Media and Hysteria

Just adding to the conversation started so enthusiastically in the previous posts. I wanted to pick up on what Emily has been pointing out about earlier forms of media and the ways in which they have been targeted as harmful. In particular, I cannot help but think of the ways in which novel-reading was for so often seen as detrimental to women. Think of course of "The Yellow Wallpaper," in which a woman is treated for "hysteria" (alternately "neurasthenia," which interestingly was also the diagnosis for soldiers in World War One, a form of "shell shock"); in her treatment she is denied any form of literature, since it will over-excite her. Earlier (especially in the late 18th and throughout the 19th centuries) women were warned by doctors and religious figures about the ways in which novel-reading would harm them, both leaving them confused and over-stimulated but also "unnatural" and "deviant." All that literature (specifically that naughty Gothic literature, with all its lascivious Counts and ravished young women) would corrupt their morals and even prevent them from having children. Or, on the lesser side, would simply confuse them (think of the protagonist in Jane Austen's Northanger Abbey, whose excessive reading of novels makes her imagine intrigue and violence everywhere and almost costs her a good marriage).

That women were in need of protection from all that fiction and its titillating effects is not so different from the current obsession with protecting our children (usually young women) from the predators of the Internet. Now, I am not saying that there aren't predators online, but studies show that these risks are greatly exaggerated in the media and that most predators announce their interest in sexual encounters to the teens they are chatting with, and the teens respond in kind. [Listen to The Online Predator Myth for more information.] The panic in the media is always about how the Internet corrupts young people (usually girls) and leaves them vulnerable because they do not understand how the Internet works. Yes, there are problems when your 8 year-old wants to look up something about Brittney Spears and is left to do that on an open machine without guidance (like what happened to my niece years ago), or if someone wants to look up "water sports." Yes, you will likely get undesired results. But to constantly delpoy this argument that young people are unsophisticated users ("readers") of the Web who need "our" protection from its corrupting influences smacks too much of the earlier anxiety (and control) about fiction and its (usually female) readers. We know the root of the word hysteria locates the dis-ease in the uterus and womb--I think we should be more aware of the ways in which our (justified) fears about the Web target young women and attempt to protect (confine) them to a more innocent (asexual) form of entertainment. Like novels.

Comic Book Confidential

In a comment on Mary's post about the harmful effects of media, I said this discussion has been going about as long as any media has been popular and targeted at youth. One example I mentioned was the U.S. Senate Hearings on comic books and their role in juvenile delinquency - this link has a summary and transcripts.

Here's a video that was used as evidence for those hearings:



This footage is an excerpt from Comic Book Confidential, a documentary by Rob Mann. My brother clued me into this - he saw it in his serial illustration class (all about storyboards and comic books and yes, I'm jealous) at Columbia College. He highly recommends it to anyone interested in comic books or issues with censorship and popular media.

The video isn't terribly expensive (less than $20), so if you're building a library collection of comic books it might be a valuable addition. Besides historical footage like this, it also includes interviews with many major figures across different genres of comics and graphic novels, from artists of traditional superhero stuff to authors of more complex titles.

Storytelling Conventions in Adventure Videogames

Here's my first attempt at a podcast... I've been having the same conversation over and over in different contexts because my YA Lit class, this one, and my family's interests have all been converging lately. How do we understand the media formats as genres? How do we see connections between them or what differences do we see as one story is extended across different formats?

In the sound file below I compare a YA fantasy novel, Sabriel, to the adventure/puzzle games I grew up playing, explaining why similarities across the two formats' storytelling conventions would make this novel a fantastic game. I also touch on other stories that have played out across various media formats, like The Matrix and Joss Whedon's Firefly.

boomp3.com

I'm picturing lots of different scenes from the novel, videogames, television shows, and movies as I discuss them but I can't do "screenshots" for all of them so I've settled for cover images to illustrate my context:

Fashion & Visual Literacy

We were talking about fashion in my YA Lit class this week, comparing the novel So Yesterday and the Merchants of Cool documentary. When I saw this article in Slate, I thought about those and about some of the questions that had come up here about the "naturalness" of visual literacy:

What's Everybody Scribbling About in Their Notebooks?
by Josh Patner, posted Friday, Feb. 8, 2008, at 6:41 PM ET

The fashion editors and other professionals described in the article depend on these fashion shows for information that is essential to their careers. It's clear that they've come up with a variety of different strategies to help them take it in and process it quickly. Some sketch, some have carefully organized systems for their notes, and some just delegate. But all of them are doing much more than "just watching" as they sit in these audiences.

