Missing persons reportage in the traditional press and social media outlets

The following is a reply I sent to Rachel MacPherson, a journalism student from University of the West of Scotland.  She was writing her dissertation on the media’s representation of victims of crime, in particular missing person cases, and read my post about Serena Beakhurst and wanted my opinion.  I provided answers to her questions, as shown below.  The topic is an interesting one, as for me it highlights differences in emphasis and approach between traditional journalism outputs and online social media platforms. 

Unlike a lot of community media/alternative media researchers and activists, I still believe there is a place for traditional media platforms such as the already established newspapers and tv news.   The Serena Beakhurst story however highlighted the limitations of traditional media in what it covers and considers to be of interest to their audiences, and online social media outlets such as Twitter, Facebook and blogs allows for an additional layer of ‘news’ that would not reach the mainstream, and now also informs the editorial decisions of the mainstream press  if/when those stories eventually reach their headlines.  Although I don’t personally believe in media hierarchies in relation to quality and validity, the Serena Beakhurst case still shows that such hierarchies still exist in relation to power, value and representation.  No one was complaining that certain blogs hadn’t covered the story, the complaints were levelled at the mainstream press and their evident lack of interest.  It can only be a matter of time before the social/alternative media outputs get confident enough to ignore what the mainstream are or are not covering, and see themselves as the media itself, with inherent quality, validity, power, value and considered representation.  Hence the strap-line of this blog – Don’t hate the Media/Become the Media.

Anyway, enough of my preamble, here are my responses to Rachel.

What do you feel are the responsibilities of the press, if any, to report on missing person cases in the UK?

The word ‘responsibilities’ is an interesting one.  It brings to mind the title of James Curran and Jean Seaton’s book ‘Power without Responsibility’.  In the introduction, justifying the title, they say “that something which daily intrudes in our lives in ever more sophisticated ways needs to be, itself, the subject of continual public surveillance.  That the media interferes with us; therefore we have a right and duty to interfere with the media.”  (Curran, J. and Seaton, J. (2003), Power Without Responsibility: The Press and Broadcasting in Britain, Routledge, London, UK, page 4)

That is what I see going on at the moment with regards missing persons.  To answer your question directly, no I don’t think the national press have an automatic responsibility to report on missing person’s cases.  The cold fact is they are private commercial companies in the business of selling news to audiences – and selling audiences to advertisers.  Though I would say local news have more of a responsibility to report missing person stories, as they are directly serving close geographic communities, but the national press have no such obligation to their audiences.  The nationals are interested in what missing person stories can resonate further than the immediate geographic area? (How that is judged is highly debatable/controversial).  They have a responsibility to practice ethical methodologies, and to report fact not fiction, but regardless of what we the public think, the press do not have a responsibility to have to cover a certain type of story.  The agitation and accusation that is happening now however (though the agitation and accusation is far from new), is that the press should be reporting certain stories, especially now when certain stories become big in the blogosphere/twitter, but nowhere to be seen in the mainstream press.

Missing persons is a good case study for this.  When a person goes missing it is a deeply personal and emotional event.  We call friends, friends of friends, family, tenuous links, anybody who might have seen or know something, and of course the police when we know it’s serious.  Now in the internet age we get onto Facebook, Twitter, Blogging, etc.  In these cases social networking will invariably carry this news before any mainstream press may pick up the ‘story’, as the ‘event’ and momentum has happened from the ground up.   So in the case of Serena Beakhurst, it became a huge story online, but wasn’t at all picked up by the mainstreams.  So the online communities (myself included) eager to spread the word to get Serena found started to provide a “public surveillance” on the mainstream press and tried to “interfere” with the editorial decisions.   In the heat of an emotional frustration, accusations started to fly.  So a key question is what did the online agitators, strangers to Serena, (myself included), see in the Serena story, that wasn’t seen or appreciated by the mainstream editors?

What factors of a missing person case make it newsworthy? 

The simple answer is; a good story.  Some hypothetical questions journalists will be asking are; is it out of character?, is it suspicious?, are there any clues?, can the audience relate and sympathize, even if it ends tragically or happily?, what could be the motives of disappearance?, what visual material have we got access to show?, is it unique?, and other questions to judge whether it will be a worthwhile story. 

