Course: Reading Magazine Readers
Reading Magazine Readers
Beschreibung: Gemeinsames Blockseminar mit FB 06 (Jutta Ernst, Amerikanistik und Silvia Hansen Schirra, Linguistik) und FB 05 (Oliver Scheiding, Amerikanistik; Advanced Research Seminar 05.866.531) im Wintersemester 2019/2020
Veranstaltungsort: Germersheim (FB06)
Zeiten: 23.10.2019, 27.11.2019 und 15.01.2020 – jeweils 4-stündig (Campus-Mainz Studierende erhalten Sammelfahrscheine zur Hin- und Rückfahrt)
Content
While all magazines, print and online, rely on readership for their mere existence, there are huge differences as to how periodicals cater to potential audiences and strive to build loyal groups of readers. Readers might engage with magazines in a multitude of ways, studying them closely, leafing through them, or concentrating on particular articles, drawn in by topic, visualization, or typographical design. The aim of this interdisciplinary, research-oriented course is to review and develop possible ways of how to study the relationship between magazines and their readers. Next to a close analysis of individual periodicals, we will look at approaches which emerged in current literacy research such as affect and multimodal theories, social semiotics, and reading development theories. We will also reconsider methods from literary and cultural studies (reader-response criticism and reception theories) as well as language and communication studies. Moreover, using eye-tracking, we will record and examine reading strategies based on empirical data. Gaze paths and heat maps will reveal typical reading patterns, magazine-based reading styles and reader-specific behavior.
Suggested introductory readings can be found under the following links:
http://www.textjournal.com.au/speciss/issue25/LeMasurier.pdf