For my final Media, Culture & Everyday Life blog, I’m going to write about Susan Herring’s “Questioning the generational divide”, which I think was really interesting. She looks at the ‘iGeneration’, or Generation Y, and how our generation has come to be defined by the technologies we’ve been using since we were young. She analyses the “divide” between us and those before us, and the way in which we are perceived by the older generations.

Herring made a good point about the fact that although we are the generation defined by the use of new technologies, it is the adults who create them and profit off us. In a way, she almost makes it sound like Generation Y is being taken advantage of by the older generations. By this I mean, we are more closely aligned with the new digital media, and anything bad associated with it comes back down to us, even though it’s the adults who facilitate these means! David Buckingham had similar sentiments in the reading, stating that the “autonomy and freedom” we may experience through media is “illusory” (p290). However, Herring says that members of the iGeneration are “not yet old enough to have attained positions of influence within the media production industry” (p291). This point can be refuted by the example of the creator of Facebook, arguably the largest social networking site in the world right now, Mark Zuckerberg, who is part of the iGeneration.

As usual, news media has something to say about new communicational tools used by my generation, as well as “Netspeak”. Now, I find writin lyk dis as unbearable as your average Gen X-er, but it really isn’t as awful as some media make it out to be (http://www.myfoxatlanta.com/dpp/news/fox_5_links/Top_50_Text_Acronyms_Parents_Should_Know_052009). I don’t think anyone actually used about 99% of those abbreviations; so unless everyone starts speaking in Lolcat, nobody really has anything to worry about!

Interestingly, Herring looks at youths own perspectives on their generation. Her research shows differing opinions on new digital mediums, and how some peoples own beliefs echo those of older generations. She also looks at the effect of advertising on youth, and reveals that we are mostly “indifferent” to it. This can be attributed to the fact that we have been exposed to it all our lives, but also with programmes like The Gruen Transfer on ABC, which sheds some interesting light on the advertising industry.

In conclusion, I think the bottom line of this reading was that the youth of today are not stupid! We are often misrepresented by various forms of media, including TV (see The Simpsons episode ‘Homer Goes to College’) as well as advertising; but essentially as members of the iGeneration, we are “street wise”, “media savvy” and not necessarily “vulnerable” or “victims”.

“Want to be more than info super highway traffic… when imagination gave participation in creation of of culture and manifestation”

iGeneration- MC Lars

The weeks reading which I have decided to focus on is Mary Macken- Horarik’s, “The children overboard affair”. It’s an interesting read about how both text and image were manipulated by newspapers to portray asylum seekers a certain way in 2001 following the infamous “Children Overboard” scandal. This was done to support the governments “fiction” of what really happened at the time the apparent story occurred and to promote “racist discourse” (p251).

Macken- Horarik states that “increasingly, in western media, news is a multimodal creation” (p252). By this she means having pictures or photographs ‘complementing’ a story. A quote by van Leeuwen, arguing that “words provide the facts… images provide interpretations” (p253) can be contested as to its accurateness, particularly in relation to modern ‘tabloid’ newspapers. The children overboard story was used by the government to promote it’s policies and provided newspapers with 3 days of front page headlines while an apparent photograph of one of the incidents in question was made public.

According to Macken- Horarik, and supported by van Leeuwen, as readers of the articles about asylum seekers, we tend to “feel close” to the politicians (albeit the Liberal ones) involved in the story, rather than ‘the boat people’, as they are referred to generically as opposed to specifically, as the politicians were. Another way the audience is supposedly made unsympathetic to asylum seekers through media discourse is the lack of ‘functionalisation” of them. While other ‘characters’ of the story are referred to by their occupation, the asylum seeker is merely ‘a boat person’ or ‘chid’ or ‘parent’. Finally, the Role Allocation of each person is an important concept to understand. Macken- Horarik states that in the photograph, the boat people are ‘passive’ and the navy officer is the ‘rescuer’. This is supported by the caption of the photo, saying that she “helps a woman and child from the people- smuggling boat”.

I’ve chosen to write my blog this week on Annabelle Lukin’s article, “Reporting War”, as I think it’s extremely interesting the way she’s analysed texts about the war in Iraq, as well as speeches about it, through a linguistic approach. The main purpose of the article is to disassemble the ‘facts’ that have been reported about the war, and the way journalists have used language to essentially change the meaning of a sentence.

Lukin uses the words “The milk spilt” and “I spilt the milk” to exemplify the first couple of concepts she explains in the reading. The first is called ‘middle voice’, in which “there is no external agent who caused the event to happen” (p239). The latter example demonstrates “active voice”, in which “she is the grammatical agent which caused the even to take place” (p239). A third concept is also explained; the “passive voice”. These three different ways of speaking are not only used in politics and journalism, but also in everyday life. Carefully choosing which to speak in can completely change the way a sentence is construed by someone; by implying ownership to the cause of the event, to making it seem like a natural action.