I’m not in a position to know, but I can only assume that Serena’s story did not answer enough of these questions favorably enough to satisfy the journalists.  This is where the journalists will also be listening to the signals coming from the police and friends they get access to.  Possibly Serena had run away before.  Possibly she had threatened running away in the days leading up to her disappearance, so it wasn’t a surprise.  The headline of Serena, a 14 year old girl goes missing over Christmas – made a startling ‘story’ to us strangers, and we hit the blogs, etc, and it exposed a chasm between the “news values” of the mainstream press and the citizen journalists.  Most citizen journalists (myself included) aren’t journalists at all, they are polemicists.  If I lived in London I MIGHT have gone to interview her mum and friends, but the fact is I didn’t and instead recycled news with my own opinion. 

It’s a harsh judge for an editor to declare what is or is not worthy of being “news”, especially when a missing 14 year old girl get subsequently classed as “not news worthy”, and that is what fuelled the anger and frustration from us online agitators.  I tried to use my blog post first and foremost to help find Serena, with some side digs and the press in the process.  Some other bloggers went on a full-out assault on the press about race bias, etc, with hardly any information about Serena herself, which I did not feel was the appropriate emphasis to be having whilst she was still missing. 

So the Serena case exposed some of the differences in what are considered news values between mainstream press and social media.  It would be the logical prediction that these cases will affect mainstream press more, as they are in a dire need to retain audiences – so they will invariably find new ways of doing what they do, and if that means reporting more missing persons stories (even if only online), then so be it.  It was interesting to note that when the mainstream press did pick up the Serena story, the main emphasis was on how the story grew via Twitter, Facebook, etc, not the fact that she was still missing.

The contrast with Milly Dowler’s disappearance in 2002 I guess is down to the answers to those hypothetical questions and the signals coming from police and friends.  I think it’s also down to the forcefulness of the parents and organizing press conferences, etc.  Serena’s mum in her writing after her daughter was found seemed happy with the police approach and not overly forceful or frustrated, but in the Dowler case the sense of urgency was from the very beginning.  Of course Serena’s mum was still highly worried, but probably the journalists and police respond to different types of urgency reactions in different ways.  The same goes with missing girls that go out with guys they have met on the internet.  The reason they are story classed as stories is due to the still novel nature of the circumstance – the internet as a new cause of crime.  Those stories contain timely modern morality tales of caution for the readers, and allows a bit of awareness raising without looking too preachy.  Many other girls who run away will also be with guys, but if it’s a local lad and not a stranger from the internet then it’s deemed as having less news value, and remains absent from the press.

Do you believe the news media is capable of influencing the public opinion on certain criminal matters?

Most definitely.  Even though public opinion should not matter in a court of law, it invariably will have some influence.  If a jury have down their job well they will return a verdict they ‘know’ is right, even if that flies in the face of public opinion.  Of course this is an idealistic position, as I know there have been tragedies of miscarriages of justice in court that have been influenced the media, public opinion, politics, racism, sexism, etc.  It’s interesting with the Joanna Yeates case how Chris Jefferies the first suspect was absolutely hounded by the press with all his private life exposed, but since this new guy has been charged, it’s all gone very quiet.  I may be naive, but it almost feels like they realized they went too far.  If Jefferies was guilty, it could have been near impossible for him to have had a fair trial.  “Power without Responsibility.”

Does the media select only certain missing persons cases for publication and, if so, why?

Good vs weaker stories, (in the minds of news editors).

Do you believe that by only selecting certain missing person cases to represent, the news media are simply giving the public what they want?

Not really.  I think audiences of news media take what they are given.  It is only the well referenced and media literate amongst the audiences that agitate and say what they are not being told.  Otherwise, people don’t really know what they are not being told.  The majority of audiences don’t question the news.  They may occasionally ask, “Why is that on the news?” (e.g. Take That releasing a new single).  But it is a small minority that will ask, “why was that not on the news?”  That’s the interesting tension now between the mainstream press and social media, bloggers etc. – the online documenters are picking up things the mainstream press don’t know about yet.  If they do get ‘picked up’, that’s fine, if they don’t, there can be claims of a conspiracy of silence.  It’s not really that simple.

Why do you believe there was such widespread media interest in the Joanna Yeates case but a lack of interest in the Serena Beakhurst case?

Professor David Wilson, author of ‘Looking for Laura: Public Criminology and Hot News’, (which you’ll find interesting), was interviewed on the Jeremy Vine Show yesterday on BBC Radio 2 (Mon 18^th April) about these issues.  He said at the same time as the Stephen Lawrence murder a white boy was murdered by an Asian boy, but that didn’t hit any of the headlines or cause any of the ramifications of the public eye.  This to me shows how there’s not a news media rulebook that is cast in stone. 

