In the news story, Ulaby interviewed Kate Looby, the Operations Director for the Harry Potter Alliance, who explained that before she got involved with the Harry Potter Alliance, she was “pretty apathetic.” After joining the nonprofit and becoming their Director of Operations, Looby said “I would say now I consider myself to be a full-fledged activist.” Ulaby’s story of how Harry Potter fans were becoming activists demonstrates how surprising it is for most people that fans are not loners, hiding away from the world, but rather are productive and rational- and can create real political change.

For a fandom organization composed mostly of adolescents and young adults to see themselves as activists is pretty surprising. Harry Potter fandom is considered a leisure time activity, something silly, though enjoyable. Adolescents are supposed to be apathetic about current events and critical issues, uninformed, much less engaged. For Looby at least, fandom is playing an important role in her process of recognizing herself as an active citizen and engaged activist.

The Harry Potter Alliance’s rhetoric has invited Looby and thousands of others to begin to see themselves as more than fans using media for themselves, and consider themselves engaged citizens. Fandom and social movement rhetoric are coming together. For people who are concerned with political action, the important question is how a nonprofit can use Harry Potter enthusiasm to spur adolescents into action, where high school civic teachers cannot.

Political theorist John Dewey, philosopher Fredric Jameson, and sociologist Doug McAdam all note that people need grounding in order to act meaningful in the world. For Harry Potter fans, the Harry Potter story provides that grounding. It provides fans with a touch-point, worldview, or philosophy that allows them to take political and social action.

The Harry Potter text operates politically for fans in two ways. First, the Harry Potter text anchors fans as it guides fans and gives them ways of acting in the world. The Harry Potter Alliance asks fans to compare themselves to Harry and to ask themselves what Dumbledore would have done. Since Hermione fought for House Elf rights, then Harry Potter fans should fight for fair trade. If Voldemort killed mudbloods, then Harry Potter fans should value diversity. The Harry Potter Alliance certainly plays a key role in guiding such interpretations by highlighting some aspects of the Harry Potter story (like Dumbledore’s sexuality), organizing particular kinds of alliances (with liberal, social justice groups), and by guiding fans in determining the real world equivalent of House Elf rights.

Second, the Harry Potter text works as a strong anchor, drawing on an intense dedication to the text. The Harry Potter Alliance capitalizes on fans’ already intense identification with the Harry Potter text and translates that to an intense identification with social activism. While apathy about the environment may be easy, apathy about house elf rights for Harry Potter fans is more difficult to maintain.

For young adults who feel like political discussions are irrelevant and distant, Harry Potter offers a way to connect. Maybe political world views like liberalism and conservativism aren’t our only choices anymore. Sarah Palin better move over. Harry Potter just arrived.

1. Twitter’s bidding value has reached $4 billion, pretty good for a service whose purpose its own CEO can’t even pinpoint. Another Twitter exec said there are no plans to parlay Twitter into a news network, but Mathew Ingram says in some senses it already is one (and have you watched CNN?), as is social media in general. Twitter can also be used to crowdsource a story for Tim Burton.

2. We’re finally (hopefully) done with two long, drawn-out movie studio stories: Disney has sold Miramax to Filmyard Holdings, and MGM can now officially relaunch itself anew. But we’re not yet done with the long, drawn-out story of who will take over the MPAA. For a time it was said to be Democratic politician Bob Kerrey; now the name is Republican politician Tom Davis. And we’re not sure what the future of the British film industry will be without the long, drawn-out Harry Potter series to rely on.

3. Awards season is shifting into middle gear: Winter’s Bone is really cleaning up, winning at the Gotham Awards and the Torino Film Festival and leading the Independent Spirit Award nominations, which also had a few surprises; the National Board of Review liked The Social Network best; Sundance has announced its competitive slate (and the out of competition fare); the Academy has released the animated and live-action short Oscar nomination shortlist; and Roman Polanski accepted a Best Director award from the European Film Awards via Skype.

4. Blockbuster is hoping a new ad campaign (“We’re not closed yet!”) and a new pricing scheme (“Hopefully you’ll return this late!”) will rescue it. In contrast, the only thing rising faster than Netflix is the volume of articles on the rise of Netflix, which leads David Poland to offer his familiar “Wait a minute” perspective, while Dian L. Chu wonders if a crash is possible, and Paul Carr wonders why the studios don’t like Netflix more.

5. Wii console sales have declined precipitously; at the Xbox’s 5^th birthday mark, there are no new consoles on the horizon; and Disney is shifting attention from console to online and mobile games. And why not, with games like Angry Birds garnering lots of money and new addicts.

