Com/Media Theory Exam Review/Questions

Exam is here.

Women In The Director's Chair - Film Series @ JCU

The JCU MEDIA AND COMMUNICATION SPEAKER SERIES, The Communications  and the Italian and modern languages departments together with istituto luce/cinecitta - filmitalia PRESENTS:

Women in The Director's Chair: First Time Italian Women Directors

showcasing the debut features by a new generation of Italian women directors.

Don't Miss the First Screening, Monday October 13 @7pm in the Aula Magna. The Director, Alina Marazzi, will be present at the event to introduce the film and take questions from the audience.

Beneath the cobblestones, the beach: Theory, Situationism and Cultural Resistance

Guy Debord - Report on the Construction of Situations and on the International Situationist Tendency's Conditions of Organization and Action (1957)
Hans Magnus Enzensberger - Constituents of a Theory of the Media (1970)
Extra:
John Downing - Radical Media in Italy

If you are interested in reading more of the Situationist International's documents, manifestos and screeds (they are always fun, engaging and inspiring) you can find an excellent selection in the anthology edited by Tom McDonough and published by MIT Press titled Guy Debord and the Situationist International: Texts and Documents. Modern day situationists have made the book available here. Of course all of the Situationist documents are also available online at the Situationist Online Archive which is a true treasure trove of material. There are many other sources for Situationist materials freely available online, a direct result of the 'proto-free culture' approach the Situationist International always promoted.

Welcome To Fall 2014

On The Media Bits

(click on image for readability)

Some interesting features on this week's On The Media as usual courtesy of the good people of WNYC and the listeners (like you) who live there.

An interview with James Boyle on his new book, The Public Domain:Enclosing the Commons of Mind. See previous post on Boyle and his chapter on mashups.


The insanity of "terms of service agreements" that we all accept without ever possibly having the time to read them. Did you know that they turn us all into prosecutable hackers?



A reflection on the ways in which Indian media covered the Mumbai attacks. If you are looking for an analysis and an image of a particularly complex media system with a characterizing history look no further.


On a related note, the role of Twitter and other social media in reporting the crisis in India. Be sure to look at Gaurav Mishra's Gauravonomics Blog where he reflects on "The Role of Citizen Journalism in the Aftermath of the 11/26 Mumbai Terror Attack"
The flipside of course is how the attackers used an array of commercial technologies --from Blackberries to GPS navigators to anonymous e-mail accounts-- to organize their deadly attacks.

Study Practice

For the students in the mass media/mass comm classes, check out last week's On The Media segment about

"Small, web-only, not-for-profit newsrooms [that] are springing up around the country and scooping much larger dailies with nuts-and-bolts reporting. Voice of San Diego, for example, has managed to uncover a handful of government scandals in the past few years with a staff of only ten. Executive editor Scott Lewis believes this may be the future of journalism."

Apart from it's general interest, the interview with Scott Lewis offers a number of questions and brings up a number of issues that you could use to prepare for the end of the semester exams specifically as review for material we covered up to mid-term. Also, read the New York Times article that is related to the audio piece, the title speaks for itself: Web Sites That Dig for News Rise as Watchdogs.
If you can follow all the implications in the article and in Lewis' reflections on how, for example, the Voice of San Diego is operating as a non-profit public/community media source and follow the many references to the institutional media issues we have talked about (ie. how VoSD can do things other commercial news organizations can't) I think you are at a very good point in your 'review' of pre-midterm stuff.

Listen:

What We Watch and How We Watch It

This week's issue of The New York Times Magazine is their yearly Screens Issue. While usually dedicated to Hollywood, the cinema and theatrical exhibition, they figured that

"when you watch moving pictures these days, a theater is the last place you are likely to be. Cable, YouTube, DVDs, DVR, news briefs in the elevator and cartoons on your cellphone — through a variety of media, we now consume fragmented narratives on multiple screens. From a 16-second panda-sneeze video to 60 straight hours of “The Wire,” this is the way we watch now." Permalink here.

Don't miss the "Immersions" video by photographer Robbie Cooper; pictures in this post are stills taken from it.
Unfortunately The NYTimes is still anchored to an old-media paradigm so no embedding of their videos; at least that I know of. If anyone knows how to do this please email.
Also included: how to sell soap in a post-TV world; the year's most memorable 'clips'; the Netflix algorithm that monitors you while suggesting cool movies and a reflection on the sit-com as a TV-genre in transition.

Readings Recap For Everyone

With the end of the semester fast approaching here is what for most of you will be the last onslaught of readings. To keep things tidy and orderly, given also the number of posts this past week, you can click on the links below if you want to be taken to the reading assignment specifically related to your class. Otherwise just browse below. Enjoy.

Advanced Communication Theory
Race & Gender
Spectatorship
New Media

Advanced Comm Theory Readings

Jostein Gripsrud from Understanding Media Culture
Chapter 4 - Semiotics
Chapter 5 - Hermeneutics
(including discussion on genre and melodrama specifically)

Fredric Jameson - Postmodernism and Consumer Society

Media Semiotics: Cinema

Semiotics: Introduction + Cinema Chapters from Media Semiotics by Jonathan Bignell

Also, please return to Adorno's "Culture Industry" article for this and next week's discussion.

Product Placement

"What Tina Fey Would Do For A SoyJoy" from New York Magazine. Something to complement and update the debate around product placement/integration.

Why TV is not our fault...

Eileen Meehan on how the media and the rating services blame the victims + some random articles on audience assessment and its problems...

Meehan Chapter 1
Meehan Chapter 2
Article Compilation

More Bourdieu

Here are two brief commentary articles on Bourdieu's "On Television"

Imre Szeman, Review of Bourdieu's On Television

Glen Whelan, Appropriat(e)ing Wavelength: On Bourdieu's On Television

Hernan Vera, Review of Bourdieu's On Television (accessible through JSTOR from campus)

Andreea Deciu, Review of Bourdieu's On Television (accessible through JSTOR from campus)

Muxtape R.I.P.?

"I talked to a lot of very smart lawyers and other people whose opinions on the matter I respected, trying to gain a consensus for Muxtape’s legality. The only consensus seemed to be that there was no consensus. I had two dozen slightly different opinions that ran the gamut from “Muxtape is 100 per cent legal and you’re on solid ground,” to “Muxtape is a cesspool of piracy and I hope you’re ready for a hundred million dollar lawsuit and a stint at Rikers.”"

Read the story of Muxtape. Sasha Frere Jones on his New Yorker blog comments on the affair. It ends: "Can you name ten good things the R.I.A.A. has done for music? Five? Three?" Well...can you?

The R.I.A.A. is, of course, the infamous Recording Industry Association of America, the association that primarily takes care of the interests of the FOUR major record labels, those responsible for 81.87% (in 2006) of the music you listen to and love: Sony-BMG, Universal, EMI and Warner.

Good industry oriented story in The Village Voice this week about MySpace. The same people forcing Muxtape to close down are the ones running MySpace. There's something to be learned here.

Media Bias

For those of you reading Ed Herman's article on 'propaganda' and political economy here's something from the New York Times: Media Bashing 101.

If you are following the meta-media discussions surrounding the campaigns and the elections don't miss the On The Media podcast from WNYC. Sample this episode called 'Stick Up'. It tries to answer the question: How does a non story become the story? According to them the "answer has to do with outrageous accusations, cost free ads, back and forth squabbling" and more... Listen to Stick Up here. The On The Media website is here.