For my final response for COMS 354, I would like to comment on the documentary, The World According to Sesame Street. First of all, I would like to mention that I’ve always believed that the concept of globalization held many negative connotations, far outweighing the positive. Sometimes I would even go so far as to think that the word was synonymous with colonialism or imperialism. After having seen The World According to Sesame Street, this view was shaken and my perspective changed. Though it is common to see Hollywood blockbusters dominate international cinema, smothering independent filmmakers from all over and replacing their films with American views of the world, Sesame Street integrates the producers of those specific communities into the programming. Though it is common to see the Simpsons dubbed in any language and redistributed as is, Sesame Street creates original content specific to the community where it is broadcasted.

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Thanks, Leslie. I really did enjoy this course. It’s definitely in the top 5 classes of my entire undergrad. The blogs were a fun and original way to respond to the course material. Though it sounds cheesy, you’re one of the most youthful and energetic professors I’ve even had. Have a great winter break! Don’t forget to do things that aren’t academic.

In his essay, “Changing Citizenship in the Digital Age,” W Lance Bennett discusses the civic participation of youth through digital media. Defining youth as individuals roughly between the ages of 15 and 25, Bennett distinguishes between the two paradigms of youth engagement: the engaged youth and the disengaged youth. The former consist of youth who are unsatisfied with traditional means of political activism and find little value in dated forms of communication media, such as newspapers. Instead, they prefer to use peer-to-peer networks and online communities as their primary means of fair and equitable communication. To the engaged youth, political empowerment is achieved through new media and technology. The disengaged youth, on the other hand, still value traditional means of political involvement and media. More concern is put into voting and other methods of participating in the public sphere—and to them, it is the emphasis on the public sphere that differentiates civic engagement with media engagement. Civic engagement is essentially involves public political action, while media engagement may not. The internet, for example, is often used as an individualistic means of political participation, but does not necessarily promote the “civic.” Nonetheless, the internet plays an important role for both paradigms. As an open source for any voice to be heard, it is an efficient way of informing yourself and others on nearly any topic, political or not. It is a free and neutral medium (i.e. there is little to no censorship). Recently, some concern over net neutrality has come up. There have been speculations that internet service providers may eventually limit the sites that the average user can visit—charging more for the less visited sites (not unlike the cable TV system). This would affect both the engaged and the disengaged youth, since information would be limited and smaller sites would virtually fade away. Bloggers would lose visitors and only the empowered would be heard.

Political actions have been taken by youth to inform people online. Perhaps one of the most popular sources for internet activism on net neutrality comes from IPower on YouTube:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t89WwcsOj9U&feature=channel

With over 1 700 000 views, this goes to show that the internet is a significant tool for informing people on political issues. What interests me about the piece is that, with the girl, Tania, as their mascot, it is clear that they are using her… voluptuousness to capture viewers eyes (presumably male). A channel of videos have spun off from her popularity where she doesn’t really talk about political issues, so much as the ins and outs of courtship. Regardless, seeing as the internet is a significant part of civic participation in youth, it is only natural for youth to rise up and protest against the compromise of net neutrality.

If you are interested, here is another video by the same people on net neutrality:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A2XPiqhN_Ns

It’s hard to define exactly what we do in COMS. When I tell people I’m in Communication Studies, they usually smile, give me a blank stare, and ask me what the study of communications entails. I usually respond with: “it’s media theory and production.” Very general, but it get’s the point forward. However, this goes to show that, because Communication Studies is a relatively new field of study that is quite multidisciplinary, recognition is hard to find in a society that already has strongly defined fields of study. For this blog, I’m going to speak from the perspective of film production in COMS and the bureaucratic hurdles that riddle the field.