Ellus FW2008 by Alaz- (Alexander Azarov)

I'd find it interesting to use this approach with teens as an introduction to visual literacy- ask them how they use visual cues from fashion to get information about people. The movie Mean Girls comes to mind, I know there's already been some discussion of it on the class forums. In my YA Lit class not everyone felt that fashion mattered much to them as kids or to the kids they observe, but it is an omnipresent reality for many people whether you're talking about brand names or tech gadgets or something more expressive of individual creativity.

Tyner's Chapter 7, media violence and information

I read ahead in the Tyner book. Chapter 7 made me stop and think. Tyner is talking about the history of media education in the U.S. She spends a large portion of the chapter talking about how the U.S. has viewed media consumption as bad for young people. In this discussion, the negative effect of media violence is brought up. This led me to some questions about research and finding truthful information.

As an undergraduate, I had psychology and communications professors who insisted that research showed a correlation media violence and aggressive/violent behavior. They did say it was only a correlation, but it was strong enough to cause grave concerns. One psychology professor went so far as to say it was comparable to the correlation between smoking and cancer. Other professors and sources from communications, English, and library classes have said that the evidence is absolutely inconclusive. Each side has their arguments and studies and swears they are correct. (Tyner does a nice job of going through the history of this research and pointing out problems in the research when they occur.)

I am not looking for a solution to this dilemma. I’m looking for a way I can make my own informed decision. When there is an issue, such as this one, that is controversial, how does one get past the rhetoric and agendas and find clear information? Both sides present “evidence” to prove their point, how can a person best evaluate this “evidence” objectively? Is it possible to get unbiased information?

Everyone respond to this post, because I have no idea. I need some good thoughts!

All About Blogs

The latest issue of The New York Review of Books has an article that reviews 10 different books about blogs & the effects of blogging:

Blogs, by Sarah Boxer
The New York Review of Books · Volume 55, Number 2 · February 14 2008

If you're interested in learning more about the history of this phenomenon, or thinking about the differences between this medium and traditional print media, it's an interesting read.

Note: I'm not sure how long that link will work without a subscription. I can't find online access through UIUC, so if you come back to this in a couple weeks you may not be able to read it.

MySpace Evolves... Facebook games in court

Last week I posted some links to new security controls added to MySpace as part of a deal with 49 state legislatures.

Today I saw this article in the New York Times describing the push for MySpace to continue updating its site design and features as part of the ongoing push to keep at the head of the social networking sites pack: From MySpace to YourSpace by Brian Stelter

MySpace is in a funny position - many people (kids especially) like it because it's so easy to customize and MSM industries like it because its easy to use to promote products (especially music & video). But other users are leaving because they dislike the cluttered pages, anarchic social contacts and pushy marketing ("MySpace refugees," the article calls them).

With new security settings protecting kids and increased privacy controls on the horizon, will MySpace keep its loyal fanbase and draw in new users? MySpace's answer to keeping people engaged with their website has been more and more media content. But how long can they continue to compete with YouTube and the hordes of other video and music sites that provide content more flexibly and with more interactive features? The article mentions new celebrity content guides, but will that compete with IMDB and AllMusic.com, which are easier to browse and have giant databases of information?

Facebook, the lead competitor with MySpace in the U.S., tries to keep its users loyal by providing more and more content to keep them in the site. The "applications" approach has been a mixed bag - some people object to them as "cluttering up" the previously pristine profile pages, so they've added a way to minimize their appearance while you browse through your friends sites.

