So I'm a little busy today, trying to work on a paper and prep for a job interview I have tomorrow. This is particularly difficult because the paper isn't due for almost a month, which goes completely against my normal method of motivating myself through recognition of a fast-approaching deadline. However, April will be a killer in terms of grading and exams, so I'm trying to finish as many of my more flexible assignments as possible now. We'll see how it turns out!
In the interests of being at least a little exciting today, I decided to give you a brief peek into what the topic I'm currently working on is. For my quantitative research class, we basically have to do the background research for and design a study. If it turns out to be interesting, we might even conduct it later on. So far, I've gotten good feedback on mine.
Which, I'm sure, means you're all wondering what this amazing project of mine could be. Well, I'm afraid I can't write too much about it here for now, especially if I'm actually going to run the study. Wouldn't want any of my more enterprising students (who make up the research pool we often use for exploratory studies) to discover my hypotheses and end up giving me skewed results.
What I can say is that it deals with (surprise!) video games, and more specifically their influence on public opinion. Check out some of the material here to see some of what I'm working with. We'll see how it goes! If I don't end up taking it to the study stage, I'll probably give another update soon, but if I do, it'll be awhile before I manage to run all the data and can report back with my conclusions.
Showing posts with label media studies. Show all posts
Showing posts with label media studies. Show all posts
Sunday, March 27, 2011
Sunday, March 20, 2011
SXSW- Part 2, Anonymity and Creativity
Well, I've been back from Texas since Wednesday night, but some of the stuff at SXSW was just so cool/interesting that I'll probably be posting about it through this week or even beyond. At the very least, I'd like to discuss the keynote speeches I was lucky enough to catch.
There were so many people at SXSW that I didn't think I'd be able to see the keynotes from the main room where they were actually taking place, especially since the organizers were expecting a large enough audience that they simulcast the speeches to eight or nine other rooms. Somehow, I managed to get into the main ballroom for the two I really wanted to see-- Christopher Poole and Felicia Day. Felicia Day is probably the more recognizable name of the two of these, but Chris Poole is equally successful and well-known on the Internet front-- just not by name. Rather, he's known as "moot", the founder of 4chan.org, which he jokingly refers to as "the dark heart of the Internet" (before arguing against this perception).
If you haven't been on 4chan, don't go while at work or while with people that you don't want accidentally exposed to adult material. The website itself is a very simple imageboard, where users can post and comment on pictures, but it allows them to be entirely anonymous. 4chan has become the spawning point for a number of Internet subcultures and memes (fads or trends, such as Rickrolling). It's darker side has been manifested in Internet attacks, such as flooding the bandwidth of the Motion Picture Association of America's website in retaliation for their cyberattacks against The Pirate Bay, crashing the MPAA's website for a short period of time. The community's members have also used their computer and hacking skills for positive results, such as tracking down a poster who was threatening to blow up his school and passing the information along to the police. It's actually a pretty fascinating website to look at from a media studies perspective, just because its users are completely anonymous but still manage to exert a heavy influence on popular culture, other areas of the Internet, and people who irritate 4chan users.
I found Moot's talk really interesting, because while he recognized the more negative side of sites like 4chan, he expressed almost infinite faith in the potential of anonymity to be a positive thing. Daniel Solove, a law professor at George Washington University, wrote a book called "The Future of Reputation: Gossip, Rumor and Privacy on the Internet", where he argues that the difficulty of deleting information from the Internet means that all the mistakes and errors we commit in life will follow us forever. With a permanent chronicle of our lives stored online, we no longer have the ability to reinvent ourselves by moving to a new place or by meeting new people. This stifles experimentation and creativity, as our failures, like our mistakes, will also be linked to us permanently. Moot's argument was that sites like 4chan, which allow users to be completely anonymous, can help make up for this, by giving people places to fail risk-free. He saw them as places that can help breed creativity by decreasing the repercussions of trying something and having it not work out, as well as by allowing others to take, change and sometimes even improve upon original works.
This perspective actually correlates with some of the points I made in my undergraduate thesis, about balancing the right to free speech with the negative repercussions of anonymity. Anonymity really does unlink identity and consequences, allowing people to make posts or put forward ideas that they might otherwise have stifled. This is a positive thing when it means that, as mentioned above, people get multiple chances to try something without being deemed a failure, or when people who are surrounded by others who are unlike or disagree with them can share their viewpoints without being ostracized. It's a less positive thing when it means that individuals can attack or libel one another with impunity. Unfortunately, I don't know the best way to balance this, and I'm not sure anyone else does either. I would, however, agree with moot that 4chan and similarly anonymous sites serve a purpose.
