A3 Vertaisarvioitu kirjan tai muun kokoomateoksen osa
Bored Audiences: Zoned In and Out
Tekijät: Paasonen, Susanna
Toimittaja: Hill, Annette; Lunt, Peter
Julkaisuvuosi: 2024
Kokoomateoksen nimi: The Routledge Companion to Media Audiences
Aloitussivu: 269
Lopetussivu: 279
ISBN: 978-1-03-221466-5
eISBN: 978-1-00-326854-3
DOI: https://doi.org/10.4324/9781003268543
Verkko-osoite: https://doi.org/10.4324/9781003268543
Rinnakkaistallenteen osoite: https://research.utu.fi/converis/portal/detail/Publication/457850217
As affective flatness entailing a sense of stuckness in the present, boredom is routinely cast as the conceptual and experiential opposite of interest indicative of the richness of experience. Taking a different analytical route, this chapter makes an argument for considering boredom and interest in dynamic relation with one another as oscillations in affective intensity. It further calls for adding nuance into what boredom actually means by addressing the dynamics of casual gameplay in the context of the limitations on mobility and stimulus caused by the COVID-19 pandemic lockdowns. Characterised by mass appeal, short play sessions, clear rules, and ease of play, casual games are repetitive, and hence potentially boring, while also routinely used as escapes from boredom, and for filling up time. Starting with conceptualisations of boredom as a modern phenomenon, as the conceptual and experiential opposite of interest indicative of the richness of experience, and as a problem endemic to the attention economies of app culture, this chapter asks what the notion means in the current conjuncture of ubiquitous connectivity and mediated engagement. Through a discussion of casual gaming, it sets out to add nuance to what boredom stands for, and how it becomes diagnosed. Deploying ambiguity as an analytical lens, the chapter then addresses boredom as fluctuating rhythms of experience yielding languor, both pleasurable and very much not.