropriateness of this narrative, and whether it is disrespectful to Cobain’s legacy (see Amato). Henry Jenkins (41) has described this type of debate as a kind of “moral economy” where fans “cast themselves not as poachers but as loyalists, rescuing essential elements of the primary text ‘misused’ by those who maintain copyright control over the program materials.” In this example, many original fans of The Simpsons felt the desire to rescue both Cobain’s and The Simpsons’ legacy from a poorly thought-out retcon seen to damage the legacy of both.While other trends associated with the 90s (Seinfeld; Beanie babies; Weird Al Yankovic; Starbucks; MTV VJs) all feature, it is Homer’s supposed invention of grunge which most overtly attempts to rewrite the 90s and reaffirm The Simpsons’ centrality to 90s pop culture. As the rest of this article will discuss, by rewriting the canon, and the 1990s, “That 90s Show” has two unrealised goals— firstly, to captivate an audience who have grown up with The Simpsons, via an appeal to nostalgia; and secondly, inserting themselves into the 1990s as an effort to prove the series’ relevance to a new generation of audience members who were born during that decade, and who have a nostalgic craving for the media texts of their childhood (Atkinson). Thus, this episode is indicative of fan movement towards an anti-fan position, by demanding the series’ end, or “fan euthanasia” (Williams 106; Booth 75-86) and exposing the “… dynamic spectrum of emotional reactions that fandom can generate” (Booth 76-77).“Worst. Episode. Ever”: Why “That 90s Show” FailedThe failure of “That 90s Show” can be framed in terms of audience reception— namely the response of original audience members objecting to the retconning of The Simpsons’ canon. Rather than appealing to a sense of nostalgia among the audience, “That 90s Show” seems only to suggest that the best episodes of The Simpsons aired before the end of the 1990s. Online forums devoted to The Simpsons concur that the series was at its peak between Seasons 1-10 (1989-1999), and that subsequent seasons have failed to match that standard. British podcaster Sol Harris spent four months in 2017 watching, rating, and charting The Simpsons’ declining quality (Kostarelis), with the conclusion that series’ downfall began from Season 11 onwards (despite a brief spike following The Simpsons Movie (2007)). Any series that aired on television post-1999 has been described as “Zombie Simpsons” by fans on the Dead Homer Society forum: “a hopelessly mediocre imitation that bears only a superficial resemblance to the original. It is the unwanted sequel, the stale spinoff, the creative dry hole that is kept pumping in the endless search for more money. It is Zombie Simpsons” (Sweatpants). It is essential to acknowledge the role of economics in the continuation of The Simpsons, particularly in terms of the series’ affiliation with the Fox Network. The Simpsons was the first series screened on Fox to reach the Top 30 programs in the US, and despite its overall decline, it is still one of the highest rating programs for the 18-49 demographic, enabling Fox to charge advertisers accordingly for a so-called “safe” slot (Berg). During its run, it has been estimated variously that Fox has been building towards a separate Simpsons cable channel, thus the consistent demand for new content; and, that the series has earned in excess of $4.6 billion for Fox in merchandising alone (Berg). Laura Bradley outlines how the legacy of The Simpsons beyond Season 30 has been complicated by the ongoing negotiations for Disney to buy 20th Century Fox – under these arrangements, The Simpsons would likely be screened on ABC or Hulu, should Disney continue producing the series (Bradley). Bradley emphasises the desire for fan euthanasia of the Zombie Simpsons, positing that “the series itself could end at Season 30, which is what most fans of the show’s long-gone original iteration would probably prefer.”While more generous fans expand the ‘Golden Age’ of The Simpsons to Season 12 (Power), the Dead Homer Society argues that their Zombie Simpsons theory is proven by the rise of “Jerkass Homer”, where Homer’s character changed from delightful doofus to cruel and destructive idiot (Sweatpants; Holland). The rise of Jerkass Homer coincides with the moment where Chris Plante claims The Simpsons “jumped the shark”. The term “jumping the shark” refers to the peak of a series before its inevitable, and often sharp, decline (Plante). In The Simpsons, this moment has been variously debated as occurring during S8, E23 “Homer’s Enemy” (Plante), or more popularly, S9, E2 “The Principle and the Pauper” (Chappell; Cinematic) – which like “That 90s Show”, received a vitriolic response for its attempt to retcon the series’ narrative history. “The Principal and the Pauper” focuses on Principal Skinner, and the revelation that he had assumed the identity of his (presumed dead during the Vietnam War) Army Sergeant, Seymour Skinner. The man we have known as Skinner is revealed to be “no-good-nik” Armin Tanzarian. This episode is loathed not only by audiences, but in hindsight, The Simpsons’ creative team. Voice actor Harry Shearer was scathing in his assessment:You’re taking something that an audience has built eight years or nine years of investment in and just tossed it in the trash can for no good reason, for a story we’ve done before with other characters. It’s so arbitrary and gratuitous, and it’s disrespectful to the audience. (Wilonsky)The retcon present in both “That 90s Show” and “The Principal and the Pauper” proves that long-term fans of The Simpsons have been forgotten in Groening’s quest to reach the pinnacle of television longevity. On this basis, it is unsurprising that fans have been demanding the end of the series since the turn of the millennium.As a result, fans such as the Dead Homer Society maintain a nostalgic longing for the Golden Age of The Simpsons, while actively campaigning for the program’s cancellation, a practice typically associated with anti-fans. Jonathan Gray coined the term “anti fan” to describe “… the active and vocal dislike or hate of a program, genre, or personality (841). For Gray, the study of anti-fans emphasises that the hatred of a text can “… produce just as much activity, identification, meaning, and ‘effects’ or serve just as powerfully to unite and sustain a community or subculture” (841). Gray also stresses the discourse of morality used by anti-fans to validate their reading position, particularly against texts that are broadly popular. This argument is developed further by Jenkins and Paul Booth.“Just Pick a Dead End, and Chill Out till You Die”: Fan EuthanasiaWhile some fans of The Simpsons have moved towards anti-fan practices (active hatred of the series, and/or a refusal to watch the show), many more occupy a “middle-ground”, pleading for a form of “fan euthanasia”; where fans call for their once loved object (and by extension, themselves) to “be put out of its misery” (Booth 76). The shifting relationship of fans of The Simpsons represents an “affective continuum”, where “… fan dissatisfaction arises not because they hate a show, but because they feel betrayed by a show they once loved. Their love of a text has waned, and now they find themselves wishing for a quick end to, a revaluation of, something that no longer lives up to the high standard they once valued” (Booth 78). While calls to end The Simpsons have existing since the end of the Golden Age, other fans (Ramaswamy) have suggested it is more difficult to pinpoint when The Simpsons lost its way. Despite airing well after the Golden Age, “That 90s Show” represents a flashpoint for fans who read the retcon as “… an insult to life-long Simpsons fans everywhere… it’s an episode that rewrites history… for the worse” (Canning). In attempting to appeal to the 90s nostalgia of original fans, ‘That 90s Show’ had the opposite effect; it instead reaffirms the sharp decline of the series since its Golden Age, which ended in the 1990s.Shifting the floating timeline of The Simpsons into the 1990s and overturning the canon to appeal to a new generation is dubious for several reasons. While it is likely that original viewers of The Simpsons (their parents) may have exposed their children to the series, the program’s relevance to Millennials is questionable. In 2015, Todd Schneider data mapped audience ratings for Seasons 1-27, concluding that there has been an 80% decline in viewership between Season 2 (which averaged at over 20 million American viewers per episode) to Season 27 (which averaged at less than 5 million viewers per episode). With the growth of SVOD services during The Simpsons’ run, and the sheer duration of the series, it is perhaps obvious to point out the reduced cultural impact of the program, particularly for younger generations. Secondly, “That 90s Show’s” appeal to nostalgia raises the question of whom nostalgia for the 1990s is aimed at. Atkinson argues that children born in the 1990s feel nostalgia for the era becausewe're emotionally invested in the entertainment from that decade because back then, with limited access to every album/TV show/film ever, the ones you did own meant absolutely everything. These were the last pop-culture remnants from that age when the internet existed without being all-consuming. … no wonder we still 'ship them so hard.Following this argument, if you watched The Simpsons as a child during the 1990s, the nostalgia you feel would be, like your parents, for the Golden Age of The Simpsons, rather than the pale imitation featured in “That 90s Show”. As Alexander Fury writes of the 90s: “perhaps the most important message … in the 90s was the idea of authenticity;” thus, if the children of the 90s are watching The Simpsons, they would look to Seasons 1-10 – when The Simpsons was an authentic representation of ‘90s popular culture.Holland has observed that The Simpsons endures “in part due to the way it adapts and responds to events around it”, citing the recent release of clips responding to current events – including Homer attempting to vote; and Trump’s tenure in the White House (Brockington). Yet the failure of “That 90s Show” marks not only The Simpsons increasingly futile efforts to appeal to a “liberal audience” by responding to contemporary political discourse. The failure to adapt is most notable in Hari Kondabolu’s documentary The Problem With Apu which targeted racist stereotypes, and The Simpsons’ poorly considered response episode (S29, E 15) “No Good Read Goes Unpunished”, the latter of which featured an image of Apu signed with Bart’s catchphrase, “Don’t have a cow, man” (Harmon). Groening has remained staunch, insisting that “it’s a time in our culture where people love to pretend they’re offended”, and that the show “speaks for itself” (Keveney). Groening’s statement was followed by the absence of Apu from the current season (Snierson), and rumours that he would be removed from future storylines (Culbertson).“They’ll Never Stop The Simpsons”The case study of The Simpsons episode “That 90s Show” demonstrates the “affective continuum” occupied at various moments in a fan’s relationship with a text (Booth). To the displeasure of fans, their once loved object has frequently retconned canon to capitalise on popular culture trends such as nostalgia for the 1990s. This episode demonstrates the failure of this strategy, as it both alienated the original fan base, and represented what many fans have perceived to be a sharp decline in The Simpsons’ quality. Arguably the relevance of The Simpsons might also remain in the 1990s. Certainly, the recent questioning of issues regarding representations of race, negative press coverage, and the producers’ feeble response, increases the weight of fan calls to end The Simpsons after Season 30. As they sang in S13, E17, perhaps “[We’ll] Never Stop The Simpsons”, but equally, we may have reached the tipping point where audiences have stopped paying attention.ReferencesAmato, Mike. “411: ‘That 90s Show.” Me Blog Write Good. 12 Dec. 2012. 2 Oct. 2018 <https://meblogwritegood.wordpress.com/2012/12/12/411-that-90s-show/>.Atkinson, S. “Why 90s Kids Can’t Get over the 90s and Are Still So Nostalgic for the Decade.” Bustle. 14 Apr. 2018. 28 Sep. 2018 <https://www.bustle.com/p/why-90s-kids-cant-get-over-the-90s-are-still-so-nostalgic-for-the-decade-56354>.Berg, Madeline. “The Simpsons Signs Renewal Deal for the Record Books.” Forbes. 