Honors Presentations
Katherine Behling
"'Put a Finger Down, Fanfic Edition!': Fanfiction Participants on TikTok and Anonymity Collapse"
This study explores the self-presentation of users on the short-form, video-based social media platform TikTok. As TikTok has grown in popularity among young women, it has increasingly been utilized by a community of young, primarily female, fanfiction participants. Qualitative content analysis of 150 fanfiction-related videos from the TikTok For You Page, a personalized, algorithm-curated feed, showed that almost 1 in 2 users posted about slash fanfiction, a category of homoerotic fan works. These users did so while also providing measures of identification such as their full name, links to other social media platforms that contain more personal information, and demographic information such as their age, sexuality, and ethnicity. All of these videos also featured the user’s face. These measures of identification are made possible through TikTok’s personalization features, and can potentially make a user publicly identifiable. This seems to demonstrate a shift in the self presentation of fanfiction participants and the level of confidence that slash participants have in their engagement with the community, as well as indicate an anonymity collapse. However, while many users discuss fanfiction in association with their real-life identities online, a large number of users also express explicit embarrassment or shame in regard to those practices, and are unlikely to admit to writing fanfiction. These results indicate a possible shift in the ways that fans perceive the stigma around fanfiction, which parallels the general lessening of stigma around homosexuality and female sexual expression.
Alex Blum
"Sky’s the Limit: A Historical Assessment of the Shifts in Popular Discourses Surrounding Black Women in Pro Wrestling"
World Wrestling Entertainment, or WWE, has emerged as an international media powerhouse in the 21st century and occupies the genre within American culture of “sports entertainment,” or the presentation of a competitive atmosphere blended with theatrics and exaggeration. Professional wrestling competitions are generally “predetermined” and employ “fictionalized storylines to generate audience interest in its staged matches' ' (McQuarrie, 2006). Nonetheless, it is impossible to ignore WWE’s economic and cultural impact around the world, connecting with over 900 million homes every week. At the same time, the business has been reinvented by evolving popular discourses, the diverse lived experiences of its growing audiences, and larger socio-historical changes. Most notably, with movements such as Black Lives Matter and #MeToo, the WWE has reconsidered its scripted narratives and crafted personas of women of color. In the early 2000s, with only a few Black female wrestlers like Jacqueline, Queen Sharmell, and Jazz, WWE presented them stereotypically and one dimensionally. However, “The Boss” Sasha Banks and the “EST” Bianca Belair embody modern, complex characters that legitimize Black women’s position within professional wrestling. I will attempt to understand how the characterizations and appearances of these women have drastically shifted, while also illuminating the historical significance of these trends through an analysis of live programming and scripted dialogue. While the early 2000s marked a period of hyper-masculinization, or the idealization of stereotypically masculine traits such as toughness, violence, and dangerousness, as well as a denial of those characteristics antithetical to masculinity (Scharrer 2001, Vokey, M., Tefft, B. & Tysiaczny, C., 2013), it was also an era defined by blatant objectification of the female body with contests such as the “Bra and Panties” match (2005). Belair and Banks, however, establish a new form of hyper-masculinity-one in which they uniquely express their authentic identities to the WWE universe. While exhibiting characteristics in line with the traditional definition of hyper masculinity, Banks and Belair simultaneously outwardly portray their feminine qualities.
Skyllar Capuno
"Artist or Small Business Owner? Asian-American Content Creators on TikTok during the Early COVID-19 Pandemic and the #StopAsianHate Movement"
This paper examines how the concept of “the ethnicized hustle” shapes the content created by Asian-American artists/small business owners on Tiktok. (Idriss, 2021) By investigating how Asian-American artists/small business owners market their work and participate in hustle culture on Tiktok, we will find the intersection and collapse of the artist and business owner identities in their effort not only to sell art to support themselves and convey their identities, but also to support and uplift their ethnic community. They respond to everyday and platformed racism by creating and selling art, and subsequently donate the proceeds to organizations that support Asian Americans who have been affected by anti-Asian hate. (Southwick et al. 2021) We will also observe the type of TikToks and art produced by Asian American owned sticker shops and methods used to sell their art during the rise in anti-Asian hate crimes and the #StopAsianHate Movement. I investigate how their TikTok marketing and content is influenced by the burden of representation and resulting emotional labor and shame, which stems from their need to sell their art to survive, but also their need to be supportive of their communities and be inclusive of others. We will negotiate if the tactics used to boost engagement and bring attention to the #StopAsianHate Movement are an effective mode of political engagement and social justice by investigating audience response in the comment sections under their videos. By doing a content analysis of sounds, hashtags, comment sections, and trends within the small business/art/ Asian-American communities respectively, this paper will determine whether this work/content creation is performative and/or aspirational, and whether or not it is an effective method to bring about social change.
