the visual and the verbiage

I have spent the last 20 minutes perusing the websites of the Daily Telegraph, SMH and the Australian. Familiar faces star across the three. From my scanning, I now know that Kylie Labouchardiere’s killer, a heartless and cold-blooded prick, has remained silent over the sweet, smiling girl’s murder. Sonny Bill Williams is back and he wants to say sorry – you can see it in his eyes – he’s still a doggy at heart. Clare Werbeloff is a true bogan legend who’s gone from witness to web star. They just went, chk chk, BOOM.

I am procrastinating. I read the headlines, take in the photo, and move on… occasionally glancing at the clock as it creeps closer to 4pm. This is what these websites are designed for – news.com.au wants me to get sucked in by the pretty pictures and flashy captions. And if, in my procrastination, that’s as far as I’m going to read, then the interplay between the image and the text is crucial to my understanding of these stories.

In her paper, Mary Macken-Horarik (God bless double-barrel last names) calls for more sophisticated analysis of this relation between the verbiage and the visual. She refers specifically to reports on asylum-seekers and the implications of the ‘Children Overboard’ affair. Recognising the increasingly ‘multimodal’ nature of modern news, she studies the ways that text and image create meaning – independently and interdependently.

Macken-Horarik uses 3 categories to analyse representations in news texts. The first is genericisation-specification: whether the main actors are referred to as identifiable individuals or members of generalised groups. In terms of verbiage (definitely word of the week), generalisations are constructed through the use of plural and collective nouns. These tend to symbolically remove the actor from our sheltered little worlds, allowing them to be more easily demonised or dehumanised. The visual can back this up by using an image to typify a certain group, rather than focussing on the individual. Take a look at the NRL stories of late. You’ll most likely find the most damning articles come with a picture of the burly players practising scrums mid-training, with a headline pertaining to “NRL players” or “league boys” as a generic group. Those trying to resuscitate Matthew Johns’ career feature close-up shots of him looking sheepish and sorry, referring to “Matty” like he’s our big brother.

Categorisation is M-H’s next tool: looking at what societal groups the actors are pigeon-holed into. Defining someone in terms of their occupation or role – functionalisation, as van Leeuwen calls it – can help build a perception of that person’s morality and values. I could refer to my dad as a lawyer, a public servant, an amateur cricketer, or simply my dad. Each one carries its own implicit values, according to the audience’s view of these different roles. News images often use ‘cultural categorisation’ to construct these stereotypes -  police uniforms and rugby jerseys carry implicit meanings about the wearer without needing to say a word. However, the interplay between these images and the accompanying verbiage can drastically alter or enhance the meaning of the whole text – so, as Macken-Horarik presses, it’s important to study both in conjunction.

Lastly, M-H looks at role allocation – whether a story’s participants are ‘agents’, doing the doing, or ‘patients’, to whom the doing is being done. What side of the doing line you stand on can change your percieved role dramatically: “representations can reallocate roles, rearrange the social relations between the partipants” (van Leeuwen, cited in Macken-Horarik p11). Reports on sexual assault allegations are a clear example. A woman can be portrayed as a victim or a provocateur, a man can be a monster, a mental case, or a victim himself. Images again play a part in constructing this role – Paris Hilton is always a perfect picture of class and glamour during Fashion Week, but when the DUIs come out she’s suddenly falling out of limos with her skirt up to her waist.

Flicking back to the Daily Telgraph site, I have just found that for some unfathomable reason, poor Kylie Labouchardiere just got replaced by the derriere of George Clooney’s new squeeze. News changes fast in this modern media world. I give in to the urge to rewatch chk chk Clare one last time… wondering what complex analysis will we soon need to apply to stories that utilise video, audio, visual AND my much-loved verbiage?

