Abstract: User-produc
ed media are often presented as political reform, moving the locus of control away from mass media and toward the individual. The same is true for Flash animation or Flashimation. The Flash software allows user-producers to decrease production time while increasing their individual control. Thus, it is assumed that Flashimation is a subversive form that challenges the dominance of mass media, but this assumption ignores the complex, sometimes hegemonic relationships between Flashimation and television. This paper examines these relationships and questions whether Flashimation truly is subversive, or if aesthetic convergence and remediation reasserts television’s position as society’s dominant cultural form. Biographical statement: Michael S. Daubs is a Media Studies PhD Candidate in the Faculty of Information and Media Studies at the University of Western Ontario in London, Ontario, Canada. His research interests include visual culture and aesthetics, convergence and remediation, and the democratic potential of user-produced media. His dissertation, entitled Rivalry and Allegiance: Aesthetic Remediation between Television and User-Produced Media, examines the relationship between television and user-produced media through case studies of animation and reality media. He previously earned a Master of Science in Informatics (Media Arts and Sciences) and a Bachelor of Arts in Telecommunications, both from Indiana University.