Katherine Dickey
"I like a little chav to pick me up: How commercial pressures from advertisers affect representations of the working class on the U.K. programme 'Love Island,'"
Scholars have discovered that television programming, particularly reality TV, regularly trafficks in stereotypes regarding the working class and other under-represented groups. Love Island is a reality television dating show and cultural phenomenon in the U.K., airing seven nights a week and with regular viewership of over 4 million people. To understand the consequences of Love Island’s economic inclinations, we must study the representations that follow. This paper begins to ask questions about how commercial pressures from advertisers affect representations of the mostly working-class contestants of Love Island, by analyzing the use of narrator as the central voice of the amalgam of producers, crew, and editors who created the show. Each piece of narration builds an atmosphere that— in the triangle between narrator, contestants, and viewers— separates the islanders and audience and draws together the audience and Stirling. This separation also allows audience members to begin to move (at least temporarily) beyond their class statuses and embrace aspirational class mobility; if they are not like working-class contestants, they may begin to push their limits, credit card or otherwise.
Grace Gault
"Authenticity’s 'TikTok'-ing Clock: Exploring the Implications of Sophisticated Tools for Performing Authenticity on TikTok"
Authenticity has undoubtedly emerged as a dominant “buzzword” in 21st century society, positioned as the ultimate goal in terms of psychological well-being, professional success, relationships, and more. It is particularly prominent as a guiding logic for self presentation on social media, specifically for individuals whose livelihood is dependent on their “authentic” appeal, i.e., influencers. While authenticity itself hinges on the notion that all humans have an ultimate and absolute “true” self that is accessible and discoverable, it is rooted in a paradox when viewed in relation to sociological theorizations of the self. Accordingly, this research puts socio-philosophical theory into practice to investigate the contradictions inherent to the commodified self and its performance of authenticity. In recent years, it has become increasingly evident that creative labor on social media can carry enormous costs in terms of emotional well-being and self-image, ultimately leading to widespread burnout within the influencer industry. Through textual analysis of interviews with TikTok influencers, this paper refines existing scholars’ analyses of creative labor on social media and builds an argument around TikTok as a platform that affords influencers particularly sophisticated tools for performing authenticity and fostering intimacy with audiences. Through its distinct sociological approach, this research looks across disciplines in order to build a hypothesis around authenticity’s role within the uniquely psychological consequences of being an influencer. Accordingly, this thesis directly ties influencer burnout to the paradoxical nature of authenticity in relation to performance and the costs it inevitably imparts upon the self-concept; this connection paves the way for a new terminology to explain these costs as a direct result of the distinct mingling of self with the emotional labor intrinsic to the job. By examining the themes yielded from influencer interviews, I examine the implications of TikTok’s sophisticated tools and illustrate the ways in which influencers’ self-narrated experiences are anchored by the tensions implicit to authenticity as a guiding logic on social media. In this way, my research provides insight into the sustainability of authenticity within modern society and points to its fragility in the face of new platform development and advancement.
Hallie Hoffman
"Host in the Machine: The Artifice of AI in Reality TV"
As artificial intelligence (AI) has changed and evolved, so too has the discourse surrounding it. However, little research has been done on narratives of AI within reality television. Recent Netflix reality shows Too Hot to Handle and The Circle have incorporated elements of AI into their formulas, with simulated AIs “Lana” and “The Circle” interacting directly with contestants. Despite the integration of these constructs into the shows, “Lana” and “The Circle” represent the artifice of AI—human producers perform the actual functions behind these facades. For this reason, the reality television genre provides a unique window into popular discourse, combining elements of reality with highly constructed premises. By critically examining the portrayal of AI on Too Hot to Handle and The Circle, this paper argues that these narratives promote an idealized view of AI and normalize the presence of this technology. This research analyzes interactions between contestants and simulated AI, exploring 1) the intimacy arising from explicit and implicit feminization of AI; 2) the perceived authority of AI in mediating and dictating human interaction; and 3) the invisible labor and data necessary for the creation and function of AI. These themes work together on the shows to further a utopian vision of AI. By portraying artificial intelligence as intimate, authoritative, and spontaneously performing its intended job, simulated AI on reality television ultimately functions as an aspirational message that encourages viewers to accept a future in which AI saturates their lives.
Meghan McGorry
"Harry Potter and the Medium of TikTok: Shifting and POV Videos During Quarantine"
In this study, a new media phenomena that has developed on TikTok throughout the COVID-19 pandemic and quarantine period will be explored. This phenomenon is where fans actively insert themselves into movies or TV shows by using editing softwares and post them via TikTok. This emergent category of POV (Point of View) TikTok edits in relation to fandom can give us great insight into the presentation of self online, as well as fanfiction itself. In these videos, creators often insert themselves into these metafictional spaces as original character versions of themselves, which simultaneously invites us to join them in that reality, yet excludes us due to the specificity of each individual “storyline.” TikTok has been created in such a way that invites these sorts of “mashups” and “crossover” edits to happen on the platform. Due to the algorithm driven mechanism that runs the app, one’s For You Page (FYP) is filled with content TikTok “thinks” you will like or interact with. This has combined each medium of the app (popular audio and visual), to run in parallel with one another in relation to these POV videos.
