Creating Digital Exhibits for Critical Inquiry of Media Representations

Richard Beach, 2009 NAMLE

Google Docs version of handout: http://tinyurl.com/kk6zky

Objectives Infer patterns in media images and video

Flickr, Google Images, YouTube, digital maps Mount exhibit as museum curators

Construct own media collages Flickr, VoiceThread, YouTube, iMovie,WMM, Web

Poster Wizard, Gliffy Reflect on how media texts are constructed:

“Production, representation, distribution, reception, and socialization” Paul Prior

Theories: Making connections Situated Cognition Studies: James Gee:

humans—like connectionist computers—look for patterns in the elements of their experiences in the world and, as they have more and more experiences, find deeper and more subtle patterns, patterns that help predict what might happen in the future when they act to accomplish goals.

Stephen Downes: Connectivism learning theory We need to look at networks, not as physical

systems, but as semantical constructs, where the organization of links is determined as much by similarity and salience than by raw, epistemologically neutral, forces of nature. Knowledge is a network phenomenon, to “know” something is to be organized in a certain way, to exhibit patterns of connectivity. To “learn” is to acquire certain patterns. This is as true for a community as it is for an individual.

Collecting images/videos

Flickr, Google Images, YouTube, etc. Identifying key terms/categories Search strategies: Uses of tags

“attentive noticing”/“informed seeing” tagging

Flickr badges (html or Flash collages to post on a blog or

wiki) http://www.flickr.com/badge.gne Harry Potter:

Digital collages/scrapbooks Shutterfly Studio Smilebox  Clipmarks Plum Tabblo Ulead Photo Express My Scrapbook 2 (Windows only) HP Creative Scrapbook Assistant (Mac and Windows)

Jeff Rice: Digital Detroit: Digital tagging of spaces in Detroit By imagining the urban environment as one of

encounter rather than fixed place, we can begin to conceptualize a city like Detroit as a network.

My call is for a plan of information tagging, where residents, working in digital spaces, reimagine the city through their own conceptualization and actualization of tags. In place of tagging the bypass or the stop sign with graffiti, they tag the city itself as an encountered name or moment within a digital, interconnected space

Jeff Rice: Digital Detroit: Digital tagging of spaces in Detroit Imagine, then, the city as a network of tags.

Residents, who tag themselves simultaneously as writers or non-writers, mark the city through memory maps, weblogs, delicious tags, and other related tools in order to reconstruct the city's sense of urbanity as a digital experience. The tagging generates a number of assembled taxonomies, some recognizable, many not. Through the assemblages, we find new Detroits to engage. We find new Detroits emerging out of our own discursive constructions. This reworking is social in ways capital investment has failed to generate.

Decontextualizing or defamiliarizing images

Decontextualizing or defamiliarizing images

Parodying/Altering/Remixing of Images TinEye: reverse image search engine

Parodying/Altering/Remixing of Images

Remix America: Remixed videos Adbusters My Pop Studio: Magazines

Collect videos on YouTube Search topics: Select images or videos: Hollywood representations of teachers Inductively define patterns/deviations School of Rock: provocateur Dead Poet’s Society/History Boys: deviant Dangerous Minds/Freedom Writers: savior Half Nelson: relationship with students

Comment/annotate

VoiceThread: add oral or written comments to slideshows

VoiceThread resources VideoAnt: add written

annotations to specific points in a video

Remix: Copyright

“Transformational” fair use of images/videos

Center for Social Media: Video: Remix & Fair Use: Best Practices for Online Video

Autobiographical connections childhood photos or video: artifacts,

events, places, family members, places Agnes Varda, The Beaches of Agnes

(2008) American Memory Project Family tree/heritage projects:

MyHeritage Geni

Representations of Race Power of white hegemony in film/media

Predominating control/portrayal of whites

People of color not shown as subservient and not engaging in “human”/complex practices

Chinese Hollywood Black People on YouTube

Construction of Femininity

“Beauty industry”: appearance, slimness, or attractiveness as central to identity http://www.bodyimagesite.comhttp://www.edap.org/media1.htmlhttp://www.aap.org/advocacy/hogan599.htm

Kasi Williamson: Representations of feminism in the media

Jennifer Budenski: The New Cult of True Womanhood: the Monolith of Disney’s Princess

Representations: Masculinity Traditional masculinity: aggression,

competition, domination as portrayed in men’s magazines http://www.theory.org.uk/mensmags.htm

http://www.theory.org.uk/ctr-rol5.htm Matthew Ferrari, FlowTV: Mixed Martial

Arts’ Burgeoning Wild Kingdom

QuickTime™ and aTIFF (Uncompressed) decompressor

are needed to see this picture.

Representation of Class People’s desire to be perceived as

“middle class” by adopting class markers of dress, language, social practices

PBS: People Like Us Representations of “working-class”

“White trash” Center for the Study of Working Class

Life

Teachers in films Caretakers, saviors, drillmaster, keepers

of wisdom, facilitator/guide-on-the-side, technician, agent of social change, or underpaid unionist.

YouTube collection Up the Down Staircase, Dead Poet’s

Society, Dangerous Minds, Good Will Hunting, Finding Forrester, The History Boys, Freedom Writers, The Wire

Students

Reality TV Ivy: Spoof on RTV: college

students

Representation of urban vs. suburban vs. rural worlds Urban worlds as dangerous, crime-ridden, poor

http://www.newmediastudies.com/art/city-med.htm Suburbia as bucolic, safe escape from urban world

or as shallow, conformist, uniform “cooker cutter” world

Rural worlds: news stories focus on crime few stories dealt with issues of agriculture,

despite the loss of jobs, and the decline of family farming

Gina Nelson: Homelessness

Connecting the Dots between Systems

Analyze how systems serve to each other to protect the status quo Government, military, school, justice,

business, media/entertainment, health care, transportation

How media functions to represent/perpetuate these systems

Mark Lombardi: Maps Osama bin Laden support

Food industry

Agri-business/corn lobby <-->campaign donations <--> government farm policies <--> Manufactured food <--> advertising <--> High fat food <--> obesity <--> health-care costs

Documentary: Food, Inc.

Michael Pollan I think Obama gets the issues. He's a great

dot connector. He connects the dots between the way we grow food and the health care crisis and the climate change crisis and the energy crisis. He understands that and he's spoken about that eloquently. The question is how much political capital he is going to put into changing the system.

Obesity <--> Health care <--> advertising

CDC: 36% of black Americans, 29% of Hispanics, and 24% of whites are obese.

Medical costs of obesity could have risen to $147 billion per year by 2008.

Children see 7600 food commercials a year; 35% and 45% of commercials are for food. Almost all advertised food is unhealthy.

“African Americans are consistently exposed to food promotion and distribution patterns with relatively greater potential adverse health effects than are Whites.” American Journal of Public Health

Connecting the dots: Health care reform Insurance/pharmaceutical corporations

(50 million ad campaign) lobbying Congress campaign donations bills without “public” options- competition cost of running for reelection high cost of TV advertising McCain/Feingold campaign finance “reform” (no free TV ads) TV networks lobbying

Reducing Future Campaign Costs: Web Campaigning Movement away from reliance primarily on

expensive TV ads Strategies for effective uses of online

campaigning Engagement of younger voters in campaigns Media literary: analyzing/producing online

political ads Frank Baker, Political Campaigns and Political

Advertising, Greenwood Press