Group items tagged

"On the Internet, everybody is a millenarian. Internet journalism, according to those who produce manifestos on its behalf, represents a world-historical development-not so much because of the expressive power of the new medium as because of its accessibility to producers and consumers. That permits it to break the long-standing choke hold on public information and discussion that the traditional media-usually known, when this argument is made, as "gatekeepers" or "the priesthood"-have supposedly been able to maintain up to now. "Millions of Americans who were once in awe of the punditocracy now realize that anyone can do this stuff-and that many unknowns can do it better than the lords of the profession," Glenn Reynolds, a University of Tennessee law professor who operates one of the leading blogs, Instapundit, writes, typically, in his new book, "An Army of Davids: How Markets and Technology Empower Ordinary People to Beat Big Media, Big Government and Other Goliaths." The rhetoric about Internet journalism produced by Reynolds and many others is plausible only because it conflates several distinct categories of material that are widely available online and didn't use to be. One is pure opinion, especially political opinion, which the Internet has made infinitely easy to purvey. Another is information originally published in other media-everything from Chilean newspaper stories and entries in German encyclopedias to papers presented at Micronesian conferences on accounting methods-which one can find instantly on search and aggregation sites. Lately, grand journalistic claims have been made on behalf of material produced specifically for Web sites by people who don't have jobs with news organizations. According to a study published last month by the Pew Internet & American Life Project, there are twelve million bloggers in the United States, and thirty-four per cent of them consider blogging to be a form of journalism. That would add

About Welcome to my site. Here you will find summaries of my work, videos to watch, papers to download, images to study and links to pursue. I have three areas of interest - photography, multimedia and politics. I am particularly concerned with (1) how documentary photography, photojournalism and satellite imaging visually enact our world; (2) how multimedia technologies are transforming the capacity of photography to tell stories about our hybrid world; and (3) how issues of identity and representation help structure international politics. A full CV/resume is available here. As professor of cultural and political geography at Durham University in the UK, I am associated with the Durham Centre for Advanced Photography Studies. In 2009 I have a fellowship at Durham's Institute for Advanced Study to work on photographs from the Sudan archive for my 'Geopolitics and Visuality' project.

Avaaz.org is a new global web movement with a simple democratic mission: to close the gap between the world we have, and the world most people everywhere want. "Avaaz" means "Voice" in many Asian, Middle Eastern and Eastern European languages. Across the world, most people want stronger protections for the environment, greater respect for human rights, and concerted efforts to end poverty, corruption and war. Yet globalization faces a huge democratic deficit as international decisions are shaped by political elites and unaccountable corporations -- not the views and values of the world's people. Technology and the internet have allowed citizens to connect and mobilize like never before. The rise of a new model of internet-driven, people-powered politics is changing countries from Australia to the Philippines to the United States. Avaaz takes this model global, connecting people across borders to bring people powered politics to international decision-making.

Globalization and the internet have created a space for news and political discourse that overrides geography and increases opportunities for non-mainstream, citizen-based news sources. Drawing a distinction between emerging citizen and professional media, this study examines one rapidly expanding and increasingly influential citizen news source - weblogs. We analyzed the linking patterns, the online network led to by six of the most popular news and political weblogs to study their relationship to other weblogs and the traditional professional news media in the USA and internationally. Findings suggest a more complementary relationship between weblogs and traditional journalism and less echo-chamber political insularity than typically assumed. The blogosphere relies heavily on professional news reports and half of its linked-to sites can be considered non-partisan.

We live in a world where we can watch disasters and suffering unfold around the world. New technologies mean that every war, every famine, every hurricane can be covered live and direct. But do we actually notice what is happening to those involved? Polis Summer School student Andrea Abril has been thinking through the moral dilemmas. This is her report: Hannah Arendt, the German political theorist, wrote about the "Politics of Pity". Firstly , she made the distinction between those who suffer and those who do not. She also wrote that 'seeing' and 'looking' are considered as different concepts because sufferer and observer are physically distant - despite the closeness that modern media brings. This creates the "spectacle of suffering", unfortunate people are observed by those who do not share their suffering, who do not experience it directly and who, as such, may be regarded as fortunate people. This theory can be applied to sufferings representation in media. Audiences are observers of the misery of the unfortunate but within a distance, which is not just geographical, but also emotional.