I said at the time Serena was found that I believed had she been a white girl the mainstream press would have picked it up.  Of course I can’t prove that.  With time passing and reading what her mum had to say, I still believe race played a part, but I think the behind the scenes factors (those hypothetical questions) are also significant.  I now believe it would never have been a front page big news story, but still believe that it would have at least got a mention in more press had she been a white 14 year old from a conventional family, but saying that I have also to recognise that the answers to those hypothetical questions would change, so it would be unfair to compare them as like for like.  And this is the problem with the notion of ‘news values’ – as when all said and done a 14 year old girl was missing – regardless of socioeconomic background, class, race, etc.  But those backgrounds builds the story, and that’s where/when mere facts are not enough for the judgment of news values.  Yes a 14 year old girl is missing, but what type of 14 year old girl?

Joanna Yeates was older, steady job, steady relationship, keys left in flat, missing pizza, it had mystery all over it from the start.  News stories, like drama, needs tension to hook the audience.  It was weighed up with Serena and the 14 year old lost out.  At Christmas there will only be so many missing persons stories the press are going to want to deal with, so the editors took the gamble, and in a depressing gruesome macabre way it paid off.  It obviously sounds cold to discuss such tragic events in this detached commercial way, but that is the commodity that is being dealt with in this business of news journalism.  The mainstream press being silent on the Serena story was not racist, but it did expose a bias – which was a bias of what makes a good story.  I’m sure Serena would have provided a good story, but one seemingly not good enough for the news demographic for audience/readers to care.  The online agitators rightly questioned that logic of judgement. Thankfully it also had a happy ending.  It is depressing to think that only a tragic ending to the Serena story would have vindicated that questioning of the news values status quo.  That is one battle I am so glad to have lost.        

Dr Shawn Sobers – University of the West of England
20^th April 2011

YouTube – UNDER the spotlight, IS the spotlight, and source of energy FUELING the spotlight

Earlier this week MIT Press published a ‘video book’ called ‘Learning from YouTube’ by Media Studies Professor Alexandra Juhasz.  The book is not of the physical kind, nor is it a downloadable file for your Kindle or iPad.  It is a website-book which has been peer reviewed and given an ISBN number, which exists in, amongst and around YouTube, with the site being the subject matter, field of research and platform for dissemination.

An additional architecture framework has been created linked into the YouTube site which includes a multi-search facilitate to navigate the various chapters  which creates the (non-linear) video book concept, with the content being quite short written pieces with dynamic links to video content produced by Juhasz, her students and (laterally) related pieces found on YouTube.  Juhasz herself does not use the term ‘chapters’, instead has coined the phrase ‘textios’, which are the 15 webpages which include text and videos, alongside other forms of non-linear navigation such as tags and tours.

 To see the ‘Learning from YouTube’ video book for yourself, and to describe it for yourself – click here.

As Dr Juhasz herself says, there is not one linear argument this video book is making, but rather multiple arguments that were explored during her ‘Learning from YouTube’ classes at Pitzer College Los Angeles, since 2003.  There are many points of innovation that could be discussed in relation to this video book, including;

-       the experiment’s research findings on YouTube , (and the challenges of even getting qualitative research findings out of something so random and fast as YouTube.);

-       the concept of a ‘video book’, and how this could inform the future directions of media literacy.  Also interesting that such a video book is based on trust of other YouTube users that they will not take down their videos, leaving a video book with empty pages.  It would be unethical to copy their videos to a video book archive without the owners’ permissions as security, so those questions of participation and ownership etc are really interesting in relation to this work;

-       this video book being published and disseminated free by MIT Press, and the future of academic publishing.  This video book was peer-reviewed, copy-edited, has an ISBN number, and went through all the processes of traditional academic publishing.  It is completely free to access and as far away from the inaccessibility of the academic journal system as you can get, which costs money to access, slow to publish, and not updatable.  Also how the concept of a peer-reviewed free ‘video book’ could inform other academic websites and blogs, and how publishing houses and universities could respond to this changing dynamic in academic texts.

-       Dr Juhasz’s concept of ‘Third YouTube’, and its relationship to Third Cinema.

