Archive for March, 2008

Strapped in

Sunday, March 30th, 2008

Many of us rely on the MTA for our mode of transportation. Whether we use the buses, the subways or both, we are somewhat at the mercy of the Transit Authority when it comes to our commuting experience. Luckily, there is an organization that takes great effort in providing a critical analysis of the MTA’s transportation network. NYPIRG (New York Public Interest Research Group) has been running a Straphangers Campaign for over 10 years, where they release a report card on the various subway lines based on the following criteria:

  • Amount of service – scheduled amount of service
  • Dependability of service - % of trains arriving at scheduled time, breakdown rate
  • Comfort/usability – chance of getting a seat, interior cleanliness, adequacy of in-car announcements

Based on how well a particular line does in these areas, NYPIRG gives the line a grade from A to F. I was contemplating these criteria, and felt that they fall just short of what should determine a subway line’s quality. Depending on where you’re going and how long your commute is, you are a captive customer which I am sure is something the MTA realizes when they contemplate the advertising they plaster all over their property. I’ve often looked at the ads, some that have run in one form or another since I first moved to the city over 8 years ago, as a nuisance and a contributing factor to how comfortable my commute is.

I believe that NYPIRG’s Straphangers should include an evaluation of the advertisements in subways, buses and stations. Perhaps the following criteria could be considered:

  • % of ads that are Public Service Announcements for MTA policies
  • % of ads that are timely or out of date
  • % of ads that are inappropriate for the typical audience a particular line serves

This last one is particular important because the MTA acts as a proxy school bussing system, and i wonder how many parents would approve of the Department of Education consenting to let beer companies advertise on the big yellow buses.

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Keeping Up With the Natives

Tuesday, March 25th, 2008

Terms I like to use to describe the differences between young people and their parents when it comes to the use of digital technology are sociological/anthropological metaphors that are now used every day. The term digital “native” describes young people who have grown up learning and using digital technology. It is innate to them. Their parents, however, a generation (or two sometimes) ahead of them, are digital “immigrants” because their exposure to digital communication came later in their lives, even if they are now comfortable using many digital technologies. It is not innate to them, and some aspects are still often perplexing (like constant instant messaging, multitasking with various media, and the like).

Like all metaphors, “native” and “immigrant” in this case molds a way of thinking about how today’s very young and older generations differ from each other in the ways they communicate — which has everything to do with how they develop relationships, relate to the world and even understand who they are. The metaphors have become commonly accepted among media scholars and others who study new media and young people. The Library of Congress in Washington, D.C., just announced a lecture series on “Digital Natives” which I highly recommend because of the topics and the speakers. The first lecture will explore how young people think, learn and play. The title of the talk is “The Anthropology of Digital Natives” and will be delivered by scholar and child development expert Edith Ackerman, currently a visiting scientist at MIT. This lecture will be held Monday, April 7, at 4 pm.

Since many people can’t make it to the Library of Congress, the lecture will be streamed live at www.loc.gov (which is where I’ll be tuning in). I’ll be reminding you of all lectures as they near, but for a list of all the speakers, titles, dates and times, please visit http://www.loc.gov/kluge. This is an outstanding opportunity to hear from first rate scholars studying Internet communication and young people. And stay tuned for information about our own LAMP panel discussion about the Internet and young people coming up later this spring at a location here in New York City.

-Katherine Fry

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Spring cleaning

Monday, March 24th, 2008

Now that spring is officially here (despite what the thermometer tells us), many of us will be taking the opportunity to clean out clutter from closets, cabinets and shelves.  Among the old clothes, unread books and treasures yet to be rediscovered, you might find you have some spare electronic devices.

Don’t throw them out.  There’s a better way to get rid of them.  For phones, many cell phone shops will take your old device and either recycle it or donate it to a charity.  The same holds true for computers.  Many neighborhoods also hold e-waste events from time to time, which serve as safe dumping grounds for anything electronic.

If you’re busy and can’t find time to get down to the store with your stuff, there are also websites like myboneyard.com, which will make the process ridiculously easy.  Register on their website and give them some information about what you’re recycling.  Not only will they send you a prepaid shipping label, they’ll send you a check for the current market value and wipe all your personal and private data from the computer, phone or PDA.   So get to it–you officially have no excuse!

