Postmodernism- Introduction

Bricolage
&
Hyperreality

Playfulness
Aesthetic
Irony
Nihilism

Parody
Intertextuality
Pastiche
Eclectic
Self-referencial

Postmodernism- Notes from Chapter (Holiday HW)

Postmodernism

Where the idea of representation gets 'remixed', played around with through pastiche, parody + intertextual references.

Basic Post modernist ideas:
-Post modern media rejects the idea thant any media productor text is of any greater value than another. Anything can be art.

-Distinction between media and reality has collapsed. We now live in a 'reality' defined by images and representations ... a state of simulacrum. Images refer to each other as reality - this is a state of hyperreality.

-All ideas of 'the truth' are just competing claims and what we believe to be the truth at any point is merely the 'winning' discourse.

Many examples of these texts which are intertextual and self referencial, breaking the rules of realism. They represent media reality.

EXAMPLES:
News reports and images of 9/11
Films - Blade Runner, The Matrix
Auteurs- Michael Winterbottom, The Coen Brothers + Wong Kar-Wai
TV- The Mighty Boosh, Ricky Gervais and The Wire, Echoe Beach/Moving Wallpaper, The Cadbury Gorilla
Games- Grand Theft Auto and Second Life.

Notes On Spooks and Cultural Identity represented in Spooks

Glamourous lifestyles- elite, upper class citizens. Large houses, expensive clothing etc

Emphasis on technology- Computers, Phones... used throughout

Patriotic in many senses- relationships with the British government, fighting for Britain etc (can link to Bond in this sense)

Authority and struggles with authority

"Goodies" and "Badies" clearly represented by nationality and general image.

Definite sense of danger- presented by the guns, bombs which are frequent.

Real similarities to how Bond is presented- elite, glamourous and a sense of danger.

How has the Internet changed our notion of collective identity?

Collective identity is, in principal, a social group that is constructed or that we, ourselves, form. The growth of the Internet has been the biggest change in technology over the past 10 years, and therefore it is inevitable that something as powerful as the Internet is going to chance our vision of society. The Internet has become a central part to our lives; used in a variety of occupations by a huge majority of the population it has become one of the most important communication developments of this century. We now live in an age of transmediality; a migration of content across a vast number of different media forms (the Internet being the solely most important platform for content being portrayed on). Therefore, the Internet has significantly affected the different groups in society causing a sense of fragmentation. Affecting this new generation of people, it is now a real difficulty for the older generations to interact with this new ‘digital’ generation or as often dubbed, ‘digital natives’ (2001, Marc Prensky, ‘Digital Natives, Digital Immigrants’). This younger generation or ‘digital natives’ have grown up with the Internet throughout their lives forcing their perception of the Internet to be a very important element to their lives. In contrast, the older generations or ‘digital immigrants’ have not grown up with the Internet forcing their perception of the Internet to be very limited plainly because they are not used to it and do not know entirely how it works.

Over the past couple of years, it has become clear that the media has changed in a number of different ways. This can be shown by the Media and web 1.0 and Media and web 2.0 ideas. This difference between the old media (web 1.0) and the new media (web 2.0) is that there is now a heavy emphasis on the people rather than media itself. For example, ‘The new media are no longer mass media… sending a limited number of messages to a homogenous audience… the audience itself becomes more selective’ Sabbah, 1985, suggesting that media is run on the audience rather than the mass.

We can see this by the increasing popularity of citizen journalism, which has increased in popularity ever since the Internet was made available to a variety of people through devises such as phones and iPods. Through social networking sites such as Twitter, Facebook and MySpace, it is now easier than ever to update news very quickly, ‘on-the-go’ and has become steadily popular with the ‘digital natives’. For example, the Hudson River plane crash in New York was first reported via a video on a phone which was then placed onto the persons Twitter account. In minutes, it had been reported to the world and is a real example of citizen journalism.

The sense was that the old media (media 1.0) was controlled by oligopolies, individuals such as Rupert Murdoch, who own a number of dominating companies. Now, the sense is that the media is controlled by the producer meaning streams of different opinions and more valuable media.

Marc Prensky’s article, ‘Digital Natives, Digital Immigrants’, 2001 places great emphasis on the collective identities and how they have been affected by the Internet. He states clearly the difference between the ‘Digital Natives’, ‘”native speakers” of the digital language of computers, video games and the Internet’, and the ‘Digital Immigrants’, ‘those who were not born into the digital world but have, at some point, become fascinated by and adopted many or most aspects of the new technology’. He places the population into these two separate groups and suggests that because they both speak different ‘languages’, it is difficult to teach because they no longer understand each other. For example, ‘our Digital Immigrant instructors, who speak an outdated language are struggling to teach a population that speaks an entirely new language’. Prensky says that ‘Digital Natives’ are used to receiving information really fast, thriving on instant gratification and frequent rewards. ‘Digital Immigrants’ have no real care for the skill that the ‘Natives’ have acquired and assume that the ‘Natives’ are the same as they have always been. Through things such as the Internet, the Digital Natives have a real belief that learning should be fun; via games, programmes and other technological delights. The Digital Immigrants, on the other hand, believe that learning shouldn’t and cannot be fun and that there should be emphasis on slow learning- through lectures, books and simple learning.