Moot also had a number of other ideas that I really liked, but including them would make this post way too long, so I think I'll save them for Wednesday. For now, what do you think about 4chan, if you've experienced it in the past? Is it useful, or just a spot for people to waste time and be offensive? And how do you think open speech and civility can be balanced online?
(Also, if interested, moot's talk is actually up on YouTube in its entirety. And the Austin Chronicle did an interesting article on 4chan during SXSW. My favorite quote from it-- "Anonymity allows identity to exhale". )
There were so many people at SXSW that I didn't think I'd be able to see the keynotes from the main room where they were actually taking place, especially since the organizers were expecting a large enough audience that they simulcast the speeches to eight or nine other rooms. Somehow, I managed to get into the main ballroom for the two I really wanted to see-- Christopher Poole and Felicia Day. Felicia Day is probably the more recognizable name of the two of these, but Chris Poole is equally successful and well-known on the Internet front-- just not by name. Rather, he's known as "moot", the founder of 4chan.org, which he jokingly refers to as "the dark heart of the Internet" (before arguing against this perception).
If you haven't been on 4chan, don't go while at work or while with people that you don't want accidentally exposed to adult material. The website itself is a very simple imageboard, where users can post and comment on pictures, but it allows them to be entirely anonymous. 4chan has become the spawning point for a number of Internet subcultures and memes (fads or trends, such as Rickrolling). It's darker side has been manifested in Internet attacks, such as flooding the bandwidth of the Motion Picture Association of America's website in retaliation for their cyberattacks against The Pirate Bay, crashing the MPAA's website for a short period of time. The community's members have also used their computer and hacking skills for positive results, such as tracking down a poster who was threatening to blow up his school and passing the information along to the police. It's actually a pretty fascinating website to look at from a media studies perspective, just because its users are completely anonymous but still manage to exert a heavy influence on popular culture, other areas of the Internet, and people who irritate 4chan users.
I found Moot's talk really interesting, because while he recognized the more negative side of sites like 4chan, he expressed almost infinite faith in the potential of anonymity to be a positive thing. Daniel Solove, a law professor at George Washington University, wrote a book called "The Future of Reputation: Gossip, Rumor and Privacy on the Internet", where he argues that the difficulty of deleting information from the Internet means that all the mistakes and errors we commit in life will follow us forever. With a permanent chronicle of our lives stored online, we no longer have the ability to reinvent ourselves by moving to a new place or by meeting new people. This stifles experimentation and creativity, as our failures, like our mistakes, will also be linked to us permanently. Moot's argument was that sites like 4chan, which allow users to be completely anonymous, can help make up for this, by giving people places to fail risk-free. He saw them as places that can help breed creativity by decreasing the repercussions of trying something and having it not work out, as well as by allowing others to take, change and sometimes even improve upon original works.
This perspective actually correlates with some of the points I made in my undergraduate thesis, about balancing the right to free speech with the negative repercussions of anonymity. Anonymity really does unlink identity and consequences, allowing people to make posts or put forward ideas that they might otherwise have stifled. This is a positive thing when it means that, as mentioned above, people get multiple chances to try something without being deemed a failure, or when people who are surrounded by others who are unlike or disagree with them can share their viewpoints without being ostracized. It's a less positive thing when it means that individuals can attack or libel one another with impunity. Unfortunately, I don't know the best way to balance this, and I'm not sure anyone else does either. I would, however, agree with moot that 4chan and similarly anonymous sites serve a purpose.
Moot also had a number of other ideas that I really liked, but including them would make this post way too long, so I think I'll save them for Wednesday. For now, what do you think about 4chan, if you've experienced it in the past? Is it useful, or just a spot for people to waste time and be offensive? And how do you think open speech and civility can be balanced online?
(Also, if interested, moot's talk is actually up on YouTube in its entirety. And the Austin Chronicle did an interesting article on 4chan during SXSW. My favorite quote from it-- "Anonymity allows identity to exhale". )
Sunday, February 06, 2011
Mean World Syndrome
Most of my time recently has been spent grading papers turned in by my students, detailing their analysis of media effects in television shows they viewed. When I do take a break, I've gotten hooked on the TV show "Castle". Collectively, these two inspired today's blog post.
"Castle", if you haven't seen it, is a pretty excellent show. I'd highly recommend it as a series with interesting characters, well-written dialogue and some clever plots. Nathan Fillion stars as mystery writer Richard Castle, who teams up with the NYPD when a serial killer starts imitating the way his victims were killed in his books. After solving that crime, he stays with the NYPD as an assistant/observer, using the main detective Kate Beckett as his inspiration for the main character in a new book series. The reason watching this show connects to my students' papers is because it reminds me of a Media Studies theory, Mean World Syndrome.
