[Air-L] Bad Influences: Invitation to read and participate in a blog fiction PhD project

[Emma Pooka]

I want to announce my PhD project on this list, as I hope that it will be
relevant to some researchers here.   Please do pass on the details to any
colleagues or students who you think would be interested in reading or
participating.

Bad Influences (http://badinfluences.org.uk) is a multi-character,
real-time, interactive blog fiction.  It began in January and will continue
until November.  The purpose of the project is to explore the poetics of
blog fiction, especially those relating to the narrative time effects of
real-time serialisation, a feature of epistolary fiction using a blog or
social network as its platform.  It is also an interactive creative writing
project that I hope will be enjoyable to read and to participate in whether
you have an academic interest in digital literatures and narratology or not!

Bad Influences is set in 2026 and tells the story of a global pandemic flu
virus through the blogs of four characters, based in London, New Jersey,
Beijing and Canberra.  The blogs are pre-written and are being posted in
real-time (i.e., each post or comment goes up precisely 13 years before the
event it relates).  The comments sections of the blogs are open for reader
participation (upon filling in a participation agreement
http://badinfluences.org.uk/take-part/participation-agreement/), and the
commentary is a mixture of pre-written character interaction and improvised
interaction between reader-participants and characters.

This project could be of interest to anybody teaching or researching digital
literatures, interactive storytelling, narrative time, disaster fiction or
creative writing.  Please feel free to contact me on
purplepooka at badinfluences.org.uk for more information, or explore the site
and the story at http://badinfluences.org.uk.  Questions and feedback are
very welcome, and I'd love to hear about any use you make of the project in
your own research or teaching.

Many thanks,
Emma Segar (Edge Hill University)
purplepooka at badinfluences.org.uk