Critical Inquiry of Media Representations Through Digital Exhibits
1. Creating Digital Exhibits for
Critical Inquiry of Media
Representations
Richard Beach, 2009 NAMLE
Google Docs version of handout:
http://tinyurl.com/kk6zky
2. Objectives
Infer patterns in media images and video
Flickr, Google Images, YouTube, digital maps
Mount exhibit as museum curators
Construct own media collages
Flickr, VoiceThread, YouTube, iMovie,WMM, Web
Poster Wizard, Gliffy
Reflect on how media texts are constructed:
“Production, representation, distribution, reception, and
socialization” Paul Prior
3. Theories: Making connections
Situated Cognition Studies: James Gee:
humans—like connectionist computers
—look for patterns in the elements of
their experiences in the world and, as
they have more and more experiences,
find deeper and more subtle patterns,
patterns that help predict what might
happen in the future when they act to
accomplish goals.
4. Stephen Downes:
Connectivism learning theory
We need to look at networks, not as physical
systems, but as semantical constructs, where
the organization of links is determined as
much by similarity and salience than by raw,
epistemologically neutral, forces of nature.
Knowledge is a network phenomenon, to
“know” something is to be organized in a
certain way, to exhibit patterns of
connectivity. To “learn” is to acquire certain
patterns. This is as true for a community as it
is for an individual.
5. Collecting images/videos
Flickr, Google Images, YouTube, etc.
Identifying key terms/categories
Search strategies: Uses of tags
“attentive noticing”/“informed
seeing” tagging
6. Flickr badges
(html or Flash collages to post on a blog or
wiki) http://www.flickr.com/badge.gne
Harry Potter:
7. Digital collages/scrapbooks
Shutterfly Studio
Smilebox
Clipmarks
Plum
Tabblo
Ulead Photo Express My Scrapbook 2 (Windows only)
HP Creative Scrapbook Assistant (Mac and Windows)
8. Jeff Rice: Digital Detroit: Digital
tagging of spaces in Detroit
By imagining the urban environment as one of
encounter rather than fixed place, we can begin
to conceptualize a city like Detroit as a network.
My call is for a plan of information tagging,
where residents, working in digital spaces,
reimagine the city through their own
conceptualization and actualization of tags. In
place of tagging the bypass or the stop sign with
graffiti, they tag the city itself as an encountered
name or moment within a digital, interconnected
space
9. Jeff Rice: Digital Detroit: Digital
tagging of spaces in Detroit
Imagine, then, the city as a network of tags.
Residents, who tag themselves simultaneously as
writers or non-writers, mark the city through
memory maps, weblogs, delicious tags, and other
related tools in order to reconstruct the city's sense
of urbanity as a digital experience. The tagging
generates a number of assembled taxonomies,
some recognizable, many not. Through the
assemblages, we find new Detroits to engage. We
find new Detroits emerging out of our own
discursive constructions. This reworking is social
in ways capital investment has failed to generate.
18. Collect videos on YouTube
Search topics: Select images or videos:
Hollywood representations of teachers
Inductively define patterns/deviations
School of Rock: provocateur
Dead Poet’s Society/History Boys:
deviant
Dangerous Minds/Freedom Writers:
savior
Half Nelson: relationship with students
19. Comment/annotate
VoiceThread: add oral or written
comments to slideshows
VoiceThread resources
VideoAnt: add written
annotations to specific points in
a video
21. Autobiographical connections
childhood photos or video: artifacts,
events, places, family members, places
Agnes Varda, The Beaches of Agnes
(2008)
American Memory Project
Family tree/heritage projects:
MyHeritage
Geni
22. Representations of Race
Power of white hegemony in film/media
Predominating control/portrayal of
whites
People of color not shown as
subservient and not engaging in
“human”/complex practices
Chinese Hollywood
Black People on YouTube
23. Construction of Femininity
“Beauty industry”: appearance, slimness, or
attractiveness as central to identity
http://www.bodyimagesite.com
http://www.edap.org/media1.html
http://www.aap.org/advocacy/hogan599.htm
Kasi Williamson: Representations of feminism in
the media
Jennifer Budenski:
The New Cult of True Womanhood: the Monolith o
f Disney’s Princess
24. Representations: Masculinity
Traditional masculinity: aggression,
competition, domination as portrayed in
men’s magazines
http://www.theory.org.uk/mensmags.htm
http://www.theory.org.uk/ctr-rol5.htm
Matthew Ferrari, FlowTV: Mixed Martial
Arts’ Burgeoning Wild Kingdom
27. Representation of Class
People’s desire to be perceived as
“middle class” by adopting class markers
of dress, language, social practices
PBS: People Like Us
Representations of “working-class”
“White trash”
Center for the Study of Working Class
Life
28. Teachers in films
Caretakers, saviors, drillmaster, keepers
of wisdom, facilitator/guide-on-the-side,
technician, agent of social change, or
underpaid unionist.
YouTube collection
Up the Down Staircase, Dead Poet’s
Society, Dangerous Minds, Good Will
Hunting, Finding Forrester, The History
Boys, Freedom Writers, The Wire
30. Representation of urban vs.
suburban vs. rural worlds
Urban worlds as dangerous, crime-ridden, poor
http://www.newmediastudies.com/art/city-
med.htm
Suburbia as bucolic, safe escape from urban
world or as shallow, conformist, uniform “cooker
cutter” world
Rural worlds: news stories focus on crime
few stories dealt with issues of agriculture,
despite the loss of jobs, and the decline of
family farming
Gina Nelson: Homelessness
31. Connecting the Dots between
Systems
Analyze how systems serve to each other
to protect the status quo
Government, military, school, justice,
business, media/entertainment, health
care, transportation
How media functions to
represent/perpetuate these systems
33. Food industry
Agri-business/corn lobby <-->campaign
donations <--> government farm
policies <--> Manufactured food <-->
advertising <--> High fat food <-->
obesity <--> health-care costs
Documentary: Food, Inc.
34. Michael Pollan
I think Obama gets the issues. He's a great
dot connector. He connects the dots
between the way we grow food and the
health care crisis and the climate change
crisis and the energy crisis. He understands
that and he's spoken about that eloquently.
The question is how much political capital
he is going to put into changing the system.
35. Obesity <--> Health care <-->
advertising
CDC: 36% of black Americans, 29% of
Hispanics, and 24% of whites are obese.
Medical costs of obesity could have risento
$147 billion per year by 2008.
Children see 7600 food commercials a year;
35% and 45% of commercials are for food.
Almost all advertised food is unhealthy.
“African Americans are consistently exposed
to food promotion and distribution patterns
with relatively greater potential adverse health
effects than are Whites.” American Journal of
Public Health
36. Connecting the dots: Health
care reform
Insurance/pharmaceutical corporations
(50 million ad campaign) lobbying
Congress campaign donations
bills without “public” options-
competition cost of running for
reelection high cost of TV
advertising McCain/Feingold
campaign finance “reform” (no free TV
ads) TV networks lobbying
37. Reducing Future Campaign
Costs: Web Campaigning
Movement away from reliance primarily on
expensive TV ads
Strategies for effective uses of online
campaigning
Engagement of younger voters in campaigns
Media literary: analyzing/producing online
political ads
Frank Baker, Political Campaigns and Political
Advertising, Greenwood Press