Author Profile

  • Qilan Zhao
  • Url: http://qilan.wordpress.com
  • Posts: 8
  • About the user: I'm currently enrolled in the research master's program Media Studies. Prior to this program, I graduated with a MA in Film and Television Studies in 2005. My field of interest includes gender relations, youth culture, transnational media, and Japanese animation.

Author Archive

Cyberbullying or Collaborative Violence?

Qilan Zhao | 22 October 2007, 12:59 am | tags: , , ,

Media and communication technology has provided us with tools to enable and facilitate collaboration without physical participation or geographical constraints. When it comes to the impact of new media on childhood and youth, there has always been much discussion of the potential benefits, but as well as dangers of these new media tools. Along came a rise of new phenomena…

Mobile phone makes the sovereign man? Analyzing citizen journalism with Nietzsche in mind

Qilan Zhao | 10 October 2007, 12:19 am | tags: , , , , ,

Nietzsche’s criticism of the mass culture emerged along with the rise of popular literature, journalism, and the modern press. With the explosive rise of weblogs, mobile devices, and online video, traditional journalism has been contested and challenged by a new model of journalism called citizen journalism. With Nietzsche’s critique of mass society in mind, can we actually consider citizen journalism…

Wiki entry: Internet Phenomenon Little Fatty

Qilan Zhao | 05 October 2007, 12:33 pm | 5 comments | tags: ,

Wikipedia compiles a list of Internet phenomenons, categorized under people, bands, games, videos, animation-based, images, films, web sites, and audio. Accordingly, only a “sample of Internet phenomena that have achieved recognition in contexts wider than that of the Internet, such as coverage in the mainstream media”, are present on the list of Wikipedia’s Internet phenomena.

Little Fatty refers to…

Picnic Creative China

Qilan Zhao | 03 October 2007, 11:56 pm | 2 comments | tags: , , , , , ,

Last Friday, I attended Creative China, a partner event at Picnic 2007. One of the main topics of this seminar was the use of Internet versus government regulations and Internet restrictions in China. The Internet is by no means a tool for self-expression, if it was up to the Chinese government to decide, but in reality, Chinese users are vehemently…

Mobzombies

Qilan Zhao | 25 September 2007, 9:41 pm | tags: , ,

Julian Bleeker from Near Future Laboratory presented “Mobzombies” at Picnic Academy 2007. Mobzombies is a hand-held videogame that is enabled by motion awareness. In the game, the user functions as a human joystick and (literally) runs away from the zombies displayed on the hand-held portable screen.

Blog analysis: Jenkins versus Bordwell

Qilan Zhao | 23 September 2007, 9:20 pm | 1 comment | tags: , , , ,

Blogs are increasingly used by not only students, but academics as well. Here, I will analyze the blogs by two academics in the field of media studies; Henry Jenkins and David Bordwell.

Analytical framework

My analytical framework consists of three sections; content, interface, and functionality/tools
For the analysis of the content, I have drawn upon William…

Review: Henry Jenkins’ Fans, Bloggers, and Gamers

Qilan Zhao | 16 September 2007, 10:49 pm | tags: , , , , , , , , ,

This is a review of Henry Jenkins’ book Fans, Bloggers, and Gamers: Exploring Participatory culture (2006). Henry Jenkins is the co-director of the MIT Comparative Media Studies program. Fans, Bloggers, and Gamers is a compilation of several essays, including his previous work on fandom, Textual Poachers: Television Fans and Participatory Culture (1992).

The introduction of the book is entitled as…