‘Learning with YouTube’ also highlights something to learn from with regards the underlying pedagogy of the production of this video book, as an example of dynamic curriculum delivery for Higher Education.  As an educator I am always interested in ways teachers teach, and am always trying to find new ways for students to experience the curriculum.  As someone who works with young people both in formal education institutions such as universities and schools, and also in less formal spaces such as community centers, galleries and museums, I’m interested in how to reconcile the different styles of pedagogy between those spaces, from traditional top down ‘banking’ style teaching, through to less hierarchical forms of group facilitation.  In the ‘Orientation to the Class’ tour Juhasz explains how her course was run.

“Our classes were recorded and put on YouTube, and all of the students’ research and course work was confined to the form of either videos or comments on YouTube. We learned together in and about Internet culture, DIYmedia, and social video networking by reframing YouTube for higher education, critical reflection, and reflexive processes. Just so, I made videos too. But because of the limits of YouTube (and video), I also chose to blog in real time about these experiences. And then … the course went viral: a telling if tiring opportunity for even more self-reflection and YouTube critical reflexivity!”

Even though criticized by some quarters when Juhasz’s classes were first announced in 2007,  finding innovative ways to teach/deliver/facilitate classes (call it what you will), and to keep them relevant for students has to be one of the key areas that universities have to keep their eye on and develop.  Especially in the UK with the current tensions concerning the raising of tuition fees, students will increasingly want curriculums that reflect the world they live in today.  Rather than wallowing in media communication theories from the 1970s, with ‘Learning from YouTube’ Alexandra Juhasz has put her money (time and effort) where her mouth is and sought to create a class which drags media communication theories into the here and now.

By being a harsh critic of YouTube as well as an enthusiastic user, and producing a media research work inside the very medium of its study, Juhasz’s ‘Learning with YouTube’ highlights the simple fact that, love them or hate them, these new technologies are now a part of our (online) lives that we can seldom avoid.  My friends who swear blind they would never join Facebook still have the occasional glimpse via their partner’s profiles, and get invited to parties etc arranged through their partners profiles, but because they don’t have a profile themselves they can still claim they have clean hands. 

The majority of YouTube users will not have YouTube profiles as there is no real need.  As Juhasz says in one of the tours, YouTube hardly encourages participation in the same way as social network sites, and is more about “solo play”.  So even as a critic Juhasz also understands the potential for YouTube to innovate, as without it this very innovation would not have been possible.  Like with all technologies, if we view it as a tool we can use it for our own ends accordingly for educational, liberation and other processes for the social good.  But we are still only human with temptations, and we want our cake and eat it too.

Even though we may disdain at the huge amount of crap on YouTube and what that says about people living in developed societies with time on their hands, we can’t deny we are also a part of that developed society with time to think about such questions, and the Achilles heel of our human selves may be disgusted, but at the same time fascinated, like anthropologists who at the same time are disgusted and envious of what they witness.  This is why my current favorite video I found on the ‘Learning with YouTube’ so far speaks to that truth, made by one of Dr Juhasz’s students who goes by the YouTube moniker of ‘PerchysBigAdventure’.  YouTube adopts a personality and taunts the politicized student. 

“Go ahead, watch. What, you have better things to do with your time? Write a book?”

And of course he clicks to watch more.  We all click eventually.  Our curiosity gets the better of us.  Go ahead…..click!

There is a lot of content in ‘Learning with YouTube’, which shouldn’t be a surprise, after all it is a book!  I wish this experiment all the best and I shall watch with interest, and will hopefully also act accordingly, and not just wait for the academy to change around me.

Some questions about the Queen’s media habits…..

From being the first (non-engineer) person to make a long distance phone call without an operator in 1958, I wondered how up-to-date Beth II keeps with new technologies. 

1. Is she a PC or a Mac?

2. Does she use the internet?  What’s her email address? 
(corgi-luva@buckpal.co.uk)  Has she ever Googled herself? 

3. Has she got a Freeview box, or is she signed up with Sky?

4. Is she HD ready?

5. Does she have a giant flat screen big tv, or is her tv wooden, ornate and in-keeping with her plush Buck Palace surroundings?  (Wonder what a Sony TXaV6-yawn look like in a stately home???).  Or does she use a projector, as it “feels like the Olden Days”?

6. What will she watch now that ITV have cancelled The Bill? (We know she watches The Bill thanks to Charlie Brooker’s ‘Screen Burn’, 29.11.2003.  She also watches Eastenders).

7. Has she upgraded to Blue-ray and/or HD DVD (or whatever these – yawn!! – new formats are)?

8.  Does she have a mobile phone? If she has an Iphone, what apps (yawn!!!) does she use the most?   Who is on her speed dial?  (Surely it must be Barack!!!)