In his essay, “Wireless Play and Unexpected Innovations,” Christian Sandvig talks much about youth media production and the innovations that come out of young minds. He points out his concern that it is difficult for “outsiders” to gain sufficient exposure and resources for innovation in elitist fields of media production: “A useful way to conceptualize the state of digital media and innovation today… isn’t as a ‘transformation,’ but as something much more worrying: it is the predictable process of things staying the same while established centers of power and structure exert their influence.” (Sandvig, 90) Such is the case with This Little Piggy, a film produced in Film III last year in COMS. (I helped my roommate, Sebastien Rist, and friend, Sarah Quinn, during production… The film can be seen here: http://enroutefilm.com/2008-selection/this-little-piggy/#video)

Over the summer, the film won two major awards: Popular Choice at the Young Cuts student film festival and the Norman McLaren Award for Best Overall Film at the 39th Canadian Student Film Festival – part of the Montreal International Film Festival. All the work to get into these festivals was done independently. However, with the help of the COMS department, the film got some exposure in the Concordia Journal: http://cjournal.concordia.ca/archives/20080911/this_little_piggy_comes_home.php?&print=1

To top off the cake, the film was eventually accepted into Air Canada’s En Route Film Festival and won the popular choice for that as well—bringing home $5000! (You can see Seb and Sarah accept the award here at 4:15– http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4jankvaPV_I )

Though this story has a happy ending, it was not easy. Much of the difficulty comes from the lack of prestige that a film from a Communication Studies department holds—not because the department doesn’t produce good films, but because it is not as recognized as the Mel Hoppenheim School of Film. In the En Route festival, a couple films were submitted by students in Concordia’s film department, also taking home awards. The Concordia Journal has mention of their awards, but not of This Little Piggy. (http://cjournal.concordia.ca/archives/20081106/lights_camera_traction.php) Though there could be a number of reasons for this oversight, it isn’t uncommon to see that COMS productions are not recognized often in the academic world. Again, this roots back to the original issue—the multidisciplinary nature of this new field makes the subject matter hard to pin point. Because Mel Hoppenheim is delegated primarily as a film department, it is easier to funnel funding and opportunity into the school. The title makes it easier for commercial companies like Kodak to present awards and production companies like Alliance to offer job opportunities. Perhaps this is because Film is a strongly established field of study with rules that govern its application. Yet, I find that COMS’s ability to connect sound students, with video students, with intermedia students, with film students is an advantage. Though it is an unconventional way of studying and producing media, innovations are much more prone to occur through the collaboration of these fields, both young and old.

When I was in elementary school, my sister was in high school. The phone used to ring for her, day and night. She’d get calls from her closest girl friends and even the occasional boy. I remember how she would get upset and yell from her room when I would spy on her conversations from other house phones. Even my mother would do the same! It was part of a game. I would listen in just because it was in my bratty nature as her little brother. My mother would listen in because she insisted on understanding the ins and outs of her little girl’s adolescence. My sister knew this and so she would always ensure that her phone was not tapped before getting into the juicy gossip. She could never really talk with boys without thinking that somebody could be listening. And boys could never call without being embarrassed by mother picking up before her. Today, with the mobile phone, this game of sneaking and spying has changed.

With the mobile phone, you no longer need to worry that someone else is listening in on your immediate conversations (except maybe the government!). If you want to take it even another step further, you can text—thereby preventing nearby people from hearing you. The interesting thing about texting is that it provides its own unique context of communication, separate from the home phone and even mobile voice conversations. Take, for example, texting for the use of romance. As Rich Ling points out in “Children, Youth and Mobile Communication,” after interest is conveyed between two individuals, “texting can be used to ease the initial stages of the romance since it allows for more carefully staged and properly edited interaction.” The communication timeframe changes in the context of texting. Immediate response is not necessary and not expected. Information can be absorbed, digested, and fed back much slower than any voice or face-to-face conversation. It is also much less formal than a letter or email. Given these reasons, even the least witty individual can flirt with little difficulty. The problem with this is that people may become so attuned to the context of texting (or chatting online… for the sake of this argument) that interaction in reality may be awkward. There is a Cingular commercial that plays on this dynamic on the text savvy adolescent:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4nIUcRJX9-o

It’s strange to me that, given the time and space restraint, texting is still used as a primary method of communication. With the use of acronyms and small words, we are limited to the amount of information we can communicate. Even Morse code can communicate information faster than texting:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t041g4X-aM0

It seems we are regressing.

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On another note… The Onion has released another funny video in the wake of the Obama election victory:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c3_95F5e-Ac

Hello, my name is Ian… and I’m addicted to Facebook. In fact, I’ve checked my Facebook news feed at least a dozen times today. Surely if I didn’t have a Facebook account, I would have completed this blog entry much earlier–but such is not the case. Why? If I’m aware of the fact that it is time consuming and causes a significant amount of procrastination, why do I continue using it? This answer can be found in how I use Facebook.

