This topic hits on the nose my research assignment. I am looking at the blog site ‘One Tree Hill Blog’, a fan site dedicated to the popular TV show One Tree Hill. The show is an example of a highly institutionalised text which is governed by expectation from the network (The CW) and acceptable content standards in America.

New media has enabled a group of fans to organise themselves into a community, to share their interest, politicize the show and create new content. Most interestingly this environment is a very specific culture, unique to the attributes that come out of the fans whilst on the site and quite literally designs a new way of living, for at least the time they spend on the site.

The big institutions/politics govern the actions of the micro-communities only so far as influencing their activities transversality,  from the weekly episodes.  I would even go so far as to say that the fan community would pay more attention to the extremist opinions of audiences members  on the blog that don’t fit into the culture than that of the ‘uniformed’ opinions of TV critics who do not share the same passion and enthusiam for  thier community.

This theory of online social behaviour is supported in Jellis’ article who sees Politics as already infused with micro-political tenancies,(Jellis, Thomas (2009) ‘Disorientation and micropolitics: a response’, spacesof[aesthetic]experimentation, <http://www.spacesofexperimentation.net/montreal/disorientation-and-micropolitics-a-response/>). Therefore all disciplines including television should account for audiences as activate agents, ready to organisation themselves and collaborate in an ecology of creative commons without the same obligations or restraints that institutions experience.

Linking to last week’s readings, as a critical student of media and online processes, one cannot be ignorant of the limitations in bottom-up social organising. Each group that forms are influenced by the values espoused in the content that drove them to organise in the first place. Therefore, the power of value-framing by large institutions cannot be underestimated.