The central premise of Mean World Syndrome is that exposure to violent media leads viewers to believe that the world is more dangerous, or "meaner", than it actually is. For instance, the tendency of news shows to focus on crime, while understandable, is thought to increase this by making viewers believe crime is more common than it actually is.
While I haven't studied this syndrome in awhile and don't know what the contemporary assessment of its accuracy is, I do occasionally have to wonder if it's affecting me. Living by myself and having a very active imagination, I have already spent a few nights waking up from a dream convinced that someone is in my apartment. Rather scary at three in the morning. Now I'm curious if occurrences like these might be partially influenced by what I'm watching on TV. Guess we'll find out if watching "Castle" has an impact! It's a relatively non-violent show (while containing dead people, it rarely shows them getting killed or even a lot of blood), but I'll definitely be keeping my eyes out. What do you think?
"Castle", if you haven't seen it, is a pretty excellent show. I'd highly recommend it as a series with interesting characters, well-written dialogue and some clever plots. Nathan Fillion stars as mystery writer Richard Castle, who teams up with the NYPD when a serial killer starts imitating the way his victims were killed in his books. After solving that crime, he stays with the NYPD as an assistant/observer, using the main detective Kate Beckett as his inspiration for the main character in a new book series. The reason watching this show connects to my students' papers is because it reminds me of a Media Studies theory, Mean World Syndrome.
The central premise of Mean World Syndrome is that exposure to violent media leads viewers to believe that the world is more dangerous, or "meaner", than it actually is. For instance, the tendency of news shows to focus on crime, while understandable, is thought to increase this by making viewers believe crime is more common than it actually is.
While I haven't studied this syndrome in awhile and don't know what the contemporary assessment of its accuracy is, I do occasionally have to wonder if it's affecting me. Living by myself and having a very active imagination, I have already spent a few nights waking up from a dream convinced that someone is in my apartment. Rather scary at three in the morning. Now I'm curious if occurrences like these might be partially influenced by what I'm watching on TV. Guess we'll find out if watching "Castle" has an impact! It's a relatively non-violent show (while containing dead people, it rarely shows them getting killed or even a lot of blood), but I'll definitely be keeping my eyes out. What do you think?
Wednesday, January 26, 2011
Movable Type-- Quality Undergrad Media Studies
I am in graduate school. By definition, this makes me kind of (really) a nerd about my field of study. Possibly one of the most nerdy things I've done, and also one of the best, was joining together with a few of my awesome fellow Media Studies majors as an undergrad to found Movable Type, an undergraduate media studies journal for the University of Virginia.
The reason I bring it up today is because the journal didn't close down when the original staff graduated in May. In fact, it's still going strong, and the second edition is in the process of being released now. As an online journal, new editions of Movable Type are released a few papers at a time, to keep postings more current. Even better, all the content is archived and searchable, as well as sorted by keyword.
If you've ever been interested in exactly what media studies majors and scholars write about, Movable Type can give you more than enough insight. One of my papers on gender and video games, a topic I covered briefly in an earlier post, is up on Movable Type, as well as some of the best work I've read by my fellow undergraduates. If you're interested in hackers, crafts, Glee, Harry Potter fandom, political campaigns or more, I'd encourage you to check it out, read some material and leave your comments. It's great to get feedback on work, especially if you're planning to go anywhere with it.
Because the articles and the journal can be a little heavy at times, however, I'll also leave you with "A Media Studies Love Story", a video created by one of the original Movable Type staffers, demonstrating not only her own nerdiness and love for media studies, but a bit of insight into what it is.
In case the video looks familiar, it was inspired by the follow advertisement, "Parisian Love", released by Google for the 2010 Superbowl. Enjoy!
The reason I bring it up today is because the journal didn't close down when the original staff graduated in May. In fact, it's still going strong, and the second edition is in the process of being released now. As an online journal, new editions of Movable Type are released a few papers at a time, to keep postings more current. Even better, all the content is archived and searchable, as well as sorted by keyword.
If you've ever been interested in exactly what media studies majors and scholars write about, Movable Type can give you more than enough insight. One of my papers on gender and video games, a topic I covered briefly in an earlier post, is up on Movable Type, as well as some of the best work I've read by my fellow undergraduates. If you're interested in hackers, crafts, Glee, Harry Potter fandom, political campaigns or more, I'd encourage you to check it out, read some material and leave your comments. It's great to get feedback on work, especially if you're planning to go anywhere with it.
Because the articles and the journal can be a little heavy at times, however, I'll also leave you with "A Media Studies Love Story", a video created by one of the original Movable Type staffers, demonstrating not only her own nerdiness and love for media studies, but a bit of insight into what it is.
