During the winter holidays the television networks like the fact that you’re off from work, often near food-coma status, and tired of hearing that same story your uncle tells you every year about the time he ran the Philadelphia marathon and had to drive himself the four hours home because his support person (your grandmother)…
From Chris Ferrin: Although election season is over and everyone has had their fill, I’m sure, of political talk, my recent experience interning on a campaign had me thinking about politics in everyday life. This became relevant to media marathoning when I read a Maclean’s article about the recent trend of political shows that are…
From Carissa Risucci: Throughout the course of this semester we have undoubtedly and comprehensively covered the addictive tendencies of marathoners and their compulsion to obtain as much information as possible about a narrative world. We haven’t, however, uncovered where the breaking point in this process lies. In other words: when does so much exposure become…
By Meagan Holung: Ritualistically, when a favorite artist or band releases a new mixtape or album, my roommates are the first to download it. After the download, they plug in whatever device (cell phone, mp3 player, laptop, etc.) they’ve brought the album to through Airdrop or iCloud. The beginning of the process to marathon an…
From Carissa Risucci: For some marathoners, the motivations behind text selection are rather simplistic. I found trends within my interviews of participants searching for, or more often stumbling upon, texts that they could relate to or that made them laugh and feel good about themselves. For others, however, text selection is much more strategic than…
From Teddi Castle: I was talking to my husband about what to blog about for media marathoning class and he happened to mention that to him marathoning seems like an obsessive compulsive type of behavior. According to Wikipedia, the definition of obsessive compulsive is, “an anxiety disorder characterized by intrusive thoughts that produce uneasiness, apprehension,…
From Bre Page: As part of an independent study with Dr. Perks I held a focus group with Hunger Games marathoners and conducted interviews with TV marathoners. My research fostered some interesting results solidifying some hunches that I had, as well as highlighting two very interesting new concepts. First, I noticed that many of the…
From Katie Bishop: After our discussion on Tuesday about narrative complexity, I began thinking about shows that I watch that encourage a more actively engaged viewer. One show that really stood out to me was ABC’s Once Upon a Time, a show about story book characters coming to life. This show is very complex, but…
In the end of July, Peter Jackson announced that The Hobbit would be split into three films. The decision was cause for concern, particularly among those who had a hard time picturing how a relatively short book would be coaxed into three separate films. (Would the story be sort of stretched, like butter scraped over…
From Rachel Montpelier: I am in the middle of viewing Season 2 of The Wire in another class and can’t help but wonder if my experience is different from those who watched it every week when it originally aired. While the first viewers probably expected resolutions for the characters during each season finale, my professor…