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Nowadays the mass media are omnipresent. They constitute a real part of our lives and we are constantly influenced by the images and visual information broadcast by the different types of media. Social media have been really important as well and almost everybody has a Facebook or Twitter account where he or she can post his or her ideas, wishes, pieces of advice or opinions on films, books or tv series. Mass media and social media can be used to inform, instruct, influence or entertain people. For this last purpose television can count on tv shows, films and series. Considering the fact that new media are very popular, producers and showrunners of series make use of other media to extend the narrative world of their creations. This way of creating stories is called 'transmedia storytelling' (a term created by Henry Jenkins) and is combined with mass and social media to do people participate and interact with the creators, characters or actors of the series.In this master thesis, the case of novelization and transmedia storytelling will be studied through theories about communication, television, transmedia storytelling and participation. The thoughts of Henry Jenkins, Jason Mittell and Sarah Sépulchre are presented and compared to each other. After a theoretical part a more practical part will be dedicated to a case study: the series Castle produced by ABC. Castle will be shown as an example of 'unbalanced transmedia' (one primary medium and other secondary channels used to extend the story). Moreover considering the importance of 'participation', people were interviewed to give their opinion about the novelizations of Castle (books written by a character from the series). The interviews are used to show how they feel about stories that are expanded through the use of various media platforms.

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Ai Weiwei, a Chinese-born and now China-based artist and activist, whose artworks range widely from architecture, sculpture, installation, curating, photography, film, along with many high-profile political activities, has a quite unbalanced fame in China and in the west. His status as an artist and public figure is seriously suppressed by the Chinese government because of his tendency of subversion and of engaging in sensitive political issues. However, his artwork is widely exhibited in western art field and his outspokenness has attracted a lot of media – especially western media – attention.Under these circumstances, his fame and reception is quite ambiguous and I start to wonder whether his popularity in the west, especially among media, is because his artworks are truly artistically valuable and deserve the attention as any other artworks by his western counterparts who have enjoyed the same attention, or his significance is a discursive construct because his proclaimed political attitude against the Chinese government and political systems falls right into the hegemonic discourses of the west – its dominant democratic and humanistic ideologies for instance – and happens to provide the support for the western’s accusations of the flaws and deficiencies of China’s political systems and function as a voice fortifying the west’s geopolitical imaginations of the country arising from within the Other. Is he a Chinese figure or is he more of a western figure – although he himself claims that the world is a globe and there is no west or east?The recent two documentary films about Ai Weiwei are two pieces which allow us to have a glimpse of how the western perception and understanding are constructed around this figure. And since film text is a discourse, it is this paper’s goal to investigate the differences between the two discursive constructs and the consequent representations of Ai Weiwei, by adopting some concepts and approaches from the stu

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This master’s thesis deals with the developments within the current field of the Flemishpoetry. Since numerous headlines reported about the alarmingly low book sales, peoplestarted to worry about the future of the art type. There even was a day organized for reflectionon the matter, where important people of the poetry field gathered and discussed the situation.But despite of the problems with selling poetry books, poetry is actually doing very well.More and more people take part in poetry, there are many activities and events organizedabout poetry, a lot of new poetry forms are circulating and poetry in general occupies a largerplace in society than ever. So today it is a striking fact that paper isn’t the only means ofdisseminating anymore. Other media like the internet, gadgets and public spaces are used topromote and distribute poetry as well.In the first part of this master’s thesis, we will give an image of all types of non-book poetryin Flanders. We will use lots of examples to illustrate this evolution. We also make a list ofall the initiatives concerning poetry that have been taken these last few years. This inventoryshows how omnifarious the current field of poetry in Flanders has become.In the next chapter we try to figure out why the poetic field in Flanders is so colorful. Itshows that the poetry landscape currently is a ‘polysystem’. In the center of the field is nodominant literary movement any more, like there used to be for centuries. We are living in atime of subdivision and interdisciplinarity, where several movements exist next to each otherand none of them tries to claim the center. The romantic conception of poetry as anautonomous field which is ruled by the tradition of young movements who combat the oldones, is broken. It’s an evolution which started in the late eighties and which provoked someprofound effects on the different stakeholders in the field, like the poet himself, the reader,the literary critic, the teacher of liter

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This thesis analyses intertextuality and its potential critical ability in contemporarysitcom. Researching popular forms is one of the main objectives of Cultural Studies, yetsitcom has often been neglected by academics. In addition, intentional intertextuality hasnever been as prevalent as it is in contemporary pop culture, including the sitcom.An extensive literature review examines the concepts of intertextuality, parody andsitcom. The origin of intertextuality in the works of Ferdinand de Saussure and MikhailBakhtin is discussed, as well as the contributions of Julia Kristeva and Roland Barthes, beforemoving on to Gérard Genette and his concept of transtextuality. Genette recognized fivemajor categories, which served as building blocks for later theorists. Then, the subversivenature of parody is explained. Artistic conventions are foregrounded and disrupted. The activerole of the viewer is emphasized. The viewer is guided in interpreting a text as parodic bytextual cues situated on the lexical, syntactic and stylistic axes of the text. Criticisms ofpostmodern parody are debated as well. Finally, the sitcom is explored. A number oftraditional definitions are considered, but have to make way for one that focuses on the role oftextual cues (such as the laugh track). Recent innovations in the genre are contemplated aswell. Criticisms of sitcom centered around discriminatory stereotypes are examined as well.Finally, a case study of critical darling 30 Rock showcases how intertextuality,paratextuality, architextuality, metatextuality and hypertextuality can influence particularreadings of sitcom episodes and how reiteration, inversion, misdirection, literalization,extraneous inclusion and exaggeration invite such readings. Furthermore, it is highlightedhow many of these instances of intertextuality are examples of a new trend in contemporarysitcom: the digressing cutaway gag. A number of instances are explicitly critical, for exampleof issues as consumerism, ads, ...

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The main research question of this thesis focusses on television as a possible channel through which the people of the Netherlands will be encouraged to take part in cultural activities. First the possibility of media to influence people in their behavior is covered by using media effect studies. Historical events can be subscribed to publications in media whilst many indications of concerns of the effects of media were known. In recent research the evidence for direct and indirect effects of media are widely known. But should the effects of media be put in perspective? On the one hand the direct effects of media are very limited and usually only found in very unique and extreme cases. On the other hand researchers have started looking at the potential of the audience to interpret the message rather than passively soaking in whatever the media fire at them.The second theoretical part focusses on how people acquire certain attitudes in live, starting with Bourdieu’s reproduction theory. Even though his theory focusses on class related attitudes, it’s a very important start in recognizing that the context of ones upbringing plays a part in the attitudes shown later in life. Most of the recent research confirms that Bourdieu was right in assuming that the direct family is an important influence on the attitudes one develops during the course of life. The research also adds an important influence; education. Finally research over different generations shows that the younger the generation, the smaller the influence of parents turns out to be. The next part consists of an analysis of the case study: De Wereld Draait Door. This television program will first be put in context by looking at the Dutch television as a whole. First five recent developments are described which influenced the recent culture of Dutch television. The program is a daily, live show, which airs every evening at 19.30h, viewed by almost 1,3 million people on average. The program mainly focusses