9. Has she got a digital camera? 

10. Does she have a blog?  What would she write about?

11. What picture does she have on her desktop?

12. Has she searched for her old school friends on Facebook?

If our Beth hasn’t keep up to date with ANY of these technologies, is it then fair to say that she is out-of-touch with her people?  I suggest she logs-on quick, before the digital revolution turns into a republican one.  *

 

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* Obviously this comment about revolution is just me being mela-dramatic for artistic effect to conclude this article, but I do feel the comment about being out-of-touch is valid.  Obviously these are only questions, and the Queen may be fully connected.  Her online alias may be Bill Bartmann.

How Will The End Of Print Journalism Affect Old Loons Who Hoard Newspapers?

From the Onion News Network.  Genuis!

(p.s. I relate to this, as I am a self-confessed ‘loon’ myself!)

Bloggers, have you been Bill Bartmann’ed yet?

Bill Bartmann is the billionaire that massages your ego with spam.

This image was taken from Wolf Kettler’s excellent blog article about Bill’s spamming habits - see here.

I’m really glad you like my blog Bill, but if you like it so much then please leave a personal message and not one you have copied and pasted 1000 times just to improve your Google ratings and web footprint.

 

Thanks.  I love you too by the way!

Dance your PhD contest (one of the parallel universes of YouTube)

I was browsing YouTube and for some reason decided to do a search for ‘PhD’ to see what I would find, assuming I would find a lot of existential reflections on the torture of the PhD process.   But to my surprise I found a whole underground movement of the PhD Dance Contest.  A fantastic idea of research students not taking themselves too seriously, when they are working in environments where it is all too easy to take themselves too seriously, and are encouraged to do so.  The PhD dance is a whole world now opened up to me, like realising it is the earth that revolves around the sun and not the other way around.  (Ok ok, I know this is a grand claim for the magnitude of the PhD dance….!)

It did make me wonder though, how many new religions and ideologies are being born singularly through the internet?  And not joke religions like Jedi (I don’t mean to offend anyone with that statement!), but serious contenders for new schools of thought for the next generations. 

We have heard how the internet is a “breeding ground” for terrorism and far right extremist groups, etc, but they existed before the internet anyway.  If this technology existed 2000 years ago, this would have been Christianity’s main tool of communication, not Sermons on Mounts (that would have been the equivalent of a Flash Mob gathering).  They say Scientology was invented by a science fiction writer, and the stories of the Bible can be traced back to older sources such as the Egyptian Book of the Dead, so religions have always used the popular culture of the time as reference points and to tap into the zeitgeist.  The PhD Dance contest is just a glimpse at worlds I didn’t know existed.  How many more paradigms are out there courtesy of YouTube, Blogger, WordPress, etc, and how many will be the new religions and political parties of tomorrow.  All I can say is, God Help Us All!!

On that note, enjoy the delights of the best PhD Dance I could find. They are illustrating the research context – “Properties of Hard, Nanolayered TiB2:CHx Low Friction Coatings”  (A full description that I don’t undertsand can be found on their YouTube page – http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C5pu9bm4xaE&feature=related)

This has obviously made me wonder how I can illustrate my own research.

“BEYOND PROJECT: An Ethnographic Study – According to stakeholders of community media educational activity, what are the prime motivations of participation, and what pedagogic conditions allow for impacts and areas of sustainability to be nurtured?”

Any suggestions always welcome!!!

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[An obvious shout out goes to Prof. Alex Juhasz.  Respect to you.  I see how researching YouTube will be a lifetime’s work!! lol )

UPDATE: Almost at the same time I was writing this post, Prof. Juhasz was writing a post on her blog analysing YouTube’s role in social movements in similar territory to this.  See it here.   She says, “At minimum, communities need to be called through shared goals and analyses, built over time while in and about an acknowledged place, and in collaboration. These calls need to be focused on activities that also build upon each other and this shared logic.”

China blocks Twitter, Flickr and Hotmail ahead of Tiananmen anniversary

“Internet crackdown blocks “young generation” as leading dissident is detained in Beijing”

Visit this link to read the full story on The Guardian website, by Tania Branigan in Beijing.