Kidding, I just want to watch her say OI BRO, you slept with ma cousin aye…

Reference:
Macken-Horarik, M. “The children overboard affair” Australian Review of Applied Linguistics 26.2 (2003) pg 1-16.

the science of signs

In 2004, I went to New Caledonia as part of my school’s relatively fruitless attempts to teach me to parlez francais. My friend and I stayed with a couple whose English was roughly as good as our French, which was entertaining, if not occasionally frustrating. (After thinking I’d successfully explained that seafood was the only thing I didn’t eat, we had a vat of fresh prawns for dinner. Score.) However, the greatest instance of misunderstanding we encountered was when I decided to buy a Che Guevara tshirt. One could easily argue against the merit of such a purchase itself - I know it has created a cult of walking oxymorons, but I’m okay with this, I find it kind of personally amusing. (Like this song.)
Anyway.. the tshirt.
Beneath the mass produced screen-print of Korda Diaz’s infamous portrait of Che are the letters KNKY. My friend and I just thought the stall owners were a bit kinky in picking a brand name. Alas! When we showed off our purchases to our homestay couple, they were evidently unimpressed, in rapid, passionate French. After 15 minutes of ‘mais, c’est le Che… er… je ne comprende pas..’ we started to piece together what all the fuss was about. KNKY = not kinky. KNKY = underground protest group advocating the guerilla-style Kanak revolution in New Caledonia: ie. kicking out the white settlers and returning to traditional Melanesian islander way of life. Pretty much, my tshirt represented colossal racial tension and an omniprescent history of violence. I sheepishly placed it in the bottom of my suitcase. Whoops.

So! Where on earth am I going with this long-winded and seemingly irrelevant anecdote??

..Signs.
Not the Mel Gibson alien movie, but Saussure’s linguistic study of semiology: the science of signs and their role in creating meaning in everyday culture. As an example, Saussure would have analysed my tshirt by dividing it into signifier (the physical tshirt with its screen-printed image), signified (the concept evoked by the tshirt) and sign (the combination of the two). Evidently, what it signified by a signifier is heavily dependant on the context of the sign. Worn in my local coffee shop, my tshirt signifies a popular – to the point of obscene overuse – image of an heroic historical figure. Worn in the streets of Noumea, it signifies dedication to a violent racial revolution. These differences are explored in the chapter by Schirato & Yell. They explain that the reading and interpretation of such signs is an ideological process; usually entailing negotiation, disagreement or conflict en route to establishing a certain ‘meaning’.

Saussure believed that meaning is relational, thus it depends upon the way ‘signifiers’ are understood in different socio-cultural contexts. He argued that languages, as ‘semiotic systems’, are abstract entities to themselves, defined by a methodical set of rules and logics. Russian linguist, Volosinov, disagrees (in true Marxist fashion). Volosinov believed that language is a messy social construct in a state of constant change and renegotiation – rather than Saussure’s idyllic meaning-making machine. The contextual relevance of words as signs means that “there are as many meanings of a word as there are contexts of its usage” (Volosinov 1986, quoted in Schirato & Yell pg 26).

[For example, my friends have adopted the verb, 'fang', and subsequently stretched its meaning to disturbing degrees. Very few care that it's initial meaning referred to the speed of Fangio the F1 driver - because 'fang it' no longer just means put the pedal to the floor. Can you fang me a glass, let's fang a coffee, I'm gonna fang it home... it's even developed a past-tense form, 'fung'. It's terribly bogan and I apologise to anyone who encounters a poor Northern Beaches soul who's been sucked into the craze.]

In terms of the media, the importance of semiotics comes with the construction of ‘politicised meanings’. As the chapter points out, there is an important relationship between a sign – be it a word, an image, a label – and the way that the subject is treated in its surrounding culture. This raises the issue of power: who controls the dominant interpretation of a sign? Of course in our modern world where media seeps from our pores, everything is a construction and everyone is fighting to get their own “real” meanings across. By discrediting and disassociating themselves from any alternatives and ‘naturalising’ the interpretation they present, media producers convince our subconscious minds that they are ‘correct’. Depending on where you are, the dominant reading of a sign might be completely different… KNKY sure ain’t kinky in New Cal.