4 Nov. 2016. 20 Nov. 2018 <https://www.forbes.com/sites/maddieberg/2016/11/04/the-simpsons-signs-renewal-deal-for-the-record-books/#264a50b61b21>.Booth, Paul. “Fan Euthanasia: A Thin Line between Love and Hate.” Everybody Hurts: Transitions, Endings, and Resurrections in Fan Cultures. Ed. Rebecca Williams. 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IntroductionFirmly located within the discourse of visible culture as the lofty preserve of art exhibitions and museum artefacts, the noun “curate” has gradually transformed into the verb “to curate”. Williams writes that “curate” has become a fashionable code word among the aesthetically minded to describe a creative activity. Designers no longer simply sell clothes; they “curate” merchandise. Chefs no longer only make food; they also “curate” meals. Chosen for their keen eye for a particular style or a precise shade, it is their knowledge of their craft, their reputation, and their sheer ability to choose among countless objects which make the creative process a creative activity in itself. Writing from within the framework of “curate” as a creative process, this article discusses how the state banquet for Queen Elizabeth II, hosted by Irish President Mary McAleese at Dublin Castle in May 2011, was carefully curated to represent Ireland’s diplomatic, cultural, and culinary identity. The paper will focus in particular on how the menu for the banquet was created and how the banquet’s brief, “Ireland on a Plate”, was fulfilled.History and BackgroundFood has been used by nations for centuries to display wealth, cement alliances, and impress foreign visitors. Since the feasts of the Numidian kings (circa 340 BC), culinary staging and presentation has belonged to “a long, multifaceted and multicultural history of diplomatic practices” (IEHCA 5). According to the works of Baughman, Young, and Albala, food has defined the social, cultural, and political position of a nation’s leaders throughout history.In early 2011, Ross Lewis, Chef Patron of Chapter One Restaurant in Dublin, was asked by the Irish Food Board, Bord Bía, if he would be available to create a menu for a high-profile banquet (Mahon 112). The name of the guest of honour was divulged several weeks later after vetting by the protocol and security divisions of the Department of the Taoiseach (Prime Minister) and the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade. Lewis was informed that the menu was for the state banquet to be hosted by President Mary McAleese at Dublin Castle in honour of Queen Elizabeth II’s visit to Ireland the following May.Hosting a formal banquet for a visiting head of state is a key feature in the statecraft of international and diplomatic relations. Food is the societal common denominator that links all human beings, regardless of culture (Pliner and Rozin 19). When world leaders publicly share a meal, that meal is laden with symbolism, illuminating each diner’s position “in social networks and social systems” (Sobal, Bove, and Rauschenbach 378). The public nature of the meal signifies status and symbolic kinship and that “guest and host are on par in terms of their personal or official attributes” (Morgan 149). While the field of academic scholarship on diplomatic dining might be young, there is little doubt of the value ascribed to the semiotics of diplomatic gastronomy in modern power structures (Morgan 150; De Vooght and Scholliers 12; Chapple-Sokol 162), for, as Firth explains, symbols are malleable and perfectly suited to exploitation by all parties (427).Political DiplomacyWhen Ireland gained independence in December 1921, it marked the end of eight centuries of British rule. The outbreak of “The Troubles” in 1969 in Northern Ireland upset the gradually improving environment of British–Irish relations, and it would be some time before a state visit became a possibility. Beginning with the peace process in the 1990s, the IRA ceasefire of 1994, and the Good Friday Agreement in 1998, a state visit was firmly set in motion by the visit of Irish President Mary Robinson to Buckingham Palace in 1993, followed by the unofficial visit of the Prince of Wales to Ireland in 1995, and the visit of Irish President Mary McAleese to Buckingham Palace in 1999. An official invitation to Queen Elizabeth from President Mary McAleese in March 2011 was accepted, and the visit was scheduled for mid-May of the same year.The visit was a highly performative occasion, orchestrated and ordained in great detail, displaying all the necessary protocol associated with the state visit of one head of state to another: inspection of the military, a courtesy visit to the nation’s head of state on arrival, the laying of a wreath at the nation’s war memorial, and a state banquet.These aspects of protocol between Britain and Ireland were particularly symbolic. By inspecting the military on arrival, the existence of which is a key indicator of independence, Queen Elizabeth effectively demonstrated her recognition of Ireland’s national sovereignty. On making the customary courtesy call to the head of state, the Queen was received by President McAleese at her official residence Áras an Uachtaráin (The President’s House), which had formerly been the residence of the British monarch’s representative in Ireland (Robbins 66). The state banquet was held in Dublin Castle, once the headquarters of British rule where the Viceroy, the representative of Britain’s Court of St James, had maintained court (McDowell 1).Cultural DiplomacyThe state banquet provided an exceptional showcase of Irish culture and design and generated a level of preparation previously unseen among Dublin Castle staff, who described it as “the most stage managed state event” they had ever witnessed (Mahon 129).The castle was cleaned from top to bottom, and inventories were taken of the furniture and fittings. The Waterford Crystal chandeliers were painstakingly taken down, cleaned, and reassembled; the Killybegs carpets and rugs of Irish lamb’s wool were cleaned and repaired. A special edition Newbridge Silverware pen was commissioned for Queen Elizabeth and Prince Philip to sign the newly ordered Irish leather-bound visitors’ book. A new set of state tableware was ordered for the President’s table. Irish manufacturers of household goods necessary for the guest rooms, such as towels and soaps, hand creams and body lotions, candle holders and scent diffusers, were sought. Members of Her Majesty’s staff conducted a “walk-through” several weeks in advance of the visit to ensure that the Queen’s wardrobe would not clash with the surroundings (Mahon 129–32).The promotion of Irish manufacture is a constant thread throughout history. Irish linen, writes Kane, enjoyed a reputation as far afield as the Netherlands and Italy in the 15th century, and archival documents from the Vaucluse attest to the purchase of Irish cloth in Avignon in 1432 (249–50). Support for Irish-made goods was raised in 1720 by Jonathan Swift, and by the 18th century, writes Foster, Dublin had become an important centre for luxury goods (44–51).It has been Irish government policy since the late 1940s to use Irish-manufactured goods for state entertaining, so the material culture of the banquet was distinctly Irish: Arklow Pottery plates, Newbridge Silverware cutlery, Waterford Crystal glassware, and Irish linen tablecloths. In order to decide upon the table setting for the banquet, four tables were laid in the King’s Bedroom in Dublin Castle. The Executive Chef responsible for the banquet menu, and certain key personnel, helped determine which setting would facilitate serving the food within the time schedule allowed (Mahon 128–29). The style of service would be service à la russe, so widespread in restaurants today as to seem unremarkable. Each plate is prepared in the kitchen by the chef and then served to each individual guest at table. In the mid-19th century, this style of service replaced service à la française, in which guests typically entered the dining room after the first course had been laid on the table and selected food from the choice of dishes displayed around them (Kaufman 126).The guest list was compiled by government and embassy officials on both sides and was a roll call of Irish and British life. At the President’s table, 10 guests would be served by a team of 10 staff in Dorchester livery. The remaining tables would each seat 12 guests, served by 12 liveried staff. The staff practiced for several days prior to the banquet to make sure that service would proceed smoothly within the time frame allowed. The team of waiters, each carrying a plate, would emerge from the kitchen in single file. They would then take up positions around the table, each waiter standing to the left of the guest they would serve. On receipt of a discreet signal, each plate would be laid in front of each guest at precisely the same moment, after which the waiters would then about foot and return to the kitchen in single file (Mahon 130).Post-prandial entertainment featured distinctive styles of performance and instruments associated with Irish traditional music. These included reels, hornpipes, and slipjigs, voice and harp, sean-nόs (old style) singing, and performances by established Irish artists on the fiddle, bouzouki, flute, and uilleann pipes (Office of Public Works).Culinary Diplomacy: Ireland on a PlateLewis was given the following brief: the menu had to be Irish, the main course must be beef, and the meal should represent the very best of Irish ingredients. There were no restrictions on menu design. There were no dietary requirements or specific requests from the Queen’s representatives, although Lewis was informed that shellfish is excluded de facto from Irish state banquets as a precautionary measure. The meal was to be four courses long and had to be served to 170 diners within exactly 1 hour and 10 minutes (Mahon 112). A small army of 16 chefs and 4 kitchen porters would prepare the food in the kitchen of Dublin Castle under tight security. The dishes would be served on state tableware by 40 waiters, 6 restaurant managers, a banqueting manager and a sommélier. Lewis would be at the helm of the operation as Executive Chef (Mahon 112–13).Lewis started by drawing up “a patchwork quilt” of the products he most wanted to use and built the menu around it. The choice of suppliers was based on experience but also on a supplier’s ability to deliver perfectly ripe goods in mid-May, a typically black spot in the Irish fruit and vegetable growing calendar as it sits between the end of one season and the beginning of another. Lewis consulted the Queen’s itinerary and the menus to be served so as to avoid repetitions. He had to discard his initial plan to feature lobster in the starter and rhubarb in the dessert—the former for the precautionary reasons mentioned above, and the latter because it featured on the Queen’s lunch menu on the day of the banquet (Mahon 112–13).Once the ingredients had been selected, the menu design focused on creating tastes, flavours and textures. Several draft menus were drawn up and myriad dishes were tasted and discussed in the kitchen of Lewis’s own restaurant. Various wines were paired and tasted with the different courses, the final choice being a Château Lynch-Bages 1998 red and a Château de Fieuzal 2005 white, both from French Bordeaux estates with an Irish connection (Kellaghan 3). Two months and two menu sittings later, the final menu was confirmed and signed off by state and embassy officials (Mahon 112–16).The StarterThe banquet’s starter featured organic Clare Island salmon cured in a sweet brine, laid on top of a salmon cream combining wild smoked salmon from the Burren and Cork’s Glenilen Farm crème fraîche, set over a lemon balm jelly from the Tannery Cookery School Gardens, Waterford. Garnished with horseradish cream, wild watercress, and chive flowers from Wicklow, the dish was finished with rapeseed oil from Kilkenny and a little sea salt from West Cork (Mahon 114). Main CourseA main course of Irish beef featured as the pièce de résistance of the menu. A rib of beef from Wexford’s Slaney Valley was provided by Kettyle Irish Foods in Fermanagh and served with ox cheek and tongue from Rathcoole, County Dublin. From along the eastern coastline came the ingredients for the traditional Irish dish of smoked champ: cabbage from Wicklow combined with potatoes and spring onions grown in Dublin. The new season’s broad beans and carrots were served with