Final

COM203 Fall 2012

FINAL ESSAY – Due 18 December 5pm

Answer one question in a full essay of at least two typed pages. Use quotations from your reading; cite all sources, use MLA style. If you plagiarize, you fail. Requirements: Double space, using 12 pt type and Times New Roman, one inch margins. Your grade goes down one full grade if your essay is shorter than requested. Hand in to my mailbox in the Media Culture office.  No email attachments. Remember you cannot successfully answer these questions by repeating my lecture notes; you must know the readings well.

1 Discuss the importance of narrative, play, meta-communication, and gender identity in videogames. Refer to all of our reading about play and game theory (Caillois, Bateson, Burrill, McGonigal).

2. Discuss the usefulness of the term “convergence culture” to describe the contemporary mediascape. What does Henry Jenkins mean by this term? What does he mean by the black box fallacy? Relatedly, what do the terms “transmedia storytelling” and “remediation” mean? Apply these terms to discuss a particular example of contemporary media.

Exra credit: In no more than one page explain Umberto Eco’s theory of “how culture conditions the colors we see”?