Considering this is all technically still ‘fact’, it’s surely a journalist’s and politician’s dream to be able to use grammatical language like this to lead readers and citizens! It’s no wonder American politician’s (*ahem* Republicans), “have put billions of dollars” into being able to “frame” words and speeches; they could essentially say whatever they want if they just put it the right way (George Lakoff- linguistics professor). Lukin further explains this idea, of how choosing the right words to say can change the entire meaning of something. She used the quote, “Coalition forces dropped bombs on Baghdad”, as an example of ‘passive voice’, and how differently that sentence would be recieved if it were changed to “F- 117 radar- evading jets dropped bombs on Baghdad”. This was a fairly clever thing to have done, as having gone with the former sentence, they would have somewhat reduced fear amongst the public that perhaps the government wasn’t in control of what was happening in Iraq, as opposed to the technology being in control.

In conclusion, Lukin’s article presented some very good points on how language is manipulated to change the meaning of ‘fact’, and how it can be used to present different versions of ‘fact’, especially by media and politicians.

P.S. The George Lakoff quote was taken from here- <http://www.berkeley.edu/news/media/releases/2003/10/27_lakoff.shtml> accessed May 14 2009.

http://news.cnet.com/8301-10784_3-9965649-7.html

In this reading, Nick Couldry writes of  three stages in the development of audiences as identified by Abercrombie and Longhurst (1998). They are the simple, mass and diffused audience. As technologies have progressed, so too have audiences and the way they ‘receive’ media communications.

Couldry talks about the “power relationships between producers and consumers” due to the now diffused audience. As noted in last weeks reading, “The archaeology of the playlist”, many user generated content websites are becoming more and more apparent these days, such as YouTube, where the audience are also becoming the producer. Could this mean the erosion of the formal media industry; if people are now turning to this user generated content? A good example of this is Will Ferrell’s website, FunnyorDie.com. It was originally meant to be a website where skits, often featuring celebrities, were posted and voted by users as to how funny they are. Without going through the medium of television and a specific channel, it cut out the formalised industry, or the ‘middle man’. This allowed audiences to directly view the content, without waiting for it to appear on tv first. However, in 2008, FunnyorDie signed a partnership deal with television company, HBO, to produce some tv episodes. Ferrell himself stated that “this is the missing link moment where tv and internet finally merge” (2008, cnet.com).

Something I found pretty funny in the reading was Abercrombie and Longhurst’s claim that “individuals (are) narcissistic” (p192). Media have learned to take advantage of society’s apparant narcissism, and have created ‘reality’ shows such as Big Brother and innumerable others, so that again, audiences become the ‘performers’. While we’re calling society a bunch of narcassists’, we may as well also label people as voyeurs for choosing to watch people go about their everyday lives in relation to reality tv. Programs such as MTV’s, “The Hills”, demonstrate the lives of ‘ordinary’ young women as they go about their everyday activities, and according to Couldry’s interpretation of Abercrombie and Longhurst’s theory, we are able to identify with them as performers, because they are “‘like us’ and not just media professionals” (p196).

The main point of Couldry’s writings that I decided to focus on in my blog was the idea of power relationships between consumers and producers, as well as the idea of these two concepts fused into one through the development of the “diffused audience”.

In this reading, Teresa Rizzo talks about “flow” in relation to the playlist. She uses Foxtel iQ, YouTube and the iPod as examples of the personalised modern playlist. Rizzo gives a brief history of the playlist, and how it has changed over time from something that was used by television and radio broadcasters to account for every second of broadcast to present day where anyone can create their own ‘playlist’ to suit their own interests and needs, through a wide range of mediums. She states that, “Rather than producing viewers who are caught up in broadcast flow, the televisual experience becomes one of co- participation and interactivity” (p173). This concept of “co- participation and interactivity” essentially is her main point, as the aforementioned mediums allow people to completely realise this.

The Foxtel iQ is Rizzo’s first example of “programming your own channel”. Rather than waiting till 6:30 every night to catch Neighbours, then cursing yourself for missing the first 15 minutes, Foxtel iQ automatically records it for you so you can watch it at your own leisure. Ultimately, with this technology, the viewer is in charge of what they watch, when they watch it.