wild garlic leaf, which adorned the dish (Mahon 113). Cheese CourseThe cheese course was made up of Knockdrinna, a Tomme style goat’s milk cheese from Kilkenny; Milleens, a Munster style cow’s milk cheese produced in Cork; Cashel Blue, a cow’s milk blue cheese from Tipperary; and Glebe Brethan, a Comté style cheese from raw cow’s milk from Louth. Ditty’s Oatmeal Biscuits from Belfast accompanied the course.DessertLewis chose to feature Irish strawberries in the dessert. Pat Clarke guaranteed delivery of ripe strawberries on the day of the banquet. They married perfectly with cream and yoghurt from Glenilen Farm in Cork. The cream was set with Irish Carrageen moss, overlaid with strawberry jelly and sauce, and garnished with meringues made with Irish apple balsamic vinegar from Lusk in North Dublin, yoghurt mousse, and Irish soda bread tuiles made with wholemeal flour from the Mosse family mill in Kilkenny (Mahon 113).The following day, President McAleese telephoned Lewis, saying of the banquet “Ní hé go raibh sé go maith, ach go raibh sé míle uair níos fearr ná sin” (“It’s not that it was good but that it was a thousand times better”). The President observed that the menu was not only delicious but that it was “amazingly articulate in terms of the story that it told about Ireland and Irish food.” The Queen had particularly enjoyed the stuffed cabbage leaf of tongue, cheek and smoked colcannon (a traditional Irish dish of mashed potatoes with curly kale or green cabbage) and had noted the diverse selection of Irish ingredients from Irish artisans (Mahon 116). Irish CuisineWhen the topic of food is explored in Irish historiography, the focus tends to be on the consequences of the Great Famine (1845–49) which left the country “socially and emotionally scarred for well over a century” (Mac Con Iomaire and Gallagher 161). Some commentators consider the term “Irish cuisine” oxymoronic, according to Mac Con Iomaire and Maher (3). As Goldstein observes, Ireland has suffered twice—once from its food deprivation and second because these deprivations present an obstacle for the exploration of Irish foodways (xii). Writing about Italian, Irish, and Jewish migration to America, Diner states that the Irish did not have a food culture to speak of and that Irish writers “rarely included the details of food in describing daily life” (85). Mac Con Iomaire and Maher note that Diner’s methodology overlooks a centuries-long tradition of hospitality in Ireland such as that described by Simms (68) and shows an unfamiliarity with the wealth of food related sources in the Irish language, as highlighted by Mac Con Iomaire (“Exploring” 1–23).Recent scholarship on Ireland’s culinary past is unearthing a fascinating story of a much more nuanced culinary heritage than has been previously understood. This is clearly demonstrated in the research of Cullen, Cashman, Deleuze, Kellaghan, Kelly, Kennedy, Legg, Mac Con Iomaire, Mahon, O’Sullivan, Richman Kenneally, Sexton, and Stanley, Danaher, and Eogan.In 1996 Ireland was described by McKenna as having the most dynamic cuisine in any European country, a place where in the last decade “a vibrant almost unlikely style of cooking has emerged” (qtd. in Mac Con Iomaire “Jammet’s” 136). By 2014, there were nine restaurants in Dublin which had been awarded Michelin stars or Red Ms (Mac Con Iomaire “Jammet’s” 137). Ross Lewis, Chef Patron of Chapter One Restaurant, who would be chosen to create the menu for the state banquet for Queen Elizabeth II, has maintained a Michelin star since 2008 (Mac Con Iomaire, “Jammet’s” 138). Most recently the current strength of Irish gastronomy is globally apparent in Mark Moriarty’s award as San Pellegrino Young Chef 2015 (McQuillan). As Deleuze succinctly states: “Ireland has gone mad about food” (143).This article is part of a research project into Irish diplomatic dining, and the author is part of a research cluster into Ireland’s culinary heritage within the Dublin Institute of Technology. The aim of the research is to add to the growing body of scholarship on Irish gastronomic history and, ultimately, to contribute to the discourse on the existence of a national cuisine. If, as Zubaida says, “a nation’s cuisine is its court’s cuisine,” then it is time for Ireland to “research the feasts as well as the famines” (Mac Con Iomaire and Cashman 97).ConclusionThe Irish state banquet for Queen Elizabeth II in May 2011 was a highly orchestrated and formalised process. From the menu, material culture, entertainment, and level of consultation in the creative content, it is evident that the banquet was carefully curated to represent Ireland’s diplomatic, cultural, and culinary identity.The effects of the visit appear to have been felt in the years which have followed. Hennessy wrote in the Irish Times newspaper that Queen Elizabeth is privately said to regard her visit to Ireland as the most significant of the trips she has made during her 60-year reign. British Prime Minister David Cameron is noted to mention the visit before every Irish audience he encounters, and British Foreign Secretary William Hague has spoken in particular of the impact the state banquet in Dublin Castle made upon him. Hennessy points out that one of the most significant indicators of the peaceful relationship which exists between the two countries nowadays was the subsequent state visit by Irish President Michael D. Higgins to Britain in 2013. This was the first state visit to the United Kingdom by a President of Ireland and would have been unimaginable 25 years ago. The fact that the President and his wife stayed at Windsor Castle and that the attendant state banquet was held there instead of Buckingham Palace were both deemed to be marks of special favour and directly attributed to the success of Her Majesty’s 2011 visit to Ireland.As the research demonstrates, eating together unites rather than separates, gathers rather than divides, diffuses political tensions, and confirms alliances. It might be said then that the 2011 state banquet hosted by President Mary McAleese in honour of Queen Elizabeth II, curated by Ross Lewis, gives particular meaning to the axiom “to eat together is to eat in peace” (Taliano des Garets 160).AcknowledgementsSupervisors: Dr Máirtín Mac Con Iomaire (Dublin Institute of Technology) and Dr Michael Kennedy (Royal Irish Academy)Fáilte IrelandPhotos of the banquet dishes supplied and permission to reproduce them for this article kindly granted by Ross Lewis, Chef Patron, Chapter One Restaurant ‹http://www.chapteronerestaurant.com/›.Illustration ‘Ireland on a Plate’ © Jesse Campbell BrownRemerciementsThe author would like to thank the anonymous reviewers for their feedback and suggestions on an earlier draft of this article.ReferencesAlbala, Ken. The Banquet: Dining in the Great Courts of Late Renaissance Europe. 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Introduction Many destinations promote culinary encounters. Foods and beverages, and especially how these will taste in situ, are being marketed as niche travel motivators and used in destination brand building across the globe. While initial usage of the term culinary tourism focused on experiencing exotic cultures of foreign destinations by sampling unfamiliar food and drinks, the term has expanded to embrace a range of leisure travel experiences where the aim is to locate and taste local specialities as part of a pleasurable, and hopefully notable, culinary encounter (Wolf). Long’s foundational work was central in developing the idea of culinary tourism as an active endeavor, suggesting that via consumption, individuals construct unique experiences. Ignatov and Smith’s literature review-inspired definition confirms the nature of activity as participatory, and adds consuming food production skills—from observing agriculture and local processors to visiting food markets and attending cooking schools—to culinary purchases. Despite importing almost all of its foodstuffs and beverages, including some of its water, Singapore is an acknowledged global leader in culinary tourism. Horng and Tsai note that culinary tourism conceptually implies that a transferal of “local or special knowledge and information that represent local culture and identities” (41) occurs via these experiences. This article adds the act of reading to these participatory activities and suggests that, because food writing forms an important component of Singapore’s suite of culinary tourism offerings, taste contributes to the cultural experience offered to both visitors and locals. While Singapore foodways have attracted significant scholarship (see, for instance, work by Bishop; Duruz; Huat & Rajah; Tarulevicz, Eating), Singapore food writing, like many artefacts of popular culture, has attracted less notice. Yet, this writing is an increasingly visible component of cultural production of, and about, Singapore, and performs a range of functions for locals, tourists and visitors before they arrive. Although many languages are spoken in Singapore, English is the national language (Alsagoff) and this study focuses on food writing in English. Background Tourism comprises a major part of Singapore’s economy, with recent figures detailing that food and beverage sales contribute over 10 per cent of this revenue, with spend on culinary tours and cookery classes, home wares such as tea-sets and cookbooks, food magazines and food memoirs additional to this (Singapore Government). This may be related to the fact that Singapore not only promotes food as a tourist attraction, but also actively promotes itself as an exceptional culinary destination. The Singapore Tourism Board (STB) includes food in its general information brochures and websites, and its print, television and cinema commercials (Huat and Rajah). It also mounts information-rich campaigns both abroad and inside Singapore. The 2007 ‘Singapore Seasons’ campaign, for instance, promoted Singaporean cuisine alongside films, design, books and other cultural products in London, New York and Beijing. Touring cities identified as key tourist markets in 2011, the ‘Singapore Takeout’ pop-up restaurant brought the taste of Singaporean foods into closer focus. Singaporean chefs worked with high profile locals in its kitchen in a custom-fabricated shipping container to create and demonstrate Singaporean dishes, attracting public and media interest. In country, the STB similarly actively promotes the tastes of Singaporean foods, hosting the annual World Gourmet Summit (Chaney and Ryan) and Pacific Food Expo, both attracting international culinary professionals to work alongside local leaders. The Singapore Food Festival each July is marketed to both locals and visitors. In these ways, the STB, as well as providing events for visitors, is actively urging Singaporeans to proud of their food culture and heritage, so that each Singaporean becomes a proactive ambassador of their cuisine. Singapore Food Writing Popular print guidebooks and online guides to Singapore pay significantly more attention to Singaporean food than they do for many other destinations. Sections on food in such publications discuss at relative length the taste of Singaporean food (always delicious) as well as how varied, authentic, hygienic and suited-to-all-budgets it is. These texts also recommend hawker stalls and food courts alongside cafés and restaurants (Henderson et al.), and a range of other culinary experiences such as city and farm food tours and cookery classes. This writing describes not only what can be seen or learned during these experiences, but also what foods can be sampled, and how these might taste. This focus on taste is reflected in the printed materials that greet the in-bound tourist at the airport. On a visit in October 2013, arrival banners featuring mouth-watering images of local specialities such as chicken rice and chilli crab marked the route from arrival to immigration and baggage collection. Even advertising for a bank was illustrated with photographs of luscious-looking fruits. The free maps and guidebooks available featured food-focused tours and restaurant locations, and there were also substantial free booklets dedicated solely to discussing local delicacies and their flavours, plus recommended locations to sample them. A website and free mobile app were available that contain practical information about dishes, ingredients, cookery methods, and places to eat, as well as historical and cultural information. These