Reference:
Schirato, T. and Yell, S. “Signs and Meaning.” Communication and Cultural Literacy: An Introduction. Sydney: Allen and Unwin, 2000, 18-33

all the world’s a stage…

Ladies and gentlemen of the worldwide web.. welcome to the show. It’s wonderful to be here, it’s certainly a thrill.. you’re such a lovely audience, we’d love to take you home with us…

Okayyy so, I’m not the Beatles. But I’m an ordinary member of the contemporary audience, meaning that I hold, by design, an inherent desire to perform and become involved in creation as well as consumption. Which brings me here, to the magical realm of blogs, where I can – to the most minor degree – become a ‘performer’ in the media world by publishing my thoughts. (It’s definitely not because I’m trying to pass a university Arts course.)

This is what Couldry percieves as the major shift that has taken place in audience behaviour in recent years: the line between performers and audiences is becoming increasingly hazy. With the proliferation of new media platforms that utilise digital technologies, audience members are now almost permanently connected to some form of media. This creates a ‘diffused audience’ (Abercrombie and Fitch, wait no. Abercrombie and Longhurst 1998). Rather than a ‘mass audience’ that relies on centralised media institutions, the diffused audience is highly mobile and individualised; and hell-bent on playing an interactive role in their media consumption. Thus, Couldry recommends a rethinking of traditional approaches to audience studies: to look beyond mere reception and response, and focus on the broader ‘media culture’ and the various roles within it. It is no longer enough to know that someone watches ‘So You Think You Can Dance’. It is now a question of whether they watch it live on free-to-air, or on pirate-streamed broadcasts on the internet, or podcasts from Channel 10′s website – downloaded and watched on an iPod on the bus… Audience dispersion requires a re-evaluation of spatial and temporal boundaries.

The changing nature of audiences has also called for a shift in power relations: in a media-drenched society, we have become around-the-clock audiences that absorb media texts almost subconsciously. This constant engagement with media has brought us closer to its production, as we are so familiar with watching performances and observing how they are constructed. The blurry line between producers and consumers poses a challenge to the ‘symbolic power’ of media institutions: its ‘capacity to intervene in the course of events, to influence the actions of others and indeed to create events, by means of the production and transmission of symbolic forms’ (Thompson 1995 – quoted in Couldry pg195). Couldry, however, postulates that institutional power may actually have been strengthened, rather than reduced:  the more deeply involved we become with media, the more important it may be to differentiate between ‘media performers’ and mere ‘audience members’.

Reality TV is an obvious example of the ease with which the ordinary person can break the boundary to ‘celebrity’. It is now quite plausible for your obese neighbour to be a well-known persona on the other side of Australia, or for your cousin’s backyard makeover to be the hot topic of conversation in a cafe. Thankyou Biggest Loser and Backyard Blitz. However, even with the rise of audience participation, we still distance ourselves from the ‘extraordinary’ worlds constructed by the media: exemplified by Couldry with the desire to visit TV sets as though they were tourist locations. I’ll admit to getting excited when my local beach makes an occasional appearance on Home and Away. You never know, I could be walking past with a coffee in the background… unknowingly trespassing on the magical pastures of Summer Bay…

Essentially, Couldry urges a re-evaluation of audience studies in adjustment with the new media world: no long a mass construct but a patchwork of individuals engaging with different media on different levels. End transmission… cue the red curtain.

Reference:
Couldry, Nick. “The Extended Audience” from Gillespie, M. (ed) Media Audiences, Open Uni Press, 2005, pg 184-196 & 210-220.

The subtle art of the modern playlister.

“The making of a good compilation is a very subtle art… many do’s and don’ts. First of all, you’re using someone else’s poetry to express how you feel. This is a delicate thing. You gotta kick off with a killer, to grab attention. Then you gotta take it up a notch, but you don’t wanna blow your wad, so you’ve gotta coooool it off a notch. There are a lot of rules…”

Nick Hornby, High Fidelity. If you haven’t read it or seen the movie… well, just do it.

Compilation tapes, mix cds, iTunes playlists.. an evolution fuelled by technology’s advances, while remaining rooted in the core human desire for personalisation. The concept of the ‘playlist’ has existed in different forms for decades, expanding its programming capabilities into different media platforms. Playlists are now in the hands of the masses, no longer tied to broadcast schedules and regimented timetables. Rizzo (“look at me I’m Sanda Dee, lousy with virginity…” ahem.) looks at the implications this shift in power has for television, through case studies of Personal Digital Recorders (PDRs), YouTube and the iPod. She explores this through the concept of ‘flow’. No longer restricted to the one-way transmission of content through broadcast media, Deleuze and Guattari perceive flow as the connections between ‘machines’ – bodies, institutions and discourses. Interruptions and breaks in connection are essential for the functionality of any ‘flow’, defined by its own unique combination of connections and processes.

