Week 10: Privacy and Surveillance

You may or may not be glad to hear that I've gotten off my soapbox following the last post's excessive rant and that it has been safely stored away. On that note, let's begin.

Privacy and surveillance have always been worrying for people. Nobody likes it when a stranger knows their every move, as there are plenty of things you wouldn't ordinarily want others to know about, such as going to the bathroom or getting intimate (That's what sex tapes are for... Joking! Joking!) The rise of the internet has exacerbated this, as personal information as well as embarrassing or incriminating photos and videos can be accessed by almost anyone online. There are even sites that run on this principle.The link below discusses a site called Is Anyone Up, which allows people to post explicit photos and videos of their ex lovers, as well as link to their social media accounts. (No, I have not been on the Is Anyone Up site, and I am not linking to it, so don't ask. You can go on it yourself, if you absolutely must.)
http://blogs.metro.co.uk/tech/revenge-porn-the-disturbing-but-predictable-conclusion-to-sexting/

The reading discusses a statement made by Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg in 2010 who declared the death of privacy. I would argue that while Facebook has played a role in the erosion of our online privacy, the statement feels like a hyperbole from Zuckerberg, who could merely be aiming for a soundbite comparable to the Beatles' infamous "Bigger than Jesus". I would argue that Twitter has contributed more, due to the 140 character limit lending itself to bite-size posts, whereas to my knowledge, Facebook has no such limit, or if there is one, it's higher. Twitter was adopted by celebrities describing almost every aspect of their lives in minute detail, from the extraordinary (Lady Gaga announces new tour!) to the mundane (Lady Gaga had cornflakes for breakfast.) Ordinary people were granted a portal into the lives of their idols behind closed doors, and now lay folk use Twitter for similar purposes.

Wacks believes that privacy will not go away completely, but it does need constant monitoring and regeneration. As he puts it, "The invaders are at the gate, but the citadel will not fall without a struggle." Personally, I would agree with the statement, as people often get uncomfortable about increased security camera presence in public areas, and there is no reason why internet usage should be no different.

 The evolution of the internet towards social media has given rise to a peculiar paradox. We want ever increasing access to the lives of others, yet we also do not want other people having access to our own private information. How this paradox resolves itself in the future will be interesting, yet potentially frightening to see.

Bonus Material
Battle for the Internet: A week long feature on the Guardian's website detailing the struggle over control of the internet from various countries, governments and factions. Varied articles from representatives of internet heavyweights Google and Facebook, academics such as Clay Shirkey and many more promise an interesting read.  http://view.mail.guardian.co.uk/?j=ff321d727566&m=fe8a1570706c0d7a72&ls=fe5815727d6302747116&l=ff69177076&s=fe9716737d67047a74&jb=ff60107573&ju=fecb11737460017f&CMP=EMCLIFTXT16821I&r=0

Sources

• McStay, A. (2011) The Mood of Information (New York: Continuum)
• Wacks, R. (2010) Privacy: A Very Short Introduction (Oxford: Oxford University Press)

Week 9: Moral Panics

 This will be fun.

This king-size post is to discuss the threat of moral panics. I'm sure anyone reading this (there must be someone...) will be familiar with the London Riots of August 2011. They started when Mark Duggan was shot dead by police under shady circumstances on August 4. Two days later, a peaceful protest was held in Tottenham over the matter. That night, the area erupted in violence, which spread to several other cities over the following days.

I recall trying to learn about the causes and reasons behind the rioting at the time, which proved to be a difficult task, as everyone was suffering from mass hysteria. Both left and right wings were swamped with irrational scaremongering. The media's handling of the situation was anything but sensitive, with reports demanding the heads of everyone involved and mourning the end of Britain. Arguably, the media could have encouraged the violence to spread in a devious ploy to sell more papers. Newspaper sales go up when a significant event is happening, so when something big happens, the media naturally wants to milk it for all it's worth.

Another symptom of occurrences like this are the damning of those involved. The government dismissed the rioters' motives as petty crime on a massive scale.  Academics were brought in to concur, whether they're qualified to make an informed and appropriate judgement or not. The Economist pointed to David Starkey, a historian specialising in Tudor England, as a particularly bizarre example. People wanted reassurance, and to Hell with trying to learn from our mistakes. There is another incident I remember from a television opinion show. After several calls promising death for the rioters, one caller tried to engage the presenter in a discussion about why the riots happened and who was to blame. The presenter kept loudly interrupting them, insisting that it was the rioters' fault, before eventually going to an unplanned break, instead of sticking his fingers in his ears and saying "I can't hear you, lalalalala!"

When something like this happens, people look to the past. It is important to keep things in perspective, as the rose tinted glasses are working overtime.
London Riots- Britain has deteriorated in the last thirty years! Thirty years ago we had the Miners strike.
Miners strike- Britain has deteriorated in the last twenty years! Twenty years ago we had Hippies Vs The Man
It's possible to keep going backwards like this. The Economist took it all the way to 1751!