resources are also freely distributed to many hotels and popular tourist destinations. Alongside organising food walks, bus tours and cookery classes, the STB also recommends the work of a number of Singaporean food writers—principally prominent Singapore food bloggers, reviewers and a number of memoirists—as authentic guides to what are described as unique Singaporean flavours. The strategies at the heart of this promotion are linking advertising to useful information. At a number of food centres, for instance, STB information panels provide details about both specific dishes and Singapore’s food culture more generally (Henderson et al.). This focus is apparent at many tourist destinations, many of which are also popular local attractions. In historic Fort Canning Park, for instance, there is a recreation of Raffles’ experimental garden, established in 1822, where he grew the nutmeg, clove and other plants that were intended to form the foundation for spice plantations but were largely unsuccessful (Reisz). Today, information panels not only indicate the food plants’ names and how to grow them, but also their culinary and medicinal uses, recipes featuring them and the related food memories of famous Singaporeans. The Singapore Botanic Gardens similarly houses the Ginger Garden displaying several hundred species of ginger and information, and an Eco(-nomic/logical) Garden featuring many food plants and their stories. In Chinatown, panels mounted outside prominent heritage brands (often still quite small shops) add content to the shopping experience. A number of museums profile Singapore’s food culture in more depth. The National Museum of Singapore has a permanent Living History gallery that focuses on Singapore’s street food from the 1950s to 1970s. This display includes food-related artefacts, interactive aromatic displays of spices, films of dishes being made and eaten, and oral histories about food vendors, all supported by text panels and booklets. Here food is used to convey messages about the value of Singapore’s ethnic diversity and cross-cultural exchanges. Versions of some of these dishes can then be sampled in the museum café (Time Out Singapore). The Peranakan Museum—which profiles the unique hybrid culture of the descendants of the Chinese and South Indian traders who married local Malay women—shares this focus, with reconstructed kitchens and dining rooms, exhibits of cooking and eating utensils and displays on food’s ceremonial role in weddings and funerals all supported with significant textual information. The Chinatown Heritage Centre not only recreates food preparation areas as a vivid indicator of poor Chinese immigrants’ living conditions, but also houses The National Restaurant of Singapore, which translates this research directly into meals that recreate the heritage kopi tiam (traditional coffee shop) cuisine of Singapore in the 1930s, purposefully bringing taste into the service of education, as its descriptive menu states, “educationally delighting the palate” (Chinatown Heritage Centre). These museums recognise that shopping is a core tourist activity in Singapore (Chang; Yeung et al.). Their gift- and bookshops cater to the culinary tourist by featuring quality culinary products for sale (including, for instance, teapots and cups, teas, spices and traditional sweets, and other foods) many of which are accompanied by informative tags or brochures. At the centre of these curated, purchasable collections are a range written materials: culinary magazines, cookbooks, food histories and memoirs, as well as postcards and stationery printed with recipes. Food Magazines Locally produced food magazines cater to a range of readerships and serve to extend the culinary experience both in, and outside, Singapore. These include high-end gourmet, luxury lifestyle publications like venerable monthly Wine & Dine: The Art of Good Living, which, in in print for almost thirty years, targets an affluent readership (Wine & Dine). The magazine runs features on local dining, gourmet products and trends, as well as international epicurean locations and products. Beautifully illustrated recipes also feature, as the magazine declares, “we’ve recognised that sharing more recipes should be in the DNA of Wine & Dine’s editorial” (Wine & Dine). Appetite magazine, launched in 2006, targets the “new and emerging generation of gourmets—foodies with a discerning and cosmopolitan outlook, broad horizons and a insatiable appetite” (Edipresse Asia) and is reminiscent in much of its styling of New Zealand’s award-winning Cuisine magazine. Its focus is to present a fresh approach to both cooking at home and dining out, as readers are invited to “Whip up the perfect soufflé or feast with us at the finest restaurants in Singapore and around the region” (Edipresse Asia). Chefs from leading local restaurants are interviewed, and the voices of “fellow foodies and industry watchers” offer an “insider track” on food-related news: “what’s good and what’s new” (Edipresse Asia). In between these publications sits Epicure: Life’s Refinements, which features local dishes, chefs, and restaurants as well as an overseas travel section and a food memories column by a featured author. Locally available ingredients are also highlighted, such as abalone (Cheng) and an interesting range of mushrooms (Epicure). While there is a focus on an epicurean experience, this is presented slightly more casually than in Wine & Dine. Food & Travel focuses more on home cookery, but each issue also includes reviews of Singapore restaurants. The bimonthly bilingual (Chinese and English) Gourmet Living features recipes alongside a notable focus on food culture—with food history columns, restaurant reviews and profiles of celebrated chefs. An extensive range of imported international food magazines are also available, with those from nearby Malaysia and Indonesia regularly including articles on Singapore. Cookbooks These magazines all include reviews of cookery books including Singaporean examples – and some feature other food writing such as food histories, memoirs and blogs. These reviews draw attention to how many Singaporean cookbooks include a focus on food history alongside recipes. Cookery teacher Yee Soo Leong’s 1976 Singaporean Cooking was an early example of cookbook as heritage preservation. This 1976 book takes an unusual view of ‘Singaporean’ flavours. Beginning with sweet foods—Nonya/Singaporean and western cakes, biscuits, pies, pastries, bread, desserts and icings—it also focuses on both Singaporean and Western dishes. This text is also unusual as there are only 6 lines of direct authorial address in the author’s acknowledgements section. Expatriate food writer Wendy Hutton’s Singapore Food, first published in 1979, reprinted many times after and revised in 2007, has long been recognised as one of the most authoritative titles on Singapore’s food heritage. Providing an socio-historical map of Singapore’s culinary traditions, some one third of the first edition was devoted to information about Singaporean multi-cultural food history, including detailed profiles of a number of home cooks alongside its recipes. Published in 1980, Kenneth Mitchell’s A Taste of Singapore is clearly aimed at a foreign readership, noting the variety of foods available due to the racial origins of its inhabitants. The more modest, but equally educational in intent, Hawkers Flavour: A Guide to Hawkers Gourmet in Malaysia and Singapore (in its fourth printing in 1998) contains a detailed introductory essay outlining local food culture, favourite foods and drinks and times these might be served, festivals and festive foods, Indian, Indian Muslim, Chinese, Nyonya (Chinese-Malay), Malay and Halal foods and customs, followed with a selection of recipes from each. More contemporary examples of such information-rich cookbooks, such as those published in the frequently reprinted Periplus Mini Cookbook series, are sold at tourist attractions. Each of these modestly priced, 64-page, mouthwateringly illustrated booklets offer framing information, such as about a specific food culture as in the Nonya kitchen in Nonya Favourites (Boi), and explanatory glossaries of ingredients, as in Homestyle Malay Cooking (Jelani). Most recipes include a boxed paragraph detailing cookery or ingredient information that adds cultural nuance, as well as trying to describe tastes that the (obviously foreign) intended reader may not have encountered. Malaysian-born Violet Oon, who has been called the Julia Child of Singapore (Bergman), writes for both local and visiting readers. The FOOD Paper, published monthly for a decade from January 1987 was, she has stated, then “Singapore’s only monthly publication dedicated to the CSF—Certified Singapore Foodie” (Oon, Violet Oon Cooks 7). Under its auspices, Oon promoted her version of Singaporean cuisine to both locals and visitors, as well as running cookery classes and culinary events, hosting her own television cooking series on the Singapore Broadcasting Corporation, and touring internationally for the STB as a ‘Singapore Food Ambassador’ (Ahmad; Kraal). Taking this representation of flavor further, Oon has also produced a branded range of curry powders, spices, and biscuits, and set up a number of food outlets. Her first cookbook, World Peranakan Cookbook, was published in 1978. Her Singapore: 101 Meals of 1986 was commissioned by the STB, then known as the Singapore Tourist Promotion Board. Violet Oon Cooks, a compilation of recipes from The FOOD Paper, published in 1992, attracted a range of major international as well as Singaporean food sponsors, and her Timeless Recipes, published in 1997, similarly aimed to show how manufactured products could be incorporated into classic Singaporean dishes cooked at home. In 1998, Oon produced A Singapore Family Cookbook featuring 100 dishes. Many were from Nonya cuisine and her following books continued to focus on preserving heritage Singaporean recipes, as do a number of other nationally-cuisine focused collections such as Joyceline Tully and Christopher Tan’s Heritage Feasts: A Collection of Singapore Family Recipes. Sylvia Tan’s Singapore Heritage Food: Yesterday’s Recipes for Today’s Cooks, published in 2004, provides “a tentative account of Singapore’s food history” (5). It does this by mapping the various taste profiles of six thematically-arranged chronologically-overlapping sections, from the heritage of British colonialism, to the uptake of American and Russia foods in the Snackbar era of the 1960s and the use of convenience flavoring ingredients such as curry pastes, sauces, dried and frozen supermarket products from the 1970s. Other Volumes Other food-themed volumes focus on specific historical periods. Cecilia Leong-Salobir’s Food Culture in Colonial Asia: A Taste of Empire discusses the “unique hybrid” (1) cuisine of British expatriates in Singapore from 1858 to 1963. In 2009, the National Museum of Singapore produced the moving Wong Hong Suen’s Wartime Kitchen: Food and Eating in Singapore 1942–1950. This details the resilience and adaptability of both diners and cooks during the Japanese Occupation and in post-war Singapore, when shortages stimulated creativity. There is a centenary history of the Cold Storage company which shipped frozen foods all over south east Asia (Boon) and location-based studies such as Annette Tan’s Savour Chinatown: Stories Memories & Recipes. Tan interviewed hawkers, chefs and restaurant owners, working from this information to write both the book’s recipes and reflect on Chinatown’s culinary history. Food culture also features in (although it is not the main focus) more general book-length studies such as educational texts such as Chew Yen Fook’s The Magic of Singapore and Melanie Guile’s Culture in Singapore (2000). Works that navigate both spaces (of Singaporean culture more generally and its foodways) such Lily Kong’s Singapore Hawker Centres: People, Places, Food, provide an consistent narrative of food in Singapore, stressing its multicultural flavours that can be enjoyed from eateries ranging from hawker stalls to high-end restaurants that, interestingly, that agrees with that promulgated in the food writing discussed above. Food Memoirs and Blogs Many of these narratives include personal material, drawing on the author’s own food experiences and taste memories. This approach is fully developed in the food memoir, a growing sub-genre of Singapore food