PDRs produce a spatial, rather than temporal, mode of viewing, where channels become places to visit at a time suitable to the individual. They allow users to create personal playlists of the shows they are interested in, effectively giving consumers power which was previously owned by television broadcast schedulers. In this way, viewers are said to behave less like pure ‘viewers’, and more like computer users – actively engaging in the structuring of their entertainment desires. The centrality of broadcast television, tied to the concept of passive consumption, is thus being challenged: viewers can select and organise shows into their own personal channels, to be played at their own convenience – and we can fast-forward through the ads! The “‘bargain’ whereby viewers watch commercials as well as programming” (Matt Carlson, pg111) is suddenly irrelevant. I can record the footy on Friday night, and re-schedule the kickoff to 8:30 so that I can have dinner first. I can fast-forward through the half-time ad-fest and dressing room pep talks, and by the time I’m halfway through the second game… I’ve caught up with live broadcast. Sweetness.

YouTube also breaks with the temporal viewing structure of broadcast television: allowing users to establish their own ‘DIY channel’, fine-tuned to their specific tastes. This exemplifies the shift in audience attitudes, as we now demand media democratisation and ‘co-participation in scheduling, timing, controlling, viewing and engaging with media and entertainment” (pg114). YouTube encourages users to become producers and sharers, creating an online social interface for connecting with others with similar tastes and interests. Unlike passive engagement with broadcast television, YouTube users must actively search, select, download and program their choices in order to create their own ‘flow’.

The iPod, with its codependent iTunes in tow, could be the modern-day compilation tape. However, in saying this, I’d like to make something clear here… I don’t have an iPod. I’ve never had one. I have a slightly lame tendency to become stubbornly non-conformist when it comes to anything with such mass-hype. I am religiously anti-Apple – it’s always going to be the Beatles label in my mind – I am the conformist non-conformist, for sure. I’ve gone through about 5 different mp3 players (I’m also really good at breaking things. And apparently water – from a plastic bottle or the ocean – does not mix with electronics) and in formatting my current one, I use Windows Media Player. So take that iTunes devotees. I am a bit of playlist geek, there’s probably about 50 on my WMP… ranging from “hibernation for the winter” to “songs about alcoholism”, “if i had a cafe..” to merely ”f*** you”. Trust me, its a good way to procrastinate.
Rizzo explains that this interface between iTunes and the iPod (or respective alternatives!) allows the user to create and direct a number of personalised “flows”. What the iPod represents is more than a music playback device. It is mobility, freedom, the chance to dance like a lunatic silouhette against a fluorescent background. Podcasts and online TV can be downloaded and stored, ready to whipped out in any situation. Screaming child next to you on the bus? Extremely boring university lecture? iPod to the rescue: these things can be blocked out and replaced with your own hand-picked library of audio and visual delights. Television, in these situations, is useless. You can’t lug a plasma onto the L90.

Essentially, Rizzo explains that the expanded role of the playlist as a composer of diverse, personal ‘flows’ is challenging the hegemonic, one-way ’flow’ of broadcast television. New technologies and media platforms have responded to audiences’ desire for control and personalisation.
I never have to stay home on a Friday night again. 

Reference:
Rizzo, Teresa. “Programming Your Own Channel: An Archaeology of the Playlist”. In Kenyon, Andrew, Ed. TV Futures: Digitial Television Policy in Australia. Carlton, VIC: Melbourne University Press, 2007, p108-134.

Converrrrrgence.

When I hear the word ‘convergence’, I immediately visualise some kind of magnetic force, hauling surrounding objects into some epic gravitational centre. It’s a concept I find is most easily described in sweeping hand gestures involving outstretched arms and the merging and interlocking of fingers. Thankfully, Nightengale has managed to explore the convergence of modern media slightly more comprehensively, in terms of flow of content across constantly changing platforms.

