This month we interviewed Merlin, a middle-school student who has taken two video workshops with The LAMP. Read on for how he thinks media impact his classmates, and how workshops with The LAMP changed his perspective. Check out  “Fading Away From The Stereotypes,” one of the videos he made with The LAMP!

LAMP Education Director Katherine Fry, Ph.D., at The LAMP Family Media Scavenger Hunt in 2008

On January 28 at 6.30pm, LAMP Education Director Katherine Fry will participate in a panel discussion with Young Women Social Entrepreneurs. The event, taking place at T Salon in Chelsea Market, will address the ways that media can act as a catalyst for change, and how media is used to tell stories of change. Additional speakers will include Karena Albers (KONTENTREAL), Yvette Alberdingk Thijm (WITNESS) and Alexia Prichard (Closed Loop Films). Check it out!

OMG! Teens only use 800 different words a day, and it’s all social media’s fault.

Yeah, but, like, whatever.

This is according to a study done at Lancaster University in England, which has Jean Gross, the country’s first Communication Champion for Children, up in arms about the lack of vocabulary and the potential impact it can have on future employment for inarticulate teens. While I agree that having a wide range of vocabulary is important to being an effective communicator, the suggestion that diminished vocabulary is due to social media greatly oversimplifies the ways in which language use changes over time for any individual. Professor David Crystal, also quoted in the article, is right when he says (and I paraphrase) that the issue is not a lack of vocabulary, but the fact that most adults disapprove of or misunderstand the purpose of slang. Which they probably also used when they were teens.

To me, this sounds like the result of a generational gap, whereby the older group trivializes the culture of the younger group, and sees this cultural shift as some sort of apocalypse. Never mind the fact that shifts like this have been happening for ages.  Parents have been singing “What’s the Matter with Kids Today?” since Bye Bye Birdie showed up on Broadway in 1960, when my own mother was a teenager and listening to rock and roll. Further back, my grandmother’s mother probably took issue with her style in the 1930s.

Mounting a campaign for improved vocabulary, as Ms. Gross plans to do, is not necessarily a bad thing, but let it not be motivated solely, or even primarily, by one study which says that kids like to use slang. Don’t blame technology, either–you know the saying that guns don’t kill people, people kill people? Well, it’s not social media that makes teens inarticulate. It’s the teen using social media who is inarticulate, and the reasons for that could constitute an entirely different post.

The OJ Simpson trial was an iconic moment in pop culture. The white Ford Bronco, the blood-stained glove, and a legal “dream team” — they all came together to create the “trial of the century.” Over the course of nine months, it spawned 2,237 news segments, one controversial magazine cover, and countless jokes on late-night talk shows. According to Paul Thaler, who wrote The Spectacle: media and the making of the OJ Simpson story, “the Simpson story is one of exploitation, of media overkill and outright pandering, of huge profitmaking, all of which undermined the trial and fueled tremendous public cynicism about the way in which justice–and the media–work in this country.”

Which is why, when I got an email asking me to sign a petition asking Judge Vaughn Walker to televise the Prop 8 trial, I hesitated. On the one hand, the trial is a landmark federal lawsuit, the civil rights battle of this century and my generation. Its outcome will not only affect the lives of thousands of Californians but will have ramifications across the country with regards to marriage equality. Of course I wanted to watch it, but I wasn’t sure that televising the trial was the best way to go about it.

The fact is that the theory behind cameras in the courtroom never coincides with the practice. In theory, they are supposed to protect against a miscarriage of justice and provide the public with knowledge and information about the judicial process. In practice, well, you get the OJ Simpson trial — a media circus that reduces the level of discourse to witty affirmations by the defense and cheap jokes on Jay Leno.

That’s why Judge Walker’s plan to show the trial on YouTube is so genius. The man understands that media coverage of a trial — and especially this trial — can be used to inform and engage when it is in the right hands. Which is why, in his words, “it’s important for the transmission to be absolutely within the court’s control.” The court has an incentive to show the nuances of the judicial proceedings, unlike corporate media, whose only incentive is to turn a profit.

Using the Internet to increase government transparency has long been an unanswered call. With a medium so democratic in nature, it’s almost offensively obvious that it should be used to further the cause of democracy. Thankfully, Judge Walker gets that.

– Megha Kohli, LAMP intern

At The LAMP, we’re generally not supportive of media that does nothing more than add noise to our easily-cluttered digital and physical locales. But, I have to hand it to the folks who thought of these two ads. If you can ignore the message and just look at the design, this is simple, good old-fashioned creativity put to work. Click the picture to be taken to the Ad It Up! Ad Archive, and don’t forget to email us pictures of ads you find interesting to info@thelampnyc.org!

Casino ad running on luggage carousel in Venice airport

On the floor of a shopping center in Jakarta