Category: Lea Schlanger

In my last post, my questions centered around what actions could be taken by the institution of journalism to reverse the downward spiral it seems to be taking.

The first question I asked was what are other potential revenue outlets that could support the industry besides advertising. Right now, ads are the bandage that is protecting journalism. However, that bandage is not promoting healing and eventually it will fall off. I want to say another avenue would be to streamline journalism and make it a purely an online entity. However, while that might increase the number of journalists it would also take away the jobs associated with the “atom” side of journalism. While I brought this up in class yesterday, looking at it again I can see a more over arching problem within; and this can be applied to other industries as well. Part of the trade-off for moving to the internet to cut cost is some of those cut costs come from jobs that are required in the world of atoms, but not the world of bits. For journalism, it is the printing portion. Another example is the music industry. The internet provides so much exposure for artists that recording labels are essentially obsolete. I doubt these are the only areas suffering from this issue, so maybe instead of asking how to financially support the journalism industry a better question would be where those who would lose there jobs are going to find work. Instead of stalling the flood, perhaps it would be better to run ahead and secure a position stop the flood entirely. Instead of focusing on finding money, focus on creating jobs for those who will need them and establishing the training they will need.

The next question I asked was more of a what if scenario about what journalism would look like if profit was not the driving force. I am not asking people to look back and reminisce about “the good old days”. Instead I am asking people to look back and see what has occurred in journalism since the sixties to gather knowledge that could potentially be used to help the industry today and in the future. For example, how were newspapers et al. financially structured in the past and how has that changed over the years; are there any changes that are no longer needed or are only benefiting a few? I do not have the answers to this nor any knowledge regarding this situation. This is just an example of something to look at.

My final question regarded the potential coordination between local blogs and larger news organizations. According to the article, there are some partnerships in the works. Since the internet has made it possible to obtain hyperlocal news, these partnerships show promise. Local journalist can provide local news while larger organizations with more access can focus on more national and international news. The downside is this scenario could not be supported like Wikipedia. Eventually local journalists would need to be paid. However, if there is some promise then this is worth looking into and experimenting with. Risks will need to be taken to get the full story of the situation. I presume that is what journalists are told in school.

According to State of the Media.org, there is much strife in the realm of journalism. Deciding where journalism is going and how to pay for it are constant questions. Here are some of my own to add to that list.

A current solution to the revenue question is to have advertisers pay for ad space, but many readers ignore ads which reduces the value of that ad space. What are some other potential revenue sources to explore? Advertising just seems to be the easy default and there is only so much ad space that those companies need.

My next question is about the affects the bottom line has had on the journalism institution. Yes there has been a major loss of profits over the years, but where would the profits have been if news had been focusing on relaying the news rather than making a larger profit? Perhaps the news industry is viewed not so differently than the music industry in that people are willing to support journalists, but not the corporations that employ them.

The report also touches on community news sites in relation to major news outlets. What potential collaborations could be made between the two outlets to helps support journalism in general?

I stand by my initial quote, “What an exciting time to be alive”. We are in the middle of a transitional milestone in human history and our actions and decisions of today will determine our course over the next few decades. I enjoy watching the new innovations that are happening everyday as people come to understand the changes around them and choose to take control of them. However, after hearing the concerns of my fellow classmates regarding the future it is clear that there is a need to step out and examine the flow of events rather than be swept away by them.

For my questions this week, the overarching theme was what other options are out there waiting to be explored regarding the integration of Free. Compared to some of the other books we have read this semester, Anderson’s Free really helped bring to light some of the innovations being made and clarified some of the mysteries surrounding the success of certain companies (Google, Wikipedia, etc). While these are good strategies that can be replicated and used to employ some of the population, it is not likely that there will be an equal competitor to those running the show now. Not every Google copy will become a multi-billion dollar corporation; they will probably hover around the 100,000 dollar area which is still a pretty decent salary depending on the scale of the operation.

Unfortunately, many of the strategies in Anderson’s book require training and a skill set that many in the current working population do not have. The push from the Obama Administration to increase our society’s math and science skills reflects this concern. Another part of these strategies that concerns people is that many take an existing market, position, function, etc and either reduce the number of people that are required to perform the job or it has been outsourced to the millions of people willing to voluntarily do that job. I think what people are looking for is news of new corporations hiring people who do not need computer skills or only need a basic understanding of technology. It is much easier to design a building when you know what the land for the base looks like. If something like that can happen I think that will aleviate some of the fears people have, which will increase confidence in the market, thus pushing us forward again.