Essentially, Nightengale reveals that the process of digitisation is forcing traditional media to change its fundamental structures through a process described as disintermediation. Although the emergence of new media platforms is threatening the ‘old media’ in terms of audience share and revenue, this is not necessarily resulting in the collapse of traditional structures: but rather their expansion and integration into a wider modern ‘mediascape’. For example, newspapers are branching into the world wide web with online ‘enhancements’: polls and interactive content aimed specifically at Internet audiences. This ‘internetisation‘ of traditional media is met by corresponding ‘mediatisation‘ of cyberspace (Fortunati 2005): where the Internet is adapting itself to the roles of exisiting media and continuously reinventing and expanding their services. Hence, convergence is seen as a process that unifies media (cue interlocking of fingers..) whilst also promoting diversification.

The article explores the way media content is now often treated as though it were a brand, a commercial product. The increasing range of media platforms can be seen as a new marketing opportunity, building on the idea of transmedia storytelling: where content is spread across different media platforms, which create their own ‘franchised’ experience of what is offered by the ’brand’ as a whole package.

Take the example of .. deep breath .. Harry Potter. 
He started as another daggy protagonist in a fantasy series: he lived in the world of the novel, a world which is defined by its unique engagement with readers’ imagination and perception. Then the kid with the scar got famous, he apparated to the world of cinema: again defined by its own unique way of engaging viewers. Some elitist ‘book people’ boycotted the movie, as it meddled with the imaginary nature of the original medium. Some lazy ‘movie people’ watched the film but wouldn’t read the book, because a picture’s worth a thousand words – so a moving picture says it all, right? And of course, some people did both: finding the new medium an enhancement of their experience overall, revelling in the prospect that Daniel Radcliffe just might age handsomely, demanding even more from the series… and suddenly the HP fanatic was born. These people (you’re sure to know at least one) are the reason for ’Mystery at Hogwarts’ Cluedo, HP video games, online Quidditch tournaments, and, perhaps the most blasphemous, Harry Potter fan-fiction.

The diversification of the Hogwarts crew across media platforms is unsurprising – as Nightengale notes, Disney have been doing it for decades. However, the concept of fan-fiction presents an interesting new twist on the idea of ‘transmedia‘. Content is no longer defined by its initial producers; audiences are no longer interested in mere blind consumption. We are becoming activists, we want involvement and agency. In the case of Potterheads, they want an engagement with the story beyond what novels, films and games can provide. Fan-fiction allows them to be the characters, change their relationships, interact with the fictional world they belong to. A product of online communities, forums and blogs, the popularity of this phenomena is a clear example of what Nightengale calls audience activism. Such ‘brands’ of content have the power to build cult-like fan bases, which become their own self-sufficient communities who provide a permanent market platform of their own.

Not all ‘brands’ of content can gain such a huge fanatical audience as Mr Potter. But Nightengale’s article does reveal the potential for multi-platform media to be used in this way, posing drastic changes to our engagement with content. Maybe the Sydney Morning Herald should start taking tips from JK Rowling… who knows, before long we could be voting for alternative endings on Home and Away during the ad breaks, and taking our dates to the YouTube home-page rather than Hoyts..

Reference:
Nightengale, Virginia – “New Media Worlds? Challenges for Convergence.”
In Nightengale and Dwyer, eds. New Media Worlds: Challenges for Convergence. South Melbourne, VIC: Oxford University Press, 2007, p.19-36.

There are ‘theres’ out there..

I read ‘The Doubling of Place’ on the bus home from uni on Monday night. My attention was sporadic – my friend would interrupt with some comment about his day, a song would need skipping on my mp3 player, I’d instinctively raise my eyes to take in the sunset over the Spit bridge. I can’t help it: I’m a part of the generation of multi-taskers. And in terms of ‘doubling place’, I feel that this is essentially the focus of Moores’ analysis: the multi-tasking of place that is facilitated by modern media.

One of the examples Moores uses is an internet chatroom – where participants can create their own idealistic persona within a virtual world, regardless of who they may be in reality. Textual descriptions, images and layouts allow us to create our own personalised ‘space’ on the internet, which may bare no resemblance to our physical circumstance. Effectively, we are actively engaged in two places at once.

