Open Source, Open Culture

While I mentioned specific media reform groups in class, and in the previous post, I wanted to emphasize some other aspects of media reform and media activism that don't focus so much on policy, but on cultures which have grown up in the past few decades which put counter-hegemonic ideas about media ownership into practice. In these cultures, which are nurtured by the richness and potential of new media, the emphasis is on sharing, collaboration and the relinquishment of the ownership of ideas in order to produce the best technology and media possible. This is very different from the for-profit, market model of media which characterizes much of the media landscape, but proponents of Open Source and other alternative media cultures, are fierce believers that media monoliths, who are constantly working to protect their copyrights, stifle not only free expression, but the creation of better, more interesting and more diverse media products.

The idea of Open Source comes from the design of computer technology and hacker culture, where "source code" is the actual computer code behind a product. Rather than fiercely guarding the nuts and bolts of a technology you create, so only you can profit from it, the practice of Open Source means that anyone can look at the code, play with it, change it and improve it. The Free Software movement is an offshoot of Open Source, which takes a more activist stance towards ownership of technology copyrights in general. The more dependent we all become on Microsoft Office, for example, the more control Microsoft has over how many of use (and have to buy) their products; the more they can structure our experience of technology. For instance, they can create types of document files that can only be opened on their software, thus forcing everyone to use their software. Open Office, on the other hand, is completely free (and highly functional, thanks to a dedicated community). By challenging the idea that only a big, closed company can create good software, and by presenting a product that works across all formats, such endeavours are both products and political projects.

Another interesting aspect of Open Source Culture relates to media content, and the backlash against corporate ownership of ideas, especially when so much of our shared culture today comes from corporately owned media. In some instances, as in the article we read by Henry Jenkins, this can mean appropriation of copyrighted images and media by fans, either to the consternation of, or supported by the owners. Jenkins draw our attention to the doctrine of Fair Use, which has long protected the limited use of copyrighted material- for commentary, parody, criticism, etc. More than ever, as corporations seek to intimidate around the use of their products, it is important for all of us to know we do have the right to use media to a certain extent. Check out this clever video which explains Fair Use, by "fairly using" clips only from Disney movies!




With increasingly restrictive intellectual property laws in place, which allow companies to restrict how people use their products, open source culture has arisen to encourage the creative use, sharing, and collabortion of media.

Another way to do this, is to NOT use media from big companies, but to share your own creations and borrow from others who want to share with you!

The Creative Commons is a great place to check out. It is a clearinghouse of websites where people upload material, the majority of which is free for anybody to use, legally- to remix music, make videos, create art. (There are various licenses which ask you to do different things- whether you can modify it, whether you need to cite the artist, etc.)

As McChesney says, a corporate media system is not a given- there are other ways to conceive of how to create media, who can "own" ideas, what makes the best, most healthy media system. These cultures are places where these other ideas are being put into practice and being nurtured.

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?

Links for this week

Here are quick links to the links listed in the syllabus for this week, as we wrap up the course and take the temperature of the current environment of mass media.

First, I ask you to check out a few alternative and independent media sources: http://www.projectcensored.org/censorship/news-sources/

Second, please watch this video: Save the Internet!

Toys and Socialization

In light of the holiday season, in which our usual consumer culture gets pumped up into a frenzy of consumerism, and the focus is largely on children receiving toys, it's fascinating to take a look at toys and toy advertising: how they play a role in socializing children into gender roles, and how toys present certain ideals and limited representations to children.

I want to present a curious development in the advertising of children's toys: the increasing gender segmentation of toys. Take these ads from the 80s:




The toys are not presented as gendered (i.e. as a boys' toy or a girls' toy). The girl in the Lego ad is not styled as stereotypically feminine- she is just wearing denim overalls and a t-shirt. It looks like she's wearing the clothes she might be playing in, rather than being presented as particularly fashionable. In the Fisher Price ads, boys and girls are presented as playing together, with the same toy. A red sports car is not presented as a boys' toy. Girls are not the only ones interested in cooking (or, I suppose, working at a fast food restaurant).

However, it doesn't seem like this trend has continued and grown. In fact, we are more likely to see toys presented as girls' toys and boys' toys, with the same toy even coming in different colors and marketed as (or assumed to be) the boys' and girls' version.

We even have previously gender neutral toys/games suddenly being split up into the "original" and the "designer" version, with the "designer" version in pink and purple ostensibly being equated to the "feminine" version.


