HCRHS Media Lit

"The city of Boston and the friends and family members of the marathon bombing victims will never forget the day when two explosions ripped through the crowd at the race, killing three people and injuring more than 200. Neither will the family of Sunil Tripathi, but for very different reasons. Their story is told in the documentary film Help Us Find Sunil Tripathi. Sunil was a gifted student from a high-achieving family. But in college at Brown University, Sunil began to struggle with depression. In March 2013, he went missing. His family organized a massive search operation, and - somewhat reluctantly - used social media to help with the search. "Despite how uncomfortable it was to take our personal childhood and smatter it across Facebook, we just knew this was what we had to do to get his story out," says Sangeeta. And then, the bombing happened. Three days after the bombing, the FBI released photos of the suspects. On Twitter, a former classmate of Sunil said she thought one of the suspects looked like him. That was picked up by reddit. And suddenly, the Tripathis' Facebook page was bombarded with hateful messages, many saying that, given his name and appearance, Sunil must be a Muslim terrorist. "This is not just one or two comments that would make Mom cry," says Ravi. "It progressed to having as many laptops open as possible and deleting every single post. It almost felt like a case study in mob mentality, in virtual mob mentality." Journalists saw the buzz on social media and started calling the Tripathis. Some retweeted the accusations. Others actually repeated them on television. The Tripathis, who had been waiting for their phones to ring with information about Sunil, were suddenly getting questions about his alleged involvement in the bombing. News vans lined up outside their home and reporters were knocking on their front door."

"NBA star Stephen Curry is famous for shooting three-pointers. So, for each one he sinks during this year's postseason, Under Armour will honor him with a new three-second ad."

"SNL has created commercial parodies about everything: chia pets, Spanx for babies, an app for kids whose moms want to add them on Facebook. It's not unusual for those commercials to make light of serious news of the moment. Remember, this is a show that has made comedy out of the swine flu, police brutality and ISIS. There will always be people who chuckle along, and (usually more) who take to the Internet in a rage. With "Heroin A.M.," SNL struck a nerve again."

"Just in biology alone, many people believe that spinach is a good source of iron (sorry, Popeye), that we use less than 10 percent of our brains (no, it's too energy-guzzling to allow that), and that some people suffer hypersensitivity to electromagnetic radiation (for which there is no scientific evidence). But here's the more concerning news. Our access to information, both good and bad, has only increased as our fingertips have gotten into the act. With computer keyboards and smartphones, we now have access to an Internet containing a vast store of information much bigger than any individual brain can carry - and that's not always a good thing. Better access doesn't mean better information This access to the Internet's far reaches should permit us to be smarter and better informed. People certainly assume it. A recent Yale study showed that Internet access causes people to hold inflated, illusory impressions of just how smart and well-informed they are"

I am concerned with the way we approach digital citizenship as this boogey-man, scare-fueled conversation. What would it mean if we allowed kids to make mistakes? What if we treated social media indiscretions as a chance to grow? What if we approached them as learning opportunities? What if we were quicker to listen and slower to judge? What if we viewed it as an evolving story rather than a permanent digital tattoo? Do we risk making kids so risk-averse and image-conscious that they can't be authentic? And are we doing enough to allow all students to express their identity, even in the face of bigotry? What if we shifted the conversation from "here's what to avoid" to "what can you do to promote positive change?" What if we highlighted more of the stories of kids who are creating things and sharing them with the world? What if we celebrated those times when students were courageously authentic about their identity even in the midst of bigotry and intolerance? What if, instead of saying, "your future employer will look at your Facebook," we also had a conversation about corporations and privacy?"

"Your homework for tonight: you've been given $3 million dollars. It comes with one string attached: you must use that money to create a new public media organization in the United States. Some questions to think about - and answer."

"Edward Humes describes his new book as a "transportation detective story" that chronicles the hidden characters, locations and machinery driving our same-day-delivery, traffic-packed world."

"A big part of why they've stuck around is that they are the epitome of convenience. That's the allure and the promise that's kept drivers hooked, dating all the way back to the versatile, do-everything Ford Model T. Convenience (some might call it freedom) is not a selling point to be easily dismissed-this trusty conveyance, always there, always ready, on no schedule but its owner's. Buses can't do that. Trains can't do that. Even Uber makes riders wait. But convenience, along with American history, culture, rituals, and man-machine affection, hide the true cost and nature of cars. And what is that nature? Simply this: In almost every way imaginable, the car, as it is deployed and used today, is insane."

