Events
about cool japan
Since January 2006, Professor Ian Condry has organized the Cool Japan: Media, Culture, Technology Research Project at MIT and Harvard. The project presents colloquia, international conferences, and arts events to examine the cultural connections, dangerous distortions, and critical potential of popular culture. The goal is to encourage scholarly debate, research, and networking in the Boston area for faculty and students interested in media and globalization related to Japan. The project is sponsored by the MIT Japan Program, the Reischauer Institute of Japanese Studies at Harvard University, MIT Foreign Languages & Literatures, and MIT Comparative Media Studies.
organizer:
Ian Condry, MIT Foreign Languages & Literatures
condry@mit.edu
theme 2011-2012:
Cultural Action and Social Media
From January 2011 through summer 2012, the theme of the Cool Japan research project will be to explore “cultural action and social media.” By social media, we are not referring primarily to particular technologies (Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Nico Nico Dôga, 2 Chan, Mixi, etc.) but rather to a way of looking at media in terms of the character of its social interactivity. What kinds of sociality emerge through contemporary transmedia phenomena? How do social connections transform the meaning and uses of media? In what ways does media hinder or facilitate social movements?
Our emphasis on cultural action draws attention to the ways media is no longer something we simply listen to, watch or consume, but rather media is now something we do. Given the the importance of blogs, Tweets, postings, news updates, etc., we can see that the analysis of the “cultural meaning” of media objects must take new forms. Meaning is not contained inside an apparatus of affordances, but rather emerges through social practices, whether participatory or hierarchical, that must be grasped through an understanding of the nuances of the value of social connection. In other words, we are interested in the ways media can be a vehicle for cultural action through collective practice.
Both “action” and “the social,” therefore, become ways of rethinking what scholarly analysis can tell us about the media transformations affecting society today. By considering Japan as an alternative media world, we also hope to problematize some ethnocentric assumptions of media analysis.