Strategically Communicating

Aside from the casual inclusion of the word “dildonic” in an academic text, the portion of our reading that I found most striking was the exploration of class-based inequity in media distribution and consumption. The digital divide driving a wedge between the have-internets and the have-no-internets seems to correlate with each respective party’s exposure to high culture and low culture, which reminded me of an alarming bit of news I read last week: a networking group called CEOs for Cities recently released a statistical ranking of “cultured cities,” a list of 51 major American metropoles ranked according to the ratio of citizens who attended a cultural event in the year 2007 versus citizens who owned televisions.

This strange, relatively arbitrary study would have breezed right past me had I not noticed that the city of New Orleans ranked dead last. I admittedly tend towards overprotective of my adopted second home, but I know I wasn’t the only one raising an eyebrow. Many would argue that the Big Easy bears a reputation for exceptional cultural richness, and although locals attribute the bizarrely inaccurate statistic to – duh! – aftershock from Hurricane Katrina in late 2005, it still got me thinking: how do we define something as “cultured”? Who has the power or expertise to make such a subjective decision, and is consumption of the generally “low culture” that comes out of a television really grounds to characterize an entire population as uncultured?

-Emily

The book “Media and Society” says this in chapter 7 about the immateriality of digital content : “with digital content, you don’t have to come into contact with a physical media form.” However, while digital media itself has no physical dimensions, the devices used for viewing, interacting with, storing and dispersing media still do. So, in a sense, all media, analogue and digital, are still permanently linked to some physical object.

Digital content is invisible to us without processors, microchips and displays, and it’s useless to us without keyboards, mice and touch screens. If we’re stuck with physical things, what’s the advantage of digital media? It can be manipulated, reproduced, converted and shared with ease. Think about typing – make one mistake on a typewriter and you had to retype the entire document. You could use correction fluid, but that was messy and unprofessional. I don’t think blogging would’ve gotten very far on typewriters. Now modern keyboards and word processing allow us to easily manipulate text and quickly expunge errors, all without using a scrap of paper!

What are other examples of how communication technology has changed our day to day lives? What skills are dying out as a result of new media? What new digital skills are replacing them?

While reading about the structural organization of the media (p. 25), I could not help but think of the upcoming presidential debates that start this week. As we have seen in the past couple of months, the media has an incredible ability to make certain statement or gaffs from both candidates and running mates, constant headline news. Less attention is paid to their platforms and their past successes, and instead the negative comments and the verbal sparring are given the most air time.

Though it is important to see these aspects of the potential next President, as a voting citizen I want a clear understanding of both candidates and their platforms. The media seems to have moved away from helping citizens become informed and educated voters and instead focus on what they can do to continually drive ratings and increase viewership.

Is it even possible for today’s media to maintain an open, unbiased outlook and stray away from their standard ‘gatekeeping’ as they report on the debates? There is so much more to a candidate than a sound bite, and as voters we are hurt when the media does not share the whole story.

Throughout my reading of the first seven chapters of the text book, I was struck by the unsettling generalization of the media as a cohesive being to which the same ideals and critiques could be applied. For instance, in Chapter Two, the reader is asked to consider if he or she thinks the media is good or bad. To me, this is a broad, unanswerable question; the media is made up of not only such mediums as print, video, music and social, but is also put forth for such separate purposes as entertainment, information and persuasion. How, then, can we begin to condemn or praise a category that spans from charming representations of baby’s first steps to Nazi propaganda?
In Chapter Three, during a discussion of whether the media reflects or affects the world, the authors put forth two case studies: that of the romanticizing of smoking in film and that of violent images of the war in Iraq. I failed to find this comparison worthwhile because the examples of smoking in the media were pulled from films produced for entertainment, whereas the images of the war were published with the intention of informing the public and were presented for a fundamentally different purpose.
It was not until Chapter Seven that I saw the authors begin to break the media down and consider different forms of media as separate entities, which brings me to ask, what, if anything is to be gained by studying the media as a whole?

We’ve all heard that print news is dying. That’s old news, but in a ten-year study released Thursday, The Pew Research Center indicated that television news may not be far behind as the next generation of news consumers goes online and digital.  In Changing News Landscape, Even Television is Vulnerable.