By now, most people have heard of "the Bechdel test." To pass this famous three-part test, which measures whether female characters in a film are anything more than superficial, a movie has to (1) have at least two female characters (2) who talk to each other (3) about something other than a man. It seems like a pretty low bar, but at least 40 percent of films fail, according to BechdelTest.com, a site that crowdsources these test results. "Birdman" fails. The "Lord of the Rings" movies all fail. "Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire" fails. Even "Toy Story" fails. And it's hard to think of a movie that doesn't pass the Reverse Bechdel test -- where two male characters don't talk to each other about something other than a woman (according to the IMDB universe, some do exist). The Bechdel test has its critics. Some films with prominent female roles, like Sandra Bullock in "Gravity," don't pass the test, while other films that are male dominated or sexist do. But, as Walter Hickey wrote for FiveThirtyEight.com in 2014, for a long time the crowd-sourced information on the Bechdel test was the best data on gender equity in film that we had. Two years later, we're amassing more data that gives a clearer look at the real role of women in film. In a new project, Hanah Anderson and Matt Daniels at Polygraph analyzed screenplays for 2,000 popular movies, and broke down the number of words spoken by male and female characters -- "arguably the largest undertaking of script analysis, ever," they say."

"Stanford psychologist Philip Zimbardo, who became a household name after conducting the Stanford prison experiments, argues that our online culture is disproportionately harming boys, who watch more pornography, waste more time playing video games, and are increasingly bored with their sedentary office jobs.  The cause, Zimbardo explains in his new book "Man (Dis)connected: How Technology has Sabotaged What it Means to Be Male," is biological in nature. Men have what psychologists call "single-cue arousability," meaning one mere stimulus brings them closer to happiness, such as a naked person on a screen, when compared to women who require more complex stimuli to become aroused."

"Do you use media? That's why media literacy matters. Too simplistic? Really it is as simple as that. If you use media, then it has influence on you. If you use it a lot, then it has a lot of influence. Doesn't matter whether your preferred media is the latest iPhone or the Playstation 4 or the app Heads Up. Influence. Influence. Influence. And of course, fun. Therein lies the need. The potent combination of influence + fun.   Media is a central part of most of our lives and therefore deserves to be understood and thoughtfully considered, as well as enjoyed. This logical progression makes so much sense to me, I have trouble understanding why others need convincing of its value. They don't need convincing about the value of media, just the value of media literacy."

"Today's edition of The Boston Globe includes a fake front page that imagines the state of America under the presidency of GOP frontrunner Donald Trump. Although the cover looks like the front page for the entire newspaper, it's actually the first page of the Boston Globe's ideas section, which is tucked inside the daily edition. The ideas section is a Sunday edition of the Globe that combines a mix of reporting and commentary on major intellectual trends. Scattered with such alarming headlines as "US soldiers refuse orders to kill ISIS families" and "markets sink as trade war looms," the page is a fictional snapshot of daily news one year from now, about three months into Trump's imagined presidency."

"Expect to see more branded content in your News Feed, as Facebook Friday introduced a new branded content tool and updated guidelines."

"The final installment of "American Idol" closed with 13.3 million viewers, the highest viewership for the show in two years, according to Nielsen. "Idol" was the highest rated show on Thursday night in total viewers and in the 18-to-49 year old age bracket that is important to advertisers. The final episode was a two-hour celebration of the show's 14 years on the air. Former judges like Simon Cowell, Randy Jackson and Paula Abdul appeared on stage, while dozens of former contestants like Carrie Underwood, Jennifer Hudson and (a very pregnant) Kelly Clarkson performed. Trent Harmon was announced as the final "American Idol" winner, beating out La'Porsha Renae. The show was once a ratings juggernaut for Fox. At its height 10 years ago, it routinely drew 30 million viewers an episode, the sort of numbers that these days are reserved for National Football League playoff games."

