English in Utah

In Case of Zombies, Break Glass. (#cmp10 project proposal)

In The Cultural Logic of Media Convergence, Henry Jenkins asks us to, “imagine a world” where one type of media power comes from collective intelligence, gaining visibility, “only if deemed relevant to a loose network of diverse publics.” (Jenkins 35)

Within the world of Zombie fandom, and the variety of media that proliferate its mythology – movies, books, graphic novels, video and board games, there lies a message in the undercurrent, a message that has been deemed relevant and has formed a loose network that proliferates the message. That message is that the end is coming. The zombie apocalypse is eminent, and if we plan to survive, we must prepare now. There are individuals, who out of a sense of humor, irony, or true self-preservation, are heeding the words of Max Brooks, “Organize before they rise.”

Zombie fandom has given rise to an interest in collapse-of-civilization survival techniques, spawned in large part by Brook’s “Zombie Survival Guide”. De Certeu assertion that “ users re-appropriate the space organized by techniques of sociocultural production” holds true among Zombie Fandom. Users have re-appropriated a number of media to develop and redevelop survival strategies for the coming Zombie Apocalypse. Evidence of this production can be found on YouTube, websites, message boards, and other digital spaces. Of interest here, is how these user-produced responses to zombie fandom may be creating useful, usable, survival advice that would be deemed appropriate in an actual emergency situation.

By using contextual analysis, I will look at the nexus between Zombie Fandom and actual survival strategies. Drawing on my own experience with survival training, and manuals published by the United States Armed Forces and other survival experts, I will create a coding methodology and rating system to evaluate fan-created survival strategies.

The key fan-created text I will examine is the use of Amazon.com lists to assemble zombie apocalypse survival kits. I will also examine comments and discussions generated by these lists. I will further my investigation by examining survival strategies outlined by fans on a participatory message board.

The end result will be an understanding of the transmedia/intertextuality of survival culture and zombie fandom, as well as recommendations for creating your own Zombie Survival Kit. I also hope to make an argument for seeing fan-based participatory community as not just a media for exchanging and reshaping information about a particular text (or texts), but also as a means of gaining information beyond the scope of mere fandom.

Michel de Certeau (1925-1986) was a Jesuit scholar, historian, and philosopher, whose interests varied from Sigmund Freud to mysticism. De Certeau was a founding member of Ecole Freudienne de Paris, a French professional organization for psychoanalysts.

General Introduction to The Practice of Everyday Life

In the introduction, de Certeau states that the purpose of this work is to investigate how users operate. By users, de Certeau seems to be moving away from the term consumers, a term which carries the connotations of passivity and docility.

De Certeau brings up the term “poaching”, a term that is familiar to readers of Henry Jenkins (thus, the image).
(you can get more loltherists here

De Certeau suggests that rather than allow research to continue to focus on the dichotomy of representations of society and behavior of society, studies should focus on what the consumer/user does /makes with the representations of society. He asserts that the production of users is hidden, an assertion that does not hold true in the age of the internet, user-created content, and fansites. He does, however, offer an understanding of how the consumer, the segment of society that has products imposed on it by a dominant economic order, can subvert this imposition by using these products in unique ways. He references how indigenous populations subverted the imposed culture of the Spanish colonizers. Is there much distance between this type of subersion and the work of hacker culture, or music/movie pirates?

In light of Foucault’s work, De Certeau emphasizes the need, not to focus on the regime of discipline and surveylience, but rather, the ways in which subversiveness and creativity emerge from these systems from the very people who are supposed to be caught in its net.

De Certeau call consumers/users “poets of their own acts.” Is this view too romanticized? De Certeau asserts that statistical investigation fails to graps the form and phrasing of what consumers are producing.

The idea that the consumer/user travels a wandering line means that the interests and desires of individuals are not encapsulated within a system.

De Certeau uses the term “strategy” to refer to the ability of a subject is able to separate itself from the environment. He uses “tactic” to describe a calculus which is dependent on space and time, and can not be seperated entirely. He asserts that many everyday activities, like walking and cooking, have their root in the tactile.

June Deery

June Deery

June Deery received her D.Phil in literature from Oxford University in 1989. Her early publications involve science fiction authors and utopian narratives, including articles on Huxley, and H.G. Wells. Towards the beginning of the new milinium, her interests appear to have morphed over into the world of reality television. She lists her research interests as: contemporary mediation, reality tv, media convergence, commercial culture, advertising, body image, media and politis, and technology and fiction.

Currently, Deery is an Associate Professor of Literature and Media Studies in the Dept. of Language, Literature and Communication at Rensselaer (RPI). Perhaps Deery’s greatest work in academia was in her role as advisor to our very own Liza Potts .

June Deery does have a Facebook account, but it looks empty.