As Leslie Shade (that’s you!) points out: “most participants spend substantial time and energy in developing and updating their profiles via posting pictures, documenting their social activities, writing on other users’ walls, and uploading new applications.” My Facebook habbits don’t exactly follow this pattern. I’m not one for adding multitudes of pointless applications, nor do I incessantly keep updating my own profile. My intentions for being on Facebook are simple: to communicate with my peers, to maintain a photographic portfolio, and to remain updated with the current happenings of my peer groups (i.e. to “be in the know”). The last reason is the main reason I find myself on Facebook.

I will admit that I enjoy scrolling through the profile pictures of my friends and acquaintances. In fact, it has almost become a ritual every time I sign in. Sometimes I even scroll through photos together with my friends. In a way, this habitual use of Facebook come off as a sort of gaze (which is more of a playful social habit than anything else). The funny thing is that, in any other social situation that involves seeing people face to face, we wouldn’t “check out” girls to the same degree as we would online. I would imagine this is because it is much easier to observe people online without the possibility of being observed immediately in return. The veil of the internet prevents people from being casted as a gazer.

It is important to also keep in mind that the gaze that exists on Facebook is not completely male oriented. The gaze exists both ways (both male and female) and is not necessarily sexual in nature. While many people often scout out profiles to see how “cute” the person in question may be, they may also just like to look at photos to get a sense of who the person genuinely is—or rather who they are projected to be. The same could be said about how people present their image. Though many people (probably most) edit out unflattering photos to present a “perfect image” of the self, some don’t really care. I consider myself to be in the latter. Ultimately I feel that my photos should communicate my identity in or out of social situations. Those who choose to gaze upon me online should expect to see me both in flattering and unflattering photos. If they choose to talk to me after seeing me in my best and worst, then I may be more inclined to consider them genuine friends.

This past week in COMS 354 we looked into participatory media online. Much of our readings and class discussions concentrated on online social networking sites. Danah Boyd’s article, “Why Youth (heart) Social Network Sites,” specifically concentrates on how youth in the US use and form identities on Facebook and MySpace. In terms of creating an identity through the use of online profiles, Boyd makes the important distinction between the controllability of the physical self and the virtual self:

“In some sense, people have more control online—they are able to carefully choose what information to put forward, thereby eliminating visceral reactions that might have seeped out in everyday communication. At the same time, these digital bodies are fundamentally coarser, making it far easier to misinterpret what someone is expressing.”

Whether you like it or not, your immediate physical appearance communicates a certain amount of information regarding your identity. Your demeanour and facial expression (intentional or unintentional) communicate your attitude at that specific moment. These (among other things) are variables that we have little control of when we leave the home and enter the public domain. Our privacy fades. With online networking sites, like Facebook, we can control our identities by picking and choosing which qualities we would like to broadcast to a specified group of people. In this way, online profiles act as a sort of self-portrait rather than a reflection of the immediate self. We can manipulate our virtual identities (and even the identities of others) with specific intentions in mind. For example, I may choose to only post and confirm the use of photos that are flattering to my image, thereby making me seem more attractive than usual. I’ve noticed that a certain method of taking photos has come out of this common online habit. Many people like to take photos of themselves by holding the camera up and pointing it downward to take the shot. Many often produce a “cute” puckered up baby face during these shots (*barf*). This is just one example of the photo pose. With the abundant display of close up portrait photos on such sites, it seems that people enjoy creating (with ease) a sort of celebrity image of the self by either copying or developing their own signature pose… such as Paris Hilton’s “public” face:

http://parisfacial.ytmnd.com/

To me, this kind of use of social networking sites comes off as a sort of narcissistic habit. This creates identities that are overly manipulated and should only be taken at face value. The need to show only the best of oneself, thereby denying the “not-so-good” days, perhaps illustrates some sort of shame of one’s own identity as a whole. After all, no one is attractive all the time—it takes courage to accept one’s own frowns and double chins.