"Lately, Hollywood has been taking so much shit for rampant sexism and racism. The prevailing theme: white men dominate movie roles. But it's all rhetoric and no data, which gets us nowhere in terms of having an informed discussion. How many movies are actually about men? What changes by genre, era, or box-office revenue? What circumstances generate more diversity? To begin answering these questions, we Googled our way to 8,000 screenplays and matched each character's lines to an actor. From there, we compiled the number of lines for male and female characters across roughly 2,000 films, arguably the largest undertaking of script analysis, ever."

"Australian teenager with more than 612,000 Instagram followers radically rewrites her 'self-promoting' history on social media (and launches new website)"

"U.S. Soccer, the governing body for the sport in America, pays the members of the men's and women's national teams who represent the United States in international competitions. The men's team has historically been mediocre. The women's team has been a quadrennial phenomenon, winning world and Olympic championships and bringing much of the country to a standstill in the process. Citing this disparity, as well as rising revenue numbers, five players on the women's team filed a federal complaint Wednesday, accusing U.S. Soccer of wage discrimination because, they said, they earned as little as 40 percent of what players on the United States men's national team earned even as they marched to the team's third World Cup championship last year. The five players, some of the world's most prominent women's athletes, said they were being shortchanged on everything from bonuses to appearance fees to per diems.

We are witnessing a great explosion in the way that human beings are allowed to express their gender identities. We are also hearing a lot of awkward conversations. What are we supposed to ... call everyone? A recent scene on HBO's "Girls" riffed on this problem, drawing a linguistic fault line down a Brooklyn street. On one side is a no-frills coffee joint run by Ray Ploshansky, the show's resident grumpy old man. (He's, like, 38.) Across the street, a hip new cafe springs up and instantly hoovers up Ray's clientele. When Ray crosses the road to eyeball the competition, he encounters a barista he can't quite size up. First he calls the barista "sir," and the barista balks, "Why'd you feel the need to call me 'sir'?" So Ray tries "female?" and the barista says: "Oh, 'female'? You a biologist? You a biological essentialist? Are you a detective?" So Ray asks, "What's going on here?" and a second barista steps in to explain: "What's going on here is that you offended they, and you offended me, so I think it's best that you leave." He does. The baristas embrace. The cafe clash took the language debate of the moment and personified its most extreme positions. On one side are people like Ray, who come off as clueless and offensive for failing to recalibrate their language to accommodate people who don't identify as "he" or "she." On the other side are "theys" like the barista, who can sound unreasonable and absurd when they try to police new rules of language that are still in flux. But in the subtext of the scene, a third figure emerged. The barista character was played by the younger sibling of Lena Dunham, the creator of "Girls": Grace Dunham, a young queer writer and performer who identifies as a "trans person with a vagina" and recently wrote on Twitter, "I hate, fear and am allergic to binaries" - and is also game for joking about how hard it can be to get everybody on the same page.

Last semester, a student in the masculinity course I teach showed a video clip she had found online of a toddler getting what appeared to be his first vaccinations. Off camera, we hear his father's voice. "I'll hold your hand, O.K.?" Then, as his son becomes increasingly agitated: "Don't cry!… Aw, big boy! High five, high five! Say you're a man: 'I'm a man!' " The video ends with the whimpering toddler screwing up his face in anger and pounding his chest. "I'm a man!" he barks through tears and gritted teeth. The home video was right on point, illustrating the takeaway for the course: how boys are taught, sometimes with the best of intentions, to mutate their emotional suffering into anger. More immediately, it captured, in profound concision, the earliest stirrings of a male identity at war with itself. This is no small thing. As students discover in this course, an Honors College seminar called "Real Men Smile: The Changing Face of Masculinity," what boys seem to need is the very thing they fear. Yet when they are immunized against this deeper emotional honesty, the results have far-reaching, often devastating consequences. Despite the emergence of the metrosexual and an increase in stay-at-home dads, tough-guy stereotypes die hard. As men continue to fall behind women in college, while outpacing them four to one in the suicide rate, some colleges are waking up to the fact that men may need to be taught to think beyond their own stereotypes."

"A culture jam uses the media of a dominant culture (corporate, entertainment, political) to criticize and subvert the intentions or values of that culture. Dominant (mainstream, hegemonic, commercial) culture generally aims to seduce and entertain you; culture jams typically want to disrupt or upset you, make you feel uncomfortable about the elements of mainstream or dominant culture that they are subverting. Here is an example. This was done by a student in a previous class as her Creative Remix Project:"