Despite my concerns, I still believe that there are still a lot of untapped possibilities which may hold the answers we are looking for. There are currently around 200 states in the world and dozens of cultures within each of those countries. The world is nearing a population of 7 billion people. There is no way all possibilities have been explored and more are on the way as we move forward. The flood has already happened; but rather than be swept away we can control which direction the flow will take.

As my social/behavioral science teacher would say, “What an exciting time to be alive”. The world around us is changing in various ways and those who can grasp how it is changing are going to be the dominant power. After reading Free, it is clear that the implementation of the concept of free is one of the major forces causing change across the board.

That being said, what aspects of free have we as a society not investigated that could pull us out of the panic phase of integrating free into society?

Many of us have been over seas and know various features of other countries. So, what implementations of free has anyone experienced in those countries that could potentially be implemented in the U.S. with or without tweaking?

According to Marx’s definition of communism, the workers own the means of production as well as produce the product. As part of his criticism of capitalism, he felt that this was the ultimate outcome of capitalism after the workers became tired of having their workmanship under valued. Is it possible that the some of the tenets of Marxism could be utilized as a foundation for how to let the internet grow? Arguably the beginnings of the “workers revolt” can be found around the internet realm  so perhaps it would be worth returning to Marx for answers to the question of free.

As indicated by Jenkin’s article, people inspired by various forms of media have emulated their role models in attempts to follow in their footsteps a.k.a. amateurization. Just off the top of my head, here are 3 sites that host the works of various fans and fandoms:

Fanfiction.net

Youtube

Deviant Art

My question to this is what opportunities will be available to those who post their work on the internet since more people will have a chance to see it? Or is the quantity of content so vast that the chances of being “discovered” are equal to what they were before the internet?

After reading You Are Not a Gadget I have a question similar to Lanier: Where are the virtual reality gadgets? According to his book, Janier was working with VR in the 1980s and that was 30 years ago. Maybe we are working toward VR though just in a different way. In the gaming community, the big stories are centering around Microsoft and Sony as they release their competitors in the motion gaming movement. If we can get a computer to respond to these physical movements, is it possible true VR will be around in 10-20 years? Maybe 30?

If virtual reality does come around, what affects will we see in society? I like Janier’s idea of telegigging. After working out the finer details it could provide an answer to my first questions. Also, by that point we could be closer to virtual reality. Cyberspace is so passe.

1. The whole first section of the Wealth of Networks is essentially an argument for the application of social production to our current institutions. So, if this trend continues to grow what impact could we see economically? As great as it would be for people to work together for nothing, our economy still requires the exchange of currency to function. Is this potentially a step towards a true socialistic or communistic society? (I mean a real communist society not a dictatorship proclaiming the values of communism).

2. What other arenas could social production be applied and will our cultural values allow the supplication of incentive production to social production?

3. What if social production was incorporated into the developing world? Right now, the developing world is trying to keep up with the developed world by becoming like us. This has caused various amounts of strife. So, what if they incorporated a social production method into their economic system? It might blend better with their individual cultures. For example, China is a very community based culture so I could see social production working well in that part of the world.

To begin, I have no idea why my last question was cut off. I think I wanted to ask what methods the researchers for those studies were using. I am presuming that they used surveys or interviews. However, I am concerned about the phrasing of the questions put towards the participants. It is possible that these questions would be a good example of agenda setting in the media, or in this case media research. Actually, this example works in the media too. After all, many news organizations do polls on and off and I am sure other media researchers try to collect data that reflects what they want to reflect. I would actually like to see in class some examples of studies done on the diction utilized in various stories or across news stations like what we did in class today.

Speaking of which, there was something I wanted to say in class regarding the NyTimes headline G.O.P. Insurgents. Everyone was focusing on the work insurgents. However, the article calls the Tea Party G.O.P. Insurgents. Therefore, perhaps what they were trying to get at was that the Tea Party is like the Iraqi insurgents in that they are a more extremist portion of the larger group. After all, Tea Party candidates ran on the G.O.P primary ticket and the major news organization like to talk about the Tea Party and G.O.P. within the context of each other.

Perhaps it is just another form of propaganda. Of course to call it propaganda files under the agenda setting theory as well as this underlying notion by the dominant paradigm that the mass media has a major effect on society. Although, it is not just the dominant paradigm, but also the alternative paradigm that notes the wrongs in mass media. This leads me to ask the question again, “why does propaganda have to be negative and hold its negative connotation?” I suppose it is because the purpose of propaganda is to persuade people. However, what does that say about public service announcements? The purpose of those are to encourage “appropriate” behavior which classifies them as propaganda.

