About
ca • nar • y trap noun
1. Slang. In spy parlance, a means of locating the source of an information leak by disseminating further information and tracking its flow.
As our media culture becomes increasingly networked, increasing global and deterritorialized, we can no longer speak simply about the production or consumption of culture. More and more, it is that ambiguous, unstable space of media circulation between the two modes where meaning are being made, identities are being constructed, communities are being forged. We must ask how media travels, through what channels and platforms, for what purposes. We must ask who is responsible for sharing, remixing, appropriating, transforming, promoting media and why. In short, not how it is produced or consumed, but how media is being used.
Xiaochang Li is a Digital Brand Strategist at Weber Shandwick in New York City. She recently graduated with a Masters of Science from MIT’s Comparative Media Studies program, where she was a researcher with the Convergence Culture Consortium and was heavily involved in planning the annual Futures of Entertainment conference.
Prior to that, she worked as a strategic consultant and researcher, employing a unique blend of academic research methods and industry insights. Her current interests include affective economies, transnational/global media flows, transmedia, digital cultures, and brand communities. She previously co-authored If It Doesn’t Spread, It’s Dead with Henry Jenkins and fellow C3 researcher Ana Domb, a white paper discussing the move from models of “viral” to “spreadable” media in understanding the social value and infrastructures for the promotion and circulation of branded media content online. She has also completed extensive work on the circulation and consumption of East Asian television drama in online fan communities and the ways networked media culture intervene upon established discourses surrounding diaspora and representation. The work focused on how participatory audience practices and the increased visibility and consumer control of transnational media flows complicate and reshape thinking around diasporic audienceship and cultural negotiation in an increasingly global media landscape.
Other interests include fanfiction cultures, digital forms of distributed and collective storytelling, Marcel Proust, and Korean boybands. She is a strong proponent of the Oxford comma.
email me at xiaochang.li@gmail.com
Download my resume and research summary (pdf)