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The Golden Rule

Friday, March 21st, 2008

Almost every blog, social networking site, online magazine or newspaper has at least one thing in common: a forum for comments and discussion. Talking back to media is not necessarily new; people have been submitting letters to the editor for about as long as news outlets have been in existence. What is new about online comment is its permanence.

When you are creating an online profile or posting a piece of your writing, it is of the utmost importance to remember that the content is out there forever. It is not like graffiti that can be painted over or washed off. I think that for the most part, people are fairly responsible and hold themselves to some degree of accountability, but the opportunity is there for anyone to post a nasty anonymous comment and have it published permanently, which happens too often. This aligns with the spirit of free speech–whether something is hateful, subversive or innovative, you can say it–but I question whether Internet users are catching up to the level of responsibility they need to have when publishing comments and content.

I agree with Bob Garfield when he says there is a difference between commentary and vandalism, and we need to teach people that difference. The advent of the Honesty Box on Facebook is used by some to declare a secret crush on a user, by others as a conduit for cyberbullying. It is up to the user to do the right thing.

Safe and responsible use of the Internet is everyone’s responsibility. The ability to publish original content is not going anywhere soon, at least in the United States, and so it’s up to us to talk to each other about accountability and standards of decency. It has been suggested that perhaps comments sections need to be regulated, but to me, this seems to be the equivalent of confiscating someone’s illegal handgun when there’s a knife shop down the block. There is always going to be a way to be mean, cowardly and irresponsible, and we didn’t need the Internet to teach us how to act that way. The Internet is nothing if not open and free, and I do believe the positives of a free Internet outweigh the negatives. The best solution is to hold ourselves and each other to the golden rule of do unto others as you would have others do unto you.

-Emily Long

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Nine inch Nails it

Tuesday, March 18th, 2008

As some of you may know, the popular rock band Radiohead released its latest album a few months ago in a manner that both sticks it to the recording industry as well as embrace the different distribution outlets the Internet offers.

Another rock band has followed the example by Radiohead, but has expanded its offering even more so. Nine Inch Nails (NiN) has announced that it will offer tracks from its new 36-track album free for download. The music is not just from their own site, but they are also making it available through other download sites like BitTorrent.  And the innovations do not stop there.

They are also releasing it via a Creative Commons license, which is a new type of intellectual-property copyright. This allows users certain permissions to use and alter the product, which is really the revolutionary thing about what NiN is attempting with their latest album. They are inviting their fans to create videos to their music and upload them to an online film “festival”. This is truly a collaborative effort that Web 2.0 allows.

In an NY Times article on it, NiN bandleader, Trent Reznor has this to say:

“…we believe in finding ways to utilize new technologies instead of fighting them.”

That’s how we feel at The LAMP. We believe in working with what is going to be around to try to find ways we can use the technologies to improve our lives rather than ignore them.

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Change or die!

Monday, March 17th, 2008

I read a blog post today on salon.com that echoes something all of us here at the LAMP (and other media literacy organizations) have been talking about for a long time now in some form or another: The Internet doesn’t have to be scary.

When I was a kid, I remember being constantly told to roll with the punches, go with the flow, and all the other euphemisms that basically say that things change and so you must as well.  I was also often told that what at first looks like a problem or limitation may actually be an opportunity–think lemonade from lemons.

All of this has me noting the irony that the same adults who told me to adapt and make the best of a bad situation seem unable to do so for themselves.  A refusal to integrate new media into the classroom because it’s unfamiliar or potentially dangerous is not only shortsighted, it’s also mildly insulting in some respects.  Younger generations may not communicate the same way as their parents did at their age, but that doesn’t mean young people are doing it wrong, and their modes of communication shouldn’t be marginalized because of it.  Too often, we think kids are just fooling around online when really, they’re information junkies expressing themselves.  It doesn’t have to be hard to funnel those skills into a useful, positive outlet.

