Ephemeral Media

From the television interstitials that appear between programmes to the brief clips and videos that proliferate on YouTube, contemporary screen culture is populated by short-forms that make claims for our attention. Ephemeral Media provides a unique focus on these fleeting but increasingly ubiquitous texts. Through case studies in television and web entertainment, this original book looks at the production of media at the edges, within the junctions, and that surrounds the output of networks and studios. Analysing promos and idents, emergent forms of online TV and web drama, and the burgeoning world of worker- and user-generated content, this new collection examines screen forms that circulate 'between', 'beyond' and 'below' the TV programmes and films traditionally privileged within screen studies. With essays by leading international scholars in television, film and new media studies, as well as interviews with key industry figures, Ephemeral Media explores the practices, strategies and textual forms helping producers (and viewers) negotiate a fast-paced mediascape. Examining dynamics of brevity and evanescence in television and new media, Ephemeral Media provides a new perspective on the transitory, and transitional, nature of screen culture in the early twenty-first century.