Lisa Glebatis Perks: "Media Marathoning and Affective Involvement"
b'Although the popular press primarily uses the negatively connoted phrase \\u201cbinge-watching,\\u201d Lisa Glebatis Perks employs the label \\u201cmedia marathoning\\u201d to describe viewers\\u2019 rapid engagement with a story world. Rather than positioning these media experiences as mindless indulgences, the phrase media marathoning intimates engrossment, effort, and purpose. These media engagement efforts can be rewarded with pleasurable experiences, but they can also lead to feelings of disappointment. Perks draws from discourse gathered from over 100 marathoners to describe some of marathoners\\u2019 most common emotional experiences, including anger, empathy, parasocial mourning, nostalgia, and regret. The theme of the talk is that characters become the marathoners\\u2019 pseudo-avatars, gaining shape, texture, and life through viewers\\u2019 affective investments.\\n\\nLisa Glebatis Perks (Ph.D., University of Texas at Austin) is Associate Professor of Communication Arts and Sciences at Merrimack College. She recently published Media Marathoning: Immersions in Morality, which explores the ways readers and viewers become absorbed in a fictive text and dedicate many hours to exploring its narrative contours.'