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Media Studies Posts

Graduate Thesis: DONE

Graduate Thesis Prepped for mailing

Sunday night I finished my graduate thesis for the Master of Arts in Media Studies at The New School. Yesterday I received the final signature I needed from my second reviewer. Today I left it in the capable (I hope) hands of FedEx, expecting it to arrive at the thesis office by Monday morning.

Feels good to be done. I’m making plans for some work I want to do for myself. But I wanted to take a minute and note that the faculty and program were wonderful. I learned a lot and enjoyed my time in classes. The administration side could use some work.

Since I’ve gotten this a few times, The New School is a real school. It is not a for-profit. In fact, The New School was founded in 1919 in New York City and offered refuge to German scholars fleeing Nazi persecution in the 1930s during the war. Since then, The New School has continued to expand its divisions, program offerings, and research subjects. It has a world-renowned design school, Parsons The New School for Design, as well as highly regarded divisions for Social Research, Jazz and Contemporary Music, Drama, and Public Engagement (my division).

Find out more about each division’s history.

Ch-ch-changes

Me wearing my "Never not working" shirt.

In mere weeks I will have finished my graduate thesis (entitled Our Foreign Selves: Mapping Transnational Media in a Real-Time World), been hooded, and hold a freshly minted Master of Arts in Media Studies. With that expensive piece of paper comes something even more valuable to me: Time.

Naturally, I am already looking at how to fill said newly gained time. One thing I am considering is launching a current events commentary site that deals with media issues and representation. It’ll attempt to have little-to-no political bias and a whole lot of calling out of the absurd and dangerous. In a way, it would be my little addition to ongoing media literacy awareness.

I am toying with the idea of creating a supplementary podcast that deals with similar issues from different angles.

Also maybe a food blog.

And a travel site.

And do more web development.

Thoughts? Concerns? Opinions? Please give me feedback.

Summer’s Almost Over (Almost)

Media Studies Books

I realize that there is still about a month left of summer for me, but I feel like it’s about time I start getting back into the routine of schoolwork and thinking about my thesis. At the end of August I’ll be starting my last credits in my MA and that’s kind of exciting. Only nine credit hours remain in my degree, but they will need to be completed over the course of two semesters, leaving a lot of time for thesis preparation and writing.

I think I am pretty fortunate to be working with the two advisors I have. They are media scholars whom I look up to and have learned a lot from in the courses I’ve taken under them. Their international perspectives will really help me stay extra-America in my thought processes, and in greater ways than I think any of the full-time principal faculty at The New School is able to. I’ve found that a lot of New Yorkers are really New York-centric in their thought… and I need be thinking globally.

So. Now that we’ve caught up on Doctor Who, and Top Gear is winding down the summer series, and there’s not much else to distract me, I think it’s time to start reading. A lot. I am devoting the next three weeks to reading books, journal articles, and essays. This fall, my thesis proposal will happen.

Blather Fatigue

Russian Propaganda Poster

blather |ˈblaðər
noun
long-winded talk with no real substance.

As I sit and watch the tweets roll by in my Twitter client I am frustrated–and today especially, for some reason–by the lack of substance. Don’t get me wrong, I love Twitter. I love it for the relationships I’ve made and maintained and the community that it builds. I am totally sick, on the other hand, of the lack of new thought in my field.

I work in higher education web marketing. That basically means I am an over-worked, under-paid marketer who makes the best of what the underfunded school can provide. I am okay with that and have been for the past five years.

What I am not okay with is how easily we lose the human aspect of what we do. Eventually we all start talking like professional marketing salespeople, blathering on about the latest social media tool, hitting all the major buzzwords. It’s gotten to the point where I flush with near-disgust when I see people saying the same things they have for the past three years; when conference topics show that we still don’t seem to get the very context we’re living in.

William & Kate & Globalized Media

Crowds of well wishers approach the forecourt of Buckingham Palace

photo from The British Monarchy on Flickr

I live in America. I grew up in America. I work and communicate everyday, mostly, with Americans. It was really interesting to me to see all of the vitriol regarding US news media coverage of the royal wedding in my online social circles. People are angry. Conservatives are angry that news media are covering the wedding at all, while liberals are angry that there’s so much coverage everywhere.

