After a lot of hard work, my collaboration with Peter Zuurbier on a book that details a different approach to conducting affect research is out! A big “thanks” goes out to everyone at Peter Lang and the editors of the Counterpoints series for their help getting this project published. Here’s the abstract:
Affect is so powerful and represents such ripe territory for study that, in its infancy, conventions of research need to be established that attend to its particular motion and shape. Masamune’s Blade: A Proposition for Dialectic Affect Research outlines an original research method for the study of affect known as affect probes, and proposes the establishment of a new knowledge project based in affect. The book begins with a call to discursively reshape research using affect, after which the authors develop a unique conceptualization of affect, one that brings it into the realm of Frankfurt School Critical Theory. The theoretical foundation sets up the affect probe method, which involves giving participants a package of small activities that require fun, easy, and creative participation. The activities are intended both to inspire affects and to mark their presence. Strategies for analysis are outlined and a series of critical interventions are woven throughout the text to situate the ideas.
And the link to Peter Lang’s page for the book if: https://www.peterlang.com/view/product/31481.
Stuart Poyntz and I have just recently published a review of Paddy Scannell very enjoyable Television and the meaning of “live”: An enquiry into the human situation (2014) for the journal Popular Communication. You can access the text here. Here’s a short snippet of what we wrote:
“Paddy Scannell has long been concerned with the way meaning operates across everyday communication. Among these practices, in the unseen care structures of mediated communication our lives are woven together and our democratic futures arise. For Scannell, television and radio, and by extension digital and social media, shape our being-in-the-world. […] In Television and the Meaning of “Live,” Scannell continues to develop these analytic lines but in his new book, it is not merely public media that is of concern. Scannell aims to develop a phenomenology of television (and to a lesser extent, radio) through a revisionist reading of Heidegger’s Being and Time in order to understand how the very experience of “live-ness” now operates for communicative subjects.”
Overall, I found his use of the concept of unseen care structures of mediated communication to have some great research potential and Scannell is such a great writer, especially when it comes to media history. I highly recommend it.
I’ve been working with Artemisa Bega (SFU MA student in the School of Communication’s Global Media Double-degree program) and Sylvia Roberts from the SFU Library to put together a comprehensive bibliographic review of Photoshop instruction manuals. It’s proven to be quite the interesting challenge. Up to now we’ve identified 1226 primary publications between 1991 and 2015 that fit within our research protocols. We’re just about to start the analysis but it’s been fascinating to see the initial material come in! We’ll continue to update with posts as the analysis begins to roll in.