YouTube is the second of Rizzo’s examples of playlists. Leading on from the way Foxtel iQ allows users to take control of their media usage, YouTube is based around user generated content, taking another part of the formal media industry out of the equation. This, as suggested by Rob Cover in the reading, is attributed to the “democratisation of the media” (p176). Rizzo refutes a point made by Cover, stating that YouTube doesn’t result in “social isolation”, rather it encourages sharing and “taps into the desire for communities”. I certainly agree with this, and this is where the notion of networks come about. People are connected through their common playlists, creating the networks on YouTube where each user can become a ‘node’.

Finally, the iPod is Rizzo’s last example of playlists. This technology takes a further step from YouTube and iQ, allowing portability of your playlist. Although she states that it can be “limited by what is available and released”; however these days, you could pretty much find any movie, album or tv show available for download from one website or another.

Rizzo describes flow, in relation to television, as the “constant outpouring of images and sounds from channels into homes” (p178). The specific programs on the channels could be suggestes to be the ‘nodes’, between which the ‘flow’ of ads run.

I found Mizuko Ito’s writings highly interesting, particularly because I can relate to much of it. Although it focuses primarily on Japanese youth and their use of mobile phones, it holds values and mindsets that I’m sure most teenagers these days can identify with also. The main concept of the writing is the way in which the mobile phone is used in Japanese culture today and the reasons for these particular uses.

Ito highlights the importance of text messaging when using the mobile, suggesting that it is “less subject to peripheral monitoring and allows easy contact with a spatially distributed peer group” (Grinter and Eldridge, 2001; Kasesniemi and Rautianinen, 2002; Ling and Yttri, 2002 as cited in Ito, 2005, p121). I find this extremely true, considering my parents haven’t the faintest idea of how to read text messages so they can’t really monitor my use of them; and the way that I can easy send a text to a group of friends now and they’d all receive the same message at the same time despite being in completely different places.

Ito also emphasises the reasons for the importance of text messaging for youth, suggesting that they’re a way of circumventing the regulations placed upon them by parents, teachers and even public transport. Through various research and interviews conducted with high school students regarding their phone usage in class by the author, several of the teens claimed they actively used them to text their friends when they were bored, however they thought it would be “going too far” to take a voice call. This, as well as the fact that according to the reading, there are actually signs on buses and trains in Japan disallowing mobiles, has contributed to the shift in primary function of the phone to text messaging rather than calling someone. Also, Ito points out that you are able to have a “chat like sequence while in transit” through texting. This is certainly true for me, as I’m sure it is a lot of people. I enjoy having light conversations with friends while on the train home from uni without having the rest of the carriage hearing about what I had for lunch that day.

Ito makes a final point about a new set of “disciplines and power geometries” created by mobiles (2005, p127). The main “discipline” would be succinctly replying to a text, not doing so would, according to the reading, result in a “chiding” from your friends. He concludes by saying that “an emergent set of social expectations are defining the parameters of these new power geometries” (2005, p127). I find it highly ironic that Ito feels that for teens, using mobiles is an escape from the “institutionalised weight” of the classroom or home, however the etiquette created through them is essentially ‘trapping’ you into another set of rules and regulations you have to abide by.

http://news.ninemsn.com.au/article.aspx?id=665873

There’s also this video which I think is pretty hilarious!

In John Hartley’s writings, “The Frequencies of Public Writing…”, he analyses the ways in which various public writings operate at different ‘frequencies’, how the public recieves this & how this has changed over time.

Hartley highlights the importance of time in our everyday lives. He uses the news as an example of this, and how it has been “naturalized” to broadcast “on the hour” everyday. It is through this that people organise the rhythms & routines of their lives; my family, for example, are usually home in time to catch the 6:00 news on Channel 9 every evening. This is something we always watch together, and afterwards we go separate ways until dinner’s ready; “messing with news (is) tantamount to messing with time itself”.

Hartley explains the nature of ‘frequencies’ in media. ‘High frequency’ time is exemplified by the “up to the second news bulletin”. Consequently, ‘low frequency’ would be a “wave length of 1000 years”. He suggests that “all news relies on… a high frequency of consumption”. This is obviously true as something that was breaking news today will be superceded by something new tomorrow. Hartley defines low frequency public writing as something that occurs every decade, century, millennium or for eternity (of which “reruns” of Star Trek is an example). Whereas high frequency writings are produced to inform society as quick as possible, low frequency ones are built to last and “speak to millions of contemporary readers”; the Egyptian pyramids typifies this.

The internet has been revolutionary in its effect on media, being one of the highest frequency outlets there is. Right now, with a few simple clicks, I can see what is going on in the world at this precise moment. Not only can this be done using academic & news websites, social networking sites such as Twitter let me know where Barack Obama is making a speech today or where Kevin Rudd had coffee. Hartley uses the Monica Lewinsky affair as an example of how the internet works in “bypassing the usual journalist gatekeepers”. However, he goes onto argue that it is not yet “politically or culturally decisive in the way that a… speech can be”. I agree with this to an extent, however the internet can facilitate these means. In my above example of President Obama’s Twitter, links were posted nearly everyday  of his campaign as to where you could stream his rallies, not to mention the fact that you can watch them on YouTube.