This is very sad indeed! I was in China in 2007, I was the film maker accompanying a group of young people, youth workers and teachers that visited Guangzhou. We were out there for 10 days, and to keep the parents of the young people informed of what we were doing, I set up a blog so everyone to keep up to date with events.

http://planchina.wordpress.com/

The blog was innocent enough in terms of content, but after about 3 days of being there it was banned by the censors and we could no longer access it. To get around the ban, I had to email the young people’s writing and photos back to England via any email account I could get working to Jemma back in the office, with full instructions (from memory) of how to upload content into the blog.

Luckily we still had access to Flickr so I uploaded photos there, copied the URL to embed the photos, and emailed a whole chunk of HTML that Jemma could be just paste into the blog window. (I’ve never thought of myself as a geek, but it actually worked!!!)

Parents were updated every day not knowing we were victim of the communication block. They would have been very concerned if we/they had lost communication!

I can only hope that the Chinese authority come to their senses and realise that they can’t win the battle to censor the internet. I admit they are giving it a damn good go, but it is a battle they will ultimately lose. If they ban enough sites hopefully it will just crash their servers and their censor wall will come tumbling down.

Here’s hoping that now that this blog will be banned,  it will be the straw that breaks the dragon’s back.

[There's me, top of the photo, concentrating on not dropping anything from the chopsticks!]

Why Don’t You Just Switch Off Your Television Set and Go and Do Something Less Boring Instead?

Earlier this week, John Gibson, chair of the Independent Schools Association, told its annual conference that many children are growing up in ”prison-like environments” because they are surrounded by technology and don’t play outdoors enough.  (See the BBC story here.) 

Even though I’m an advocate of media literacy and the role of digital media in education, I agree with Gibson and recognise, as with anything, that there are appropriate levels of usage for anything, and too much time at a computer or tv screen doing anything is not good for you, educational or not.  I’m from the ’Why Don’t You?” generation and remember with fond memories the lines “Why Don’t You Just Switch Off The Television Set And Go Do Something Less Boring Instead?”. 

 

 

 

I don’t let my own children stay on the computer for more than about 20 minutes at a time, (“do as I say, not as a I do kids!!”), so absolutely, get out there, get muddy, get climbing trees, and get making dens in the bushes.  The problem with today’s environment though, is that parents are also scared that their children are going to get kidnapped, or whatever else horrific situations our imaginations can conjure.  So now not only are screens the electronic babysitters (nurture), they are also the new nature. 

 

Want to go bowling kids?  Let’s plug in the Wii.  Want to paint a picture?  Go to the Cbeebies website and use their painting programmes and so you don’t get the carpet messy.  Want to own, love and nurture a pet of your own?  Tamagochi’s are now half price in Toyz R Us!  And most of all children, do you want to meet up with your friends and chat about girls & boys & play games & just be the children that you are, then why not log onto Facebook, or one of the thousands of children’s social network sites that are child safe and protected from ‘stranger danger’?  (Judging from some of the things I’ve seen on the internet, I’d rather my children being out there in the ‘real world’ thank you very much.) 

 

 

 

A highly contradictory part of me wept every time I saw my 8 year old daughter play on her Nintendo DS since we bought it for her, as she used to spend a lot of her time doing arts & crafts activities, and now she had her nose stuck in the mini computer playing Brain Gym, figuring out timetables and anagrams and lateral thinking puzzles.  Highly contradictory, as of course I was pleased she was using her brain, and also relieved she was using a very expensive present, but I was now concerned about her eyes.  As parents, we need to have something to worry about, as the alternative is just too frightening to comprehend.

  

But that’s just the point actually, parents are also scared of the evils of the internet, so, if we believed the hype about deranged adults lurking around every physical and virtual corner, then our children would be house bound sitting on their hands.  But that is purely theoretical, as I would like to hope that humans are more sensible than that (I trust).  We know that all things need moderation.  If a child is indeed living in a web prison, then yes they need to get out more.  If they are out all of the time, then maybe they should also come in once in a while and, I don’t know, read a book perhaps.  But the idealised nature of the traditional family are perhaps long gone.  Watching Saturday evening television together as a nuclear family used to be the ideal demographic for programmes between 6.30 – 9pm on BBC1 and ITV regions, but now you get a situation where Britain’s Got Talent gets more people watching short clips on Youtube than anyone would ever sit down to watch the whole programme on tv.  The reality is that young people’s lives are busy, just like the media they consume.  A video clip, a twitter, an instant message, a text, and photo, and video call, a poke (on facebook for those who don’t know!!)  At least they’re not out having sex and doing drugs, eh?

