.................................................................................................. iii Sammendrag .............................................................................................. v Preface ..................................................................................................... vii Table of contents ...................................................................................... ix List of tables ..........................................................................................xvii A note on language ................................................................................. xix

English teachers’ choices and beliefs about literature in the Norwegian upper secondary classroom

This commentary considers the rise of algorithmic personalization and the power of propaganda as it is shifting our understanding of the landscape of 21st-century literacy research and practice. Algorithmic personalization uses data from the behaviors, beliefs, interests and emotions of the target audience to provide filtered digital content, targeted advertising, and differential product pricing to online users. Understanding the propaganda function of algorithmic personalization may lead to a deeper consideration of texts that activate emotion and tap into audience values for aesthetic, commercial and political purposes. As persuasive genres, advertising and propaganda may demand different types of reading practices than texts whose purpose is primarily informational or argumentative. Increased attention to algorithmic personalization, propaganda and persuasion in the context of K-12 literacy education may also help people cope with sponsored content, bots, and other forms of propaganda and persuasion that now circulate online.

/pdf/propaganda-in-an-age-of-algorithmic-personalization-9jmg6lqhoz.pdf

Propaganda in an Age of Algorithmic Personalization: Expanding Literacy Research and Practice

Throughout the Hunger Games trilogy, the residents of the Capitol are associated with an array of physical, behavioral, and sartorial traits that have stereotypically been associated with homosexuality in general and gay men in particular. Although none of these characters is explicitly identified as lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, or queer/questioning (LGBTQ), they are routinely linked with queer forms of feyness, fussiness, and flamboyance. How are young adult readers to interpret these details? What social message or political stance is Suzanne Collins conveying by making some of the vainest, powerful, and heartless characters in her book also in dialogue with common conceptions about queerness? Does The Hunger Games include these elements to dismantle negative stereotypes about LGBTQ people, or does the book perpetuate and even affirm homophobic attitudes? In what ways do these details impact the presentation of Katniss, in many ways, as a genderqueer figure herself? In exploring these and other ...

“The Capitol Accent Is So Affected Almost Anything Sounds Funny in It”: The Hunger Games Trilogy, Queerness, and Paranoid Reading

Climate Change and Cultural Anxieties: An Exploration of Dystopian Novels from Before and After Global Warming

The original contribution of this thesis is an examination of how the concept of metanarrative can be used to illuminate shifts in popular thought in the Information Age. There is disagreement over what Information Age paradigms signify, and whether a metanarrative can exist. The postmodern dismissal of metanarrative requires re-examination in the face of understandings that have accompanied contemporary technological advancements. Information technology will be used in this study to explain the movement in globalised culture towards metanarrative understandings as technology is the most broadly visible indicator of human advancement. Branching out from a core literature of media and cultural theorists and internet researchers, I also employ analogous understandings of such a phenomenon from tangential theory including philosophy, psychology and natural science.

Observations have been made of a pattern of increased self-referral over recent decades occurring in various disciplines, indicating shifts in the contextualisation of understandings. Our paradigms are becoming more selfconscious as narratives. As humankind’s ideas and capacity to harness understandings of the world continue to develop, we are increasingly engaging with further levels of self-awareness that provide us with the
perspective needed for epistemological shifts. This thesis explores the way in which our advancement brings us closer to a meta-textual awareness. I will argue that this constitutes a shift in our perception towards an initial oneness of cultural narratives. An examination of convergence paradigms in the Information Age can be demonstrated to speak of an underlying metanarrative that fundamentally shapes our constructed narratives. 

The institutions constructed by our conscious theorisations are becoming seen as conceits, as the Information Age is illustrating for the public that our notions of discrete concepts are constructed from narratives. The dream world offered by the virtual is ingraining us with the idea of a potential for any narrative to emerge and shape the collective consciousness. I conclude from this investigation that we increasingly have a self-awareness of the narratives we inhabit as constructions, creating a popular conceptualisation of everyday interactions as narratives being acted out.

The metanarrative paradigm

students are struggling with more depression and anxiety than ever before. These are characteristic dangers of the "consumer class" 1.7 billion people worldwide who are "characterized by diets of highly processed food, desire for bigger houses, more and bigger cars, higher levels of debt, and lifestyles devoted to the accumulation of non-essential goods" (Mayell). Mindless consumerism threatens physical, social, and psychological health; total abstinence, on the other hand, means starvation. How do we guide students to navigate such treacherous, shifting seas? I teach dystopian literature, which exaggerates our modern context so that we can challenge it. Providing for its readers a glimpse into a horrifying but fully possible future, Aldous Huxley's Brave New World and M. T. Anderson's Feed show how unrestrained industry often relies on manipulation and herd mentality, an unspeakably grim encroachment on the individual. When the important thing is selling and buying, the individual becomes nothing more than consumer or worker. This is where it gets tricky: Young people love advertising, consuming, entertainment, and technology. If we attack these trappings of modern life, we risk nurturing defensiveness. The challenge is to focus on the dangers, demands, and opportunities common to the "consumer class" without alarmism difficult terrain to navigate. It's a matter of human nature, not stuff: "man in using his reason to create the ultimate life of pleasure has ceased to be human" (Greenblatt 97). Dystopian literature such as Feed and Brave New World is to consuming as Frankenstein is to cloning theoretical exploration and warning. Four important traits of modern consumerism that these two novels address are powerful advertising and industry, mindless consumption based on instant gratification, reliance on technology, and the resulting atrophy of language. English teachers can explore these important concepts with their students, as I explain below. Using these texts, we can meaningfully discuss what it means to be responsible, aware, knowledgeable, and moral consumers.

https://www.jstor.org/stable/info/40503477

Rachel A. Wilkinson

Papers

Teaching Dystopian Literature to a Consumer Class.