Reality TV as Advertainment

Deery views Reality TV as a triumph of the market, in that the high degree of commercialization found in reality tv signals a willingness of the audience and programmers to accommodate the commercial imperative of television.

Deery writes that “Individuals, experiences, and even the medium intself are repeatedly marketed in the genre.” Shows act as “Branded content”; the show itself is the product. The first example that lept to my min, The Ultimate Fighter, serves as an extended advertisement for it’s finale and eventual pay per view card. In the course of the show, a rivalry is built and explored between fighters who will eventually meet in a finale that draws in even more advertising dollars.

The Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC) saw the advertainment value of reality tv, and was able to go from struggling company to the flagship of programming on SPIKE TV. ESPN recounts the significance of the first Ultimate Fighter finale as essential to legitimizing MMA as a sport.

Deery asserts that “Advertisers have become interested in a more embedded and direct influence on programming.” Advertisers are having a direct influence on the production of the shows themselves. Survivor features products from its advertisers in the production of the show. This type of influence and product placement demonstrates how advertisers are fitting their products into the show, rather than placing adds in-between segments of the show.

She writes that, “Tivo, DVR, and the internet allow viewers to by-pass spot advertisement, so the convergence of entertainment and advertisement is a necessary monetizing effort.” Technology has altered the nature of audiences. TV audiences are no longer left to sit through commercials (even if you channel surf, commercials seem to come at coordinated times across networks). So, broadcasters are faced with a dilemna. They must have advertising to pay for the shows. This brings up issues with DRM and pay to play technologies.

Deery mentions two types of Reality TV programming, the Spartan, and the Hedonistic. Spartan shows, like Survivor, Big Brother, (and for me, TUF) deprive contestants of goods, then offer them up as a reward, therefore placing significant value on the specific product. Hedonistic shows, like Tempation Island or the Bachelor, revel in providing luxury. Each of these sub-genres contain their own methodologies for product placement and offer different strategies for emphasizing the value of a product.

Ed Herman is a mixed-martial arts fighter who fights out of the Team Quest camp in…. wait…. wrong guy.

According to Wikipedia, Edward S. Herman (1925) is a professor with the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania. However, my search of their faculty pages yielded no results. Herman earned his Ph.d from Berkley in 1953, and has published 17 books on topics related to political economy and the media.
Below is the first part of a two-part interview with Herman.
Herman interview

Herman’s co-author, Noam Chomsky, is a professor emeritus of linguistics at MIT. Considered by many to be a father of modern linguistics and a notable philospher, Chomsky has been a significant contributer to the fields of linguistics, psychology, politics, and the cultural criticism of science. The depth and breadth of Chomsky’s contributions would exhaust this space, so feel free to puruse his website at your leisure.

Here you will find the first of nine videos in a series where Chomsky discusses Manufacturing Consent, the title of the book in which The Propaganda Model appears. The title of the book came from Walter Lippmann, who described the manufacture of consent, or the way in which democracies promote the common interest, which often eludes the public.
Manufacture of Consent

Propaganda Model

Herman and Chomsky offer the following ingredients of the Propaganda Model
1. The size, concentrated ownership, owner wealth, and profit orientation of the dominant mass-media firms

2. Advertising as the primary income source of the mass media

3. The reliance of the media on information provided by government, business, and “experts” funded and approved by these primary sources as agents of power

4. “Flak” as a means of disciplining the media

5. Anticommunism (later expanded to ani-idealogy)as a national religion and control mechanism

The first ingredient listed by Herman and Chomsky relys on the massive expenses associated with printing a daily newpaper, or running a television network or movie studio. The duo provides tables that show how media and wealth were controlled in 1987.

While this model is very true for its time, I am curious as to how relevant these numbers are today. Has the interenet lessened the centralized control of new sources, or are even bloggers subject to the same type of monetary concerns?

Advertising is the second filter preventing new from being truly objective and propaganda free. Popular media relies on income generated from advertisers.
Do pay-to-play cites eliminate the need to appeal to advertisers? Where does Google Ads fit into this as bloggers seek to monetize their output?

Official Sources of Information
Mass media relies on sanctioned experts and agencies to provide information. There is a reciprocity of interest and an economic benefit for both parties. The “expert” gains the public confidence, and the monetary benefit of the position, while media builds a relationship with sources who the public consider reliable.

How is Twitter, and other social media, affecting the definition of reliable sources? Is the US Embassy in Haiti a better source than volunteer relief workers who are tweeting what they see?

The fourth filter, “flak”, is the negative responses that mass media receives. The authors describe several organized, politically and economically backed movements that were used to reinforce political authority and specific ideology toward the media. This type of activism can still be found in groups like the Parents Television Council http://www.parentstv.org/ and Accuracy in Media http://www.aim.org/

The fifth filter, which was later revised expanded from anticommunism to anti-ideology, speaks of the the tendency to polarize ideologies in a “with us or against us” fashion. Spend some time on the AIM site above, and read the article “Obama’s Comrades push global socialization” and you might find that the shift in language may be unnecessary.