Enough about propaganda for now though. For now the argument will just circle around until something happens to break it. At this point I would like to address the last question I had at the beginning of the week. This question was about media dependency and how the more we use it the more dependent we become on it. I am a fan of various medias, but I find it hard to argue that media dependency is not a current or future problem. Now that I think about it though, arguing about media dependency is pointless. Just think about every technological innovation that has happened since humans were around. We have become so dependent on these innovations that media dependency is just our newest one. After all, imagine trying to live without electricity or fire. At this point we probably cannot.

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Videogames: More Than a Game

“I’m making games about things that I have personally found interesting and want to communicate.”- Shigeru Miyamoto (Mario Creator), Kotaku interview

Since 1977, Miyamoto has been hard at work in the videogame industry; his most famous creation being the iconic videogame character Mario. I chose to start with this quote from him because it reflects the theme behind one of the major communication theories; namely that of Walter Fisher. According to Fisher “all meaningful communication is a form of storytelling or giving a report of events and so human beings experience and comprehend life as a series of ongoing narratives, each with their own conflicts, characters, beginnings, middles, and ends” (Wikipedia; (I will find the real source late; please do not comment)). Fisher’s statement is known as narrative paradigm theory. When narrative paradigm theory is applied to Miyamoto’s quote, it leads me to question if others in the videogame industry have something to say with the videogames they have created over the years.

I am a gamer. Hence I have played through a number of games and I can say that my favorite games usually contain a story of some kind. With regards to story telling, videogames are no different than films, novels, or even art. All of these mediums and more have something to tell those who consume, view, analyze, etc whether it is something about the artist, society, the work itself, or any number of things. Despite all of the rich content within; anytime a game makes the news, it is usually because either a) there is something controversial around it (Grand Theft Auto: San Andres, Bully) or b) there was an act of violence that was somehow connected to a videogame (Columbine). What I do not see is a review of the new art style a game is utilizing (Okami, Shadow of the Colossus) or an analysis of the characters or the story being told in the game.

There is so much that goes into a videogame that they are essentially more than just “games”. However, it does not appear that society can get past the word game when the topic of video games comes up.  However, if one were to strip down a videogame to its bare essentials, it could arguably be considered an interactive movie. Thus, for my project, I will be applying Fisher’s narrative paradigm theory to videogames and see what stories are trying to be conveyed through them.

To complete this project, at least two methods will be applied the first being literature review on what research has already been done regarding the treatment of videogames as communication mediums. When I say communication, I mean what message it is determined that the game in question was conveying, be it positive or negative.

In addition to the literature review, there will also be a survey distributed to voluntary participants. While withholding the true nature of what the content of the survey is, participants will be asked to analyze a synopsis of the plot and characters of a novel, play, movie, or videogame; the details will also be withheld. When asked to analyze these synopses, participants will be instructed to identify if the synopsis is from a novel, play, movie, or videogame and, if they can, to identify title of the medium selected. Participants will also be asked to pick out any underlying themes, messages, etc that they see in the synopsis. The responses to this survey will be coded and then analyzed to look for trends regarding how the synopses were identified and how the participants interpreted what they read.

I wonder. Based on the chapters for this week, it sounds like from the get go mass media has been the target of criticism regarding the negative affects on society. Even now I still see signs of media being analyzed in a negative light. Part of the chapter specifically focuses on propaganda. So, my question is why propaganda is viewed in this negative light? One of my other teachers said that propaganda is neither good or bad, but there is still a negative connotation attached. So, why?

According to chapter 6, the more we use media, the more dependent we become on it. Yet, despite the threat of dependency our society incorporates more and more technology into our lives. When do we reach the point where media dependency becomes a major issue and if we have to revert, will we be able to?

I am looking at the section on third-person effect right now and I am not sure if the examples they use really prove their theory or not. It seems like all the of the people they asked about various subjects said they would not be affected by something, but others would. Therefore, what methods were

How would you determine which observation method would be best suited to gather data from social media site users?

If the target population of one’s research only makes up a majority of the total population, then does that immediately make the valid when applied to all groups?

If Normative theory focuses on what the ideal would be, why is it worth pursuing? Wouldn’t a combination of Interpretative and Critical theory be more valuable since it would combine knowledge of the present with critiques on how to make improvements for the future?