Shannon McHugh and Chris Tokuhama

Shannon McHugh is a doctoral student of Italian Studies at New York University and Chris Tokuhama is pursuing a Master's degree in Communication at the University of Southern California.

PostSecret, a community art project started by Frank Warren in 2005, represents a fairly simple concept: individuals anonymously divulge a secret on a postcard frequently adorned with a related image, which is then published on the Internet.

Chris Tokuhama
Growing up, I remember watching the first seasons of The Real World and Road Rules on MTV and I was always entranced by the confessional monologues. As a teen, the confessionals possessed a conspiratorial allure, for I was now privy to insider information about the inner workings of the group. Looking back, I wonder if my exposure to reality TV's version of the confessional changed the way I think about my secrets.

Sylvia Martin

Sylvia J. Martin earned her PhD in anthropology and is a visiting Assistant Professor of Media Studies at Babson College. She is a recipient of a Fulbright Scholarship to Hong Kong for 2010-2011.

As the one year anniversary of Michael Jackson's death approaches, hundreds of fans from as far away as France, Japan, and the Ukraine are expected to converge on his burial place at Forest Lawn Memorial Park in Los Angeles. Since Jackson was buried there nine months ago, Jackson fans have been steadily making the pilgrimage to his mausoleum. On one of my visits there, an African-American fan told me that she felt that Jackson had distanced himself from the black community over the years. A white fan

Laith Ulaby

We asked Laith Ulaby - a musician with a PhD in ethnomusicology from UCLA - to blog for us about a development in the globalization of entertainment that he's tracking.

While the economic downturn has dimmed Dubai's reputation as a business dynamo and tourism hub, the Gulf region has quietly prospered as a mass-media center. Dubai Media City alone hosts several bureaus of large media companies, including BBC, CNN, Bloomberg, Showtime and Reuters. While international companies have a significant presence in the UAE, a regional one - Rotana - is perhaps the most important.