Ideas Flow for RTF Graduate Students

By Nick Hundley

It’s an expected right of passage for graduate students: a road of long hours and little pay, grading papers and crunching numbers for faculty research projects ­— all on the way to an advanced degree.

Graduate students in the Department of Radio-Television-Film, however, have discovered one more project, one that gives them recognition and satisfaction.

In October of 2004, graduate students Avi Santo and Chris Lucas, busy with coursework and assisting faculty, noticed the landscape of television and new media changing at a faster rate than scholarship in the field.

They realized by the time articles on television and new media appeared in dust-covered volumes lining the shelves of faculty offices around the world, they were already outdated.

Santos and Lucas, plus a cadre of fellow graduate students, decided to create a journal that would respond to these rapid shifts and developments in television and new media — bypassing many of the conventions that slow the production of a traditional journal.

The end result was Flow — a journal of television and media studies published entirely online, and edited exclusively by volunteer RTF graduate students.

Flow does away both with the printing process that can delay the arrival of new scholarship and the extensive peer-review process typical of academic print journals. In living up to its name, Flow was able to publish in weeks what might have taken years to publish in traditional print journals.

Produced twice monthly throughout the academic year, and monthly during the summer, Flow publishes 1,000-word essays from leading scholars in a range of media studies disciplines. It also accepts open submissions for longer-form feature articles. Since its founding, seven volumes and over 550 articles have been published.

Although founders Santos and Lucas are now gone, two graduate students continue to serve each semester as coordinating editors, along with an additional 20-30 other graduate student editors, who work with the journal’s marketing, contributors and Web design.

The grad students operate in a very informal environment. Without office space, supplies or rooms for editorial meetings, the editors have meetings in coffee shops and homes, provided only with the occasional laptop cast-off from someone else at UT. (The University has also decided to provide stipend funding for the two coordinating editors next year.)

Jacqueline Vickery, a graduate student and coordinating editor, says working for Flow is a unique opportunity. “It enables students to have one-on-one communication with the top scholars in their field through working with them as contributors.”

According to faculty advisor Michael Kackman, an assistant RTF professor, "(Flow) has become the dominant electronic journal in media studies, and its reach and influence rivals that of the top print journals.”

The brief format and conversational nature of the articles help it find a large audience. Kackman estimates each issue of Flow is viewed by a minimum of 5,000 readers, and the web site now averages 30,000 visits per month, from every state in the U.S. and over 60 countries.

“Because of the unique nature of Flow’s short essays, it has been especially effective in undergraduate classrooms …articles have been included in dozens of college media studies syllabi.

“Flow has never been a narrowly academic site — it’s not just for scholars talking to one another. It’s used by secondary school teachers, fans, and other members of the public interested in our contemporary media culture,” he believes.

Kackman feels by bringing together industry professionals, TV critics, fans, activists and scholars, Flow can help facilitate better relationships among the various groups. Most issues feature articles on a diverse array of topics in media studies, including reviews of TV shows such as Mad Men and commentary on video game censorship issues, or analysis of policy decisions and lawsuits against YouTube.

In addition, several former graduate coordinating editors, and faculty advisor Kackman, are editing an anthology of original essays, entitled FlowTV: Essays on a Convergent Medium, by former Flow columnists that will be published later in 2008 by Routledge/Taylor & Francis.

THE FLOW CONFERENCE 2008

The success of the journal has spawned the Flow Conference, held at The University of Texas every two years. Like the online journal, the Flow Conference is organized entirely by graduate students and takes an innovative approach to the role of conferences in scholarship.

Some 170 participants, plus another 100 attendees, have been invited to this year’s conference, scheduled from Oct. 9 –11.

“The goal of the Flow Conference is to create a timely dialogue about TV culture,” says Mary Kearney, associate professor in the Department of Radio-Television-Film, and faculty advisor for this year’s conference.

Unlike the majority of academic conferences, the objective of the Flow Conference is to initiate a dialogue that may lead to future research. It is organized around a series of questions about TV culture, aimed at conference participants and attendees.

And like the journal, the conference appeals to people outside the academic community, including critics, activists and members of the public interested in television and new media. “Bringing together people in one place who are interested in television culture can facilitate sustained conversations that help to build relationships and catalyze new work,” says Kearney.

Four graduate student coordinators, plus an additional 11 graduate students, volunteer to run the conference, create the questions, invite participants, handle registration, manage the web site, moderate the event and develop conference materials.