HCRHS Media Lit

"Growing numbers of observers contend that the dominant public role of our time has shifted from citizen to consumer. Indeed, respondents in polls typically cite entertainment, shopping, and other consumer activities as their top free time preferences. Commercial media and public entertainment venues offer environments carefully constructed to avoid politics and real world problems that might disturb these consumer impulses. As people in global societies increasingly enjoy the freedoms of private life, it becomes increasingly difficult to communicate about many broad public concerns. The personalized society enables people to choose individual lifestyles and identities that often lead to disconnection from politics. Many citizens become receptive only to consumer-oriented messages about tax cuts, retirement benefits, or other policies targeted at particular demographic social groups. Culture jamming is an intriguing form of political communication that has emerged in response to the commercial isolation of public life. Practitioners of culture jamming argue that culture, politics, and social values have been bent by saturated commercial environments, from corporate logos on sports facilities, to television content designed solely to deliver targeted audiences to producers and sponsors. Many public issues and social voices are pushed to the margins of society by market values and commercial communication, making it difficult to get the attention of those living in the "walled gardens" of consumerism. Culture jamming presents a variety of interesting communication strategies that play with the branded images and icons of consumer culture to make consumers aware of surrounding problems and diverse cultural experiences that warrant their attention. "

"Nike's web site allows visitors to create custom shoes bearing a word or slogan -- a service Nike trumpets as being about freedom to choose and freedom to express who you are. Confronted with Nike's celebration of freedom, I could not help but think of the people in crowded factories who actually build Nike shoes. As a challenge to Nike, I ordered a pair of shoes customized with the word "sweatshop." Nike refused my order. A contentious email exchange ensued which was subsequently distributed widely on the Internet as an email forward. Eventually, news of the dispute was reported in major newspapers, magazines, and on television. You can read a detailed account of "My Nike Media Adventure" in the April 9th issue of The Nation."

"A preview of what the next wave of anti-corporate activism might look like. Call it Big Dada: speaking noise to power."

"Ninety seconds of storytelling. Under Armour's recent commercial featuring its marquee athlete and Olympian juggernaut, Michael Phelps, is just that and then some. Before we dive into the essence of what this ad represents, let's take a stroll down memory lane."

"Here's just a short list of things you're likely to see in some of these chest-thumpingly 'Murican TV spots: amber waves of grain, stars and stripes wafting in the breeze, explosions, and smiling Caucasian children. Granted, most of these things don't represent actual political issues. Political relevance aside, a bevy of (mostly conservative) politicians from, Lyndon B. Johnson to Gerald Ford to Ronald Reagan to (of course) Ted Cruz have employed this veritable art form in an endeavor to convince the voters that they should lead the free world. Because as we all know, nothing says "I got this, America" like a bald eagle soaring triumphantly over a mushroom cloud."

"In the 2 1/2 years she spent researching her book, Sales interviewed more than 200 teenage girls around the country about their social media and Internet usage. She says girls face enormous pressures to post "hot" or sexualized photos of themselves online, and she adds that this pressure can make the Internet an unwelcoming environment. "I think a lot of people are not aware of how the atmosphere has really changed in social situations ... in terms of how the girls are treated and how the boys behave," Sales says. "This is a kind of sexism and misogyny being played out in real time in this really extreme way.""

"While the sexual exploitation of women and girls is rampant, there are many ways that you can help combat the media objectification of girls. Whether it is through writing, petitioning or joining organizations that promote gender equality and balanced gender representation in the media, here are ways in which you can help stop sexual exploitation of girls."

"As newspapers and magazines struggle to survive, you'll probably be hearing a lot about "native advertising." It's a purposefully vague way of saying that online ads will look more and more like articles, making it harder for readers to tell the difference. And you'll likely see more and more cases of marketers getting caught trying to trick people. This week, the Federal Trade Commission announced its first-ever enforcement action involving native advertising. The clothing company Lord & Taylor reached a settlement with the agency over deceptive-trade charges concerning a story about the company's duds on the fashion site Nylon. The story was actually a paid ad. Lord & Taylor, owned by Hudson's Bay, also was accused of paying thousands of dollars to dozens of so-called online influencers - a.k.a. Instagram users with big followings - to plug a dress without revealing that they'd been compensated. "Consumers have the right to know when they're looking at paid advertising," said Jessica Rich, director of the FTC's Bureau of Consumer Protection."

