Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Abstract: Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan have often been described as political "soul-mates" with a shared conservative political philosophy and a "conviction" leadership style. While a general acceptance of the similarities of these leaders has taken hold in both the academic and popular literatures, no one yet has sought to challenge empirically the merit of this premise. To what extent did their shared beliefs overshadow other, perhaps even quite fundamental, differences in their views on governing and public policy? Using a sample of the major speeches of both leaders, we employ automated content analysis ("Alceste" software) to measure statistically (using the chi-square statistic) and spatially (using correspondence analysis) the rhetoric unique to each leader while in office as prime minister and president. We recognize the importance of rhetoric to the leadership effectiveness of Thatcher and Reagan--both often characterized as populist leaders--advancing many of the same themes in their major addresses, but also conveying some differences. Hence, our approach enables us to analyze empirically each and every word of our sampled major addresses, thereby extracting not only the themes associated with each leader, but also to gauge the relative statistical significance of these themes as they relate to each leader. Our aim is to identify not only the shared rhetoric of the leaders but more revealingly, to identify and measure significant differences--which in turn, enables us to understand better their styles of political leadership. The results of our analysis are striking and somewhat surprising. While the two leaders agreed on the importance of the Soviet threat and on some aspects of domestic economic policy, Reagan was unique in using religious symbols to describe American exceptionalism (American civil religion) while Thatcher was unique in shaping conservatism around domestic economic policy goals such as privatization. In short, our approach allows us to identify and measure empirically both the shared themes and the differences between the two conservative leaders.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Review Method: Peer Reviewed
Abstract: This paper explores the structural controls available in entertainment centers and that mediate the relationship between producer and audience. Virtual World Entertainment -- an early producer of virtual reality games --set up an elaborate system of controls. Virtual World adopted structural controls to train its fans in its own ideology of textualism. This ideology promoted the belief in the unity of the BattleTech world, encouraged players to accept the fit between the entertainment center and the fictional representation of the BattleTech universe and to take the text at face value as an expression of competition. Structural controls already informed the reception of the text by customers in their performance, but this preparation happens to different degrees based upon a person's exposure and socialization. This example is used to explore the nexus of language and technology as a factor in technological diversity, which includes both technological variety and multimedia coordination.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Review Method: Peer Reviewed
Abstract: Most of the time, the reflection on discourse and textuality tends to reduce this phenomenon to what employees or managers do when producing and using texts in organizational contexts, but fails to recognize that texts, on their own, also seem to make a difference. In the present essay, I will show that one way to approach discourse also is to analyze the active contribution of texts (especially documents, but not only) to organizational processes, that is, to what extent texts like reports, contracts, memos, signs or work orders can be said to be performing something in a given situation. After reviewing what other scholars have (often indirectly) been saying on the question of textual agency, I will show how it is analytically possible to ascribe to texts the capacity of doing something without falling into some modern form of animism. Having done that, I will explore systematically the different types of action texts can be said to be performing by taking up (while adapting it) Searle’s (1979) well-known classification of speech acts. This review will then lead me to address questions related to the constitution of organizations, that is, to what extent this reflection on textual agency (and nonhuman agency in general) enables us to redefine the mode of being of organizational forms.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Abstract: The Grateful Dead were perhaps the first to allow their fans (Deadheads) to make audio recordings (bootlegs) of their live shows and trade them with friends. This practice of trading music was an early predecessor of Peer-to-Peer (P2P) trading, a revolutionary use of Internet technology with far-reaching social and economic implications. P2P is generally regarded as the cause of a pitched legal battle between the music industry and consumers, but it has become just another means by which Deadheads have extended their practice of permitted trading. This paper examines Deadhead bootleg trading as described on several fans’ websites. Bootleg trading highlights the interplay between media producers and consumers in negotiating the meaning of media products and the functioning of subcultures in the face of marginalization by the mainstream. In contrast to the recording industry’s efforts to label trading as “piracy,” bootlegging also highlights the social value of decentralized music distribution.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Abstract: The advent of new media, particularly the World Wide Web and associated audio-visual production technologies, has transformed our sense of adaptation and with it our sense of authorship and authenticity. Media consumers, or ‘readers’, have always been active to some extent, selecting, combining and re-contextualizing portions of their favorite texts. But multimedia networks have both deepened and extended these activities in important ways. Employing digital duplication and production tools, global communities of network users now create and exchange media artifacts of ambiguous provenance. Their activities are blurring the boundaries between author and audience, and transforming the nature of media adaptations.
This paper examines the constellation of texts and activities that comprise Cowboy Bebop, a Japanese television program adapted to feature film, and subsequently repurposed in numerous forms. The paper asserts that three principals emerging from new media and related new audience activities are changing the constitution of media, story and genre. First, all texts are now potentially multimedia, and both commercial and communal players will increasingly exploit these properties. Second, all texts should be understood as networks of form and meaning, with a variety of constituencies contributing to both their shape and content. Third, industrial marketing strategies are supplemented, contested and extended in these new networks and activities. The role of non-commercial, textual communities in quasi-marketing activities is an important consideration in understanding contemporary media adaptation processes.