Moral panic is not restricted to events. Films and video games are common targets of calls to "Ban this sick filth!" The moral guardians who make such calls rarely understand what they're criticising, and have almost never partaken. Some savvy people have exploited this to divert attention away from their crimes, such as Anders Behring Breivik, who claimed to have practiced the Norway Massacre on Modern Warfare 2. Films went through the media witchhunt with the Video Nasties of the 80s and early 90s. Nowadays it's the turn of video games. Examples include the murder of Stefan Pakeerah in 2004, where the media was fixated with the murderer's possession of the video game Manhunt, to the extent that the police had to issue a statement saying that the game belonged to the victim, not the killer. Another game, Bully, was savaged by the Daily Mail and anti-bullying organisations in 2005. They were left with egg on their faces when the game was released, and involved defending the weaker pupils at a school from bullies and corruption. The title, probably chosen for some free publicity, refers to the game's setting, the fictional Bulworth Academy. 

Bonus Content

Jack Thompson: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jack_Thompson_(activist)
A former lawyer and one of the most vocal anti-video game activists. Ironically, this made him one of the most entertaining and harmless. He was permanently disbarred over his conduct in July 2008.

Fox News: Accusations abound that Mass Effect is a rape simulator and has fully rendered sexual organs. The sex scenes are a minor and completely optional part of the 30+ hour game which prides itself on character interaction and altering how events take place based on your relationships. All the sex scenes are consensual and all but one are in a relationship, not to mention that you'll see far worse on Fox's own Family Guy for instance.

South Park: Bigger, Longer and Uncut: South Park brilliantly parodies the concept of moral guardians when the boys sneak into the Terence and Phillip movie and imitate the profanities they hear. Kyle's outraged mother, Sheila, leads a campaign to ban the film, which escalates in true South Park fashion into a three-way war between the USA, Canada and the Legions of Hell, led by Satan and his lover, Saddam Hussein. In the clip, Sheila leads the parents in blaming Canada for the corruption of their children.

 

Sources

The Economist, August 16, 2011. We Have Been Here Before
 http://www.economist.com/blogs/bagehot/2011/08/civil-disorder-and-looting-hits-britain-0

Krinsky, C. (2008) Moral Panics over Contemporary Children and Youth. Aldershot: Ashgate

Week 8: Information and Networks

This post discusses the concept of networks. Networks are becoming increasingly prominent nowadays, with the most well known being the internet. The internet is a massive network containing all sorts of things. Anything you could dream of looking up is probably on the internet somewhere- train timetables, cheat codes, pornography, photos of cats with bread around their faces, historical anecdotes, more pornography, online shopping, blogs such as this one, videos and pornography. Did I mention pornography?

However, the problem with the internet is that there is arguably too much information on it. There are things most people would probably not want to look up online. These sites need site traffic as well, so they might exploit the networked nature of the internet by using false or misleading tags to drive people to click on it. At times, this is only an annoyance, when you arrive on a site that is not what you're looking for, but has at least tangential relevance- the cats are riding skateboards instead of putting bread around their faces, for example. The bigger problem is when this could potentially be harmful- a malicious website could trick people into clicking with promises of Twilight fanfiction, then display racist, xenophobic or otherwise harmful content, infect your computer with viruses and spyware, then spit in your chips for good measure.

Networking allows individuals greater ease of access to the information they want as well as related materials, but as with all things, there are unscrupulous individuals who will take advantage of this for their own malicious intentions.

Source: Burnett, R and Marshall, P.D. (2003) Web Theory: An Introduction. London: Routledge.

Week 7: Digital Advertising 

This week's entry attempts to discuss the evolution of advertising, from the humble origins to the present day. When advertising was first created, it took the form of pages in newspapers or magazines, or posters. This isn't terribly efficient, as the advertising was not tailored to people's interests or tastes. As a result, the advert will be witnessed by people who are not interested in the product or service advertised. John Wanamaker, a merchant in the 1870's once said "I know half my advertising is wasted. The trouble is, I don't know which half."

Nowadays, advertising can be tied together with the audience with make your own advert competitions, or submitting a question as part of an ad campaign. The idea is that some products thrive from the input of the general public, but this can sometimes backfire, as the commands given to the Burger King Chicken gradually got ruder and sillier. An advantage in involving audiences in advertising is that there is less chance of disasters such as McDonalds accidentally encouraging sexual relations with their burgers in the "I'd hit it" campaign. For anyone wondering, McDonalds was aiming for a "younger, hipper" audience. Clearly, the advertising agency didn't know that "I'd hit it" was a slang term for sex until the campaign was ridiculed by the very audience they wanted to attract.

Link: http://www.subservientchicken.com/ Have some fun with the Burger King Chicken.

Source: Digital Advertising (2009) McStay, A, Palgrave Macmillan, Basingstoke.

Week 5: Andy McStay

Andy McStay is an academic writer and researcher who specialises in the area of advertising. He also works as a university lecturer.

