RAGGED TROUSERED WIKINOMICSBack to the future for poor old Media Studies?

Poor old Media Studieshttp://news.bbc.co.uk/today/hi/today/newsid_8204000/8204849.stm

Helpful stuff other people say

Secondary school age students use Youtube as a search engine.

Regulatory policy is way behind social activity - eg vague Byron intervention.

The media is now defined by ‘attention wars’, not the loudest voice.

Google are outside of regulation – too much ‘google juice’ = switch off.

This media literacy shift is equal to the emergence of mass literacy but the pace of change is much greater.

Worrying about wikipedia in relation to the construction of knowledge is pointless – already happened, a while ago.

Worrying about QA equivalences (eg a video to an essay) is pointless.

Stuff I’ve been doing

Working out some pedagogy around ‘Media 2.0’

Theorising (critical) media literacy in relation to GTA4.

Doing audience research using multimodal methods.

Developing a new A Level unit that ‘remixes’ Cultural Studies

Thinking about a ‘new politics’ for Media Studies

Defending ‘poor old Media Studies’ in England

Take the Skinheads Bowling

In 1985 I bought this record. Now it reminds me of being a sixth form student. Long time ago. For Xmas 23 years later I got a USB turntable. This week I converted the original to mp3 and then put it on my ipod. Then I went on facebook and told everyone I was listening to it. If my ‘friends’ are remotely interested they can download it from facebook through another application. Then someone posted the link to this ska cover version I had never heard.

Is this ‘we media’ or ‘me media’? I don’t know. Am I giving meaning to media or just distributing it in a new way? Either way are the texts in question less important than the dissemination – the chain? Is this kind of stuff, which is going on in many parts of the world, every minute, relevant to Media education? How should we respond? Should we ignore it, thinking of it as just a new aspect of the media? Should we think of new kinds of concepts to theorise it? Should we assess online exchange as well as production itself? Can you even separate these anymore? Or what?

• http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=MpMS2E-Fj6M

The view of the internet and new digital media as an ‘optional extra’ is replaced with recognition that they

have fundamentally changed the ways in which we engage with all media.

David Gauntlett: Media Studies 2.0 @ www.theory.org.uk

Britney 1.0 Britney 2.0News values Online newsInfotainment Rolling news

Celebrity culture Blogs Gender Youtube Ideology Lack of regulationMedia regulation Notions of truthDeregulation People respondingNews agendas People creating

NOT TEXTS BUT cultural products to which people give meaning (Barker, 2007)

Just Gaming

Critical media literacy.

Social (postmodern) constructions of reality, storytelling and (perhaps) narrative.

Player / reader / gamer identities – ways of being.

Starting the game from scratch isn't easy. Your first task is to drive an associate round Liberty City - driving is an absolute nightmare! First few plays is simply consumed with trying to sort out how to drive the car - kept writing the car off and thereby terminating the mission. Not being terribly experienced with driving games, found this tough at first.

Anyway, in between trying to sort this, this being a GTA game, I decide to take a walk down the street and fight some random passers-by. Got beaten up by a girl at one point - couldn't learn how to fight fast enough. Once I master the art of street fighting, its back to driving the car round Liberty City. By now, about 40 mins into playing I'm starting to pick up the thread a bit - I can drive, I can fight and this starts to impress the ladies!

A girl tells me she 'likes' me but my clothes are no good - I guess this is a cue for material self-improvement. An hour into playing and I'm starting to get into the swing of it - what to do, how to do and just as importantly how its similar and different to previous GTAs.

An hour and a bit into the game, feeling like I've made a decent start but also knowing it'll take me some time to master this version of Liberty City

Gaming as performance

Carnivaesque

Frivolity – playing, picking and mixing

Morality

Storytelling – multiple approaches

The Baroque Showman

Adopting multiple approaches in both their ways of being in the game and their ways of telling.

GTA4 as a text is less interesting educationally than the ways that people play and tell – ‘being’ in and in relation to the cultural product.

Doing Culture

Switching and splicing

Performance

Identity

Reflection

Nationwide Remixed?

Post-broadcast audience research

Gauntlett, Making and Doing

‘What comes back’

De-texting Pedagogy

Outcomes• Strategy– a ‘mash up’ of methods with the deliberate intention of exploring

the difference this additional set of determinants (in addition to the cultural map) makes to the outcomes.

• The conclusions we can draw at this point seem to be that it is perfectly possible to adhere to the principles of Morley’s seminal study even in this post-broadcast mediasphere. Despite the fact that The Wire has not been consumed in the same way as Nationwide was – as a collective experience in time – we have been able to situate the data in relation to a very clear sense of a ‘preferred reading’ and produce a cultural map of the connections between readings and social practices.

• The limitations of these findings are clear. This project has been another ‘small story’, in Barker’s words (2007b). But it is hoped that further research will more extensively explore the idea of using ‘multimodal methods’ to play the game and that this approach will be passed on to students so we can more consistently move beyond the level of the text to explore how people in culture attribute meaning to media.

We Media and Democracy

http://cvtvspielbergclub.blogspot.com/

everyone could see it, your Mums, your Dads, your Aunties, your Uncles...”.

On the other hand 1

On the other hand 2

On the other hand 3

………where’s the serving dude?

New frameworks?

Together with genre, narrative, representation, ideology, audience, power. Always through practice (making and doing) and research (people).

Education

1.0 Mass Literacy / Divided Schooling

Media Studies

Absent

2.0 Mass Media / Mass Schooling / Divided Distribution

3.0 Divided Schooling / Digital Divide / Web 2.0

Media 1.0 – Texts / Marxism

Media 1.5 – Texts / Production

Media 2.0 – People

j.mcdougall@newman.ac.uk