Online Age: Everyone's a critic now - Guardian online article

Everyone's a critic now (link to full article)
A refusal to heed the advice of highbrow cultural critics is nothing new. But when the public can quickly share their own - different - views on Twitter, Facebook, myDigg and other social media, is criticism dead?

Extract:

So if this was some sort of critical last stand, a desperate ploy by critics to display their power by circling the wagons, it seems to have failed. Even if The Social Network wins the Oscar as expected, Freedom the Pulitzer Prize and Boardwalk Empire the Emmy, it would only serve to confirm the breach that now seems to exist between the critics and the public. Once upon a time, critics could close that breach through a process close to cultural brainwashing. They could get people to see and love The Social Network, to read Freedom, to watch Boardwalk Empire. Now they can't.

The usual suspect in this immunisation is the internet. It is certainly no secret that the internet has eroded the authority of traditional critics and substituted Everyman opinion on blogs, websites, even on Facebook and Twitter where one's friends and neighbours get to sound off. What is less widely acknowledged is just how deeply this populist blowback is embedded in America and how much of American culture has been predicated on a conscious resistance to cultural elites. It is virtually impossible to understand America without understanding the long ongoing battle between cultural commissars who have always attempted to define artistic standards and ordinary Americans who take umbrage at those commissars and their standards.

Michael Wesch - Online Age and We media

Another name you will become familiar with is that of Professor Michael Wesch who is a leading lecturer in Media. Below is a video he has produced to show the evolution of the web and how it has transformed the way we interact and engage with content and each other.
The Machine is Us/ing Us

This is Michael Wesch's lecture about the History of YouTube. It is worth watching the first few minutes to see why the Internet is a global medium!

If the video doesn't appear (it might be too long to load up effectively), please click on this link instead.

Media in the Online Age

This is a video featuring a virtual David Gauntlett explaining how we moved to the Online Age. Please note it wasn't produced by Gauntlett himself though he says he quite enjoyed it. The voices are of course very monotonous but the very fact it was produced with a piece of software then uploaded to YouTube is in itself an illustration of the Online Age we live in!

Rupert Murdoch Radio 4's "Today" Programme 26th Jan

Alternatively, use the BBC iPlayer. The programme was on Wednesday morning (26/1) and in the last 6 minutes of the Today show on Radio 4.

Charlie Brooker - How TV ruined your life

Charlie Brooker talks about Fear on TV. Watch out for the bit on Gerber's Cultivation theory.
If you've missed it, it's on BBC iPlayer here.

Next episode, next Tuesday!

Essential reading (look at this blog) + extra resources + H/L due in 27.1.11 and 1.2.11

1. This is a blog produced by a Cultural Studies class which contains several posts (with examples) about Cultivation Theory and Uses and Gratifications. It should really help you see things a little more clearly!

Theory Illustration Blog

You will probably want to link that to your own blog for reference and later revision.

2. I am adding another (short) Powerpoint presentation to clarify some of the points on Uses and Gratifications (below the first one from this morning). Hope it helps!

3. Home Learning:
- For next Thursday, remember to post something about your reading (Intro to Jenkins' book - Convergence Culture) so that Ms Lyall can see and check your work.

- For next Tuesday, write up some revision notes on the main audience theories seen so far. Illustrate with some examples. You might want to do a spectrum line. Best place for it would be your blog!
- Also post any research you have produced so far to allow others in the group to access it.
- Sum up in a few bullet points the main arguments Gauntlett and Jenkins use to refute Media Effects theories.

Don't fret - all this is a little overwhelming at first; accept it and keep reading! It will gradually firm up in your minds :0) Please refer to my PPT presentations to get clarification on some of the research we heard this morning (eg Kappler)

Tuesday 25th January

Lesson 2: conducting your research, ready to present lesson 3 (after break, meet back in N10)

4 research groups:
Conduct your research using the relevant slides and finding more sources (which you will list), including at least 1 or 2 videos from YouTube or Vimeo etc. Find at least one real example from the media to apply your theory to.