Imagine if school projects took the form of team blogs and YouTube channels–for example, I think I would have been much more interested in science if my assignment included a video mashup of chemistry experiments, or videos of events like the San Francisco earthquake which demonstrated basic principles of physics.  What if teachers encouraged us to explore how or why a mathematical formula works, rather than have us memorize equations that a basic calculator can do?  In one case my critical thinking skills are challenged; in another, I’m really just learning how to punch numbers on a keypad.  (According to this New Yorker article, it may be one of many reasons why we’re falling behind in math.)

The message here is to adapt, adapt, adapt.  Media literacy will help put people of all ages on the same level, and can enable us to recognize new media as a powerful tool instead of a grave danger.

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Talking About Client 9 with Your Family & Students

Friday, March 14th, 2008

Sensitive items appear in news media every day, from devastating natural disasters to horrendous acts of violence. As much as we might wish to shield our younger ones from some very adult issues, it is not always possible. In a week of news that has been dominated by Eliot Spitzer and his involvement with a prostitution ring, it’s a good time to think about how to talk with your kids.

With newspapers bearing headlines such as “Hooker Happy” and “Ho No!” being sold on every corner, lots of questions can come up in the mind of a kid. Ultimately, the most important thing is not to shun that conversation. Be an active listener. You don’t have to lie, but you don’t have to divulge every little detail if it’s not appropriate. Try to think of times like these as opportunities to get to know your son or daughter better, and to engage their sense of right and wrong.

For a great resource about talking with your kids about the news (and other things), check out PBS’s Talking With Kids series.

For examples of how some families discussed the Spitzer scandal, read this brief article from the New York Times.

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Spitzer in the News

Wednesday, March 12th, 2008

Like everyone else, I’ve been focused on, and riveted by, the news of Governor Spitzer’s recent resignation and the events leading up to it.  The headlines, particularly in the New York papers, have gleefully blasted the whole debacle on the front pages in the past few days.  The pundits are going crazy with this one.  And it doesn’t look like it’s going to end very soon.

While it’s difficult not to watch a train wreck in progress, I have to wonder about this story as news. What?  The champion-of-morality New York state governor gets caught participating in a prostitution ring, ending his political career, and that’s not news?  Certainly it is dramatic and timely.  It even has high consequence because the people of the state are experiencing the loss of this once-promising leader.  These news values–drama, timeliness and consequence–are touted by journalists as reason enough for an event to be considered news.  But while everyone’s busy chewing on this juicy bit, it’s helpful to consider another, less tantalizing perspective.

This is ratings stuff, it’s high circulation stuff, it’s titillating and it makes money, but it’s not really that important.  We’re not paying close enough attention to the news that really matters to us.  What happened to the history-making Democratic primary?  What about the economy, and specifically Bush’s economic stimulus package and it’s consequences for the economy?  And how did the economy get to where it is today? Oh, and what about the war in Iraq?

Anyone?

Back in 1985 media scholar Neil Postman published a cross-over (from scholarly to mainstream) bestseller, “Amusing Ourselves to Death,” which explained, elegantly and simply, how television had changed the cultural conversation from the age of print because of its strengths as a visual, high-stimulation medium and its weakness in discouraging logical thought, the kind of thinking encouraged by reading and writing.  Postman spent a good deal of that book and others decrying what the introduction of electronic media meant for news and for the health of the Democracy.

While not everyone agrees completely with Postman’s dire observation–that we are, literally, amusing ourselves to death–I have to agree with him that when the major forum of cultural conversation turned from print to television, we saw a dramatic shift in news.  News has become that which makes good pictures.  It has become increasingly about entertainment.   As a news historian I’m well aware that news has always contained elements of the sensational, from print to the Internet, and there was NEVER a time when news was objective.  But in the age of electronic media we’re more easily swayed by bright lights and the drama of the moment (which happens to change moment by moment in this age of 24 hour news) than we were when we only had print sources to rely on for news and information.

Today we have little time for information that isn’t sexy at all, but happens to be extremely relevant.  In short, the switch from one dominant mode of communication to another brings with it enormous changes that have political, social and cultural consequences.  The Internet is quickly becoming the new mode of conversation.  I wonder at how the news is being shaped differently now as the Internet supplants television.

