Introduction

Media are, in some sense, the root of all sociality. Human beings are gregarious, textual animals. Generally speaking, we like to be part of a group, a community, or at least an “imagined community,” and we gather around texts of whatever medium. In times and places before or without written language, human beings gathered around storytellers and songs. After the invention of writing, communities formed around the repeated reading of particular religious or philosophical writings. More recently, communities – often communicating entirely through networked digital mediation – have formed around cult movies, video games, or Korean pop music.