Prepare to PRESENT and TEACH your findings to the rest of the group (PPT or Prezi) – aim for 5 to 10 minutes.

Topics to choose from – 1 per ‘group’:
- Cultivation Theory
- Joseph Kappler’s Phenomenistic approach
- Uses and gratifications - Blumer and Katz, 1974
- Uses and gratifications – criticism of the theory

I am embedding the lesson PowerPoint for now but will remove by the end of the week.

Effects and audiences lessons 2 and 3

View more presentations from hgaldinoshea.

Uses and gratifications

View more presentations from hgaldinoshea.

Media Effects on teenagers - from peersunited.com

Here is the research that is presented as "Help for teachers, parents and teens"

Media effects on teenagers

Is one message or theory emerging as a dominant one on this page?
What are the issues that are dealt with and do you find the research convincing?

One to follow - Untangling the web with Aleks Krotoski

This is really interesting stuff to find out about We Media and Media in the Online Age.
Untangling the web with Aleks Krotoski

About this series:
How has the most revolutionary innovation of our time - the internet - transformed our world? What does it mean for the modern family? How has it changed our concepts of privacy? Of celebrity? Of love, sex and hate?

Recent topics:
Hate and the internet
Does the internet encourage insidious and bullying behaviour? Aleks Krotoski investigates

The internet's cyber radicals: heroes of the web changing the world.
A generation of political activists have been transformed by new tools developed on the internet. Here, a leading net commentator profiles seven young radicals from around the world

John Pilger's The War You Don't See - extracts

Media Effects - Aggressive modelling (Bobo doll experiment)

Democracy - Regulation - Was the Telegraph sting against Vince Cable illegal?

The Telegraph journalists who posed as constituents to entrap MPs may have committed a criminal offence
Two journalists misrepresented themselves as constituents of members of parliament to gain access to appointments at their advice surgeries, and proceeded secretly to record their conversations with the MPs – conversations from which their editors then quoted selectively in prominent front-page stories. Is this ethical? Is it even legal?
Read the whole story here.

And the follow up...
Vince Cable 'quite angry' about Daily Telegraph sting
Business secretary says paper's decision to send journalists posing as mothers to his surgery has done 'great damage' to relationship between MPs and constituents
Read the whole article here.

Now a response to the situation from a blogger - talktorex.co.uk:
In which the word 'irony' is used so ironically that it ceases to mean anything
I have already ranted about former-broadsheet-turned-caky-rag The Daily Telegraph's increasingly hypocritical, unjournalistic and exploitative content, in a blog post which caused one petulant reviewer to suggest that I have a 'tin ear for journalistic irony'.

Media and Democracy - The Anonymous WikiLeaks protests are a mass demo against control

The Anonymous WikiLeaks protests are a mass demo against control
The actions against MasterCard and Amazon are not 'hacking'. People are just finding a way to protest in a digital space
Read full article here.

Viral marketing: how film fans have caught the bug

More than a trailer, director Neill Blomkamp's new video leads fans on a digital treasure hunt for clues about his next movie. It's a game increasing numbers of film-makers are playing

(Blomkamp directed District 9)
Read the full article here.

Extract:
Social networking encourages a see-and-then-share habit for moviegoers, and it's taken a step further this year – just observe the excitement and commercial reward generated by this year's viral campaigns for Inception and Tron. Yet despite the commercial motivation, most fans appear to be enjoying the shift. Viral movie marketing encourages engagement with cinema, wider conversation and expands the worlds of movies people love. In the case of Blomkamp's new video, far from merely being a trailer for a forthcoming project, the short might be seen as a starting point for a digital egg hunt.

Henry Jenkins site - Fandom and DIY vids

Henry Jenkins, author of the Convergence Culture (highly recommended read for your course), writes the Part 3 of this series in the following link to The Official Weblog of Henry Jenkins.

The following is an interview with Tim Park from AnimeMusicVideos.org in which he responds to [Jenkins'] questions about the anime fan scene. . .