Looking at it, I think there are a few main issues popping up that most people haven’t been educated on. And some that are just base prejudices against anything not in our country.

Conversion==Community

Crowd at AgapeFest 2009

Conversion is one of those terms that gets thrown around  a lot in marketing and being in Higher Ed doing all that kind of work a lot, I hear it all the time. I even think in those terms to some extent. But while in many business settings conversion is thought about in terms of sale, I think we are seeing a strong shift in what a conversion creates apart from that new lead or income.

For eight years I was apart of a medium-sized music festival in Southern Illinois and for five of those I was directly responsible for a lot of the marketing and online promotion for it – or training those who did those jobs. Music fests tend to draw a certain age demographic and ours, being a Christian music festival, drew kids from junior high up to high school. During my tenure with the event, social media began to take hold in the mass market and become a viable channel for engaging our fans.

I was kind of the first one to grab ahold of this. We adopted a blog/news format for our site, started active community building on Twitter, pushed a Facebook group and then page, generated photos on Flickr in the form of a group… I generated a lot of community. And that only grew and the students who ran the festival started using participatory media to engage our fans.

Today I think in terms of what really happened there. Sure, the major conversion point might have been when a ticket was sold. They were locked in. But what about the miniature pieces of converting that happened throughout?

End of Summer Term

Installing CS5 Master Collection

Wow. Tomorrow is the last day of my summer term at The New School and I am worn out. I’ve had two semi-intense projects this week and they are due today or tomorrow.

One is a mobile site for micro narratives and will launch tonight (after I get the normal browser site styled up). The second is a database of the self which I still have to create a WordPress template for. But the idea is simple, so it shouldn’t take too long.

I’m also in the process of get CS5 Master Collection installed on my work MacBook Pro. I’m kind of excited to jump in and work with it.

On top of that, I am REALLY looking forward to a weekend with no school. I need to catch up on some of this lost sleep, as well as work on a couple of projects.

Post-graduate Ideas

I’ve been starting to look at possibilities for post graduate research. I still have a good bit of time before I finish my Master’s (over a year), but I’m a planner. And so is my wife.

I really want to do my doctorate in the UK and think I have found a perfect programme at the University of Sussex. I need to do a bit more looking into the programme and see if it is right for me. But I really like the prospects. The uni offers a DPhil and have a lot of faculty working in media and cultural fields. Seems perfect.

Part of this exploration is to help me focus on what my final thesis will be for my MA. I have a couple of interesting ideas that I may follow, but knowing where I want to be for my doctorate will help me develop a strong framework for study.

If there’s one thing I know about myself is that I need boundaries to get things done. Whether that is in the form of deadlines or ideology — I need some structure if I am going to accomplish my goals.

The thought of moving to the UK in a few years is super exciting… Not to mention the thought of contributing actively and, hopefully, greatly to my field.

UMS: Mock Thesis Proposal

ABSTRACT

The convergence of media must, at some point, hit a critical mass.  The point where convergence becomes a non-issue and new media cultures become ingrained into the everyday persona is where we are heading.  This project will analyze the work being done on the fringes of participatory culture and suggest ways in which digital worlds will interact seamlessly with the embodied world.  Cultural norms, politics, economics, and societal conventions will be affected by the new New Media.

To read the proposal, please contact me.

UMS: Literature Review

In preparing for this literature review, I took into account an area of Media Studies that I engage in on a daily basis: Digital Participatory Culture.  Many scholars have addressed this new cultural form through journal entries, books and television specials.  This review will cover the key works related to the topic as well as the active thought processes of media theorists and researchers affected by the overarching key ideals.

