Week 12.5

1. Week 12.5 Digital Media + Journalistic Ethics & The Self + Digital Media

2. Objectives • Recall the context of convergence across media platforms • Recognize the importance of authenticity, ethical norms, and professional codes of conduct even in “new” (though we prefer the term digital) media. • Explore relationship between digital media and self identity and play.

3. Convergence • Describes the way media technologies are increasingly unifying (converging) • The Economist video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6ILQrUrEWe8

4. YouTube in the Context of Television History. • Part of the history of the fragmentation of TV in terms of Production and Reception • Production: From A few networks > to more cable channels > to anyone with a Web cam • Reception: “Regular TV”>VCRs > Cable > Digital Recording> to You Tube (Audience More Fragmented)

5. Authenticity and Digital Ethics Adapted from Ward, “Digital Media Ethics” http://ethics.journalism.wisc.edu/resources/digital-media-ethics/

6. Tension Between Professionals and Amateurs • Mixed Media environment: professionals and amateurs working together • Traditional journalistic values: “values of accuracy, pre-publication verification, balance, impartiality, and gate-keeping” versus • Online values: “immediacy, transparency, partiality, non-professional journalists and post-publication correction” Adapted from Ward, “Digital Media Ethics” http://ethics.journalism.wisc.edu/resources/digital-media-ethics/

7. Photography as an example: technology to take a “good” photograph more accessible. • $31.00 for the cover of Time Magazine – would have been $1000+ from a professional.

8. Tension Between the Local and the Global • A “local” story now has global impact. • What responsibility do journalists have? • For example: Terry Jones Adapted from Ward, “Digital Media Ethics” http://ethics.journalism.wisc.edu/resources/digital-media-ethics/

9. Mid-April 2011, burned a Koran in Florida. • American press did not cover it, as they felt it was just a publicity stunt. • One French reporter at agency AFP files a story about it. • Riots about it in Afghanistan, people died. Source: On the Media Blackout of Terry Jones <http://www.onthemedia.org/transcripts/2011/04/08/03>

10. Other Problems • Anonymity: Acceptable online – but less acceptable as the writer or producer of a traditional news story. • Speed:Rumours spread quickly online. How do we know what’s true? • Partisanship: Stuff that’s online tends to take political sides rather than value neutrality. • Corrections: If something is wrong, is it ethical to “unpublish” it as if the mistake never happened? Adapted from Ward, “Digital Media Ethics” http://ethics.journalism.wisc.edu/resources/digital-media-ethics/

11. Example of Unpublishing: • Newspapers often report arrests (which are part of public record) but then don’t follow up with what happened in the case. • One man was arrested for indecent exposure in 1989, but later cleared of the charges. However when his name was googled the Washington Post article about his arrest came up. • The WaPo removed the story. Adapted from Ward, “Digital Media Ethics” http://ethics.journalism.wisc.edu/resources/digital-media-ethics/

12. Unpublishing • By contrast, the Toronto Star has a firm policy: • “As with our newsprint version, our online published content is a matter of public record and is part of our contract with our readers. To simply remove published content from the archive diminishes transparency and trust with our readers and in effect, erases history. This is not a practice engaged in by credible news organizations or in line with ethical journalism.” StinkyJournalism.com. “To Edit? To Unpubish?” http://www.stinkyjournalism.org/editordetail.php?id=563

13. Still More Ethical Problems • Reporters Using Social Media:Does a reporter need to be impartial on their personal blog? • Images: New technology for photography raises its own ethical questions. • How much is it OK to alter? • Just the “technical aspects” of a photo?

14. Part II: Digital Media, Self Identity, and Play

15. Key Terms • Ludic: Refers to “play”. The working thesis is that – however useful for “work” new technologies are, we end up using them for largely ludic purposes. • Based on anthropologist/historian Joseph Huizinga’s concept of play as “essential” to civilization – but always separate from everyday life.

16. Play is essential to civilization • “All are temporary worlds within the ordinary world, dedicated to the performance of an act apart.” (Huizinga 1986). • Slides: sports stadium crossword puzzle, arena, temple, stage, movie theater.