This study will explore the Harry Potter fandom specifically on TikTok, and how fans create desired worlds on the app through their POV videos. The study’s hypothesis is that the videos represent a novel blend of self-performance and fan-fiction, facilitated by an app organized around multi-media mashups and siloed subcultures. Based on an analysis of such TikTok videos, the hypothesis proposes that the blend of self performance and fan fiction represents an “imaginary idealization.” This relates directly to the idea of the performance or appearance of one’s own self in online spaces. These TikTok creators project a desired reality onto their characters—an idealized self as imagined in a fictional world. The blend of self performance and fan fiction aligns with the idea of “shifting,” which has become explosively popular on post-pandemic TikTok. Shifting supposedly entails transporting one’s subconscious to a “desired reality” or state, typically in a fictional world. This study will focus on the intersection of shifting and POV videos via TikTok, and how imagining fictional worlds through media was impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic.
Grace Oddo
"Dehumanizing Rhetoric Can Lead to Dehumanizing Actions:” Donald Trump’s Propagandistic Twitter Habits and Their Relationship to the Assault on the Capitol"
This article examines the rhetorical structure of Donald Trump’s Twitter activity using textual analysis during a three week sample—October 27-November 3rd, 2020, November 7-November 14, 2020, and December 31, 2020-January 6, 2021. The analysis builds upon existing categories established by previous researchers in order to examine Trump’s tweets while simultaneously looking for evidence of political propaganda. All of these tweets are looked at in their relationship to the Capitol Insurrection, which occurred on January 6, 2021. We must reckon with the idea that political propaganda is very much alive and well in the 21st century— and social media platforms like Twitter are a vehicle for its rapid dissemination.
Jillian Puvogel
"The Parasocial as an Indication of the Desire for Unmediated Interactions on Twitch"
For a long time, people on screen, from television stars to social media influencers, have been distant idols that their audiences could only dream of befriending. Studies of the relationship between fans and media figures have captured this worship-like distance between the fan, and exclusively classify them as parasocial, rather than social. This research focuses on the idea that the more a mediated interaction resembles an unmediated interaction, the more the relationships it hosts approach the social, rather than parasocial. Thus, live streaming, bearing the closest resemblance to unmediated interactions, is the first form of mass media capable of hosting social interactions between the fan and the media figure. I conducted a literature review of the relationships between media figures and viewers in different media, including fictional television, call-in television, reality television, social media, and finally, live streaming on Twitch to compare viewer-media figure relationships live streaming to those in past media. I accompanied this literature review with a textual analysis of observed interactions between streamers and viewers from three different live streamers. In these observations, I looked for any indications of social, rather than parasocial, interactions or relationships between streamers and their viewers. The textual analysis indicated that there are several interactions were social in nature but some interactions were also parasocial in nature. The finding that some interactions were parasocial serves as a reminder that Twitch and live streaming are still forms of media and are not face-to face interactions; the movement of media toward the similarity of face-to-face interactions still has ground to cover. However, live streaming on Twitch is still a significant pinnacle of viewer media figure interactions and relationships. One of the most important findings in the textual analysis is that streamers were often close with a select few of their viewers, and seemed to have a social relationship, rather than parasocial relationship with those few. This finding is what demonstrates that live streaming is the first mass media platform where social relationships can grow between media figure and their fans, which can be a powerful tool for more media figures to connect with their audiences.
Eliana Schuster
"'One Does Not Simply Read the Terms and Conditions:' Creative Resistance Against Surveillance and the Fight Against Inevitability"
Creative resistance has emerged as an effort to shatter the widespread inevitability that has been fostered by digital surveillance systems. This resistance, pursued through artwork, contributes to the broader field of resisting surveillance, both shaping and being shaped by its strategies and goals. This paper will identify and analyze three artworks that have located themselves within this work of creative resistance against surveillance. Engaging in a textual analysis of each of these artworks and their formal construction, this paper will aim to extract strategies from the three works. On a strategy-by-strategy level and as a collection of strategies within each work, the paper’s textual analysis will focus on the strategies’ effectiveness at achieving the artwork’s stated or implied goals, especially as they relate to inevitability-shattering and encouraging participants toward furthering the work of resistance beyond the installation space. The resulting list of strategies will be positioned as a tool kit, offering future artists and activists ideas for how they might approach the work of participatory creative resistance.