"humanitarian agencies are almost never held to account for doing wrong, even as they do not hesitate to take credit when they do good. What's more, I wrote, the humanitarian claim of political neutrality is a fiction: humanitarian action always has a political consequence, and one cannot deny responsibility for it. My focus was on humanitarian responses to armed conflict (rather than, say, natural disasters, or peace-time economic development) and on how, time and again, aid serves to cater conflicts, or to transform a crisis into the status quo. "

Photographies seeks to construct a new agenda for theorising photography as a heterogeneous medium that is changing in an ever more dynamic relation to all aspects of contemporary culture. Photographies aims to further develop the history and theory of photography, considering new frameworks for thinking and addressing questions arising from the present context of technological, economic, political and cultural change. Photographies will investigate the contemporary condition and currency of the photographic within local and global contexts. The editors seek research papers and innovative visual essays, shorter papers engaging new debates, review essays evaluating publications, cultural events, key developments, exhibitions and conferences. Photographies aims to: - establish a sustained and dynamic forum for the development of the history and theory of photography, - consider new frameworks for thinking and addressing questions arising from digital technologies and economic, political and cultural change, - examine contemporary uses and currencies of the photographic within local and global contexts, - identify, develop and discuss emergent critical debates and practices, - publish work in the humanities and social sciences which has a bearing upon our understanding of photography thereby locating debate within a wider community.

Academics and artists at London Metropolitan University worked with photographer Paul Trevor to make a selection of his images of East London digitally available to artists, students and researchers. The Collection includes 500 images (chosen from a total of 120,000) of the Spitalfields area from the 1970s to the 1990s, a period of rapid social and physical change. The Paul Trevor Collection is part of a larger archive project at London Metropolitan University, which will eventually include oral as well as visual narratives, that aims to represent aspects of the lives of local East End communities in their distinctive social, economic and political contexts. The process of producing this photographic dimension of the archive was lengthy and gave rise to challenging questions. What are the aesthetic, historical, and social dimensions of creating a photographic archive and how might these be related? Which factors contribute to the construction of a photographic archive as a relevant resource for public history and/or academic inquiry? How can aesthetic and social/political discourses work together to achieve this end?

Photographic truth and manipulation February 23rd, 2009 We know photographs can be false yet we want them to be true. Indeed, the desire for photographic veracity has persisted, perhaps even intensified, even as knowledge about image manipulation becomes more widespread. Reflecting on the Oscar ceremonies, MediaGuardian has documented the widespread use of Photoshop to enhance celebrity photographs in fashion and gossip magazines. Every cover, says one media insider, has been altered to some degree, with some of these changes exposed in the "Photoshop Hall of Shame" and "Photoshop Disasters". So common is the practice that when an October 2008 Newsweek cover of Vice Presidential candidate Sarah Palin was not airbrushed, conservative anchors on Fox television complained that this amounted to liberal bias. (Fox knew about the political power of such changes because it had earlier manipulated the photos of two New York Times journalists it wanted to discredit).

what's pdfX12|photo documentary folioX12? pdfX12 is an online, monthly free  photo journal that presents and features a series of photos  by various photojournalists living and working in various communities around the world.  These photos tell poignant stories about people who are facing harsh social, economic, environmental and political conditions. Photojournalists presented here are those, with their own resources and energy, who have chosen to dedicate their life's work to documenting certain human issues in order to bring about greater attention to harsh human conditions that many people would brush aside. It is thus very important that the voices of these photojournalists, who are living and working in communities that they are documenting, are heard through this type of online venue, which everyone can access. 

A chronology of Photography with cross-referenced timelines of Politics and Culture is provided below. It may also be useful to refer to Photographers and Exhibitions elsewhere on this site. Please select a decade below to begin to explore this resource.

Photographer and MacArthur fellow Susan Meiselas is best known for her work covering political upheavals in Central America in the 1970s and 80s. The International Center of Photography (ICP) is hosting the first U.S. overview of her work, "Susan Meiselas: In History." It's on display through January 4, 2009.

The Abu Ghraib prison scandal first exploded into public light in April 2004 when reports and photographs of torture were revealed in a daring New Yorker article written by Seymour Hersh. At a conference recently held at Stanford, entitled Thinking Humanity After Abu Ghraib, Hersh and a panel of experts came together to think through the legal, political, psychological, and ethical implications of the abuses at Abu Ghraib, and also to weigh the consequences of the US government's evolving approach to handling enemy combatants and suspects taken during the war on terror. You can now find all of the presentations on iTunes (which you can download for free). Here is the lineup:

Bill Owens: Photographing the Suburban Soul Interview by Robert Hirsch Bill Owens's Suburbia (1972) is a quintessential photographic study of suburban California life and of its rituals. Owens followed with Our Kind of People (1975), which examined political, religious, scholastic, and sports groups and their practices. Then he published Working: I Do It for Money (1977) that looked at people who work from nine to five. In 1976, Owens received a Guggenheim Fellowship and, afterwards, two National Endowment for the Arts awards. Between 1978 to the 1982 he was a freelance photographer and did work for magazines including Life and Newsweek. In 1982 Owens started Buffalo Bill's Brewery and published American Brewer Magazine (1984 - 2001). In 2004 Owens added to his visual anthropology cycle of the American middle class with the publication of Leisure: Americans at Play. Currently, Owens is making mini digital movies about America society. This piece is the result of conversations and emails between Owens and the author from December 2004 through March 2005.