 

We might never know how these new technologies are affecting young people’s brains and they way they think and process information.  Some say it has depleted their attention spans, and others say it has improved it.  Nothing was ever as good as in “our day”, the *80s/70s/60s/50s/40s (delete as applicable). 

 

 

I’m sure it’s a rare teenager that only sits on a computer and never reads a single sentence on the internet, never has to figure out a query/puzzle of some kind of Facebook game or quiz, never has to count how long it will take to download the 673mb dodgy movie before their mum comes home from work in 38 minutes.  (That is a complex transferable and mathematical skill!!)  Also, what teenager doesn’t hate their parents so much that they just have to get out of the house and trawl the shopping malls and hang out in the park until one minute past their curfew, or getting their ears screamed at by sirens only they can hear to move them along?   Young people are damned if they leave the house, and damned if they stay indoors.

 

I’m making light of all this slightly as, if we don’t, we start to believe the hype, and our children would grow to be as neurotic as we are.  So yes, let’s listen to what John Gibson has to say as it is important, but let’s also embrace the positive things in these new technologies as well, and most of all, with guidance and clearly setting the boundaries, trust that we have brought up our children to be sensible individuals.  Unless we put a microchip in their brains and cameras in their eyes, we can’t be with them everywhere they go in life.

 

Hmmmmm….now there’s a thought!

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The multiple faces of Media Literacy

I attended the informative “Your Media, Your Tools” dissemination event at Leicester’s De Montfort University run by the Community Media Association (CMA) last Friday. It included a presentation by Ofcom talking about their media literacy agenda, as well as radio and video groups from across the UK showcasing the results of their involvement in CMA’s media literacy project.

It has always struck me just how slippery the term ‘media literacy’ is, with a different emphasis depending on the agenda of the person talking about it. I used to get frustrated by what I saw as a watering down of the notion, wanting the literacy aspect to acknowledged as the critical pedagogy that resides in community media activity, and that was me wearing my personal agenda on my sleeve. I now feel however it would be more useful to slow my judgement and analyse each different face of media literacy in its own right, as each interpretation of the term contains pragmatic, theoretical and/or ideological meaning for each different type of user, so that is worth looking at without undue dismissal.

In future articles I will be exploring the idea of media literacy in the nine predominant guises that I have seen it discussed within the community media sector, media education events, published research and academia. As with all identities of phenomena there is some overlap different contexts, though they will be analysed from the perspective of emphasis, and therefore argue that the identities described here are valid. Notions described in the future will be:

-  Media Literacy as media savvy
-  Media Literacy as semiotics
-  Media Literacy as creative activism
-  Media Literacy as cross-curricula engagement
-  Media Literacy as IT support
-  Media Literacy as media sector training
-  Media Literacy as process
-  Media Literacy as informed media consumption and media use

Interestingly, given this fractious identity, the actual definition of media literacy itself is, with slight variations, mostly settled in a broad consensus without too much debate. It is the interpretation of the accepted definition which is the cause of the majority of debate. Even though there is not one single definition, in loose terms it is widely acknowledged as being about;

- the right to have access to media platforms & tools;
- the need for people to be empowered to understand the media and its ever changing nuances;
- the ability to create media communications if so desired.

Some example of this are;

Ofcom’s definition is; “the ability to access, understand and create communications in a variety of contexts.” They acknowlegde they are mostly concerned with media literacy as applied to digital technology and that people should be able to use the equipment to get the most out of it. (Media Literacy as Media Savvy / Media Literacy as IT support).

According to The Media Literacy Task Force:
“If people are to participate fully at work or in their community, or communicate effectively with family, friends and colleagues globally, or consume media intelligently they need to be media savvy. They need to understand how media works and to feel comfortable questioning what they watch and read. They need a sense of who knows or owns what, and to what extent what you see is really what you get. And, very importantly, they need to become confident in using and exploiting the possibilities of new devices and media channels.”
(Media Literacy as Media Savvy / Media Literacy as informed media consumption and media use / Media Literacy as semiotics / Media Literacy as IT support)

The Center for Media Literacy‘s view is: the ability to communicate competently in all media forms as well as to access, understand, analyze, evaluate and participate with powerful images, words and sounds that make up our contemporary mass media culture. Indeed, we believe these skills of media literacy are essential for both children and adults as individuals and as citizens of a democratic society.
(Media Literacy as Media Savvy / Media Literacy as creative activism / Media Literacy as process)

At some point in the not-to-distant future I will expand on these ideas in a case by case basis in future blog articles, and also write this up as a full academic referenced paper.