So what does this mean for our identity, both in reality and in our personal perceptions? Most of us are able to limit our absorption into ‘cyberspace’, drawing a strict line to ensure this world remains a sideshow to our real-life identity. However, there is potential here for a dangerous distortion of perceptions: what if our experience of ‘place’ becomes so abstracted that we can no longer distinguish between ‘theres’? … feeling a little schizophrenic yet?

The ‘shrinking’ of global space is positive in many ways, with media technology allowing us to feel socially close to people, places and cultures that are physically distant. Moores’ example of a phone conversation (a private, communicative ‘place’) on a train (a ‘place’ of physical, public reality) leads him to question “why is it.. that people continue to feel the need for corporeal travel?”
In my opinion, the inherent human desire to be physically ‘with’ other humans is fundamental in maintaining our true identities when faced with this ‘doubling of place’. Although we can keep in contact via SMS and Facebook, these pragmatic forms can’t recreate the true nature of face-to-face human interaction. There’s no sharing smiles, no tones of sarcasm or excitement, no thoughtful silences, no lingering eye-contact… the language of reality and of virtual, communicative spaces is vastly different. You don’t break up with someone on the phone, or send a text saying someone close to you has died… and as long as these kinds of essentially human ‘unwritten laws’ exist, the value of “real life” communication can live on.

Beth Dalgleish
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Reference:
Moores, S. – “The Doubling of Place: Electronic Media, Time-Space Arrangements and Social Relationships“
In Couldry, N. and McCarthey, A. (Eds) – “MediaSpace: Place, Scale and Culture in a Media Age” London: Routledge, 2004, 21-37.

Dailiness-ness

Yesterday I woke up to the FIFA boys complaining about new drug tests. At work I found out the ‘truth’ behind Tom & Katie’s smiles. After dinner I watched the Rafters decide to hang the consequences and keep the baby. Thus is Wednesday in the media life of Beth.

It is Scannell’s belief that this kind of consumption pattern represents the dailiness of broadcast media, as it divides every-day life into mediated structures. This seems to be an inevitable result of life in a media-saturated modern world, and broadcasters have mastered the art: the demographics and behaviour of audiences have been carefully studied, and content appropriately tailored to their appeal. In this way, the media articulates the ‘care-structures’ of the public: the way we respond to issues, people and events in everyday life. According to Scannell, news aims to “routinize eventfulness.. thereby historicizing dailiness” (p160). The scholar’s ability to incorporate the suffixes ‘-ize’ and ‘-ness’ into every word imaginable is a feat in itself. However, I can’t help feeling that Scannell may have over-romanticised the media’s power to shape how we feel and respond to the world around us.

Sport is a good example of a ritualised media event. The Friday-night footy is an unmissable part of the winter season in my family. Here it is the game that dictates the care-structure, whilst the media facilitates my engagement with it: transforming spatial and temporal boundaries to bring it right into my living room. Yet Scannell looks beyond real-life events, analysing the care-structures created by fictional dramas and soap-operas. Temporality is more complex here, as ‘time in the fictional world runs parallel with time in the actual world’ (p157). These shows are designed to be highly relatable representations of the ‘real world’, and Scannell rightly observes that viewers come to ‘know’ fictional characters in the same way we can know people in reality. The way we respond to the goings-on of their world is dictated by our care-structures: developed both from experiences in reality and in other fiction.

So yet again, I’ll bring it back to ‘Underbelly’. (I can’t help that I only tune into 2 programs at the moment!) Gratuitous violence and graphic sex scenes are now the common expectation on Monday night TV. People get obliterated by cricket bats and lose their hands & feet to axes – we barely flinch. Sure, its based on real events, but we know its a fictional construction aiming to shock and entertain.

Then we see the headlines about ‘Real-life Underbelly’ in the streets of Sydney. Gang violence is erupting, bikies are beaten to death in domestic terminals, fathers are shot dead around the corner from their family’s restaurant. …it’s just like on ‘Underbelly’. So how do we respond to this? What do our trusty care-structures conjure within us? News and entertainment are becoming so closely intertwined that sometimes its hard to tell what follows what. Broadcasting may indeed have freed the world and salvaged the true meaningfulness of everyday life. But every superhero knows that great power comes with great responsibility, and the power to shape social perceptions is no exception!