For the most part, though, their hands off approach to letting outsiders create content and add it to their website has been very successful. But how long will they keep up this approach? Scrabulous, one of the most popular apps on facebook (there are over 46,000 people using it to play "asychronous" games with friends) is facing challenges in court from Hasbro.

Will legal challenges force them to take a more direct role in managing the content on their site? Will their marketing strategies that rely on "word-of-mouth" connections between friends take off, or will people migrate to yet another new social networking site that hasn't been infiltrated by commerical interests?

Mass Media and a "Virtuous" Society

I saw this article in the Chronicle of Higher Education today and thought it connected well with some of our readings on the effects of mass media and the value of encouraging media use.

The article is titled Creative Class, Dismissed and written by Laurie Fendrich, a professor of fine arts at Hofstra University

In her class, she has undergraduate students read Rousseau's Letter to d'Alembert on the Theatre (1758) and discuss modern media saturation - Is entertainment good? What effect does it have on society? What effect does it have on our personal satisfaction with life? What effect does it have on our relationships? Is his view of gender relationships pure chauvinism, or does he have a point about the ways women are taught to present themselves in society?

The link above will work fine for non-subscribers for 5 days. After that, you'll need to search for the article using this link, where you can log in as a UIUC student to get access.

If you already have a subscription, you can use this permanent link.

Musings on "meaningful content"

I think the point of discussions in class is to make us think in new ways about old ideas or issues. If so, our first class has already succeeded. What it made me think about was how enormously complicated it is to measure information flow and media use, as well as to internalize why we measure these things in the first place. This may sound a bit confusing at first, so let me elaborate.

The studies by the Kaiser Foundation and Pew's well-respected annual reviews of media use are important indicators of how people use new and old communication technologies very generally. They are also used as one basis of many for numerous contentious arguments amongst the public and between some activist organizations on what types of media content are considered "legitimate," "good," "educational," and so on.

My initial response to these arguments has up to this point been that they should be of our main concern. Controlling media content, as far as I can tell, has never been a good idea in itself, what with the First Amendment and all. Coming from a background in the political economy of communications, I have been more interested in looking at who owns the media outlets, who pays the journalists, who employs the producers of news and entertainment shows, etc. I have even worked on a project to study whether corporate ownership in fact increases indecent media content on various outlets.

But today's discussion has really laid out some important aspects of the indecency debate to which media policy and political economy do not relate. These include the ways children choose to use the media that is available to them. Why choose certain content over others? Why are Myspace and Facebook so prominent? Yes, Merchants of Cool points out that there are actual individuals, companies studying how they can create products to advertise to young people, ultimately looking for ways they can profit off the creativity of youth. And that is definitely related to economics, to market forces, to the pressure for companies to compete through sales.

But the lines do blur when we think about what is or is not educational, informational, useful. Not only is it questionable why TV is singled out as more trashy and stupid than other media forms (as discussed in class), but one is also unsure about what portions of media content are creative and important. As I watch the CNN coverage of caucus after caucus after primary, I am struck by the lack of useful information that reporters are giving us about the candidates. It's just like any other trashy media content.

And what about what people consider to be entertainment? Who says reality TV in itself is bad, if it just distracts people from their lives for a little while?

(OK, I wholeheartedly disagree with the previous sentence. But others might not.)

But the point is, it is simply impossible to define what the public wants. I really wish I didn't have to feel this way, but I do. I think everyone has their own opinion of what public needs are, what is quality entertainment and news and what isn't, and when indecency and morality in media content isn't defined by corporations, it is defined by communist or dictatorial regimes.
Is there really a good way to measure these things?

The best way to go forward, I guess, is to try to figure out ways for people to become educated about their media system, media production, media content analysis, media policy, and then allow them (through stringent legislative means, if necessary) to have the ability to create media content that expresses their own viewpoints. If it's about trash, let it be. As long as it's personal, it means something.

I may change my mind about all this tomorrow.