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llennials -- the largest and most important consumer segment. The populari

The quick popularity of "24" showed a hardening of the public's stance on security post9/11. And popular shows such as "Modern Family" and "Glee" include prominent portrayal of lead gay characters in interesting stories, indicating something of a coming out for Middle America.

millennials -- the largest and most important consumer segment

that geeks and technology have officially become cooler than chasing fame and fortune

the rise of Pinterest, the online pinboard for sharing images and video -- and currently the fastest-growing social-media platform.

Often fans are recognized within the American cultural  zeitgeist  in just this way: fanatical, out of control, frantic and frenzied. In point of fact, fangroups are frequently ‘Othered’ by the dominant culture at large as being significantly differentfrom the mainstream norm.

we can say that fans are a group that consumes a text (or texts) enmasse , that in turn uses that consumption as a basis for creating something new that is tailored totheir specific concerns. In short, a fandom can be defined by its consumption of a text and itssubsequent cultural productions of and about that text.

we must turn our attention to the productions of the insider community. That is to say we must recognize that the urtext  , if it can be so described, does notmeet the needs of the group, so new material is produced by the community to fill the void.

“fans of a popular television series[and/or film] may sample dialogue, summarize episodes, debate subtexts, create original fanfiction, record their own soundtracks, make their own movies – and distribute all of thisworldwide via the internet”

In creating new artifacts for the group, thus theoretically fillingthe needs of the cyber-fandom as a whole, the group is further able to fashion both an ideologicaland consumable concept of Browncoat-ness and further contribute to the re-visioning and re-drawing of their community.

At a very base level these available narrative strains that existwithin the community function as a group rhetoric that ultimately reflects the fictional“Browncoats” of the program’s universe.

Each party in a struggle over hegemonic power exercises their leverage from time to time, creating an almost ever present struggle in fancommunities between themselves and the producers of their canon.

Fans attack and criticize media producers whom they feel threaten their meta-textual interests, but producers also respond to these challenges, protecting their  privilege by defusing and marginalizing fan activism. As fans negotiate positionsof production and consumption, antagonistic corporate discourse toils to managethat discursive power, disciplining productive fandom so it can continue to becultivated as a consumer base.

There is a delicate balance between fans and media producers suggested by Johnson. Fansnegotiate their power in virtual spaces, both consuming and producing texts, yet corporate mediaentities struggle to both restrict fan activity, thus allowing them further opportunity to exploitthem capitalistically, while concurrently attempting to cultivate fan production to a degree so asnot to alienate the consumer base all together.

Building a complex, onlinecommunity constructed of both a social imaginary and an empirical reality allows the group tonot only form a space wherein they can participate but where they can assert their control over culturally significant texts.

n moving to online spaces fandoms remain able to function as traditional communitieswould be expected to. But the mediated interface and its ability to allow communities tocongregate in greater numbers regardless of spatial or temporal limitations, also permits cyber-fandoms to amplify their voice, giving them greater power in space as Foucault would have it.Exercising their power from self-created points in a virtual space allow the community greater    Wiatrowski control over both the texts upon which they’ve created a group and over their imagined sense of the community. In the end, the move to online spaces allows the group to exist both as it oncehad and in ways that are new and more powerful than they had perhaps previously imagined.

One avenue that has yet to be explored, with specific regard to adolescent fans, is the potential to encounter and experiment with alternative modes of sexual discourse, particularly queer discourse.

how do depictions of adolescent sexuality in Potter fanfiction differ from those of published literature for adolescents?

"adolescent literature is as often an ideological tool used to curb teenagers' libido as it is some sort of depiction of what adolescents' sexuality actually is"

Slash, like other forms of fanfiction in the modern era, initially circulated by way of self-published zines. Because of the controversial nature of the stories, slash was available only to those who knew the right people in order to be put on mailing lists, and who had the financial resources to order zines and attend conventions-in other words, adults.

[S]lash is not so much queer in the act as it is queer in the space . . . . Slash is a sandbox where women come to be strange and unusual, or to do strange and unusual things, or to play with strange and unusual sand. The women may be queer or not, strange or not, unusual or not. The many different acts and behaviors of slash may be queer or not, strange or not, unusual or not. The queerness may be sexualized or it may not, and what is sexual for one woman may not be for another. The space is simply that: a space, where women can be strange and unusual and/or do strange and unusual things.8

Harry's discovery of his wizard nature is akin to a coming-out narrative-he escapes from a literal closet, and his relatives' horrified reactions bear a striking resemblance to the language of homophobia, especially in the way they hurl about words like "abnormality" (Chamber 2) as weapons. Thus, one can, from the perspective of the Muggle realm, read the entire wizarding world in terms of Julad's "queer space."

This equipment gave the NSA unfettered access to large streams of domestic and international communications in real time—what amounted to at least 1.7 billion emails a day, according to the Washington Post.

First, the government convinced the major telecommunications companies in the US, including AT&T, MCI, and Sprint, to hand over the “call-detail records” of their customers. According to an investigation by USA Today, this included “customers' names, street addresses, and other personal information.” In addition, the government received “detailed records of calls they made—across town or across the country—to family members, co-workers, business contacts and others.”

It works like this: when you send an email or otherwise use the internet, the data travels from your computer, through telecommunication companies' wires and fiber optics networks, to your intended recipient. To intercept these communications, the government installed devices known as “fiber-optic splitters” in many of the main telecommunication junction points in the United States (like the AT&T facility in San Francisco). These splitters make exact copies of the data passing through them: then, one stream is directed to the government, while the other stream is directed to the intended recipients.

In April 2012, long-time national security author James Bamford reported NSA is spending $2 billion to construct a data center in a remote part of Utah to house the information it has been collecting for the past decade. “Flowing through its servers and routers and stored in near-bottomless databases,” Bamford wrote, “will be all forms of communication, including the complete contents of private emails, cell phone calls, and Google searches, as well as all sorts of personal data trails—parking receipts, travel itineraries, bookstore purchases, and other digital ‘pocket litter.’

They are a significant site in the development of a mode of media driven not only by ideological or representational forms of control, but also by the effort to manage participation and social space in order to harness and modulate an ongoing circulation of meaning, attention and data.

On the social and mobile web, images are more than just representations of people, events and places. They also capture attention, and generate data and networks. An image is a device that holds in place a network of associations and affects in time and place, that can be tracked and responded to.

Hashtags, tags, likes, comments and shares are 'manual' devices users employ to position images within a larger flow. Algorithms are 'automated' devices that determine how images circulate within a network based on a set of rules.

Users often know that posting certain kinds of content at certain times or places will attain more or less interaction from peers in their network. Efforts users make to position content--for instance, by tagging or liking an image--create data that algorithms use to manage the circulation of content in general by recognising patterns of interaction over time.

he report found that social media encourage kids to connect with each other and to express their creativity.

They also provide an opportunity for learning,

Bullying was around before the Internet, but cyberbullying makes it easier,"

"Kids have always wanted to look at nude pictures, and today, taking and sending a picture can be done in a second,"

"We need more technology infrastructure, and pediatricians need to be ready to intervene and help educate young people and their parents on how to be more media literate, and how they can evaluate the types of things they're exposed to,"

"Facebook depression."

“This year, we found that consumers want their entertainment ‘selfie-style’ – content centred on them, immediately gratifying, engaging and shareable across their social networks. Brands that can successfully deliver or enhance compelling entertainment to consumers stand to gain through positive word-of-mouth and association,” said Gail Becker, president, strategic partnerships and global integrations, Edelman.