Wednesday, December 9, 2009

Final Blog Posts

As mentioned in class, all blog posts are due this Sunday, December 13 at midnight.

The areas of race, class, gender and sexuality in media are incredibly broad and rich, and you could do multiple blog posts exploring different areas of this section of the course. I also encourage you to think of other marginalized groups/identities in society, who are subjected to limited inclusion or stereotypical portrayals in the media. Race, class, gender and sexuality are certainly not the only ways people identify themselves, and are not the only identities that face challenges within the media system- they're just some of the big ones we tend to introduce in sociology survey courses.

Possible blog ideas:
• While middle and upper class gay people are gaining visibility on TV, working class gays and lesbians are still absent. How does being gay complicate being a working-class person? Consider the film Boys Don’t Cry, or the documentary it is based on, The Brandon Teena Story, or the essay by Amber Hollibaugh “The Price of Love” in the journal New Labor Forum, Fall 2005, which gives a first person account of what it means to be gay and working-class. Use any of these pieces, or any other example from the media, that examines the experience of being gay and working class. Discuss why creative work like documentary film can bring taboo subjects into public discourse, which may not be possible otherwise. What are some other media spaces where sympathetic representation is possible—for instance, blogs or video diaries? (From the Class Dismissed Study Guide)

• What occupations or positions do women and men hold in the TV shows you are familiar with? Discuss how these representations relate to Butsch's analysis of working class sitcoms or Massoni's analysis of gender and occupational aspirations.

• Why do you think we are seeing a proliferation of "reality" shows? How do they tie into the American Dream? How do they perpetuate or combat stereotypical representations of various groups, such as the working class?

• Sketch out a premise for a television show or movie that you think would represent a view of an experience or identity that is typically not seen on television. Would this be successful?


The readings this week are about the state of the media reform movement and some perspectives on what the issues are when it comes to changing what we don't like about the current media system. Some blog topics here:

• So what are your thoughts now on the media system? Do you think it could/should change? How? What are the most important issues to watch?

• Which independent media did you visit? What did you think of them? How important are alternative/independent media sources today?

• Visit some of the media reform organizations listed below (or find some others targeting issues you are especially interested in). What sorts of projects/efforts are they undertaking? How important do you think such organizations are? Who are they trying to involve and what actions do they urge followers to take?

FAIR: Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting: http://www.fair.org/
Free Press: http://www.freepress.net/
Center for Digital Democracy: http://www.democraticmedia.org/
Independent Media Center: http://www.indymedia.org/

Finally, as mentioned in class, you may also write a blog about your blogging experience in this course. How did you feel about putting yourself out there? Did it change your mind about blogging, cause you to form an opinion about blogging that you didn’t have before? Most of your blogs were probably seen by just us, but not all of them. How might you have exposed your blogs to a broader audience? Did you grow more or less comfortable with the technical and practical aspects of it as you went along?

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