Joy is a graduate of Manchester Polytechnic and the Royal College of Art. She has developed a practise which is concerned with social and political issues with particular reference to history and cultural differences in contemporary society. As a photographer she makes full use of the media from video, digital and analogue photography to Victorian print processes. In 2002, Gregory received the NESTA Fellowship, which enabled her time to research for a major piece around language endangerment. She has exhibited all over the world and shown in many biennales and festivals and is also the recipient of numerous awards. Her work included in many collections including the UK Arts Council Collection, Victoria and Albert Museum, Institute of Modern Art, Brisbane, Australia, and Yale British Art Collection. She currently lives and works in London.

The IFJ Launches Website for Ethical Journalism Campaign Welcome to the Ethical Journalism Initiative website - a new campaign to rekindle old values in media worldwide launched by the International Federation of Journalists. The future of media is the hot topic everywhere, particularly as journalists and others wrestle with the rapid changes in the way journalism works. In troubled times of political tension, social conflict and economic turbulence people yearn for reliable and quality information. Journalism provides the analysis, context and commentary that keep citizens informed and allows them to play their part in the life of society. The role of media in helping to build democracy has never been more important, but how will journalism in future deliver the service people need? [..]

10x10™ ('ten by ten') is an interactive exploration of the words and pictures that define the time. The result is an often moving, sometimes shocking, occasionally frivolous, but always fitting snapshot of our world. Every hour, 10x10 collects the 100 words and pictures that matter most on a global scale, and presents them as a single image, taken to encapsulate that moment in time. Over the course of days, months, and years, 10x10 leaves a trail of these hourly statements which, stitched together side by side, form a continuous patchwork tapestry of human life. 10x10 is ever-changing, ever-growing, quietly observing the ways in which we live. It records our wars and crises, our triumphs and tragedies, our mistakes and milestones. When we make history, or at least the headlines, 10x10 takes note and remembers. Each hour is presented as a picture postcard window, composed of 100 different frames, each of which holds the image of a single moment in time. Clicking on a single frame allows us to peer a bit deeper into the story that lies behind the image. In this way, we can dart in and out of the news, understanding both the individual stories and the ways in which they relate to each other. 10x10 runs with no human intervention, autonomously observing what a handful of leading international news sources are saying and showing. 10x10 makes no comment on news media bias, or lack thereof. It has no politics, nor any secret agenda; it simply shows what it finds. With no human editors and no regulation, 10x10 is open and free, raw and fresh, and consequently a unique way of following world events. In 10x10, we respond instinctively to patterns in the grid, visual indicators of relevance. When we see a frequently repeated image, we know it's important. When we see a picture of a movie star next to a picture of dead bodies, we understand the extremes that exist in our world. Scanning a grid of pictures can be more intuitive than reading headlines, for it lets the new

Photojournalist, Rich Beauchesne from the Portsmouth Herald and Seacoast Media Group, takes us behind the scenes on what it's like to cover politics in NH the day before the primary. Hillary Clinton stopped in Portsmouth NH at Cafe Espresso.

"Description Vietnam was America's most divisive and unsuccessful foreign war. It was also the first to be televised and the first of the modern era fought without military censorship. From the earliest days of the Kennedy-Johnson escalation right up to the American withdrawal, and even today, the media's role in Vietnam has continued to be intensely controversial. The "Uncensored War" gives a richly detailed account of what Americans read and watched about Vietnam. Hallin draws on the complete body of the New York Times coverage from 1961 to 1965, a sample of hundreds of television reports from 1965-73, including television coverage filmed by the Defense Department in the early years of the war, and interviews with many of the journalists who reported it, to give a powerful critique of the conventional wisdom, both conservative and liberal, about the media and Vietnam. Far from being a consistent adversary of government policy in Vietnam, Hallin shows, the media were closely tied to official perspectives throughout the war, though divisions in the government itself and contradictions in its public relations policies caused every administration, at certain times, to lose its ability to "manage" the news effectively. As for television, it neither showed the "literal horror of war," nor did it play a leading role in the collapse of support: it presented a highly idealized picture of the war in the early years, and shifted toward a more critical view only after public unhappiness and elite divisions over the war were well advanced. The "Uncensored War" is essential reading for anyone interested in the history of the Vietnam war or the role of the media in contemporary American politics."