This reading provides very valid insights as to what “Frequencies of Public Writings” are, as well as acute examples of them & how they work & fit into our society. John Hartley also demonstrates the ways in which time has been ingrained into society through the broadcasting of the news everyday & how this can effect our daily rhythms.

Mike Michael’s article describes the ‘disembodiment’ of humans through the introduction of various technologies that generate a “bypassing of the body, attaching human wills to the world without interventions, the mediations, of the suspect body”. He uses the remote control as the quintessential example of this; the ultimate tool for every ‘couch potato’.

The domestication of the television and consequently the remote control has created this “inert and braindead” (Green, 1995, p. 78) group, of which Michael argues has both positive & negative repercussions. Of the bad points of being a couch potato (an unhealthy, unproductive, uncultured & un- civic body), I myself have certainly been able to relate to at least one of these in the few months between high school and uni (the first quality really did become apparent when I realized how many stairs there are at UNSW). However, Michael counters these with some possible “good couch potatoes”, wherein a number of services have been created to cater for this niche market; such as the ‘Parker Knoll chair’, which allows “Customers… to slump stupefied in front of the box for even longer periods”. The author also lists a number of websites devoted to the couch potato, creating an “imagined community” of them. Inspired by this, I did a quick search on Facebook to see how many groups there are indeed devoted to the modern day idler; returning a result of over 200! This further highlights his point that this is “expressive of a subculture that, tacitly at least, sets itself in opposition to the negative discourses”.

The remote control has transformed throughout time from something connected to the television with a wire (the Lazy Bones model- The Daily Telegraph, 25 June 1996) to the ‘1955 Flashmatic’, whose technical flaws allowed “sunlight (to) change channels” (which I found highly comical). The newest version is one that Michael says “is a direct bypassing of the body”; a controller that responds to your brain waves. While the loss of these devices can be traumatic for anyone, the author finds it highly ironic, as do I, that “the body… known as the ‘couch potato’ is… unexpectedly manoeuvred and manipulated in the regular search for the remote control”.

In conclusion, technological advances & the domestication of television have allowed a whole group of people spanning generations to be labelled as ‘couch potatoes’, as explained in Mike Michael’s article.

“The things you own end up owning you”- Tyler Durden, Fight Club

David Gauntlett’s article, ‘Media Studies 2.0′, explains the changing “attitude towards” the study of the media industry. Following on from Tim Berners- Lee’s phrase, “Web 2.0″, Media Studies 2.0 is a new, interactive way of studying media.

Gauntlett argues that the “traditional approach to media studies” (Media Studies 1.0), only has a “vague recognition of the internet”, whereas Media Studies 2.0 recognises that the internet has “fundamentally changed the ways in which we engage with all media”. This argument essentially provides the crux of my blog today. This Media, Culture & Everyday Life class is the perfect example of Media Studies 2.0! We students are being asked to blog about our understanding of the readings, essentially “(participating) in the new media explosion, not just (watching) from the sidelines”. We communicate with our lecturer, tutor & fellow students through this “‘add on’ to the traditional media”, typifying one of the author’s key points about Media Studies 2.0; “interactivity”.

This follows on from Gauntlett’s belief that “media audiences in general are already extremely capable interpreters of media content” and that “media students (are) reasonably slick media producers in the online environment”, which, if you’re reading this, you probably are. The point I’m trying to make, and that the author of the article is as well, is that Media Studies 1.0 is an antiquated method & far too destitute for the 21st Century. By this I mean that having the internet & “new digital media” handled in “one self- contained segment”, as opposed to them being a dominant “new area for exploration”, our knowledge gained through media studies would be insufficient. As Gauntlett expresses, “Thank goodness the web came along… new good ideas and new bad ideas appear every week”. Thanks goodness, indeed, as the author states that this saved media studies research from a “middle aged, stodgy period”.

Not only are Media Studies 1.0′s recognition of the internet & new digital media’s challenged by the author, so are its “outmoded notion of ‘reciever’ audiences and elite ‘producers’”. Media Studies 2.0 uses “people’s own creativity”; perhaps that which has been seen through the mediums of YouTube & other similar interactive websites.

In conclusion, I’d have to say that I agree with David Gauntlett when he states that “new media is vibrant, exploding & developing”, and that this is far too exciting not to address in modern studies of media. Gauntlett provides some excellent points on why & how this “change in the whole ‘ecosystem’” is so important about the way we study media today.