This paper reports findings from a research project investigating text-list trends in the Senior Victorian English curriculum between 2010-2019. These lists are historical products, the consequence of ways of thinking about literature and subject-English that are simultaneously inclusive and exclusive. Policy documents emphasise the need for the English curriculum to foster values of 'inclusivity' and 'diversity' of culture and for texts that reflect these values in "constructive" and "affirmative" senses. In order to test the extent to which text-lists associated with subject English address these ambitions, a content analysis of three hundred and sixty texts was conducted, guided by the question: what are the trends in VCE English text lists between 2010 and 2019? Focusing on trends related to text type, story setting, sex/sexuality and Indigenous themes, we found that while some goals of policy documents were met, the lists lacked diversity beyond traditional notions of what constitutes texts worthy of study.

Reaction videos to porn are popular forms of memetic media that circulate widely on YouTube and TikTok. However, analysis remains limited and little attention has been paid to how they mediate porn. This research seeks to understand and clarify the range of reaction videos to porn on YouTube, and analyses how they expose the mutable and shifting cultures of pornographic spectatorship, from being ostensibly private and sexual to affecting and inherently public. Through a content analysis of 276 videos, this study seeks to clarify how reaction videos to porn can be understood as memes and broadly conceptualises the range of content-reactors, as well as distinct patterns in their perspective and overall purpose. This paper argues that reaction videos mediate porn as possessing a weirdly affective power, shaped by participatory logics of the Internet ‘built for porn’ where it seems as if anything can be watched by anyone, with anyone.

This paper unearths the archeology of reaction media across cinema, television and the Internet. We show how reaction content exists in high and low modes, tracing their reoccurrence and remediation from art-house and horror in cinema, to television soap opera, to animated GIFS, and YouTube compilations. Because reactions can be readily repackaged and resourced, we argue that they are a form of inter-media; operating in-between media text and media reception; in-between narrative and sensation; in-between authenticity and performativity; and in-between entertainment and resource. Reaction media are a form of sensory media with material properties. The textual and aesthetic richness of reaction content informs their persistent function, allowing for generative repurposing by internet users as a form of cultural expression and also operating as a rich resource of content able to be repackaged by professional content creators for producing economic value.

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