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On the topic of online identity, check out Identity 2.0:

http://identity20.com/media/OSCON2005/

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RrpajcAgR1E

This week we turned our critical eye to youth online. In the readings, the creation of identity in a world increasingly saturated by screen and online media seemed to be a recurring theme. Buckingham’s “Introducing Identity” article stuck out to me because of its thorough analysis of the core concept of identity itself. As he points out, identity can be seen as a negotiation between a person’s desire to be unique, while at the same time being able to identify with a group of individuals. In this way, identity (or identification—which Bukingham prefers to use) is a social process “in which the individual and the social are inextricably related.” This dynamic becomes important when we enter the discourse of “identity politics,” which is a movement that sought to protest against the process of empowered groups of individuals defining other groups as marginal and therefore “lesser” than them. The end goal of identity politics is to merge identification with solidarity—to bring people together despite their differences. The issue with this is that, by grouping marginal individuals together under an “essentialist” umbrella, diversity among individuals is denied.

This negotiation between individuality and solidarity (and indeed conformity) is appointed in Shad’s “Brother (Watching)” song, by analyzing the concept of the “black person”:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oDQ49tLg5w0&feature=related

Throughout the majority of the song, Shad (as a black person growing up in London, Ontario) lists the difficulties the black individual goes through to find a concrete identity in a white dominated society. After testifying to having watched the new generation of black kids growing up in a society infatuated with “blackness and trash” and the lack of positive portrayals of the black professional, Shad finally appoints the black activist:

With mental slavery, the shackles is loose
And it’s hard to cut chains when they attached at the roots
So what the new black activists do
For our freedom is just being them
Do what you’re passionate to
Not confined by a sense that you have to disprove
Any stereotypes, so-called facts to refute
Or match any image of blackness
They’ve established as true
Perhaps we’ll break thru the glass ceilings
Shatter the roof and emerge
From these boxes that they have us in cooped
And grow to smash the bold that they casted of you
I’ll keep watching…

In this final verse, Shad acknowledges the “new” black activist that maintains his or her individuality in spite of the social expectations that put pressure on the generalized black identity. Of course, seeking for an identity that isn’t determined by skin colour isn’t exactly an easy task in a culture that judges a lot on appearances. Perhaps the veil of the internet can provide people with “colourless” faces. But then denying one’s own heritage and cultural history becomes an issue as well. Afterall, the world is full of diverse colour which should never be denied.

The theme of the week is commercialization. We are looking into the dynamic between the producer and the consumer in the youth market. Right off the bat, we may already assume that the commercialization of youth culture is a dichotomy of the adult seller and the youth buyer. However, this assumption is not entirely accurate—for a couple of reasons. First, the distinction between the seller and the buyer is not always clear. This can be seen if we look into how “cool” is being sold. In the documentary, Merchants of Cool, “culture spies” are exposed as young adults whose jobs it is to look for the trend setting 20% of the youth population (click “1. Hunting for Cool”):

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/video/flv/generic.html?s=frol02p70&continuous=1

These children would not trust an adult who has no idea as to what is “cool.” The culture spy must come off as a person who knows these kids, who is a part of their group, and who is indeed a “youth.” The line is blurred even more when we look into “under-the-radar marketing” (click “2. Under-the-Radar Marketing”):

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/video/flv/generic.html?s=frol02p70&continuous=1

Here we see marketing firms literally hiring youths to advertise “cool” products online, at concerts, and at parties. Though done in a discreet way, these youths become sellers of their own culture, where their customers are their own peers.

So, on the side of the seller, the line between the adult and the child fades. As Buckingham points out in “Selling Childhood,” the same thing occurs on the side of the buyer:

“It is adults who buy, even if it is children who consume… Marketers also know that the children’s market is a dual market: they need to appeal to parents—or at least avoid alienating them—if they are to sell to children.”

The marketer must be aware that if the parent does not approve of the product, then the product is likely not to be purchased, because it is the parent who manages the money. To this extent, “cool” must also conform to the parent’s sense of appropriateness. The irony here is that “cool” often pushes the “appropriate” envelope. Kids like things that their parents often disapprove of—such as violent video games, sexy clothing, and controversial music. Regardless, speaking on completely economic terms, adults bracket the youth market by selling and buying youth products—with youths standing in between, distributing and consuming “cool.”

This week in COMS 354, we moved our discourse on Youth and Media to the topic of moral panics. The term comes from a concern for youth and the level of influence media has on their social and mental development. There seems to be two sides of the coin in the debate on moral panics: the first side is one that is rather pessimistic, holding the belief that children are generally naïve and vulnerable to the negative influences of media; the other side is one that is optimistic (perhaps to the point of ignorance), holding the belief that children are generally intelligent beings able to critically analyze the impact media has on their lives. In my opinion, these views are far too distant from each other and do not consider the grey area in between. That is to say, with both views boiled down to such simple terms, they do not consider the complexity of the developing mind and all the other variables that also influence a child’s growth and values.