The Internet has fundamentally changed the ways in which we are to communicate between society. Before the Internet, the only real communication was the birth of telephone. The Internet has enabled communication through so many things such as; email, social networking, blogging, file-sharing sites, Internet chat. All of this is mainly used by the Digital Natives and is an extremely important part of their lives and was only really formed over the past decade. This rise in interaction can also be seen with sites such as Second life, where you play as an avatar and meet new people on the Internet. These sorts of sites have quite an ominous and ambiguous effect- you can pretend to be anyone you want to.

To conclude, the Internet has changed our notion of collective identity. No longer is there a concentration on Web 1.0- where the media is controlled by oligopolies and is very centralised, now the concentration is on Web 2.0- where the media is controlled by the producers through things such as citizen journalism. Collective identity can also be seen in Marc Prensky’s, ‘Digital Natives, Digitals Immigrants’ idea. With the difference between the generations and their perception of the Internet; the Digital Natives having grown up with the internet and is part of their daily life, and the immigrants having to get used to something they are not entirely comfortable with. The Internet has also changed the way us, as the collective identity, communicate with each other. We can be completely different people through avatars on sites such as Second life and Habbo Hotel. The power of the Internet has changed technology, conventions and ultimately our culture.

Digital Natives, Digital Immigrants by Marc Prensky (Notes)

Basically, i am going to write up the sections from the article which i found important, in note formation.

This so-called "singularity" is the arrival and rapid dissemination of digital technology in the last decades of the 20th century. Today's average college grads have spent less than 5000 hours of their lives reading, but over 10,000 hours playing video games (not to mention 20,000 hours watching TV).

...We can say with certainty that their thinking patterns have changed.

The "new" students of today have been dubbed as 'Digital Natives'. Our students today are all "native speakers" of the digital language of computers, video games and the Internet.

Those people who were not born into the digital age, but have become facinated by most aspects of the new technology are dubbed "Digital Immigrants". Particular traits of the "Digital Immigrant" include turning to the internet for information SECOND rather than first and printing out a document written on the computer in order to edit it (rather then just editing on the screen).

The major problem, however, is the fact that our Digital Immigrant instructors, who speak an oudated language (that of the pre-digital age), are struggling to teach a population that speaks an entirely new language... (Digital Natives).

Digital Natives are used to receiving information really fast. They thrive on instant gratification and frequent rewards.

However, Digital Immigrants typically have very little appreciation for these new skills that Natives have acquired. Essentially, Digital Immigrants think that learning can't (or shouldn't be fun). The Digital Natives have no care for lectures, step-by-step logic and tell-test instruction. They are used to hypertext, downloaded music, phones in their pockets, a library on their laptops etc.

Digital Immigrant teachers assume that learners are the same as they have always been, and that the same methods that worked for the teachers when they were students will work for their students now.. but this assumption is no longer valid.

Today's teachers have to learn to communicate in the language and style of their students.

Second, the content. "Legacy"content and "Future" content.

Legacy content includes reading, writing, arithmetic, logical thinking, understanding the writings and ideas of the past, etc - all of our "traditional curriculum". It is of course still important, but it is from a different era.

Future content is to a large extent, not surprisingly, digital and technological.

We need to invent Digital Natives methodologies for all subjects, at all levels, using our students to guide us. It's dumb and lazy of educators - not to mention ineffective- to presume that (despite their traditions) the Digital Immigrant way is the only way to teach and that the Digital Natives "language" is not as capable as their own of encompassing any and every idea.

FilmFour Presentation

We were also asked to produce a presentation on an industry and write about things such as political affiliations, finance, values and products. It was interesting in finding out about the history of the company in relation to these things, particularly the political bias of the company. I will post the presentation at a later date as it is presently with my friend.

Last lesson on Moral Panics

Last lesson in Media, we learnt all about moral panics in the media.

Typical definition: Abstract concept used to make sense of "irrational public hysteria". Public and academic debate on moral panic works on the assumption that the media plays a significant role in determining the characteristics of a moral panic. Signifies complex processes that shape public perceptions of a perceived threat to the moral code of society.

Processual Model (natural process, media cannot help) --> Attends to process of a moral panic. Seven defined stages (Stanley Cohen's "Folk devils and moral panics" [1973]

1) Emergence - when a form of behaviour becomes perceived as a threat.

2) Media Inventory - explanation of threat is manipulated by media (distortion, exaggeration)

3) Moral Entrepreneurs - groups or organisations speak out and offers solutions.

4) Experts - socially accredited experts who diagnose solutions.

5) Coping of Resolution - reaction of the media, moral entrepreneurs of experts leads to legal reform.

6) Fading Away - the condition disappears, submerges or deteriorates or becomes more visible.

7) Legacy - A panic can have a long term effect or creates big changes in social policy, the law or society's view of itself.

Attribution Model (accusatory - attribute to certain groups) --> Erich Goode + Nachman Ben-Tehudas study, "moral panics: the social construction of deviance" [1994]. Claims those working in the media, political institutions of the legal system impact on moral panics through "claims making". 5 elements or criteria distinguish attributes of moral panics.

1)Concern - A heightened level of concern, measurable through opinion polls etc

2)Hostility - Increased hostility to a group or category seen as an 'enemy' to respectable society (Folk Devils).

3)Consensus - A substantial segment of society agrees that the threat is real or caused by 'wrongdoers'

4)Disproportionality -The reaction by the public is out of proportion to the actual harm.

5)Volatility - The idea that moral panics are volatile (insecure) by nature, erupt quickly but also often subside quietly. Each episode cannot be sustained for long.