In case the video looks familiar, it was inspired by the follow advertisement, "Parisian Love", released by Google for the 2010 Superbowl. Enjoy!
Wednesday, December 08, 2010
Gender in the History of Video Games
For today's post, I don't really have time to grab anything out of my old notes-- the end of the semester is packed with things that need to be done, and as fun as it is to keep my blog up to date, it's not really essential to progression in my Ph.D. program. But fear not! What you get instead is an excerpt from a paper I'm writing for my qualitative methods class. A lot of people write about video games and gender, usually not in a complimentary way. They dislike the way female characters are represented and the fact that video games tend to have more male than female players. I'm interested in seeing if these academic perceptions of gender and video games translate to gamers themselves, so I decided to do my research and the required interview for this project around video game consoles, to see if they were conceived of in terms of gender. In short, do gamers view some consoles as more acceptable for girls than others?
I'm still hashing out my own conclusions, but the following is an extract from my textual analysis for the paper, where I address what people have said about gender and games, what is going on now, and where my work fits in. This is the "Gender in the History of Video Games" section, focusing specifically on the narratives academics construct around games. Enjoy and let me know what you think! Sorry if it's kind of long, but I couldn't think of a better place to cut it off. The formatting is also being all wonky on me, so sorry for that.
I'm still hashing out my own conclusions, but the following is an extract from my textual analysis for the paper, where I address what people have said about gender and games, what is going on now, and where my work fits in. This is the "Gender in the History of Video Games" section, focusing specifically on the narratives academics construct around games. Enjoy and let me know what you think! Sorry if it's kind of long, but I couldn't think of a better place to cut it off. The formatting is also being all wonky on me, so sorry for that.
Sunday, October 24, 2010
Multitasking and Your Brain
I am always busy. It's just how I choose to live most of the time. Barring this past summer, when I avoided having a job to recover from academic burnout, I have at least five things going on all the time-- work, school, activities, volunteering, personal projects, socializing, you name it. Even when I'm relaxing, I know there's a long list of things that I should be doing. This means I have become very, very good at multi-tasking.
Recently, however, I've been trying to do that less. Not because I have fewer things to do, but because I read a fantastic book that, among other things, explained exactly how your brain processes things when you multitask and why it might not be good when you're trying to learn or remember something. The book, The Tyranny of E-mail by John Freeman, goes through all the ways in which e-mail has changed our lives, from forming our to-do lists for us, swamping us with physically impossible amounts of information to digest, and forcing us to bring our work home with us. (At one point he cites an interview with Madonna where the pop star admitted that both she and then-husband Guy Ritchie slept with their Blackberries under their pillows.)
Recently, however, I've been trying to do that less. Not because I have fewer things to do, but because I read a fantastic book that, among other things, explained exactly how your brain processes things when you multitask and why it might not be good when you're trying to learn or remember something. The book, The Tyranny of E-mail by John Freeman, goes through all the ways in which e-mail has changed our lives, from forming our to-do lists for us, swamping us with physically impossible amounts of information to digest, and forcing us to bring our work home with us. (At one point he cites an interview with Madonna where the pop star admitted that both she and then-husband Guy Ritchie slept with their Blackberries under their pillows.)
Wednesday, October 13, 2010
Culture Jamming
I have a stats assignment and an essay on Marxist media theory due tomorrow, so I don't have time to write a new post. However, I'm really proud of how I've been updating this regularly (Wednesdays and Sundays for those of you who aren't paying attention), and I don't want to mess that trend up. Therefore, today I'm just going to post a project I did first year for MDST 201, Intro to Media Studies.
For this project, we had to perform a culture jam on a piece of print advertisement and then include a writeup explaining what we did. To quote the assignment, "Culture Jamming is the practice of taking preexisting texts and altering their content so that they critique themselves. The practice goes beyond parody in that its goals are not simply comic but political. The successful culture jam subverts and destabilizes the text by pointing out its complicity in problematic practices."
I will say right now that this is not one of my best papers (it was quite a few years ago), but the assignment was an interesting one, and it's short enough that I don't feel it'll be overwhelming to post here. I'd love to know what you think!
Wednesday, October 06, 2010
Intro to Media Studies
Looking back on the posts I’ve put up, I realized that very few of them are about media studies, which struck me as odd considering that’s what I actually do. I suppose this may be attributed to the fact that media studies fall into the category of “Things I’m Not Supposed to Forget” and therefore not directly in line with the past tense focus of my blog’s title. At the same time, I could probably use a refresher on some of the things that came up in the second Media Studies class I ever took—MDST 201- Introduction to Media Studies—and hopefully it’ll give the rest of you a bit more context on what it is I study.
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