Walter Benjamin’s biography reads like the skeleton of an independent drama, the kind that would have starred Ben Kinglsey as Benjamin, a German-Jewish scholar who shocks his contemporaries with his work, had a relationship with a Bolshevik Latvian actress*, experimented with hashish, and ended up on the run from Nazi’s.

Benjamin was born in 1895, and began his academic career, which included early work on Baudelaire, during the turmoil that grew into World War I. Benjamin continued to study and work as a literary critic until his major work, The Origin of German Tragic Drama was rejected by Frankfurt University, which brought an end to his academic career.

Benjamin was considered a Marxist, but “he wrote outside the rigid strictures of the Marxist canon (Schwartz).” He continued to write about literature, social research, and found work doing translations. His last major work, The Arcades Project, was left unfinished at the time of his death. Benjamin took his own life while trying to flee from the Nazis. Some people speculate that his death came at the hands of others, possibly the Soviets.

The picture on the right is a Walter Benjamin doll, available at The Unemployed Philosopher’s Guild. His most widely read work, discussed below, is probably The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction.

You can watch the trailer for the documentary, Who Killed Walter Benjamin?, below.
*I don’t have details on this… but the entry says she was an erotic influence on him…. hmm?
Who Killed Walter Benjamin?

Applying Benjamin’s “The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction” to Culture|Media|Participation

First, let’s take a quick walk through some of Benjamin’s major assertions:

Works of art have always been reproducible(19)

Reproductions do not possess the same presence in time and space

The presence of the original is the prerequisite to the concept of authenticity (20)”

The authenticity of a thing is the essence of all that is transmissible from its beginning, ranging from its substantive duration to its testimony to the history which it has experienced. Since the historical testimony rests on the authenticity, the former, too, is jeopardized by reproduction when substantive duration ceases to matter. (21)

“Making many reproductions substitutes a plurality of copies for a unique existence (21).”

Benjamin suggests that the reproducable nature of art in his era had changed the nature of art itself. Art no longer resided in ritual, but it came to dwell in the realm of politics.

This line led me to think of the works of Ron English, Shepard Fairey, Mr. Brainwash, and Banksy. This association is largely due to the fact that I saw the Banksy film, Exit Through the Giftshop at Sundance during the same week that I was researching Benjamin. Each of these artists have attempted at different times to repeat an iconic image to rob it of it’s meaning, deconstruct its significance, or create a totally new set of associations with the icon.

Benjamin explains how the film camera transforms the work of an actor and adds new dimensions without respect for the craft of the actor. He says that the camera does not allow the actor to change with the audience, so the audience takes the position of critic, without expereincing any personal contact with the actor (25).

This section rings true with the various types of performance that take place on the internet. The participatory nature of the community allows the viewers to critique without the restraints of human-to-human contact. I’ve been called things during the duration of an online video game that I dare say not many people would say to my face.

Benjamin’s essay, which is apparently standard reading for art students, explains the significant shift in art from the antiquated ritualized art to an age where the significance of the individual creation is lost. The internet has shifted this even further, making me wonder how art (especially the movie and music industries) are responding to new technology.

I’ve got your Tweet in my Twapperkeeper

twitter and assessment powerpoint

Slideshare version

Shawn has already given us an intoduction to Henry Jenkins here, so I thought I would contribute a few other bits of information.
Jenkins describes himself as an Aca-fan, part academic, part fan, which describes his endeavors into participatory culture. Again, this is the reassertion of the idea that in order to really study participatory cultures, the academic must be involved in them.

I wanted to tailor a few Jenkins links for the class, so:

Henry Jenkins on Twitter

Henry Jenkins Harry Potter Dance Party (for Dave)

Jenkins and Gaiman (for Liza)

Leroy Jenkins (for Angela, which has nothing to do with Henry)

Jenkins on games and learning (for the gamers and teachers)

Interactive Audiences
This essay represents Henry Jenkins’s reaction to Pierre Levy’s Collective Intelligence. You can find Levy on Twitter. He often retweets Jenkins. His current work focuses on the design of a universal system for semantic addressing of digital documents. This ties into last week’s discussion of metadata.

Pierre Levy is the holder of the Canada Research Chair in Collective Intelligence, Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada, and a professor in the Department of Communication at the University of Ottawa.