Does this mean that the original is now the "masculine" version? This doesn't do much to combat the normalization of hegemonic masculinity, if girls are encouraged to use special version of previously gender neutral products. It also serves to separate boys' and girls' play, to segregate them.

Why is this increasing gender differentiation in toys happening? One reason I would suggest is that there is simply more money to be made in creating more versions of products which are tied to more aspects of an identity which is shaped through advertising. If boys and girls aren't going to play with the same toys anymore, then someone needs to buy them their own unique, personal versions of each toy.

Also, take a look at these Nintendo DS titles. Who do you think they are for?

This goes really well with the Massoni article- what kinds of occupations are being presented as viable/desirable for girls? How realistic is it? How limiting for how we encourage girls to approach the world of work?

Finally, I also recommend this column on Jezebel today about the problem with Black Barbies- how inclusion doesn't include everyone.

I would really love to hear from you guys in your blogs. What kinds of critical readings of race, class and gender can you do of some contemporary media?

(Images from various posts on Sociological Images.)

In media conslidation news...

I wanted to call your attention to the newest potential big media merger making news. It looks like Comcast will be buying NBC. The Free Press is urging people to oppose the merger, with the argument that the merger will further hurt the public interest by severely limiting competition in the online video market by combining a major internet and cable provider with a major content provider. There is concern that this partnership will squeeze out entrants into the online video sphere, where it seems a lot of viewers are moving towards.

Palin on the cover of Newsweek

This week Newsweek is receiving a lot of criticism (from Sarah Palin and Fox News, mostly) for their use of this image of Sarah Palin on their cover:



Palin originally posed for this photo for a feature in Runner's World magazine, where it would seem more in context, though it still features some not-so-innocent ideological associations, from Palin's cheerleader-y stance, to the American flag next to her. On the cover of Newsweek, however, the choice of photo, critics say, is "sexist" and "demeaning." When presented alongside a critical story about her as "bad" for America, this presentation of her in short shorts, pigtails and with a smile seems intended to disempower her, make her out to be a joke.

In conjunction with the Walsh article, this would seem to be another example of how the mainstream media is able to make powerful statement through images- statements which often rely on stereotypical understandings of race, class and gender, as they relate to power. Palin is presented as having less power by being presented in a sexualized manner (despite what you think of Palin herself, and the fact that she posed for this photo in the first place). Just as Hillary Clinton was pushed (and perhaps shaped herself) as having masculine characteristics in order to be taken seriously as a contender, in order to make sense of her as a female candidate, so too did the characterization of Palin as sexualized (maybe even as a "super-mom" who could nurture a nation?) seek to make sense of her as a female candidate.

The main point of the Walsh article is that even supposedly objective mainstream media representations of race, class and gender often serve to reinforce the primacy of white male hegemony. We rely on commonsense understandings of race and gender, which generally aren't that complicated or nuanced. This is true across news and entertainment media.

The general point should be made that it is not that one image is likely to have that much of an impact, but that we can better understand how our society talks about these issues through their representation in the media. How powerful do you think media representations are?

Current Potential Blog Topics

Current blog topics on the table, and some potential ideas to explore:

Globalization and Social Movements (from last week)
• How do you think America relates to the rest of the world in terms of media and globalization? What is your experience with global media products?
• Overall, do you see globalization as a positive or negative trend? Why?
• How do local populations interact with globalization in active and unique ways? What are some strategies transnational media corporations might adopt to recognize this?
• What are some examples of hybridization of culture?

Violence in media, Media effects
• Can you think of other "folk devils," or examples where the effect of media is used to express our concern over other, more complex social issues?
• Can you find other examples of media coverage that blames other media for a social issue? Do you see any problems with the account?

Game Over

Active Audiences and Polysemy
• Think of a current media text, and try to explore how different audiences might interpret it differently. What is it about social context that influences different interpretations?
• Has you interpretation of a media text ever changed over time? What changed?

Outsourcing Art?

Via Sociological Images

In line with our exploration around the effects of globalization, did you know that there are Chinese painters trained to produce artwork that is then sold to tourists around the world? They copy paintings or photographs of images (at a much lower payrate than artists from the various locales would undoubtedly request), producing them in these workspaces in China. These paintings are then shipped to various tourist location and sold as if they are local products, painted by local artists. These artists produce images of the American West, Venice, etc. They are obviously quite technically skilled, even if they are forced to copy certain types of images, which are in demand as touristy schlock.