In this week’s reading, Do the Media Harm Children?, I found that Livingston holds a similar position. In the article, she studies the polarity of the moral panics debate and dissects the area in between. First, Livingston breaks down this polar misconception by quoting television research done half a century ago that stated “for most children, under most conditions, most television is probably neither particularly harmful nor particularly beneficial.” She then expands on this argument by narrowing down the age groups of youth. While at a younger age, children are more susceptible to media influences, it also naturally follows that they will be more selective of their influences and values as they grow older. This can be exemplified in the experience of the two main actors in Spike Jonze’s music video of Notorious B.I.G’s “Sky’s the Limit”:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_GFiqKAQaJQ

The video cleverly plays on the conventions of modern hip-hop music videos by replacing all the “rich and sexy” adult characters in the video with pre-teens.  The irony of this is that the primary viewers of these videos are these same pre-teens. The video comes off as a commentary on the lack of appropriate reflection of the audience base.

In a DVD commentary with the two actors playing the lead performers, they explain how they’ve changed since the experience. The actor playing the Puff Daddy character (the child that doesn’t sing, but dances) explains that he gained fame from the video and has since pursued a career in rapping. The other, playing Notorious B.I.G., explains that, though he continue to rap on occasion, he has decided to continue his education in university and to pursue a career in football. This shows that while one has decided to maintain his interest in hip-hop, the other has gone on to other things. This is not to say that hip-hop is a bad influence, but this does show that some change their values and interests over time.

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 “When I saw the kids, I was really buggin’ on how much kids really mimic rap stars and the people they look up to and how they had our expressions down. When they came into the club, that’s really how it would be when we come into the club. Just seeing how they re-enacted it was really scary.”

 –Puff Daddy (commentary on “Sky’s the Limit,” Spike Jonze DVD)

As the first “real” week of COMS 354 is now underway, we appropriately began our study of Youth and Media by discussing the very concept of “youth” and how we categorize people into this ambiguous group. Needless to say, it is not an easy task to identify what exactly we mean by “youth.” In Canada, a person legally leaves his or her youth and becomes an adult at the age of 18, when he or she is able to vote. To me, this just seems like a number that makes bureaucratic life a lot easier for the government. Instead, I find that youth is more of a mental frame of mind in which each individual, more or less, has his or her own life experiences. If we are to follow this definition, my youth—with its unique collection of experiences—is different from your youth, therefore making youth even more difficult to categorize.

These sentiments are shared by some of the writers in this week’s readings, particularly in the Girls’ Study Forum. First we have Maya Gotz who warns fellow researchers of some mythological pitfalls to avoid. She mentions that, when studying “girls” and media, researchers too often look for the “strong self willed” girl or the “weak victimized” girl. This creates a massively unbalanced arc in the research, thereby denying the variety of girls that exist in between. Then there is Susannah Stern, who argues that the current discourse on girls as internet producers and consumers is derived from “broad survey research in which gender is treated as a variable.” Though more specific than “youth,” to track the internet habits of “girls” as a whole is still far too general and doesn’t account for enough variables other than gender. After all, a person isn’t just defined by their age and gender.

While youth can easily become an umbrella term that is far too general, we can’t always expect statistical research to be too specific. In fact, at some point it becomes absurd to try to isolate highly specialized groups for statistical purposes. The Onion News, a production company that parodies current news, provides an example of this:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uql1avoyizc

Not only is such detail in category absurd, but it is also pointless and nearly impossible. The goal for research on youth should be to find a reasonable balance between the over-encompassing “youth” and the overly specific “employees of the Reagan’s Idaho, Washington and Mark street who have crushes on that girl Amy, who works at the Wendy’s next door.”

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Since this is the first posting on my Blog, I figure I’d add a little bonus. This is another Onion News video that is relevant to our study of Youth and Media. Enjoy!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YZgXg_7kVI8

Cheers!

Ian

P.S. If you like this, you might want to check out other Onion News stuff. They also have a variety of hilarious news articles and radio news casts. Good times!