Beth Dalgleish
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Reference:
Scannell, P. “Dailiness” in ‘Radio, Television and Modern Life’
Blackwell, London, 1966, 122-178

Domesticating ‘Domesticating Domestication’

Triple whammy, oh yeah.

Though I’m still unsure of the appropriate tone to use in these blog entries, I thought the simplest and most effective way to address this week’s reading would be through the context of personal experience – domesticating the concept of domestication, if you will, by luring it into the realms of my own household.

As Scott reiterated in Monday’s lecture, Silverstone divides the process of domestication into four categories: appropriation, objectification, incorporation and conversion. Although he made specific example of the television, I approach this concept with a slightly more current product of the so-called Digital Age: the irresistable hard-drive DVD recorder.

Thus the journey begins with the appropriation (or more accurately, in Silverstone’s eyes, commodification) of the recorder, an exciting time for my easily excitable mother – at least when it comes to new toys. Considerable time was spent getting aquainted with the new technology, testing its capabilities and selecting which functions would be the most useful for our familial context. The initially huuuge 20GB hard drive was filled within 24 hours. Objectification was fairly simple: the recorder assumed prime position atop the main TV in the lounge room – seeing the now mere and meek old DVD player shunted off into the hidden dominion of the spare room. Such is the cut-throat reality of the domestic technological hierarchy.

Now, unfortunately the progressive flow toward incorporation and conversion of this new commodity was slightly interrupted: new technology means new functions, which inevitably means new avenues for failure. Mum, an ex-computer programmer, is the tech-savvy Mrs Fix-It within the household. Although my sister and I embrace the easy-access realms of the world wide web, and we buy into technological consumption with iPods and camera phones, we are a product of this Digital Age. We’re Generation Y: we don’t read instruction manuals, we don’t waste time configuring networks and fixing technical faults. What we do and how we consume comes naturally to us, and if it doesn’t, it’s too hard and we give up.
Mum is not Gen Y. She reads instruction manuals. When something isn’t working, its not solved by a bit of simple research and reading. She did all that before she started. If its not working, its reeeeaallly not working.

The DVD recorder was, indeed, reaaaallly not working. Seeming to have created its own self-deleting memory strategy, the family were suddenly confronted with a scary reality: we missed our favourite shows that had taken place over a number of 4 or 5 days. Cue chaos. Friction. High-tension arguments. Suddenly the house itself seemed dangerously close to spontaneous combustion… how could we sleep at night without knowing who was evicted on SYTYCD?!?!

(I’d like to note here that the dynamics of my family are such that this affected my dad and me very little, and my mum and sister very dramatically. Strangely, the split between disinterest and obsessive near-addiction kind of balances itself out. Ah, the complexities and instabilities of every day life... [pg234] )

Thus, in my own passive detachment, I suggested an antidote for the anguish and chaos that was enveloping the household: just take the thing back, get a refund, and don’t get another one. Rid ourselves of this technological thing imposing on our secure domestic space, and regain control of our lives. And I was greeted with an in-depth strongly disgruntled argument. Apparently, despite my perception, the technology did not control mum. Her anxiety over its failing was not because she relied upon it for a sense of ritual and safety, delivered in the form of weekly TV. Instead, she relied on it to exercise her own personal control over the global mediated world: allowing her to tailor her consumption, and that of the family, to suit our own needs, values and culture. Our moral economy, as Silverstone refers to it, was allowed to effectively mediate the media in our specific domestic zone. The recorder meant our lives were not structured around the TV Guide time-slots, we could still be entertained and informed in a flexibile and personalised way. And, possibly her major infatuation with the product: we no longer had to watch ads. The chase-play feature achieves immense satisfaction for our family, a sort of private domestic triumph over the evil controllers of mass media and advertisement… Take that, Channel Ten

Interestingly enough, in this personal example of Silverstone’s conceptualisation, the TV is no longer the product being domesticated. It has reached the final conversion stage, in which it becomes a kind of well-engrained social capital within the family. The TV has become so domesticated that it is almost now part of the so-called ‘taken-for-granted’ elements of the ’natural’ household environment. The idea of it NOT existing in our weekly rituals is in itself a disturbing interference in our comfortable domestic sphere.