writing. While memoirs by expatriate Singaporeans such as Cheryl Lu-Lien Tan’s A Tiger in the Kitchen: A Memoir of Food and Family, produced by major publisher Hyperion in New York, has attracted considerable international attention, it presents a story of Singapore cuisine that agrees with such locally produced texts as television chef and food writer Terry Tan’s Stir-fried and Not Shaken: A Nostalgic Trip Down Singapore’s Memory Lane and the food memoir of the Singaporean chef credited with introducing fine Malay dining to Singapore, Aziza Ali’s Sambal Days, Kampong Cuisine, published in Singapore in 2013 with the support of the National Heritage Board. All these memoirs are currently available in Singapore in both bookshops and a number of museums and other attractions. While underscoring the historical and cultural value of these foods, all describe the unique flavours of Singaporean cuisine and its deliciousness. A number of prominent Singapore food bloggers are featured in general guidebooks and promoted by the STB as useful resources to dining out in Singapore. One of the most prominent of these is Leslie Tay, a medical doctor and “passionate foodie” (Knipp) whose awardwinning ieatŸishootŸipost is currently attracting some 90,000 unique visitors every month and has had over 20,000 million hits since its launch in 2006. An online diary of Tay’s visits to hundreds of Singaporean hawker stalls, it includes descriptions and photographs of meals consumed, creating accumulative oral culinary histories of these dishes and those who prepared them. These narratives have been reorganised and reshaped in Tay’s first book The End of Char Kway Teow and Other Hawker Mysteries, where each chapter tells the story of one particular dish, including recommended hawker stalls where it can be enjoyed. Ladyironchef.com is a popular food and travel site that began as a blog in 2007. An edited collection of reviews of eateries and travel information, many by the editor himself, the site features lists of, for example, the best cafes (LadyIronChef “Best Cafes”), eateries at the airport (LadyIronChef “Guide to Dining”), and hawker stalls (Lim). While attesting to the cultural value of these foods, many articles also discuss flavour, as in Lim’s musings on: ‘how good can chicken on rice taste? … The glistening grains of rice perfumed by fresh chicken stock and a whiff of ginger is so good you can even eat it on its own’. Conclusion Recent Singapore food publishing reflects this focus on taste. Tay’s publisher, Epigram, growing Singaporean food list includes the recently released Heritage Cookbooks Series. This highlights specialist Singaporean recipes and cookery techniques, with the stated aim of preserving tastes and foodways that continue to influence Singaporean food culture today. Volumes published to date on Peranakan, South Indian, Cantonese, Eurasian, and Teochew (from the Chaoshan region in the east of China’s Guangdong province) cuisines offer both cultural and practical guides to the quintessential dishes and flavours of each cuisine, featuring simple family dishes alongside more elaborate special occasion meals. In common with the food writing discussed above, the books in this series, although dealing with very different styles of cookery, contribute to an overall impression of the taste of Singapore food that is highly consistent and extremely persuasive. This food writing narrates that Singapore has a delicious as well as distinctive and interesting food culture that plays a significant role in Singaporean life both currently and historically. It also posits that this food culture is, at the same time, easily accessible and also worthy of detailed consideration and discussion. 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Acknowledgements Research to complete this article was supported by Central Queensland University, Australia, under its Outside Studies Program (OSPRO) and Learning and Teaching Education Research Centre (LTERC). An earlier version of part of this article was presented at the 2nd Australasian Regional Food Networks and Cultures Conference, in the Barossa Valley in South Australia, Australia, 11–14 November 2012. The delegates of that conference and expert reviewers of this article offered some excellent suggestions regarding strengthening this article and their advice was much appreciated. All errors are, of course, my own.

No man [...] can wear one face to himself and another to the multitude, without finally getting bewildered as to which one may be true. (Nathaniel Hawthorne Scarlet Letter – as seen and pondered by Tony Soprano at Bowdoin College, The Sopranos, Season 1, Episode 5: “College”)The fictitious is a particular and varied source of insight into the everyday world. The idea of seriality—with its variations of the serial, series, seriated—is very much connected to our patterns of entertainment. In this essay, I want to begin the process of testing what values and meanings can be drawn from the idea of seriality into comprehending the play of persona in contemporary culture. From a brief overview of the intersection of persona and seriality as well as a review of the deployment of seriality in popular culture, the article focuses on the character/ person-actor relationship to demonstrate how seriality produces persona. The French term for character—personnage—will be used to underline the clear relations between characterisation, person, and persona which have been developed by the recent work by Lenain and Wiame. Personnage, through its variation on the word person helps push the analysis into fully understanding the particular and integrated configuration between a public persona and the fictional role that an actor inhabits (Heinich).There are several qualities related to persona that allow this movement from the fictional world to the everyday world to be profitable. Persona, in terms of origins, in and of itself implies performance and display. Jung, for instance, calls persona a mask where one is “acting a role” (167); while Goffman considers that performance and roles are at the centre of everyday life and everyday forms and patterns of communication. In recent work, I have use persona to describe how online culture pushes most people to construct a public identity that resembles what celebrities have had to construct for their livelihood for at least the last century (“Persona”; “Self”). My work has expanded to an investigation of how online persona relates to individual agency (“Agency”) and professional postures and positioning (Barbour and Marshall).The fictive constructions then are intensified versions of what persona is addressing: the fabrication of a role for particular directions and ends. Characters or personnages are constructed personas for very directed ends. Their limitation to the study of persona as a dimension of public culture is that they are not real; however, when one thinks of the actor who takes on this fictive identity, there is clearly a relationship between the real personality and that of the character. Moreover, as Nayar’s analysis of highly famous characters that are fictitious reveals, these celebrated characters, such as Harry Potter or Wolverine, sometime take on a public presence in and of themselves. To capture this public movement of a fictional character, Nayar blends the terms celebrity with fiction and calls these semi-public/semi-real entities “celefiction”: the characters are famous, highly visible, and move across media, information, and cultural platforms with ease and speed (18-20). Their celebrity status underlines their power to move outside of their primary text into public discourse and through public spaces—an extra-textual movement which fundamentally defines what a celebrity embodies.Seriality has to be seen as fundamental to a personnage’s power of and extension into the public world. For instance with Harry Potter again, at least some of his recognition is dependent on the linking or seriating the related books and movies. Seriality helps organise our sense of affective connection to our popular culture. The familiarity of some element of repetition is both comforting for audiences and provides at least a sense of guarantee or warranty that they will enjoy the future text as much as they enjoyed the past related text. Seriality, though, also produces a myriad of other effects and affects which provides a useful background to understand its utility in both the understanding of character and its value in investigating contemporary public persona. Etymologically, the words “series” and seriality are from the Latin and refer to “succession” in classical usage and are identified with ancestry and the patterns of identification and linking descendants (Oxford English Dictionary). The original use of the seriality highlights its value in understanding the formation of the constitution of person and persona and how the past and ancestry connect in series to the current or contemporary self. Its current usage, however, has broadened metaphorically outwards to identify anything that is in sequence or linked or joined: it can be a series of lectures and arguments or a related mark of cars manufactured in a manner that are stylistically linked. It has since been deployed to capture the production process of various cultural forms and one of the key origins of this usage came from the 19th century novel. There are many examples where the 19th century novel was sold and presented in serial form that are too numerous to even summarise here. It is useful to use Dickens’ serial production as a defining example of how seriality moved into popular culture and the entertainment industry more broadly. Part of the reason for the sheer length of many of Charles Dickens’ works related to their original distribution as serials. In fact, all his novels were first distributed in chapters in monthly form in magazines or newspapers. A number of related consequences from Dickens’ serialisation are relevant to understanding seriality in entertainment culture more widely (Hayward). First, his novel serialisation established a continuous connection to his readers over years. Thus Dickens’ name itself became synonymous and connected to an international reading public. Second, his use of seriality established a production form that was seen to be more affordable to its audience: seriality has to be understood as a form that is closely connected to economies and markets as cultural commodities kneaded their way into the structure of everyday life. And third, seriality established through repetition not only the author’s name but also the name of the key characters that populated the cultural form. Although not wholly attributable to the serial nature of the delivery, the characters such as Oliver Twist, Ebenezer Scrooge or David Copperfield along with a host of other major and minor players in his many books become integrated into everyday discourse because of their ever-presence and delayed delivery over stories over time (see Allen 78-79). In the same way that newspapers became part of the vernacular of contemporary culture, fictional characters from novels lived for years at a time in the consciousness of this large reading public. The characters or personnages themselves became personalities that through usage became a way of describing other behaviours. One can think of Uriah Heep and his sheer obsequiousness in David Copperfield as a character-type that became part of popular culture thinking and expressing a clear negative sentiment about a personality trait. In the twentieth century, serials became associated much more with book series. One of the more successful serial genres was the murder mystery. It developed what could be described as recognisable personnages that were both fictional and real. Thus, the real Agatha Christie with her consistent and prodigious production of short who-dunnit novels was linked to her Belgian fictional detective Hercule Poirot. Variations of these serial constructions occurred in children’s fiction, the emerging science fiction genre, and westerns with authors and characters rising to related prominence.In a similar vein, early to mid-twentieth century film produced the film serial. In its production and exhibition, the film serial was a déclassé genre in its overt emphasis on the economic quality of seriality. Thus, the film serial was generally a filler genre that was interspersed before and after a feature film in