PressThink: The People Formerly Known as the Audience
Great commentary from Jay Rosen about old and new media…
Monthly Archives: June 2006
Race, Gender, and Class on the Web
From Chapter 3, Virtuality: From virtual antiquity to the pixel zone, Nicholas Mirzoeff, An Introduction to Visual Culture:
Mirzoeff points out, that despite its claims to equality and access, the web is really a place for the upper classes. He also discusses the idea of desirable Internet addresses such as MIT’s Media Lab. An AOL address is considered undesirable: “By contrast, an address at America Online is the equivalent of living in a tract home in a subdivision…New apaprtment complexes on Park Avenue in Manhattan offer high-speed access to the Internet as a standard feature, while the first town to be entirely Internet accessible will be Fremont in California’s Silicon Valey, already a very desirable address. There are no projects in cyberspace” (p. 105).
Mirzoeff goes on to discuss the fact that while the web is gender- and race blind, there are still many electronic have nots. He suggests that Wired, an enthusiastic chronicler of the digital age, has “become the venue for a new form of social Darwinism, arguing that computing is a stage of social evolution, separating the higher online sections of humanity from those stuck at the lower levels of the industrial economy…this attitude turns contempt for the poor, especially those of color, into a scientific theory that would be laughable is it were not being taken seriously by significant numbers of people” (p. 107). Here’s the thing…there are no citations, no links to Wired articles in the references, no real evidence that this is the case. I don’t read Wired on a regular basis so have no way of judging if this is true although just browsing the headlines right now gives me a sense of upper middle class attitude…the latest gear and mostly pictures of white men. So, which came first? Wired or the demographic? Are they really as racist as Mirzoeff seems to suggest or are they just trying to appeal to a certain group of people who, in this case, happen to upper class, white and males. Is that wrong? And where is the social Darwinism in that? It’s mostly marketing. Individual media outlets can’t possibly appeal to everyone.
Mass to Molecular Media
"The shift is one from the mass to the molecular media." (Tapscott, Growing Up Digital, p. 300).
One important "new" media literacy skill is organization. In the late 70s, when I was in high school, someone else had done the organizing. We learned how the card catalog worked, how to use indexes to search encyclopedias, and how to use the Guide to Periodicals, even though my high school only subscribed to a small number of magazines listed. Basically, we learned how other people organized the world, and it seemed like it was mostly alphabetical by last name or title.
How is the world organized now? Increasingly by tags and keywords that can be sorted and re-sorted in a variety of ways using search techniques that may be different from the ones I learned. For instance, rather than going for the "L" volume to find stuff on Abraham Lincoln, in Google I would simply type Abraham Lincoln to search for information on our 16th president. (Actually, searching on Lincoln, Abraham gets you the same search results.)
I observed in a school a few months ago and watched the media specialist deliver a class on how to use the paper almanac. At the time, I wondered why she was pursuing this. After all, if I want to know how far it is to the moon, I'm just going to Google or ask.com. It occured to me, but I have never confirmed it, that using the world almanac is a testable skill. Hmmm…really? Shouldn't students be learning how to create efficient organizational methods for themselves? How to develop folksonomies that help categorize.
This is a whole new way of thinking of information. Instead of file cabinets and file folders as the metaphor to describe storage and organization, the network is a much better idea. A constellation or cloud of keywords that can be combined and recombined to show how knowledge is related. Certainly, any media literacy should help students how to organize this new media.
N-Geners
Doing some notetaking before I return Growing Up Digital (Don Tapscott) to Swem. I marked this quote as related to media literacy:
"They accept little at face value, probably because there is a medium to challenge things. Unlke the TV generation which had no viable means to interact with media content, the N-GEneration has the tools to challenge ideas, people, statements–anything. These youth love to argue and dbate. They can instantly comment on any information they find with the click of a mouse…And they are constantly required to make a case for something. They must then rely on their point of view, test it, and alter it if appropriate." p. 88.
From the conclusion of that chapter on the N-Gen Mind: "Overall, while there is much more to be learned, it appears that the doomsayer's view regarding how the Net is affecting child psychology is wrong. Rather than the "neocortex eating itself," children appear to be developing their cognition, intellects, and abilities better. From our research, the children of the digital age appear to be smart, accepting of diversity, curous, assertive, self-reliant, high in self-esteem, and global in orientation. Evidence suggests they process information differently than their predecessors, they have new tools for self-development and making their way through adolescence." (p. 104)
The Space Issue…
Here's a random thought about old media versus new media: the space issue. I just filled two grocery bags with printed copies of three different journals to which I subscribe. All of them are available in digital format online to subscribers as well as through the databases at William and Mary. Besides browsing through them when they arrive each month, they are really not all that helpful for research. I kept one favorite and will recycle the rest of them. But it only makes a small dent…the basket beside my bed is overflowing with all the print stuff I've received since the beginning of the year and there's another one in the hall bathroom. I'm desperately trying to at least open them before I recycle. And it's frustrating…sometimes I'm interested in the articles and sometimes I'm not. But I might become interested at some future time. That's when I'm going to ERIC to see what's available on the topic. Only then will the article become important. And, it will be available in digital format for download to my hard drive. Much more space-friendly…and this from someone who lives in 1350 square feet.
Finally–since this is pretty long for a random thought…I have different attachments to different types of media. I can give up magazines without a problem…but I love books. Don't like reading online. And right now lots of my books are in the boxes in the garage. I went looking for one yesterday and felt a real pang of loss…I miss my books…