My Research Interests

The following are the general topics in which I am interested. Please click one of the following links to see a list of my previous publications or presentations.

Informal Music Learning and Participatory Culture

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Participatory culture practices on social media sites have allowed musicians access to expanding audiences, networks, and communities through digital performance. Online video creators can develop a community of viewers or fandoms which revolve around their user-generated content. These communities can be fostered in the music classroom through music making and interaction by having students create digital musical performances, share their videos with classmates, and publish their content on the internet (Cayari, in press).

Performance on YouTube

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YouTube can be seen as a large canvas that allows millions of artists to place their own mark on a digital mosaic. The performers on it have their own opuses and experiments. Because of its interactive qualities, YouTube is an art medium; a technology which allows listeners to become singers, watchers to become actors, and consumers to become producers creating new original works and supplementing existing ones. It allows everyone to have a voice that can be heard and a face that can be seen. YouTube is constantly pulling for viewers’ attention and entertainment (Cayari, 2011, p. 24).

Virtual Identity and Online Community

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As a person posts content on the internet, he or she develops a virtual identity represented by a variety of formats. Examples of this include a video of a mother bouncing her child on her lap; a political statement posted on a blog; status updates on Facebook; subscriptions to favorite music artists on YouTube. These digital footprints create a virtual identity for an internet user, whether they are consciously or unconsciously making their online presence known. As people interact with each other online, online community is developed. People connect in these online communities for various reasons which range from education to entertainment and politics to hobbies.