screenings (Dixon). As well as producing a familiarity with characters such as Flash Gordon, it was also instrumental in producing actors with a public profile that grew from this repetition. Flash Gordon was not just a character; he was also the actor Buster Crabbe and, over time, the association became indissoluble for audiences and actor alike. Feature film serials also developed in the first half-century of American cinema in particular with child actors like Shirley Temple, Mickey Rooney and Judy Garland often reprising variations of their previous roles. Seriality more or less became the standard form of delivery of broadcast media for most of the last 70 years and this was driven by the economies of production it developed. Whether the production was news, comedy, or drama, most radio and television forms were and are variation of serials. As well as being the zenith of seriality, television serials have been the most studied form of seriality of all cultural forms and are thus the greatest source of research into what serials actually produced. The classic serial that began on radio and migrated to television was the soap opera. Although most of the long-running soap operas have now disappeared, many have endured for more than 30 years with the American series The Guiding Light lasting 72 years and the British soap Coronation Street now in its 64th year. Australian nighttime soap operas have managed a similar longevity: Neighbours is in its 30th year, while Home and Away is in its 27th year. Much of the analyses of soap operas and serials deals with the narrative and the potential long narrative arcs related to characters and storylines. In contrast to most evening television serials historically, soap operas maintain the continuity from one episode to the next in an unbroken continuity narrative. Evening television serials, such as situation comedies, while maintaining long arcs over their run are episodic in nature: the structure of the story is generally concluded in the given episode with at least partial closure in a manner that is never engaged with in the never-ending soap opera serials.Although there are other cultural forms that deploy seriality in their structures—one can think of comic books and manga as two obvious other connected and highly visible serial sources—online and video games represent the other key media platform of serials in contemporary culture. Once again, a “horizon of expectation” (Jauss and De Man 23) motivates the iteration of new versions of games by the industry. New versions of games are designed to build on gamer loyalties while augmenting the quality and possibilities of the particular game. Game culture and gamers have a different structural relationship to serials which at least Denson and Jahn-Sudmann describe as digital seriality: a new version of a game is also imagined to be technologically more sophisticated in its production values and this transformation of the similitude of game structure with innovation drives the economy of what are often described as “franchises.” New versions of Minecraft as online upgrades or Call of Duty launches draw the literal reinvestment of the gamer. New consoles provide a further push to serialisation of games as they accentuate some transformed quality in gameplay, interaction, or quality of animated graphics. Sports franchises are perhaps the most serialised form of game: to replicate new professional seasons in each major sport, the sports game transforms with a new coterie of players each year.From these various venues, one can see the centrality of seriality in cultural forms. There is no question that one of the dimensions of seriality that transcends these cultural forms is its coordination and intersection with the development of the industrialisation of culture and this understanding of the economic motivation behind series has been explored from some of the earliest analyses of seriality (see Hagedorn; Browne). Also, seriality has been mined extensively in terms of its production of the pleasure of repetition and transformation. The exploration of the popular, whether in studies of readers of romance fiction (Radway), or fans of science fiction television (Tulloch and Jenkins; Jenkins), serials have provided the resource for the exploration of the power of the audience to connect, engage and reconstruct texts.The analysis of the serialisation of character—the production of a public personnage—and its relation to persona surprisingly has been understudied. While certain writers have remarked on the longevity of a certain character, such as Vicky Lord’s 40 year character on the soap opera One Life to Live, and the interesting capacity to maintain both complicated and hidden storylines (de Kosnik), and fan audience studies have looked at the parasocial-familiar relationship that fan and character construct, less has been developed about the relationship of the serial character, the actor and a form of twinned public identity. Seriality does produce a patterning of personnage, a structure of familiarity for the audience, but also a structure of performance for the actor. For instance, in a longitudinal analysis of the character of Fu Manchu, Mayer is able to discern how a patterning of iconic form shapes, replicates, and reiterates the look of Fu Manchu across decades of films (Mayer). Similarly, there has been a certain work on the “taxonomy of character” where the serial character of a television program is analysed in terms of 6 parts: physical traits/appearance; speech patterns, psychological traits/habitual behaviours; interaction with other characters; environment; biography (Pearson quoted in Lotz).From seriality what emerges is a particular kind of “type-casting” where the actor becomes wedded to the specific iteration of the taxonomy of performance. As with other elements related to seriality, serial character performance is also closely aligned to the economic. Previously I have described this economic patterning of performance the “John Wayne Syndrome.” Wayne’s career developed into a form of serial performance where the individual born as Marion Morrison becomes structured into a cultural and economic category that determines the next film role. The economic weight of type also constructs the limits and range of the actor. Type or typage as a form of casting has always been an element of film and theatrical performance; but it is the seriality of performance—the actual construction of a personnage that flows between the fictional and real person—that allows an actor to claim a persona that can be exchanged within the industry. Even 15 years after his death, Wayne remained one of the most popular performers in the United States, his status unrivalled in its close definition of American value that became wedded with a conservative masculinity and politics (Wills).Type and typecasting have an interesting relationship to seriality. From Eisenstein’s original use of the term typage, where the character is chosen to fit into the meaning of the film and the image was placed into its sequence to make that meaning, it generally describes the circumscribing of the actor into their look. As Wojcik’s analysis reveals, typecasting in various periods of theatre and film acting has been seen as something to be fought for by actors (in the 1850s) and actively resisted in Hollywood in 1950 by the Screen Actors Guild in support of more range of roles for each actor. It is also seen as something that leads to cultural stereotypes that can reinforce the racial profiling that has haunted diverse cultures and the dangers of law enforcement for centuries (Wojcik 169-71). Early writers in the study of film acting, emphasised that its difference from theatre was that in film the actor and character converged in terms of connected reality and a physicality: the film actor was less a mask and more a sense of “being”(Kracauer). Cavell’s work suggested film over stage performance allowed an individuality over type to emerge (34). Thompson’s semiotic “commutation” test was another way of assessing the power of the individual “star” actor to be seen as elemental to the construction and meaning of the film role Television produced with regularity character-actors where performance and identity became indissoluble partly because of the sheer repetition and the massive visibility of these seriated performances.One of the most typecast individuals in television history was Leonard Nimoy as Spock in Star Trek: although the original Star Trek series ran for only three seasons, the physical caricature of Spock in the series as a half-Vulcan and half-human made it difficult for the actor Nimoy to exit the role (Laws). Indeed, his famous autobiography riffed on this mis-identity with the forceful but still economically powerful title I am Not Spock in 1975. When Nimoy perceived that his fans thought that he was unhappy in his role as Spock, he published a further tome—I Am Spock—that righted his relationship to his fictional identity and its continued source of roles for the previous 30 years. Although it is usually perceived as quite different in its constitution of a public identity, a very similar structure of persona developed around the American CBS news anchor Walter Cronkite. With his status as anchor confirmed in its power and centrality to American culture in his desk reportage of the assassination and death of President Kennedy in November 1963, Cronkite went on to inhabit a persona as the most trusted man in the United States by the sheer gravitas of hosting the Evening News stripped across every weeknight at 6:30pm for the next 19 years. In contrast to Nimoy, Cronkite became Cronkite the television news anchor, where persona, actor, and professional identity merged—at least in terms of almost all forms of the man’s visibility.From this vantage point of understanding the seriality of character/personnage and how it informs the idea of the actor, I want to provide a longer conclusion about how seriality informs the concept of persona in the contemporary moment. First of all, what this study reveals is the way in which the production of identity is overlaid onto any conception of identity itself. If we can understand persona not in any negative formulation, but rather as a form of productive performance of a public self, then it becomes very useful to see that these very visible public blendings of performance and the actor-self can make sense more generally as to how the public self is produced and constituted. My final and concluding examples will try and elucidate this insight further.In 2013, Netflix launched into the production of original drama with its release of House of Cards. The series itself was remarkable for a number of reasons. First among them, it was positioned as a quality series and clearly connected to the lineage of recent American subscription television programs such as The Sopranos, Six Feet Under, Dexter, Madmen, The Wire, Deadwood, and True Blood among a few others. House of Cards was an Americanised version of a celebrated British mini-series. In the American version, an ambitious party whip, Frank Underwood, manoeuvres with ruthlessness and the calculating support of his wife closer to the presidency and the heart and soul of American power. How the series expressed quality was at least partially in its choice of actors. The role of Frank Underwood was played by the respected film actor Kevin Spacey. His wife, Clare, was played by the equally high profile Robin Warren. Quality was also expressed through the connection of the audience of viewers to an anti-hero: a personnage that was not filled with virtue but moved with Machiavellian acuity towards his objective of ultimate power. This idea of quality emerged in many ways from the successful construction of the character of Tony Soprano by James Gandolfini in the acclaimed HBO television series The Sopranos that reconstructed the very conception of the family in organised crime. Tony Soprano was enacted as complex and conflicted with a sense of right and justice, but embedded in the personnage were psychological tropes and scars, and an understanding of the need for violence to maintain influence power and a perverse but natural sense of order (Martin).The new television serial character now embodied a larger code and coterie of acting: from The Sopranos, there is the underlying sense and sensibility of method acting (see Vineberg; Stanislavski). Gandolfini