6. Hard to keep track of all the piracy and copyright news lately: The US government has shut down over 80 websites suspected of piracy, Fox has gone after an online script trader, Viacom is appealing the YouTube case, Pirate Bay lost an appeal, prosecutors dropped a case against an Xbox hacker, the Supreme Court refused to hear an appeal by a 16-year-old illegal downloader, Google will try out new anti-piracy measures (which make Greg Sandoval wonder which side Google is on now, Team Copyright Owner or Team User), and China (Team China) is fighting intellectual-property abuse.

7. Google’s looking to make a library distribution deal with Miramax, part of a larger plan to feature more long-form content on YouTube. Google’s plan to acquire Groupon fell through, though, ending an already tough week that saw the company investigated for antitrust allegations by the European Union and having to respond to criticism that it helps corrupt businesses. But hey, at least it’s not MySpace.

8. A UK court ruled that paid news aggregator services have to pay newspapers when those services feature newspapers’ online content, even just headlines and short extracts, which could have significant implications (though the ruling will be appealed, of course). Something like Google News (and WAYM!) is ok because it’s free and ad-supported, not subscription-based.

9. Half of the Grammy nominations went to indie artists and labels, but Leonard Pierce says it’s more complicated than that. Spotify took a big financial loss last year, but Bruce Houghton says it’s more complicated than that. Fergie won a Billboard Woman of the Year Award; I wish it was more complicated than that.

10. Good News for TV Majors links from the past two weeks: Ad Volume Standards, The Netflix Challenge, DirecTV May Drop Channels, Walking Dead Closes Writers’ Room, Copps Criticizes Media, Good TVeets (#liesshowrunnerstellyou edition), Terriers Coverage, US Worried About Rep on Canadian TV, Net Neutrality Vote, Comcast Dispute, Attention Span Issue.

Any time a beloved text is adapted, there is the risk that the adaptation will deviate significantly from the world that readers have imagined; however Universal has an already accepted template provided by the films and the video games on which to base their theme park, significantly reducing this risk. The real gamble here, and the question the theme park most pressingly begs, is how the franchise will be kept alive after the final film is released in 2011. Paratexts, as Jonathan Gray points out in Show Sold Separately, are a vital part of any text’s life, and this is particularly true of the franchise. Harry Potter has done well with paratexts, spinning out not only video games and board games but also toys, candy, Halloween costumes, etc.  However, paratexts are most effective in conversation with a primary text – but soon all of the planned narrative texts for the Harry Potter franchise, both films and novels, will have been released.

Of course the world of Harry Potter will live on long after 2011 in the imaginations of the franchise’s fans and this is what Universal Studies is counting on. Yet the investment laid out by Universal Studios is too much to be justified by the fans that Harry Potter has today. While certainly rides are based around now defunct films like Water World or Honey I Shrunk the Kids, the construction of small theme parks around a single textual worlds are very rare. The unusual focus of an entire park on a single text indicates a faith in a franchise, like Star Wars and Batman, with long-term cultural currency. (And even Star Wars only has one ride, one stage show and occasional “Star Wars” Weekends at Walt Disney World.)

The question left by the announcement of this theme park is not whether or not it will succeed – children everywhere will have ruined the rest of the Super Bowl begging their parents for a trip to Orlando – but how the franchise will be kept alive to reward Universal Studios’ investment?  There are three possibilities: 1) the world made by the Harry Potter franchise has such mythic power that the existing texts are enough for fans to return to again and again, for generations to come.  2) Universal Studios is counting on the fans to keep the world alive. This wouldn’t be a bad bet given the massive amount of fan texts created around Harry Potter. Everything from fan-fiction, to recipes, to Wizard Rock available on iTunes from bands like The Remus Lupins have been created by loyal fans. Even the unopened theme-park already has a fan site! Yet the studio’s occasionally draconian measures regarding copyright might hinder the saturation of fan creations. 3) Finally this may portend the possibility of more licensed ancillary materials after the final film comes out. The Star Wars franchise was not kept alive by fan creations alone, but also licensed novels, role-playing games and video games. Will Harry Potter comics, novels about other Hogwarts students, an MMORPG and an animated series be soon to follow? Although it would be consistent with how other franchises, Spiderman, Batman, Star Trek, etc. are handled, the unique magic of the books make this much more difficult. How the future of the franchise will play out remains a mystery for now, but what is certain is that soon there will be many a glass of Butter Beer toasted, by both kids and Universal Studio shareholders, in celebration when the Wizarding World of Harry Potter opens its gates in Orlando.