""Haven't you ever wanted to put your foot through your television screen?" asked an actor in "Media Burn," an outdoor spectacle staged in 1975 by the performance art collective Ant Farm. The answer, 15 years later, is a resounding "Yes!" Now, a generation of artists who grew up with television are beginning to rebel against it. Following Ant Farm's lead, they are kicking a hole -- metaphorically, at least -- in the cathode-ray tube. Some of today's most incendiary artists derive the structure, style and subject matter of their art from mass media. Mordantly funny, frighteningly Orwellian and very much a product of the times, their work challenges the image merchants. Moreover, it constitutes a search for truth in the technetronic age, where, increasingly, perception is reality. These artists are "cultural jammers," exposing the ways in which corporate and political interests use the media as a tool of behavior modification. Jamming is CB slang for the illegal practice of electronically interrupting radio broadcasts, conversations between fellow hams or the audio portions of television shows. Cultural jamming, by extension, is artistic "terrorism" directed against the information society in which we live."

Part of the movement in media towards virtual reality programming. ""The Sky VR Studio allows us to add a new dimension to storytelling, taking viewers to extraordinary places and offering a unique perspective," says content chief Gary Davey. "

Some interesting short films here for class use or blog material. "At Updoc, we devote time, energy and creative juices to making films that have nothing to do with corporate sponsorships, but while the whoring trend runs rampant, make no mistake about it, we are all bed partners. You will find plenty of reference to products and corporations throughout many of our films. They are included to illustrate what's behind corporate backing, that the majority of the film industry would prefer you didn't know. The difference between Updoc Films and ninety nine percent of the film-making industry is that we refuse to allow product placement to infiltrate our work. We are not a cog in the wheel. We do not hide behind the notion that these expensive and carefully placed advertisements are a natural part of life and should be included on an average of every three minutes for your viewing pleasure. We won't do that to you. We're different; the kind of different that won't leave you groping for your soul in twenty years. We like sleeping at night."

"Adbusters magazine and its editor Kalle Lasn have been at the forefront of the global resistance to capitalism exemplified by the Occupy movement. Their new book, Meme Wars: the Creative Destruction of Neoclassical Economies, uses startling images to back up its hard-hitting points. Here are a selection of some of the best."

"Lasn, one of the brains behind the Occupy movement, told me recently from his headquarters in Vancouver that he sees a new movement in the making. To many, the revolutionary spirit of the Occupy Wall Street movement seemed to recede almost as soon as it arrived in late 2011. For two months, huge numbers of protesters camped out in Zuccotti Park in New York City, and in other cities around the world, igniting a debate over income inequality and financial corruption. Yet the movement was widely criticized for being ineffectual and lacking a coherent strategy or message, and seemed to quickly flame out. Lasn disagrees with that analysis."

"Back in July, an idea by Kalle Lasn and his colleagues at Adbusters, a nonprofit magazine run by social activists, had started to come together. For months, Lasn had noticed among his 120,000 readers an unresolved anger that wasn't finding expression. He observed that young people were starting to say they worried about having a "black hole future" ahead of them, and it suddenly felt, he said, "like a Tahrir moment in America was eminently possible." So the Adbusters team tried something out. They put out feelers for a small protest on Wall Street on Sept. 17. They started a hashtag to go with it, the catchy-sounding #OccupyWallStreet. They ran a poster in the magazine to advertise it (see above). And before they knew it, the protests had taken on a life of their own:"

"In 2013, I found that, over the course of a year, about 25 percent of the people I quoted or mentioned were women. Two years later, a similar analysis yielded discouraging results."

It would seem that for someone like Kim Kardashian West - queen of selfies, breaker of Internets, mother of two - sharing a nearly nude selfie with millions of followers on social media is a pretty ho-hum weekday activity. But her latest racy photo, published last week on Twitter with a mundane caption ("When you're like I have nothing to wear LOL"), quickly drew a mix of young, powerful celebrities into a debate over whether sharing such an image is a symbol of sexual empowerment, or an example of a powerful woman selling herself short."

"This election year, Marketplace will be casting its eyes toward the future, asking how the country can address long term opportunities and threats - the ones that don't fit into a single federal budget or election cycle. We'll imagine and ask you, if the next President were to appoint a Cabinet member to worry about future generations, what would be job one?"

"The New York Times Consumer Insight Group conducted a study using in-person interviews, a weeklong panel, and a survey of over 2,500 online sharers for a report called "The Psychology of Sharing." The results revealed that people shared for five main reasons:"

"It may be tempting to assume that reasonable people are immune to conspiracy theories, but doing so would be a mistake. Research into misperception, rumor, and conspiracy theory suggests that even reasonable individuals can reach conclusions that don't align with the best available evidence."