Dr. Anita Jóri
Assembling the Underground: Online communities of Electronic Dance Music
Seminar, English/Deutsch, 2 SWS, 2 ECTS
Wednesdays 10-14 h, 7 dates: 4.5. (online), 11.5., 25.5., 8.6., 29.6., 6.7.2022 (attention: new date: 6.7. instead of 22.6.) + one field trip / field research (date tba),
Grunewaldstr. 2-5, room 110 (Aula)

Community members of electronic dance music cultures have always been interested in technology-based communication, see for example, in the creation of online fan networks or even fandom. Many of the first web discussion forums were also dedicated to music, of which several were to electronic (dance) music, e.g. We are the Music Makers Forum. Since the era of Web 2.0 began and the Internet has become more accessible in homes, platforms such as blogs, social networks, web discussion forums, or user-generated content in general, have become even more crucial for the communication of online music communities and virtual scenes.

Now during the COVID-19 pandemic music events have been cancelled and online platforms have become the only meeting points for music communities. Events and festivals have begun to stream their programmes on different platforms (e.g. Twitch, Vimeo, YouTube) where participants can interact with each other; in some cases even with the organisers and musicians. Platforms designed for creating communities, such as Discord, have become more widespread than ever as well as external tools for online events.

The seminar introduces a mixed method ¬– including e.g., theoretical contributions of cultural studies, popular music studies, and applied linguistics, and analytical tools of computer-mediated and multimodal discourse analysis – that will be applied for the scrutiny of music-related online communities. The main emphasis will be on finding evidence for belonging and togetherness, and expressions of collective and individual identities on such platforms.

Bibliography:
Bennett, A. & Peterson, R. A. (Eds.) (2004). Music Scenes. Local, Translocal, and Virtual. Nashville: Vanderbilt University Press.
Herring, S. C. (2014). ASIS&T annual meeting award winners: Research: Computer mediated communication. Bulletin of the Association for Information Science and Technology, 40(3): 41-44.
Jóri, A. (2022). The Discourse Community of Electronic Dance Music. Bielefeld: transcript.
Thornton, S. (1995). Club cultures: Music, media and subcultural capital. Hanover: Wesleyan University Press.

Requirements for the ungraded Studium Generale credits: Active participation and a presentation or an essay.

Anita Jóri is a research associate at the Vilém Flusser Archive, Berlin University of the Arts (Universität der Künste Berlin, UdK). Jóri's research and publications focus on the discursive and terminological aspects of electronic (dance) music culture. She is also the first chairperson of the German Association for Music Business and Music Culture Research (GMM) and one of the curators of CTM Festival's Discourse programme. She is also one of the editors of the books The New Age of Electronic Dance Music and Club Culture (Springer, 2020) and Musik & Empowerment (Springer, 2020).