This is one example that ties together many of the themes we've been looking at, probably more towards the negative end of things. The interconnection of cultures and economies that globalization brings means that we outsource many jobs to locations where labor is the cheapest. Usually we think of this as applying to factory work, or other manual labor that requires little skill or creativity. But here we see it even applies to work we think of as highly skilled and creative.

It also exposes the blurring of time and space that we talked about with regard to the spread of technology, as well the postmodern idea that we can no longer distinguish between the virtual and the real. When we buy art to represent a place that we have visited, we imagine that it connects us more deeply to that place. But are we really connected to that place, when the image of Venice has been painted by an artist in China, then shipped to the gift shop in Italy?

Online reading for 11/7

Palfrey, Etling and Faris, "Reading Twitter in Tehran"

Links for online readings next week

Grossman, Lev. 2006. “Time’s Person of the Year: You.”

Hesse, Monica. “Facebook's Easy Virtue 'Click-Through Activism' Broad but Fleeting,” The Washington Post, 7/2/09.

Also, I'd like you to take this quiz from the Pew Internet & American Life Project by FRIDAY: "What kind of tech user are you?"

Please post your results in your blog or as a comment to this post. You could even fashion one of your blog posts as an examination of these results.

Politics, Consumerism, and Technology

Your blogs for this section of the course should cover some of the following topics:

• Politics
• Consumer Culture and Advertising
• Postmodernism
• Technology

In terms of consumer culture and advertising, you may continue to explore the issues connecting Dan Sarmiento's advertising presentation with the Holt and Schor readings. Some questions you might consider:

1) Can you identify other cultural brands today? What sorts of societal tensions do current advertisements seek to heal?

2) What do you think of alternative consumption movements? What are some examples? Do you think we can change the way we consume?

3) How do you see advertising changing? Can you find some examples of advertising expanding beyond the old boundaries of advertisements and into culture?

Keep blogging!

Just a reminder that you should still be adding to your blogs. The next blog grade will be on posts made through Sunday, November 8.

I'm surprised no one has written about the "Balloon Boy" story that's been dominating the media (or as one of my friends said, Shouldn't we start calling him "Attic Boy"?) Isn't this just a perfect example of a news cycle that promotes non-news? Why did the news outlets cover it intially? How is it that this story got so big, and why are we still talking about it? What else aren't we paying attention to while we keep looking into the strangeness of the Heene Family?

I'm listening to a Talk of the Nation segment on media hoaxes right now, addressing some of these very issues.

More Sociology advice

Another helpful video from Karen Sternheimer: advice for students taking sociology exams and writing sociology papers, just in time for mid-terms.



I especially like what she adds at the very end:

"You never want to include these words in a sociology exam or term paper: 'It's just human nature.' 'That's just the way it is.' or 'We shouldn't read too much into things.' Sociologists read things into things. That's what we do. We dig deeper. We look to find connections between sociological phenomena and everyday life."

Politics in the Media

There are many issues you might want to explore in your blog posts on the intersection of politics and the media. Think about the different relationships and levels of relationships at play:

• -the relationship between politicians and the state and the media: How do politicians use the media? How does the media relate to politicians? What do Clayman et al. and McChesney have to say about this?
• -the relationship between the media and the political views of the public: How much influence does the media have on people's political attitudes? Do you think there's a difference between news coverage of politics vs. entertainment coverage/commentary of politics?

Further explore some of the questions and concepts we didn't get to spend much time on in class. What do you think of McChesney's overall analysis of Iraq War coverage? What are Clayman et al. looking at when they study Presidential news conferences? How do these two articles compare?

You might also write a blog post (now or perhaps next week) sharing your findings from the assignment that's due Monday.

Protests and Power

In other news, you may have heard about the Gay Rights March that happened on Sunday in Washington D.C. (partly to send a message to President Obama that he hasn't delivered on his promises to the cause of gay rights). That event, and the reaction to it by openly gay Massachusetts Congressman Barney Frank, highlighted some of the issues we have looked at recently, with regard to power, the media and pseudo-events.