Until then, thanks for popping by. Comments always welcome.

Shawn

Will the real Renaissance please stand up?

 

Culture Secretary James Purnell says in today’s Guardian (5 Jan 08);

“Community arts in many ways can be excellent in a different way from, say, the National Theatre. But what I wouldn’t say is, ‘We’ll tolerate average work because it happens to be in a particular location.”

In another part of the article the MP says, “If any part of our cultural sector is substandard, it’s not worth subsidising. Garbage in, garbage out.”

The article, by John Harris continues;

“He (Purnell) talks about ‘engagement with communities’ and the need ‘to spread the best culture around the whole country’. The (Sir Brian) McMaster review outlines the need for some big institutions – the Royal Ballet springs to mind -to get out more; the new idea, Purnell says, is ‘touring in a strategic way”.

The McMaster policy review’s official title is Supporting Excellence in the Arts and will be published by the government next week. Purnell is an enthusiastic advocate of the review telling the Guardian, “When Brian talks about the potential for a New Renaissance, I don’t think that is an overstatement. It’s exactly true.”

The idea of a renaissance in the arts is an in interesting one, but also problematic in the terms of how Purnell describes it. To dictate from the top-down the approach that the renaissance will take goes against the very nature of reactionary rebelliousness that lay at the heart of 15th Century Italian forerunner that Purnell and McMaster are prophesising. The heretic notions such as; the fact that the earth travels around the sun; the ‘right’ to publish and own personal Bibles translated into native languages other than Latin; and the realisation that the monarchy and clergy were not divine and citizens were equals with rights in society, were aspects of the anti-establishment feelings of the time that gave rise to the renaissance period. The leaders of the day were quick to captalise on the turning tides and cleverly appropriated renaissance ideas to suit their own ends in the tense relationships between church, state and nations, but the fact remains that the reformation spirit of the times were underground and punishable by death for treason and heresy.

Radical alternative media was at the centre of this spark for new thinking. As James Curran describes in ‘Communication, power and social order’ in Culture, Society and the Media (1988 – page 218);

“In a more general sense, the rise of the manuscript and subsequently of the printed book also fostered the development of an alternative culture. Although the bulk of scribal and early print output was in Latin and religious in content, the production and dissemination of vernacular texts helped to foster a parallel secular culture based on national languages and dialects, drawing upon indigenous cultural traditions.”

So, what is the refomation thinking in the UK today that this new Purnell/McMaster renaissance will follow? Well I would say that it will only come within a hair’s breadth of being a renaissance if it is led by the citizens not the leaders, and certainly broader than National Theatre and the Royal Ballet. It is all well and good for the financial gate-keepers of culture like James Purnell to say that ‘average’ and ‘substandard’ work will not be tolerated, as they want value for money. And I would also argue that cultural creative endevevours should be of a high standard to marry content with style, but as Purnell describes it is to see a renaissance as a glorified cultural tour, brining quality works to the people. As noble as that may, be, that is no renaissance, that is still a form of cultural imperialism.

A true renaissance cannot and will not be brokered by leaders or gatekeepers. It will be in places anarchic and in other places passivley (and maybe ignorantly) building on the shoulders
of those anarchic pioneers. At present the early (and I mean early!) signs of any new renaissance is in Web 2.0, in illigal counter-cultural activities such as graffiti, and also (of course) in the activities of the home bedroom music makers, film makers and other DIY producers of modern culural artefacts. Community & Independent media producers are the Galilleos and Martin Luthers to Mass Media’s Papacy, Emperors, and, ahem, Murdochs. But the 15th Century renaissance didn’t effect and influence the arts. It changed governments, influenced religions and shaped the cultural and moral values in the Western worlds. As idealist as we may be today, we still have a long way to go.

Are we actually in the midst of a new renaissance? It would be great if we were, but alas I guess I will never know as that surely is not the within the grasp of any of is to really know. We will be long gone and in a few centuries time it will be left to the historians of the day to define our ra for us. We are too close to recognise a renaissance if it came and gave us a lapdance! It’s also probably arrogant of us to even try define our endevevours in terms of refomations, renaissances, etc, but when people are passionate about what they do, what they believe in and the connection between the two, then, with feet firmly on the ground (like Galillio), it is good to think big.

I agree with James Purnell when he says, “Why shouldn’t we be that ambitious?”

Yes, as long as we are not attempting to shape others’ ambitions for them.

© Shawn Sobers 2007