Jenkins begins by giving us an image of the new interactive audience – people who are not just media consumers, but are also media fans, producers, distributors, publicists, and critics. He asserts that “new participatory culture is taking shape at the intersection between three trends:
1.New tools and technologies enable consumers to archive, annotate, apporpriate, and recirculate media content
2.a range of subcultures promote Do-It-Yourself (DIY) media production, a discourse that shapes how consumers have deployed those technologies
3.economic trends favoring the horizontally integrated media conglomorates encourage the flow of images, ideas, and narratives across multiple channels and demand more active modes of spectatorship

These trends have not produced an audience that is completely independent from the interests of big business and media conglomerates, nor have they produced an audience that is docile and receptive to any product they are told to consume. The truth lies somewhere inbetween. The interactive audience contiues to consume media, but it also produces its own knowledge culture.

Jenkins asserts that online fan communities might be “some of the most fully realized versions of Levy’s cosmopedia (an ideal, universal information source).
Jenkins offers the history of fan communities as a way to understand interactive audience. He discusses the evolution of sci-fi fandom, and this history leads to several norms”
Every reader was understood to be a potential writer
There is reciprocity among readers, writers, and editors
Fan cultures were activist audiences
Fan cultures were early adopters of technology
Reconstructing fan comuunities as digital communities was not without strenuous effort

Further in the text, we get an explanation of the difference between shared knowledge, the information known by all members of the community, and collective intelligence, which is all knowledge available to all the members of the community. He cites Nancy Baym’s work on soap fandom to include the idea that no fan can know everything, but every fan can access anything in the fan community.

Levy also points out that the “collective exchange of knowledge cannot be fully contained by previous sources of power.” This idea resonates with the concepts presented by Warky and the hacker community. Digital community can decentralize information and knowledge, eroding the power/control previously possessed by the academy or corporate interests.

Jenkins connects Levy’s four potential sources of power (namadic mobility, control over territory, ownership over commodities, ans mastery over knowledge) and the interactions between them to several fan cultures (Xena, Babylon 5, WWE) and posses that the media producers who still operate under the logic of commodity culture may view fan culture as a loss of control and power over intellectual property.

Jenkins ends with a section on Jammers, people who attempted to add noise to CB transmissions as a form of media hacking. He discusses Derry’s work, and points out that fan culture attempts to use popular media, not disrupt it.

Linkedin is a social network designed to assist professionals in strengthening and creating professional contacts. Because it is a career focused network, users input career oriented information, including current profession, education, and areas of expertise.

My first problem with the site is that my career was not included in the drop down menu. As a ten-year educator, I can’t help but feel a little slighted by not having a category that fits my career path. I chose the higher education category, because apparently, you are a professional if you teach college students.

I am also uncomfortable with any site that wants to mine my personal email. I recognize that they have a privacy policy, and the the purpose is to assist me in adding contacts, but at the same time I am wary of giving access to my email for any reason.

If I were seeking employment, I might find the site more useful. My sister-in-law, who is a medical writer, uses Linkedin. In fact, it is the only social media site she uses. For her, it is useful for making contacts within the freelance market.

Creating meaningful assessment of student knowledge through Twitter: a constructivist/neurodevelopmental approach to facilitating asynchronous communication in the secondary language arts classroom.

As social media continues to play a more important role in the lives of adolescent learner, it is necessary for the secondary school English Language Arts curriculum to address the digital literacy needs of students as well as the pedagogical implications of such tools. Opportunity exists for teachers to provide direct instruction on the adoption of social media tools, to model appropriate use of these tools in an academic setting, and to provide authentic assessment of student learning using these tools.

Twitter, along with its related applications, Tweetdeck and Twapperkeeper, can be used by secondary English Language Arts teachers to assess student learning. By applying the principles of constructivist theory and viewing student learning through a neurodevelopmental lens, teachers can create and assess opportunities for students to build meaningful asynchronous discussions. Participation in these discussions will be compared to student participation in the face-to-face classroom with the hope of revealing how the asynchronous digital environment reveals different strengths/weaknesses in Social Cognition (verbal pragmatics, topic maintenance, collaboration), Receptive Language (sentence comprehension, discourse processing), and Expressive Language (articulation, sentence formation, discourse production).

In this qualitative case study, approximately 32 Advanced Placement English students from Wasatch Academy will use Twitter as a tool for asynchronous communication. They will also participate in face-to-face discussions, both small group and whole class. Students will complete pre and post surveys regarding their satisfaction with face-to-face assessment, their ability to build knowledge through discourse, and the use of Twitter. Students in these courses represent an age range of 16 to 18, and come from seven different countries.

The end result will be a guidelines and suggestions for Secondary English Language Arts teachers to use when implementing Twitter as a pedagogical tool. This study will draw on current research in the fields of digital literacy, social networking, distance education with emphasis placed on constructivist principles for design, and neurodevelopment for assessment.

Creating meaningfull assessment of student knowledge through Twitter: a constructivist/neurodevelopmental apporach to facilitating asynchronous communication in the secondary language arts classroom.

(educational design and evaluation)

I wil discuss using tweetdeck/twapperkeeper to track student discussions, using students at my school for qualitative research.