ECREA16-Abstract

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MED03 Culture Reconfigured: Production, Consumption and Imagination

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The Mediatization of Fashion: The Case of Fashion Blogs

N.N. Kristensen

, C.L. Christensen

University of Copenhagen, Media- Cognition & Communication, Copenhagen S, Denmark

University of Copenhagen, Media- Cognition & Communucation, Copenhagen S, Denmark

Taking our point of departure in mediatization theory, this paper investigates the institutional, aesthetic, and technological aspects of the fashion blog

as a distinct media genre in light of the changing interplay of fashion, market and media. Spurred by digital media logics – e.g. immediacy, interactivity,

democratized access and distribution – new genres, such as blogs, have challenged the fashion industry and its mass media portfolio of especially fashion

magazines as authoritative intermediaries of fashion. This has contested the aura of exclusiveness of the fashion world as well as put pressure on the logics

of fashion as an institution with its own rules and resources (Hjarvard 2013: 44). To illustrate this argument, this paper investigates how fashion blogs as

a distinct type of fashion communication are influenced by the formal and informal logics of the blog as a media technological and generic hybrid – with

consequences to the logics of fashion. Inspired by existing research on the generic features of blogs (e.g. Lomborg 2009; Rettberg 2014) and fashion blogs

in particular (Rocamora 2012), including their potentials in a market context (Colliander & Erlandsson 2013; Halvorsen et al. 2013), we have conducted

qualitative analyses of Danish fashion blogs, focusing on their 1) content and purpose, 2) aesthetics and tone, 3) directionality and networks and 4) com‑

mercial ties. Internationally Danish fashion blogs make an interesting case in light of the international economic achievements and recognition of the Dan‑

ish fashion industry in recent years. The analysis shows that while fashion blogs are booming, making fashion communication available for everyone at

all times, their communication of fashion is based on the logics of the blog placing the blogger at the centre, while fashion becomes secondary. Fashion

and the blog intertwine in the identity project of the blogger, since fashion blogs are a means to communicating or performing self, more than a means to

communicating fashion. Thus mediatization processes have made fashion ubiquitous but also increasingly made it present on the terms of the media rather

than on the terms of fashion. References: Colliander & Erlandsson (2013) "The blog and the bountiful: Exploring the effects of disguised product placement

on blogs that are revealed by a third party", Journal of Marketing Communication Halvorsen et al (2013): "Can Fashion blogs function as a marketing tool to

influence consumer behaviour? Evidence from Norway", Journal of Global Fashion Marketing 4(3): 211–224 Hjarvard, Stig (2013) Mediatization of Culture

and Society, Routledge Lomborg, Stine (2009) "Navigating the blogsphere: Towards a genre-based typology of weblogs", First Monday 14(5) Rettberg, J.

W. (2014 (2008)) Blogging. Cambridge: Polity Press Rocamora, Agnès (2012),“Hypertextuality and remediation in the fashion media”, Journalism Practice,

6(1): 92–106

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Reflexive Remembrance and Reconstruction: Conceptualizing Retrospective and Prospective Mediated Memory Work

C. Pentzold

, C. Lohmeier

Technische Universität Chemnitz, Institute for Media Research, Chemnitz, Germany

Bremen University, Bremen, Germany

The paper conceptualizes mediated memory work by considering both the retrospective dimension of memories as well as the prospective employment

of memories. Mediated practices and representations of past events, emotions, or discourses are not viewed as backward-looking enterprises. Rather,

especially in times of struggle they come to play a role as forward-looking vehicles. Considering mediated memory work of coping with and making sense

of things past while accomplishing the present and projecting the future, the paper zooms in on times of conflict and crisis that demand resolution and

recovery and often come with the chance to review and revise old and newways of living. Lining in with the conference theme, it understands the media-re‑

lated projective use of past feelings, ideas, relations, or strategies as a vital aspect of mediated memory cultures. Acknowledging the ‘mediation of every‑

thing’, it focuses on the role of media to re-negotiate, revitalize, and rethink public life. Developing the concept of mediated memory work, we argue that

the agency of those engaged in productive remembrance rests with their ability to make use of media as past ideas, actions, and contacts become available

and transferable through time and space with the help of semiotic representations and media technologies. Due to the cumulative volume and systemic

impact of media, an increasing range of public forms of remembering-cum-reviving is thus done in relation to media. Next, we pose that the possibility for

‘productive remembering’ is set within reflexive modernity. As Giddens, Beck, Bauman, and others argued, situations of uncertainty and risk accruing to

an increasing number of public and private domains provide opportunities for change and progress, at least for those empowered to assume the unfolding

challenges and chances. Reflexive modernization, then, comes with projects for reorganization and reform directed at its own multifaceted conditions.

Mastering the requisitions that mark the shift towards this stage of modernity, actors engage in bringing memory forward. In doing so, they employ, on

the symbolic level, ideologies, discourses, and narratives; on the practical level, short-term tactics and long-term strategies; and, on the relational level,

personal bonds, and communal ties to tackle challenges to identity, collectivity, life choices, and common welfare. Finally, we illustrate the conceptual argu‑

ments by two examples. For one, we look at the oppositional groups forming in the latter days of the GDR. In their struggle to transform the socio-political

state in the present time these forums and leagues can be understood as having been concerned with observing and reflecting their own formation and ex‑

pansion as well as the unrolling events they were participating in. As such, some of them gave attention to the appropriate ways of the future remembrance

of these struggles and their accomplishments – how they will be remembered. Similar patterns of anticipated future remembrance can be observed within

diasporic groups. In the case of the Cuban American community in Miami, archives have been established in order to enable the following generations to

remember life in Cuba, the departure of migrant groups, and the arrival in the U.S.A.