As one digs into the current literature, a common theme arises in nearly every journal article or book.  The idea that today’s audiences now actively create and use content at the same time pulses through the veins of the participatory culture and seeks to define it. If we start at the beginning, it seems widely agreed upon that Henry Jenkins has set the stage for this field in his book Convergence Culture: Where Old and New Media Collide (2006).  Indeed, the majority of authors reviewed for this study reference Jenkins in one way or another.

In his book Jenkins (2006) notes that, “Convergence represents a cultural shift as consumers are encouraged to seek out new information and make connections among dispersed media content (3).”  He argues that in the past consumers were seen as passive and expected to be passive, but today this has changed dramatically. In some ways consumers are expected to do more legwork for their content.

Are You Media Literate?

Are You Media Literate?

The semester is ending (I’m excited about this), and that means that I have lots of homework and lots of projects — or at least I did, this past week. My favorite course this semester has been Media Literacy, and the final for this was a project to give an overview of what media literacy is. I decided to stick with my skills (as well as pick up a few new techniques) and create an interactive web piece.

It was fun! I’d love to hear what you think of it. You’ll need a modern browser (Safari, Firefox 3+, or Chrome) and I’d suggest a normal screen resolution with a minimum of 1024px wide.

Check it out.

Re-blog: Brad King – Shut Your Digital Native Piehole (52 of 90)

Some insightful observations. Why should we teach media literacy? Right here is a good reason.

These children have grown up with digital technologies, but in a very limited way. They know a few things quite deeply, but they – as we did at their age – have no great appreciation of the subtleties of the tools. The expanse and use of the tools. The possibilities for tools that don’t yet exist.

They can push buttons, but they can’t make them.

Brad King: – Shut Your Digital Native Piehole (52 of 90).

Definitely poignant. How do we increase the literacy of kids? This is why we need media and digital citizenry taught in school. Kids grow up with computers, but they don’t know how to really use all the tech that’s out there. There is also Henry Jenkins’ position of ethical standards not being learned in an always-on world. Being native doesn’t equal being literate. And literacy has changed.

The Lost Art of Sharing

Where do the lines stand? We now live in an age where borrowing, copying and reusing creative works is the rule. From music remix culture to the more current trend in lifting authored written works for use in new publications, the boundaries of fair use and appropriation are blurred through the lens of this new participatory culture.

As the debate stands, there are quite a few sides to join. In this essay we will examine the scope of the copyleft movement and identify the beneficial aspects of adopting a Creative Commons-style approach to appropriation. In doing so, we will gain support from original copyright provisions in the United States Constitution as well as current real-life examples of the benefits. In appropriation of others’ works, it is important to respect the copyright holder’s rights. At the same time, in order for creative culture to progress, creators must be open to allowing their works to be referenced, used, and incorporated into new art forms.

Modern copyright law is a far cry from its roots, and provisions on fair use are not so fair. The United States Constitution declares,

“The Congress shall have Power…To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries; (Article I, Section 8, emphasis mine)”

Today, copyright provisions last too long and in turn stifle the “Progress of Science and useful Arts.” In 1998 the time limit became the life of the author (or creator) plus 70 years with the passing of the Sonny Bono Copyright Extension Act. As Marc Garcelon (2009) points out, this is far longer than the “original 14-year limit that copyright established in 1790 (p. 1308).” In doing so, Congress further blurred the distinction between ideas and expression that Thomas Jefferson originally intended in writing the constitution (p. 1308).

Images of the Other

Hipster City

Seen from a historical perspective, examples [of the Other] abound: think about the cold war and the mutual demonization between USA and Russia. Or take the anthropological literature which is replete with examples of aboriginal people either dehumanized and treated as animals or idealized as specifically pure, being-in-touch-with-nature, unspoiled creates (see Gaugin above). Whatever the image and values projected onto the other, it reflects usually not just a mirror image of our own identity but constitutes something that essentially withdraws from our grasp.

In this exercise of examining “the Other”, I’ve chosen three subjects – an Individual, a Group/Sub-culture, and an Action. The goal is for these to be foreign to me either negatively or positively. I attempted to choose subjects that affect me in way, which will be explained with the photographic representations I’ve chosen. The first step is to identify these subjects.