Wednesday Research Seminar Series - Does Online Communities and Co-Created Content: Development of a New User-Creator Form of Entertainment

We are pleased to invite you to our Wednesday Research Seminar. It will be held online via MS Teams on 19th February at 4pm. Wednesday Research Seminar Series was launched in 2008 and has featured more than 360 presentations to date. The seminars provide a forum for researchers to share their work. Presenters include faculty from Middlesex University Dubai and other universities in the United Arab Emirates, as well as researchers from other global institutions. Dr. Stuart will deliver seminar on:

“Does Online Communities and Co-Created Content: Development of a New User-Creator Form of Entertainment”
Stuart Francis

Abstract

The research being presented investigated fundamental change being brought about in the entertainment sector by the use of digital technology. It identifies how fans can develop a new entertainment product form - User-Created Content (UCC) constructed in Online Communities (OCs) – that is emergent, dynamic and unpredictable. UCC also satisfies the increasing preference of fans today to directly produce the content they want to create and consume. Determining how UCC can be produced was realised by analysing how greater immersion by fans in the new evaluative framework that OCs represent enabled fandoms to create the content they desire. To investigate this, Judge Dredd was chosen as an over-arching research Case Study. Netnographic research was then conducted in Facebook Judge Dredd OCs over a three-month period. Netnography was selected as the primary research methodology as it allowed online observation of fans who were congregating around a preferred shared interest and how they interacted, participated and collaborated collectively in OCs to develop their UCC. The research succeeded in identifying the dynamics and content developmental patterns in OCs that fandoms use to construct UCC and identified how UCC for entertainment IP can be created. This outcome offers new cultural and product potential in the field of entertainment content.

Presenter Bios

Currently at Brighton University, Dr Stuart Francis is Senior Lecturer with over fifteen years’ experience in the UK Higher Education Sector, specialising in Marketing and Marketing Strategy, with additional expertise in digital and brand marketing. In addition to two Undergraduate Degrees, he possesses an MBA from Warwick University Business School, the only UK Business School currently in The Economist's Top 20 Global Business Schools and a Phd from Southampton University. His teaching capabilities are supported by 20 years practical marketing experience with Blue Chip Organizations including Odeon Cinemas and BBC Worldwide (now BBC Studios) the commercial arm of the BBC. At the former he worked with leading Film Distributors such as Warner Bros, Universal and Sony to launch major motion pictures and also opened 8 new Multiplex Cinemas. Whilst at BBC Worldwide, he formulated marketing campaigns for Lifestyle Publishing products for authors including Rick Stein, Gary Rhodes and Alan Titchmarsh. He was also part of the specially commissioned marketing team that launched the BBC's first DVD titles including Fawlty Towers, Blackadder and Noddy and formulated a revised business strategy for the Multimedia Division.