[Air-L] Are 'categories' the same as 'genres'?

[Matthew Allen]

Perhaps because I used to research TV, back before the internet (where there ever such times?), I still like the idea of genre. I suspect that the current buzz word might be format, however, which has its own interesting resonances with computing.

I would also say that you comment about how people watch TV now is much more pertinent - recalling Williams and flow, clearly that is the major change. To the extent that programming schedules for TV channels, whether free to air or subscription, tend to produce flow out of the juxtaposition of different genres, then I think genre is less important now.

Matt

Professor Matthew Allen
Head of Department, Internet Studies, Curtin University
Life member, Association of Internet Researchers http://aoir.org
Fellow, Australian Learning and Teaching Council
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-----Original Message-----
From: air-l-bounces at listserv.aoir.org [mailto:air-l-bounces at listserv.aoir.org] On Behalf Of Ravindra N. Mohabeer
Sent: Thursday, 12 January 2012 7:17 AM
To: Air-L at listserv.aoir.org
Subject: [Air-L] Are 'categories' the same as 'genres'?

Hello,

Forgive me if this has been covered previously but a thought occurred to me just now as I prepped for my night course (yuck!) called "Understanding Television." 

I wondered how students today make sense of the notion of 'genre' and then I thought, well since most of them don't watch TV over the air (or cable or satellite) and get TV shows online (a whole other issue as to whether or not that's the same as watching TV), it makes sense to think of it in digital terms.

So then I got to thinking, how do genres get represented on the Internet - through database categories used for indexing? Through site producers file structures? Through tagging? If so, how do we deal with the semantic arbitrariness of tagging between individual users?

Even if categories are what can be considered genres today, do the different types of content that appear on various manifestations of the Internet fall into the same categories as other 'traditional media'? What are the genres in the age of the Internet and are they same as they ever were or altogether new?

In this case it's just a question out of curiosity.

Ravi
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Ravindra N. Mohabeer, PhD
Media Studies
Vancouver Island University
Nanaimo, BC CANADA
ravindra.mohabeer at viu.ca
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