We generally regard a protest like the Gay Rights March to be a way for media and political attention to be brought to important but marginalized issues, whether we deem it a "pseudo-event" or not. What is more powerful than thousands of people coming together in solidarity to make their voice heard? This march certainly garnered some mainstream news media attention. Yet Barney Frank called the march "a waste of time" and said the cause would be better served by lobbying elected officials, if they really want to pressure Congress. The march, he said, would fall on deaf ears, especially seeing as most lawmakers were not in D.C. because of the holiday.

What is really interesting is who Frank said the gay rights movement should be more like:

"Gay rights advocates should borrow from the playbooks of the two most effective interest groups, the National Rifle Association and the AARP, said Frank.

'Call or write your representative or senator, and then have your friends call and write their representative or senator,' Frank said. 'That's what the NRA does. That's what the AARP does.'"

Does Frank have a point? The NRA (National Rifle Association) is undoubtedly a powerful lobby in D.C.- power accumulated through money, organization and connections. They don't have to hold rallies in D.C. because they are already on the inside. Their pseudo-events take the much more cost-effective and repeatable form of press releases, conferences, etc., coming out an office with ties to the government and the mass media. Basically, Frank is telling gay rights advocates to work within the system- write letters, develop a lobby. Is that really the most effective way to go? Are protests and marches useless when it comes to changing legislation?

The other question is whether the gay rights movement is even in the position to acquire the type of power leveraged by the NRA (or the AARP)? Both groups have constituencies that are already dominant in society: largely white, middle to upper class, male and heterosexual. Can a group coming from a position of great marginalization in our society, like homosexuals, form an equally powerful lobby?

SNL and the End of the Obama Honeymoon?

As we talk more about the connection between the media, politics and the masses, I wanted to bring a couple of items to your attention.

First, a news media interpretation of the importance of another mass media form's political influence: the comedy sketch show. Here, CNN considers whether a recent sketch on Saturday Night Live that seemed to be critical of President Obama meant that his "honeymoon" period was over, presumably because during the election season, SNL was much more critical of his competitors. Here is the sketch in question:



I know many of you are aware of the growing prominence of parody, satire and comedy in political media today (and that many of you are fans of The Daily Show). What I find interesting about this article is not so much whether Obama's honeymoon really is over, but that shows based in comedy/entertainment are so powerful and relevant when it comes to political discourse and public opinion. Is this because shows such as these are where most people get their political information? Do the opinions of comedians more accurately represent the pulse of America than the news media? Or, as the pop culture professor in the article, Robert Thompson says, is comedy just about going after people in power, whoever they may be? How powerful is humor in political criticism?

And the case may be that the suggestion that this sketch matters that much is just something being stirred up by those in the media who would like to see more criticism of Obama. After all, they note, the sketch wasn't that funny, and didn't get great ratings.

All the news that's fit to print

(click to enlarge)

For your blog posts this week, here are some suggestions of things to think about. Your blogs this week can also easily tie into the work you will be doing for your assignment.

1) Think more about the pseudo-event. Can you find any more example of pseudo-events? Who or what is behind the event and why? What is its purpose?
2) Where is the line between entertainment and news these days? Between publicity and news? Should there be a difference?
3) Draw on Gilliam and Iyengar's experiment and results to think about other examples of how the construction of "news" can affect how audiences interpret the world.
4) What do you know (or what can you find) about the current problems in the newspaper industry? What do these problems have to do with the system we have been looking at?

Interesting posts about media as business

*Note* - Please give your blog post a title. It helps with linking to the post.

I wanted to highlight some of the posts recently about the media industry:

Logan talks about the death of the album as a result of a new emphasis on downloading single songs as result of technological changes. This is an interesting example of how technological change results in changes in cultural products. It's also interesting how we attach nostalgic value to technologies of the past, and tend to distrust the effects of new technologies even as we embrace progress. There are more and more collectors of vinyl records these days, for instance.

Chris explores the potential of the internet to aid new artists.

Matt takes a look at MTV, while Logan also examined the current Billboard top 20.

For Monday

In the syllabus, I ask you to check out two censored stories from Project Censored.org. Here is the link for easy clicking: http://www.projectcensored.org/top-stories/category/y-2009/

You just need to check them out, pick a couple that look interesting to you, and note them.

Tickle Me Elmo and the Gangster Meme

Tickle Me Elmo and the Gangster Meme

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A really interesting post from Sociological Images, on how the idea of the gangster gets depoliticized and commodified, and eventually ends up as 6 yr olds making gang signs in a commercial for Tickle-Me-Elmo Hands.