According to Pew, “the percentage of Americans saying they saw news or news headlines on a social networking site yesterday has doubled – from 9% to 19% – since 2010.”  The trend is not just increasing in young people but other age groups too. Pew also found that “among adults under age 30, as many saw news on a social networking site the previous day (33%) as saw any television news (34%), with just 13% having read a newspaper either in print or digital form.” Pew said this growth is complementary since the majority of Americans can access the internet on a mobile device, such as a cell phone or tablet.

The corollary that technology and communication are changing news consumers and society,  fits nicely with the Technological Determinism theory. According to O’Shaughnessy and Stadler, Technological Determinism is the belief that technological innovation reshapes social life and drives social change.

New media analyst Manuel Castells argues that each part, society and technology, is integrated in their growth and one does not drive the other. (p. 117)

So which is true? Is society changing their news consuming habits because new technology is available or is technology changing society’s news consumption? The answer will be news to you and me.

I have chosen to enroll in a multimedia journalism program because I am aware and convinced of the power of media in shaping and constructing our society and global culture. Media allows me and millions of other people on the planet to learn, be entertained, stay connected, network, and stay engaged with the world we live in.

However, is it surprising to hear that the media maintain the status quo? When I watch or listen to certain news pieces, I feel that the producers are banking on the audience’s ignorance about how media is manipulated by political forces. As Noam Chomsky points out the makers of media make the decisions as to what get covered or not and how much coverage it gets.

On top of media being manipulated by the political and economic forces that own media producing companies, many people in the world are reached by media produced in the western world with very little relevance to their everyday lives. People in Kenya for example might be more familiar with Lil Wayne or Obama than with one of their activist and politician, Nobel Peace Prize recipient Wangari Maathai mainly because media procurers in this country struggle to “compete with the established, well-resourced American studio system.” (O’shaughnessy & Stadler, 2012: 23)

I know that I can produce media that will help challenge and even reverse the status quo. Will I get air time? That’s another story.

Connected to the topic above is the concept of “cultural imperialism”. I would love to hear thoughts on the positive and negative impacts of cultural imperialism on communities across the world.

I have never heard of “Internet Addiction Affliction Disorder,” although I assume many of us may have this romantic-sounding issue. Digitization (and therefore the internet) “is a ‘universal language’ that is able to unite different communities around the globe” (p. 108). It has, more than any other medium, the potential to be all-consuming. Still, Frankfurt’s idea of the “consciousness industry” hasn’t yet taken over the internet. A huge, diverse population has control of the media on the internet. A mommy blogger in Nebraska has fans in Japan and South Africa. Twitter, the great equalizer, can give a teenager in Kansas as much attention as NBC.

But the internet is still a capitalist society. As described on p. 111, vertical integration is made possible because of media ownership and control. At first, major non-internet corporations were wary of putting their advertising money in online media. Now, online advertising spending is expected to outpace print. As major corporations become more web savvy (and web-based companies grow and buy), will the structure of the internet change?

Right now, the internet is open and free. Every voice can be heard, and everyone can say what they want (at least in democratic countries). But what will deep pockets with special interests be able to do and censor, and how will it affect our freedom of choice online? Will Twitter be bought by Pepsi and controlled by the FCC?

The question of the nature of reality is one of the fundamental concepts that has driven human inquiry for millennia. Many great thinkers throughout history have put forth the proposition of objective reality and attempted to explain its nature or to formulate the realm of existence in which it consists. But when we attempt to penetrate the ideas of these great philosophers more deeply, we find that all of their epistemological and metaphysical conceptions are dependent, to at least some degree, on abstractions and, ultimately, faith. In other words, big-T Truth remains illusive to human beings.

So when our textbook tells us that “Media products do not show or present the real world; they construct and represent reality,” what it is failing to mention is the fact that “the real world” exists beyond the reach of our human faculties and subjective experience.

So as media professionals who traffic in the ideas that represent or construct our world, how do we act as moral agents? Do we have a responsibility to try and promote a deeper understanding of the interdependent nature of our existence?