inhabited the role of Tony Soprano and used the inner and hidden drives and motivations to become the source for the display of the character. Likewise, Spacey inhabits Frank Underwood. In that new habitus of television character, the actor becomes subsumed by the role. Gandolfini becomes both over-determined by the role and his own identity as an actor becomes melded to the role. Kevin Spacey, despite his longer and highly visible history as a film actor is overwhelmed by the televisual role of Frank Underwood. Its serial power, where audiences connect for hours and hours, where the actor commits to weeks and weeks of shoots, and years and years of being the character—a serious character with emotional depth, with psychological motivation that rivals the most visceral of film roles—transforms the actor into a blended public person and the related personnage.This blend of fictional and public life is complex as much for the producing actor as it is for the audience that makes the habitus real. What Kevin Spacey/Frank Underwood inhabit is a blended persona, whose power is dependent on the constructed identity that is at source the actor’s production as much as any institutional form or any writer or director connected to making House of Cards “real.” There is no question that this serial public identity will be difficult for Kevin Spacey to disentangle when the series ends; in many ways it will be an elemental part of his continuing public identity. This is the economic power and risk of seriality.One can see similar blendings in the persona in popular music and its own form of contemporary seriality in performance. For example, Eminem is a stage name for a person sometimes called Marshall Mathers; but Eminem takes this a step further and produces beyond a character in its integration of the personal—a real personnage, Slim Shady, to inhabit his music and its stories. To further complexify this construction, Eminem relies on the production of his stories with elements that appear to be from his everyday life (Dawkins). His characterisations because of the emotional depth he inhabits through his rapped stories betray a connection to his own psychological state. Following in the history of popular music performance where the singer-songwriter’s work is seen by all to present a version of the public self that is closer emotionally to the private self, we once again see how the seriality of performance begins to produce a blended public persona. Rap music has inherited this seriality of produced identity from twentieth century icons of the singer/songwriter and its display of the public/private self—in reverse order from grunge to punk, from folk to blues.Finally, it is worthwhile to think of online culture in similar ways in the production of public personas. Seriality is elemental to online culture. Social media encourage the production of public identities through forms of repetition of that identity. In order to establish a public profile, social media users establish an identity with some consistency over time. The everydayness in the production of the public self online thus resembles the production and performance of seriality in fiction. Professional social media sites such as LinkedIn encourage the consistency of public identity and this is very important in understanding the new versions of the public self that are deployed in contemporary culture. However, much like the new psychological depth that is part of the meaning of serial characters such as Frank Underwood in House of Cards, Slim Shady in Eminem, or Tony Soprano in The Sopranos, social media seriality also encourages greater revelations of the private self via Instagram and Facebook walls and images. We are collectively reconstituted as personas online, seriated by the continuing presence of our online sites and regularly drawn to reveal more and greater depths of our character. In other words, the online persona resembles the new depth of the quality television serial personnage with elaborate arcs and great complexity. Seriality in our public identity is also uncovered in the production of our game avatars where, in order to develop trust and connection to friends in online settings, we maintain our identity and our patterns of gameplay. At the core of this online identity is a desire for visibility, and we are drawn to be “picked up” and shared in some repeatable form across what we each perceive as a meaningful dimension of culture. Through the circulation of viral images, texts, and videos we engage in a circulation and repetition of meaning that feeds back into the constancy and value of an online identity. Through memes we replicate and seriate content that at some level seriates personas in terms of humour, connection and value.Seriality is central to understanding the formation of our masks of public identity and is at least one valuable analytical way to understand the development of the contemporary persona. This essay represents the first foray in thinking through the relationship between seriality and persona.ReferencesBarbour, Kim, and P. David Marshall. “The Academic Online Constructing Persona.” First Monday 17.9 (2012).Browne, Nick. “The Political Economy of the (Super)Text.” Quarterly Review of Film Studies 9.3 (1984): 174-82. Cavell, Stanley. “Reflections on the Ontology of Film.” Movie Acting: The Film Reader. Ed. Wojcik and Pamela Robertson. 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Human history has witnessed varied surveillance and counter-surveillance activities from time immemorial. Human beings could not surveille others effectively and accurately without the technology of their era. Technology is a tool that can empower both people and governments. The outcomes are different based on the users’ intentions and aims. 2,500 years ago, Sun Tzu noted that ‘If you know both yourself and your enemy, you can win numerous (literally, "a hundred") battles without jeopardy’. His words still ring true. To be a good surveiller and counter-surveiller it is essential to know both sides, and in order to be good at these activities access to technology is vital. There is no doubt that knowledge is power, and without technology to access the information, it is impossible to be powerful. As we become more expert at technology, we will learn what makes surveillance and counter-surveillance more effective, and will be more powerful.“Surveillance” is one of the most important aspects of living in the convergent media environment. This essay illustrates government surveillance and counter-surveillance during the Iranian Green Movement (2009) on social and mobile media. The Green Movement refers to a non-violent movement that arose after the disputed presidential election on June 2009. After that Iran was facing its most serious political crisis since the 1979 revolution. Claims of vote fraud triggered massive street protests. Many took to the streets with “Green” signs, chanting slogans such as ‘the government lied’, and ‘where is my vote?’ There is no doubt that social and mobile media has played an important role in Iran’s contemporary politics. According to Internet World Stats (IWS) Internet users in 2009 account for approximately 48.5 per cent of the population of Iran. In 2009, Iran had 30.2 million mobile phone users (Freedom House), and 72 cellular subscriptions for every 100 people (World Bank). Today, while Iran has the 19th-largest population in the world, its blogosphere holds the third spot in terms of number of users, just behind the United States and China (Beth Elson et al.). In this essay the use of social and mobile media (technology) is not debated, but the extent of this use, and who, why and how it is used, is clearly scrutinised.Visibility and Surveillance There have been different kinds of surveillance for a very long time. However, all types of surveillance are based on the notion of “visibility”. Previous studies show that visibility is not a new term (Foucault Discipline). The new things in the new era, are its scale, scope and complicated ways to watch others without being watched, which are not limited to a specific time, space and group, and are completely different from previous instruments for watching (Andrejevic). As Meikle and Young (146) have mentioned ‘networked digital media bring with them a new kind of visibility’, based on different kinds of technology. Internet surveillance has important implications in politics to control, protect, and influence (Marx Ethics; Castells; Fuchs Critique). Surveillance has been improved during its long history, and evolved from very simple spying and watching to complicated methods of “iSpy” (Andrejevic). To understand the importance of visibility and its relationship with surveillance, it is essential to study visibility in conjunction with the notion of “panopticon” and its contradictory functions. Foucault uses Bentham's notion of panopticon that carries within itself visibility and transparency to control others. “Gaze” is a central term in Bentham’s view. ‘Bentham thinks of a visibility organised entirely around a dominating, overseeing gaze’ (Foucault Eye). Moreover, Thomson (Visibility 11) notes that we are living in the age of ‘normalizing the power of the gaze’ and it is clear that the influential gaze is based on powerful means to see others.Lyon (Surveillance 2) explains that ‘surveillance is any collection and processing of personal data, whether identifiable or not, for the purpose of influencing or managing those whose data have been granted…’. He mentions that today the most important means of surveillance reside in computer power which allows collected data to be sorted, matched, retrieved, processed, marketed and circulated.Nowadays, the Internet has become ubiquitous in many parts of the world. So, the changes in people’s interactions have influenced their lives. Fuchs (Introduction 15) argues that ‘information technology enables surveillance at a distance…in real time over networks at high transmission speed’. Therefore, visibility touches different aspects of people’s lives and living in a “glasshouse” has caused a lot of fear and anxiety about privacy.Iran’s Green Movement is one of many cases for studying surveillance and counter-surveillance technologies in social and mobile media. Government Surveillance on Social and Mobile Media in Iran, 2009 In 2009 the Iranian government controlled technology that allowed them to monitor, track, and limit access to the Internet, social media and mobiles communication, which has resulted in the surveillance of Green Movement’s activists. The Iranian government had improved its technical capabilities to monitor the people’s behavior on the Internet long before the 2009 election. The election led to an increase in online surveillance. Using social media the Iranian government became even more powerful than it was before the election. Social media was a significant factor in strengthening the government’s power. In the months after the election the virtual atmosphere became considerably more repressive. The intensified filtering of the Internet and implementation of more advanced surveillance systems strengthened the government’s position after the election. The Open Net Initiative revealed that the Internet censorship system in Iran is one of the most comprehensive and sophisticated censorship systems in the world. It emphasized that ‘Advances in domestic technical capacity have contributed to the implementation of a centralized filtering strategy and a reduced reliance on Western technologies’.On the other hand, the authorities attempted to block all access to political blogs (Jaras), either through cyber-security methods or through threats (Tusa). The Centre for Investigating Organized Cyber Crimes, which was founded in 2007 partly ‘to investigate and confront social and economic offenses on the Internet’ (Cyber Police), became increasingly important over the course of 2009 as the government combated the opposition’s online activities (Beth Elson et al. 16). Training of "senior Internet lieutenants" to confront Iran's "virtual enemies online" was another attempt that the Intelligence minister announced following the protests (Iran Media Program).In 2009 the Iranian government enacted the Computer Crime Law (Jaras). According to this law the Committee in Charge of Determining Unauthorized Websites is legally empowered to identify sites that carry forbidden content and report that information to TCI and