McStay discusses how advertising works in the modern era. This involves convincing people that they want things that they do not need in order the keep the wheels of consumerism turning. The role of advertising increases in importance during austere times, when people need to be more careful with their money. One way of doing this, which is currently being adopted, is personalised advertising. This means that advertising and search results are tailored to be more appropriate to the user. One one hand, this is convenient, as you will be shown pages that might interest you, as well as there being the possibility of discovering something previously unheard of, such as a new video game or TV series, example. On the other hand, this does have the potential to be unwelcome and frightening. Imagine, if you will, a scenario where a computer is shared between several people. Someone has used the computer to access inappropriate or pornographic material. One day, someone else types lawnmower in to a search engine and... they do not come up with the garden implement. I'll leave you to imagine the consequences. Such a situation has the potential to be quite embarrassing, or so I've heard.

On a more serious note, the idea that advertising can adapt in such a way does scare me, because a time may come when we won't be able to keep secrets from anyone. Big Brother will always be watching us from the search engines.

Source 

McStay, A. (2009) “Consumer Society and Advertising,” in Long, P.; Wall, T; Bakir, V. & McStay, A. (2009). Media Studies: Texts, Production and Context. London: Pearson Education.

Week 4: John Harris and Benedict Anderson

John Harris writes regularly on the subject of late 80's/early 90's britpop, and appears regularly as a speaker on Newsnight Review. Benedict Anderson is a prominent writer who came up with the idea of the imagined community, which is when people feel a nationalistic bond with their fellow countrymen, despite never meeting 99.999% of them.

These two readings' views have an interesting connection to each other. Harris writes about the image a country has, using the Cool Cymru movement as an example. This tried to make it cool to be Welsh, with prominent people of Welsh nationality in the worlds of music and sport to show that there was more to Wales than sheep, leeks, daffodils, rugby and period dress.

Anderson speaks in terms of how a country is defined, by itself and others. Some countries might have a strong sense of pride in themselves and their people. Others might view other countries or nationalities as a threat. While poking good natured fun at the French or Americans, for example, may be enjoyable, a larger threat would be to big up your own country, alienating your enemies and possibly some of your less patriotic citizens. Patriotism can easily turn into xenophobia, after all.

One element that is not touched upon in these arguments is where citizenship fits into the equation. Being a citizen of a country brings you closer to your fellow countrymen. To put it in another way, the imagined community has a basis in reality, and is now a little less imagined. An immigrant will not be a citizen of a country as soon as they move there, thus they feel alienated as if they were an outsider. This goes double if there are prejudices or negative stereotypes to deal with as well, such as a Muslim moving to America from Iraq for example, and people being uncomfortable around them at first, or wondering if they are a terrorist. Delanty argues that citizenship has become a political matter, so there is the potential of legal issues getting in the way of the formation of a fully integrated, real community. Should such a thing happen, perhaps the concept of an imagined community would die. After all, how can someone imagine themselves as being like others in the country if the law has separated them from others?

Bonus Material:
Good natured fun at the expense of the French.     

Everything the terrorists hate about America summed up in song. All together now... USA! USA! USA! [Warning: Not Safe For Work- Strong language.]     

Sources

• Harris, J. (2007) Cool Cymru, Rugby Union and an Imagined Community, International Journal of Sociology and Social Policy,
• Anderson, B. (2006) Imagined Communities (London: Verso). 
• Delanty, G. (2009) Community (London: Routledge)

Week 3: Theodor Adorno and Max Horkheimer

Week 3: Theodor Adorno and Max Horkheimer

These two critics are members of the Frankfurt School of thinkers, who moved to America in the 1930s from Germany. Since they had Jewish and Marxist sympathies, it would have been dangerous for them to stay in Germany, because Hitler was gaining power.

The media of America was vastly different to how it was in Germany, where it was controlled to ensure that it conformed with Nazi ideals. In America, anyone could do whatever they wanted in the media, in theory at least, because there was more freedom. It is possible that the duo were unable to adapt to the American way, as they found popular culture of the time, such as the cinemas or flapper girls to be abhorrent. (If they saw what was going on nowadays, they'd be spinning in their graves!) They had rather elitist views, and preferred dignified things such as classical music and operas. Unlike the even more extreme F.R. Leavis, who must have lost all faith in humanity several times by the time he died, Adorno and Horkmeier seemed to show concern for people, and wanted them to be more highbrow. However, the reading gives an implication of selfish hypocrisy, as part of them may want highbrow art to reach a wider audience, a more selfish part doesn't want them to be tainted by the simpleton masses, if quotations such as "...a movement from a Beethoven symphony is crudely “adapted” for a film sound-track in the same way as a Tolstoy novel is garbled in a film script..." are anything to go by.

Source

• Adorno, T.W. and Horkheimer, M. (1979) The Culture Industry: Enlightenment as Mass Deception. London: Verso, pp. 120-124.