Anyway, the story ends happily: after a brief take-two of commodifying and objectifying a new player, the incorporation process begun. Constant family discussions ensure the democratic prioritisation of our TV-recording habits, dictated by the limited space on the recorder (coinciding with the limited time we all have to be couch potatos) and the clashing of shows deemed worthy of recording. Familial moral economics are in full swing here: Underbelly and Packed to the Rafters take priority as the few shows we currently watch as a whole unit, whilst Grey’s Anatomy, So You Think You Can Dance and other miscellaneous American mush get demoted to other rooms for private viewing.

Finally, I should address the bigger-picture question raised in the concluding paragraphs of the reading: is domestication a plausible means for technologically instituted social change? The values displayed by my mum’s desire to control and tailor our consumption of media can be seen to represent the moral defensiveness [pg246] of our family unit, allowing a resistance to mainstream mass culture whilst simultaneously creating a new domestic culture to be integrated into our existing habits and routines.

Can we save the world with this, or are we merely propulgating cultural anaesthesia in resistance to the radical possibilities and expectations at the heart of communication change? [pg247]
I guess we’ll just have to wait and see.

Beth Dalgleish
Student # z3290054

REFERENCE:
‘Domesticating Domestication. Reflections on the life of a concept’ – by Roger Silverstone
From Berker, T et. al. (Eds) – Domestication of Media and Technology
Open Uni Press, 2006, pg 229-248

Blog for Reading 1

“What Do the Media Do to Us? Media and Society”
O’Shaughnessy, M. et. al.
Media and Society, Oxford, 2005, pg 31-58.

Essentially, this reading looks at the relationship between media producers and their audience, acknowledging that media representations are the primary influence on society’s perception of itself and the wider world. Issues of bias, selectivity, subordination and power must always be taken into account when we ‘learn’ from these media replications of reality. 

O’Shaughnessy postulates that the majority of our knowledge is gained through immersion in different media representations, rather than first-hand experience. With the proliferation of new technologies which continually improve the efficiency of global communication, I personally wonder what effect this will have on the value of real experiences. An essentially globalised media culture threatens to remove society’s connection to place and identity.
As a self-confessed travel romanticist, I am disconcerted by the idea that visual, audio and print representations of overseas countries may constitute an adequate experience of them. The ability to instantly connect and communicate with people on the other side of the world is indeed a positive achievement and holds great possibility – particularly for international relations and communication. However, I do raise the concern that, in the face of such technological change, the media should not lose sight of the value of face-to-face communication and physical experience. Media interpretations can only take us so far – some things must simply be done first-hand, human being to human being.

In a similar vein, the reading addresses the issue of popular culture – referring to the contradictary definitions of either being “from” or “for” the people. This presents a power struggle between consumers and producers of media – postulating the need for common ground to be found between the groups in order to maintain a just relationship. The “ideology of individualism” prevalent in Western society allows us the freedom to choose what and how we consume, whilst also advocating the public’s right to free, uncensored information.

In terms of popular culture and entertainment, we can see the media as both responding to the demands of society, and creating such demands through commercialism and advertising. The reading details the complexity of such social culture, particularly with the subordination of specific groups ‘categorised’ by race, gender and socio-economic status. 
I believe that the best way to achieve a balance of power is to ensure that the essential values of both parties are consistently acknowledged and maintained. Constant communication between media producers and consumers – ie ‘the people’, ordinary members of society – can help achieve this equality in the creation of popular culture. Recognising the vast differences in values, opinions and desires of societal groups makes it clear that this is not a simple task. However, the spread of communication technology to increasingly wide audiences will hopefully enable not only a broader scope for the media to project its ‘representations’, but also an opportunity for feedback and interaction between the media and the public. The more freely and easily that individuals can actively contribute to media content, the more accurately their values and ideals can be expressed to the world.

Beth Dalgleish
Student no: z3290054