Dr Stephanie Janes

Stephanie joined the CMCI Department at King’s in September 2018, on a British Academy Postdoctoral Fellowship, examining immersive promotional media (IPM). The project investigates the aesthetic, narrative and affective connections between IPM, brands and consumers, and seeks to clarify the role, impact and value of VR, AR and immersive theatre performances within media marketing strategies and the Creative Economy in the UK.

Previously, she held Research Assistant roles at Liverpool John Moores University and Royal Holloway, University of London. At RHUL, she worked in the Centre for the History of Television Culture and Production, providing research support for projects including ADAPT TV History (ERC funded), Forgotten TV Drama (AHRC funded) and the AHRC’s Creative Economy Programme. she has also worked as a Visiting Tutor on BA and MA courses at RHUL and University of East London, covering modules on Digital Cultures, Creative Industries, Film Marketing and Film, TV & Digital Media History.

Stephanie has a BA in Film & Literature and an MA in Film & Television Studies from the University of Warwick. She completed her PhD in Media Arts at Royal Holloway, University of London in 2015, titled Players and Puppetmasters: Producer/Consumer Relationships in Hollywood's Promotional Alternate Reality Games.

Research Interests

• Immersive Media (VR, AR, MR, Immersive performance)
• Immersive media audiences/user research
• Alternate Reality Games
• Digital Cultures
• Promotional Media

Stephanie currently is particularly interested in developing more creative, inclusive, qualitative methodologies for gathering user feedback from immersive experiences and embedding this into both the experiences themselves and therefore the design process at early stages.

Her PhD research focused on the production and consumption of Promotional Alternate Reality Games for Hollywood films. Using interviews with producers and audience research, this project investigates the unique nature of ARG producer/consumer relationships and the implications of that relationship on contemporary theories of fandom, including the ‘mainstreaming’ of fannish consumption practices or ‘fanification’, the potential for consumer empowerment in the contemporary media environment and understandings of fan communities’ relationship with consumer capitalism. The thesis finally questions how we might rework or reconceptualise some of those theories to better understand the diverse experiences available to media audiences.

Teaching

I teach on undergraduate modules on Media Studies, Production Cultures and Creativity. I also teach postgraduate modules on Immersive Media & Extended Realities and Global Media Industries.

Selected Publications

• Chloe Preece, Laryssa Whittaker & Stephanie Janes (2022) Choose your own future: the sociotechnical imaginaries of virtual reality, Journal of Marketing Management, 38:15-16, 1777-1795, DOI: 10.1080/0267257X.2022.2112610 
• Janes, S. (2022). Virtual Reality, Film Marketing and Value. In F. Kerrigan, & C. Preece (Eds.), Marketing the Arts : Breaking Boundaries (pp. 261-284). Routledge.
• Braybrooke, K., Janes, S. & Sato, C., 20 Jun 2021, C and T 2021 - Proceedings of the 10th International Conference on Communities and Technologies: Wicked Problems in the Age of Tech. Cech, F. & Farnham, S. (eds.). Association for Computing Machinery, p. 25-37 13 p. (ACM International Conference Proceeding Series).
• Janes, S. (2019). Alternate Reality Games: Promotion and Participatory Culture. (Routledge Critical Advertising Studies). Routledge.
• Janes, S. (2017). Promotional Alternate Reality Games (ARGs) and the TINAG Philosophy. In A. Garcia, & G. Niemeyer (Eds.), Alternate Reality Games and the Cusp of Digital Gameplay (Approaches to Digital Game Studies Series). Bloomsbury Academic.
• “You had to be there” – ARGs and Multiple Durational TemporalitiesJanes, S. (2016) The Politics of Ephemeral Digital Media: Permanence and Obsolescence in Paratexts. Pesce, S. & Noto, P. (eds.). Routledge, (Routledge Studies in New Media and Cyberculture).