other major ISPs for blocking (Freedom House). In the late fall of 2009, the government started sending threatening and warning text messages to protesters about their presence in the protests (BBC). Attacking, blocking, hacking and hijacking of the domain names of some opposition websites such as Jaras and Kaleme besides a number of non-Iranian sites such as Twitter were among the other attempts of the Iranian Cyber Army (Jaras).It is also said that the police and security forces arrested dissidents identified through photos and videos posted on the social media that many imagined had empowered them. Furthermore, the online photos of the active protesters were posted on different websites, asking people to identify them (Valizadeh).In late June 2009 the Iranian government was intentionally permitting Internet traffic to and from social networking sites such as Facebook and Twitter so that it could use a sophisticated practice called Deep Packet Inspection (DPI) to collect information about users. It was reportedly also applying the same technology to monitor mobile phone communications (Beth Elson et al. 15).On the other hand, to cut communication between Iranians inside and outside the country, Iran slowed down the Internet dramatically (Jaras). Iran also blocked access to Facebook, YouTube, Wikipedia, Twitter and many blogs before, during and after the protests. Moreover, in 2009, text message services were shut down for over 40 days, and mobile phone subscribers could not send or receive text messages regardless of their mobile carriers. Subsequently it was disrupted on a temporary basis immediately before and during key protests days.It was later discovered that the Nokia Siemens Network provided the government with surveillance technologies (Wagner; Iran Media Program). The Iranian government built a complicated system that enabled it to monitor, track and intercept what was said on mobile phones. Nokia Siemens Network confirmed it supplied Iran with the technology needed to monitor, control, and read local telephone calls [...] The product allowed authorities to monitor any communications across a network, including voice calls, text messaging, instant messages, and web traffic (Cellan-Jones). Media sources also reported that two Chinese companies, Huawei and ZTE, provided surveillance technologies to the government. The Nic Payamak and Saman Payamak websites, that provide mass text messaging services, also reported that operator Hamrah Aval commonly blocked texts with words such as meeting, location, rally, gathering, election and parliament (Iran Media Program). Visibility and Counter-Surveillance The panopticon is not limited to the watchers. Similarly, new kinds of panopticon and visibility are not confined to government surveillance. Foucault points out that ‘the seeing machine was once a sort of dark room into which individuals spied; it has become a transparent building in which the exercise of power may be supervised by society as a whole’ (Discipline 207). What is important is Foucault's recognition that transparency, not only of those who are being observed but also of those who are observing, is central to the notion of the panopticon (Allen) and ‘any member of society will have the right to come and see with his own eyes how schools, hospitals, factories, and prisons function’ (Foucault, Discipline 207). Counter-surveillance is the process of detecting and mitigating hostile surveillance (Burton). Therefore, while the Internet is a surveillance instrument that enables governments to watch people, it also improves the capacity to counter-surveille, and draws public attention to governments’ injustice. As Castells (185) notes the Internet could be used by citizens to watch their government as an instrument of control, information, participation, and even decision-making, from the bottom up.With regards to the role of citizens in counter-surveillance we can draw on Jay Rosen’s view of Internet users as ‘the people formerly known as the audience’. In counter-surveillance it can be said that passive citizens (formerly the audience) have turned into active citizens. And this change was becoming impossible without mobile and social media platforms. These new techniques and technologies have empowered people and given them the opportunity to have new identities. When Thompson wrote ‘the exercise of power in modern societies remains in many ways shrouded in secrecy and hidden from the public gaze’ (Media 125), perhaps he could not imagine that one day people can gaze at the politicians, security forces and the police through the use of the Internet and mobile devices.Furthermore, while access to mobile media allows people to hold authorities accountable for their uses and abuses of power (Breen 183), social media can be used as a means of representation, organization of collective action, mobilization, and drawing attention to police brutality and reasons for political action (Gerbaudo).There is no doubt that having creativity and using alternative platforms are important aspects in counter-surveillance. For example, images of Lt. Pike “Pepper Spray Cop” from the University of California became the symbol of the senselessness of police brutality during the Occupy Movement (Shaw). Iranians’ Counter-Surveillance on Social and Mobile Media, 2009 Iran’s Green movement (2009) triggered a lot of discussions about the role of technology in social movements. In this regard, there are two notable attitudes about the role of technology: techno-optimistic (Shriky and Castells) and techno-pessimistic (Morozov and Gladwell) views should be taken into account. While techno-optimists overrated the role of social media, techno-pessimists underestimated its role. However, there is no doubt that technology has played a great role as a counter-surveillance tool amongst Iranian people in Iran’s contemporary politics.Apart from the academic discussions between techno-optimists and techno-pessimists, there have been numerous debates about the role of new technologies in Iran during the Green Movement. This subject has received interest from different corners of the world, including Western countries, Iranian authorities, opposition groups, and also some NGOs. However, its role as a means of counter-surveillance has not received adequate attention.As the tools of counter-surveillance are more or less the tools of surveillance, protesters learned from the government to use the same techniques to challenge authority on social media.Establishing new websites (such as JARAS, RASA, Kalemeh, and Iran green voice) or strengthening some previous ones (such as Saham, Emrooz, Norooz), also activating different platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube accounts to broadcast the voice of the Iranian Green Movement and neutralize the government’s propaganda were the most important ways to empower supporters of Iran’s Green Movement in counter-surveillance.‘Reporters Without Borders issued a statement, saying that ‘the new media, and particularly social networks, have given populations collaborative tools with which they can change the social order’. It is also mentioned that despite efforts by the Iranian government to prevent any reporting of the protests and due to considerable pressure placed on foreign journalists inside Iran, social media played a significant role in sending the messages and images of the movement to the outside world (Axworthy). However, at that moment, many thought that Twitter performed a liberating role for Iranian dissenters. For example, Western media heralded the Green Movement in Iran as a “Twitter revolution” fuelled by information and communication technologies (ICTs) and social media tools (Carrieri et al. 4). “The Revolution Will Be Twittered” was the first in a series of blog posts published by Andrew Sullivan a few hours after the news of the protests was released.According to the researcher’s observation the numbers of Twitter users inside Iran who tweeted was very limited in 2009 and social media was most useful in the dissemination of information, especially from those inside Iran to outsiders. Mobile phones were mostly influential as an instrument firstly used for producing contents (images and videos) and secondly for the organisation of protests. There were many photos and videos that were filmed by very simple mobile cell phones, uploaded by ordinary people onto YouTube and other platforms. The links were shared many times on Twitter and Facebook and released by mainstream media. The most frequently circulated story from the Iranian protests was a video of Neda Agha-Sultan. Her final moments were captured by some bystanders with mobile phone cameras and rapidly spread across the global media and the Internet. It showed that the camera-phone had provided citizens with a powerful means, allowing for the creation and instant sharing of persuasive personalised eyewitness records with mobile and globalised target populations (Anden-Papadopoulos).Protesters used another technique, DDOS (distributed denial of service attacks), for political protest in cyber space. Anonymous people used DDOS to overload a website with fake requests, making it unavailable for users and disrupting the sites set as targets (McMillan) in effect, shutting down the site. DDOS is an important counter-surveillance activity by grassroots activists or hackers. It was a cyber protest that knocked the main Iranian governmental websites off-line and caused crowdsourcing and false trafficking. Amongst them were Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Iran's supreme leader’s websites and those which belong to or are close to the government or security forces, including news agencies (Fars, IRNA, Press TV…), the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the Ministry of Justice, the Police, and the Ministry of the Interior.Moreover, as authorities uploaded the pictures of protesters onto different platforms to find and arrest them, in some cities people started to put the pictures, phone numbers and addresses of members of security forces and plain clothes police officers who attacked them during the protests and asked people to identify and report the others. They also wanted people to send information about suspects who infringed human rights. Conclusion To sum up, visibility, surveillance and counter-surveillance are not new phenomena. What is new is the technology, which increased their complexity. As Foucault (Discipline 200) mentioned ‘visibility is a trap’, so being visible would be the weakness of those who are being surveilled in the power struggle. In the convergent era, in order to be more powerful, both surveillance and counter-surveillance activities aim for more visibility. Although both attempt to use the same means (technology) to trap the other side, the differences are in their subjects, objects, goals and results.While in surveillance, visibility of the many by the few is mostly for the purpose of control and influence in undemocratic ways, in counter-surveillance, the visibility of the few by the many is mostly through democratic ways to secure more accountability and transparency from the governments.As mentioned in the case of Iran’s Green Movement, the scale and scope of visibility are different in surveillance and counter-surveillance. The importance of what Shaw wrote about Sydney occupy counter-surveillance, applies to other places, such as Iran. She has stressed that ‘protesters and police engaged in a dance of technology and surveillance with one another. Both had access to technology, but there were uncertainties about the extent of technology and its proficient use…’In Iran (2009), both sides (government and activists) used technology and benefited from digital networked platforms, but their levels of access and domains of influence were different, which was because the sources of power, information and wealth were divided asymmetrically between them. Creativity was important for both sides to make others more visible, and make themselves invisible. Also, sharing information to make the other side visible played an important role in these two areas. References Alen, David. “The Trouble with Transparency: The Challenge of Doing Journalism Ethics in a Surveillance Society.” Journalism Studies 9.3 (2008): 323-40. 8 Dec. 2013 ‹http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/14616700801997224#.UqRFSuIZsqN›. 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