17. Two Ways to Understand Impact of New Media • 1. Through the technology itself • 2. Through how we use the technology.

18. Technology Itself

19. Daily Life in “The Media Home” • Where in the house is the computer? • Screen Play (1998-2000) project found most families put the computer in a common area – living room or kitchen. • That might be different now: wireless and laptops mean people work and play on the computer in different parts of the house.

20. Daily Life in the “Media Home” • Family members compete for access. • Someone tends to be the “expert”. They might delete games or limit work to certain times. • Gender a factor • Girls say they like video games as much as boys, but girls with brothers play less. • Gaming consoles tend to be in the Brother’s room.

21. Work or Play? Instrument or Gadget? • Instrument – is necessary to survive • A gadget “a technological artifact with which we play” (Baudrillard). • The Phone: “Creates a playful and emotional connectedness among friends. It is about feeling and reaffirming the connection.”

22. Social Shaping of Technology (SST) Thesis • Essentially, specifications don’t matter – its all about feelings. • “Every electronic media product launch…carries with it a…fantasy scenario of domestic consumption…and an ideological rational for its social function.” (Broddy 1999)

23. Example – iPhone launch • First iPhone ad http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pQ1CkkxNjYc • Watch for • 1. Fantasy of how you will use it AND/OR • 2. Ideological rationale for why it is valuable.

24. X-Box – Social Shaping of Media Technology • Same thing with X-Box http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DnIN5XByxO8 • Microsoft was competing with Sony – needed to rethink its nerdy image • “Rather than the beige box located in the study and associated with work, the console was promoted as a sexy machine designed to look good in the living room” (Flyn 2003:557)

25. How We Use It.

26. “Technoculture” – The Expectation in the Early 1990s • Identity play: Early research on chatrooms – people take on and “Play” with new identities: “chatrooms serve no other cultural function than the remediation of the self.” (Bolter and Grussin 2000) • Idealism: That the internet would create a place for us to interact without judging one another based on class or race.

27. “Technoculture” – The Reality Now. • Social Networks have taken off because they allow us to “articulate our existing communities through the links made” (295) • People are primarily not meeting new people, but communicating with people already in their network. • Most people’s online identities tend to mirror their offline one. • “Like a Village”, according to Tufecki: “just like living in a village, where it’s actually hard to lie because everybody knows the truth already … . If anything, it’s identity–constraining now.””

28. Beyond the Body • But some changes are real. • Identity before “the internet” was “coterminous” with the body • One can look at media technologies simply as ways to amplify identity beyond one’s own physical space and even time.

29. Goffman’s Expressions of Self (1959) • In Social Media, we “give” more, because more of our presentation of ourselves has the power to be much more selective.

30. Components of Online Identity • Changes in Mass Media: changes in Television broadcasting might influence how we present ourselves in “small media” (references to TV shows, etc). • Bricoloage: choosing images and components we select and put together to “project” ourselves. • Evident in the “MySpace Angles”

31. MYSPACE ANGLES • “Angles photographs”: “MySpace Angles” are a style of photograph primarily showcased on SNS profiles (originally on the SNS “MySpace” but not exclusive to this particular site).” • “These photographs are normally self–portraits taken by holding the camera above one’s head. Because the camera is only at arm’s length the subject fills the entire frame, though it is the face that is featured most prominently — due to foreshortening the subject’s body appears small” Sessions, Lauren. “You Looked Better on Myspace.” <http://firstmonday.org/htbin/cgiwrap/bin/ojs/index.php/fm/article/view/2539/2242>

32. MYSPACE ANGLES • Sessions found that on SNS, “Angles photos” were criticised and made fun of for three reasons by users: as vain, as “trying too hard” to be trendy, and for “concealing the body.” • Supports thesis that “authenticity” is valued.

33. Break/Film

34. Film: For Neda • http://socialtimes.com/for-neda-documentary-illustrates-the-power-of-social-media-in-the-fight-for-human-rights_b15110