Politicians have always paid hookers for sex.  It’s not a good thing for anyone involved, but it’s always happened.  Wars, the economy, and broad-based social problems have always been there for citizens to work on.  Which of these are we encouraged to spend our time considering?  The news media aren’t just presenting us with what’s out there.  They’re making decisions based on a number of factors, including money and medium.  It’s good to be literate in all of the factors involved in shaping our news, and in shaping us.  And it’s good to start early.

Katherine Fry

Education Director

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Death in Video Games

Monday, March 10th, 2008

I was a little surprised this morning when I read an article on wired.com about a new report by Dr. Niklas Ravaja, a researcher with the Center for Knowledge and Innovation Research at the Helsinki School for Economics.  In it, Dr. Ravaja and his colleagues report that when the emotional states of video game players were monitored with several tiny sensors, they felt a release when they were killed but experienced distress when they killed another character in the game.  (Disclaimer: The paper, entitled The Pyschophysiology of James Bond: Phasic Emotional Responses to Violent Video Game Events, is unavailable to read in full online unless you pay for it.  Everything I know about the report comes from other articles about it, not from my firsthand knowledge of the paper’s contents.  I’m not finding much in the way of scholarly critical response to the paper.)

At first, this conclusion seems backwards.  When you kill another character in a game, you’ve eliminated your opposition, so you should feel a sense of victory, right?  And when you’re killed, it means you’ve lost, and what feels good about losing?  Dr. Ravaja theorizes that this is because even when we operate in a virtual world like a video game, our real-life sense of morality doesn’t entirely switch off.  Although we know intellectually that we didn’t really just kill someone, we feel a little bad about it.  When we die, we’re relieved from the stress of playing.

This was surprising to me because so much past research has suggested that violent video games desensitize a player, blurring the lines between a virtual world of no consequence and a real world where murder holds many, many consequences.  Like Dr. Ravaja, I’m a little relieved at the implication that gamers aren’t completely turned off when their games are turned on.  Given the fact that violent video games aren’t going to disappear, I find the new perspective to be somewhat comforting.

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The Airborne Settlement

Thursday, March 6th, 2008

In May of 2006, a complaint was filed against the makers of Airborne, the herbal supplement, for false advertising.  A year later, the complaint was amended, and alleged that Airborne engaged in “consumer fraud, deceptive or unfair business practices, false or misleading advertising, concealment, omission, unfair competition by marketing and advertising the Products as a preventative or a cure for the common cold.”

Last Monday, a settlement was announced to the tune of $23.3 million, requiring that Airborne offer refunds to anyone who purchased any of their products between May 2001 and November 2007.  In an ironic twist, having been accused of false advertising, Airborne must also take out advertisements in several newspapers and magazines with refund instructions. (You can read the full terms of the settlement here.)

In short, Airborne Health and Knight-McDowell labs were nailed for marketing their product on the basis that if you have a cold or are worried about getting one, pop an Airborne and you’re safe.  But look closely at their marketing–on their website, they claim that “Airborne is the best-selling herbal health formula that boosts your immune system to help your body combat germs.”  Know what else boosts your immune system?  Any source of good old-fashioned Vitamin C, like oranges or grapefruits.

Airborne may be an herbal health formula, and it may be the best-selling product of its kind, but there’s nothing in that statement about its proven effectiveness.  On top of that, the lab tests are of questionable legitimacy.  However, someone who finds Airborne in the cold remedy aisle might well understand it to be just that: a remedy, which it is not.  Read the packaging, ask the right questions, and you’ll understand that it’s just another way to get a concentrated boost of vitamins and minerals that support your immune system.  There’s no guarantee you won’t get sick.

The defendants in the case still deny any wrongdoing.  Not having followed the lawsuit over the past few years, and not knowing the intimate details of Airborne marketing history or development, I may be no more equipped than anyone else to pass judgment on whether Airborne is or is not guilty of deliberately misleading consumers in efforts to sell their product.  I believe, however, that there are plenty of other companies out there that are doing just what has Airborne has done, and at minimum make false implications.  Any time you see an ad, remember–tap in to your media literacy skills, ask questions, and think critically about what you’re told.  Our advertising workshop is a great place to start, and it’s not too late to sign up.

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