G'day ! This may be of interest to some of you. Includes scientific proof that the Internet is indeed made of cats.

-----Original Message----- From: Axel Bruns [mailto:editor@media-culture.org.au] Sent: Thursday, 1 May 2014 10:26 To: Axel Bruns Subject: [MCJ] M/C Journal 'cute' Issue Now Available

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE - 1 May 2014

M/C - Media and Culture is proud to present issue two in volume seventeen of

M/C Journal http://journal.media-culture.org.au/

'cute' - Edited by James Meese and Ramon Lobato

Cute content is a fundamental but under-researched component of the Internet economy. Millions of people around the world start their day with videos of kittens, puppies and meerkats. Recent years have seen the rise of global animal brands, such as Maru and Grumpy Cat, along with new talent agencies for this purpose. Online portal I Can Haz Cheezburger has received millions of dollars in venture capital funding, becoming a diversified media business in its own right. YouTube channels, Twitter hashtags and blog rolls form an infrastructure across which a vast amount of cute-themed user-generated content, as well as an increasing amount of commercially produced and branded material, now circulates.

Cute content can also be understood as an aesthetic tradition. Tracing the history of animal imagery leads us to a range of practices - kitsch portraiture, stock photography, greeting card imagery - as well as newer online spaces, such as the 4chan message boards, which have resignified the captioned cat pic as a geek subcultural practice. Approaching cute content as a sphere of contemporary cultural production raises a number of questions for analysis. How can we contextualise digital cute content within a longer history of mediated human-animal interactions? What is the nature of animal celebrity and stardom? What textual forms does online cute imagery take in different national and regional contexts? This issue of M/C Journal explores 'cute' as a mode of textual production and as a sector of the Internet economy.

=========================================================================== Further M/C Journal issues scheduled for 2014:

'persona': article deadline 25 Apr. 2014, release date 25 June 2014 'gothic': article deadline 20 June 2014, release date 20 Aug. 2014 'illegitimate': article deadline 15 Aug. 2014, release date 15 Oct. 2014 'counterculture': article deadline 10 Oct. 2014, release date 10 Dec. 2014 --------------------------------------------------------------------------- M/C Journal 17.2 is now online: <http://journal.media-culture.org.au/>. Previous issues of M/C Journal on various topics are also still available. --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Visit M/C Journal and M/C Reviews at <http://www.media-culture.org.au/>. --------------------------------------------------------------------------- All contributors are available for media contacts: mc@media-culture.org.au. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------

M/C Journal Vol. 17, No. 2 (2014) - 'cute' Table of Contents http://journal.media-culture.org.au/index.php/mcjournal/issue/view/cute

Editorial -------- Kittens All the Way Down: Cute in Context Ramon Lobato, James Meese

Feature -------- “It Belongs to the Internet”: Animal Images, Attribution Norms and the Politics of Amateur Media Production James Meese

Articles -------- The Alchian-Allen Theorem and the Economics of Internet Animals Jason Potts

Do Cats Know They Rule YouTube? Surveillance and the Pleasures of Cat Videos Radha O'Meara

Cute But Relaxed: Ten Years of Rilakkuma in Precarious Japan Carolyn Shannon Stevens

“Meng? It Just Means Cute”: A Chinese Online Vernacular Term in Context Gabriele de Seta

Cute and Monstrous Furbys in Online Fan Production Catherine Barbara Caudwell

Cute-ifying Disability: Lil Bub, the Celebrity Cat Elaine M Laforteza

Because Neglect Isn't Cute: Tuxedo Stan's Campaign for a Humane World Shari Sanders

I Can Haz Likes: Cultural Intermediation to Facilitate “Petworking” Jonathon Hutchinson

-- M/C Journal http://journal.media-culture.org.au/

-- Dr Axel Bruns http://snurb.info/ - http://mappingonlinepublics.net/ ARC Future Fellow, 2014-17 http://www.amazon.com/author/axel.bruns/ Associate Professor, Media & Communication a.bruns@qut.edu.au ARC Centre for Creative Industries and Innovation http://cci.edu.au/ Creative Industries Faculty, Z1-515, CIP @snurb_dot_info Queensland University of Technology +61 7 31385548 Musk Ave, Kelvin Grove, Qld. 4059, Australia CRICOS No.: 00213J