Unless you live under a rock, you’re aware that today is Election Day here in the United States. I hope that each and every one of you who are registered voters are going out and performing your civic right and duty to cast a ballot for our next President.
I’m no historian when it comes to presidential campaigns, but I would be willing to bet that, just as in this campaign, media has played a huge role. From pamphlets distributed in the pre-bellum era to blog postings published moments ago, our votes are impacted in some way by media. The trick for the candidate is in the strategy for creating his/her own media image, and in the response to media produced by the opponent. Given that, it is worth noting for a second the power of new media which has reached a new height with this election cycle.
The online presence of both candidates has been much discussed already, but let’s do a quick recap: Barack Obama picked up where Howard Dean left off, and rallied a good many of his troops through online social networks. A visit to his website will bring you to 16 social networks where he is registered, while videos are posted to BarackTV–which is divided into eight channels, each of which are filled with dozens of videos. After his win in South Carolina in January, online donations poured in at the rate of $500,000 per hour. John McCain has also designated a portion of his website to multimedia, but he has not ulitized social networks nearly to the extent that Obama has. A search on his website for Facebook turns up nothing. I was unable to locate figures for how much McCain has raised online, but he should get an honorable mention for having raised $2.2 million online during the week he won the New Hampshire primary…back in 2000. For a side-by-side comparison of online activity related to each candidate, be sure to check this out. It should be clear that more and more, democracy is taking place online.
Politics aside, one must respect the staggering number of people who used new media to learn about or campaign for a candidate. It reminds us that it is time to rethink the innumerable ways people interact with media, and the ways in which new media in particular is changing how we do…well, everything. Like how we teach our children, or what skills we need to be competitive in a modern workforce. Media literacy addresses both of these things and much more, and is imperative to an increasingly digital society. If you or someone you know ever doubted the power and importance of new media, it’s time to wake up. As they say, attention must be paid.
Please consider making a small donation to the LAMP today, using the button at the bottom of your screen for NYCharities. Every little bit helps us in our mission to build a media literate culture in a media saturated world.
I opened the paper this morning to discover that yesterday, 16-year-old Nicholas Browning pleaded guilty to shooting his parents and his two younger brothers last February. As the story goes, he was playing video games at a friend’s house, and suddenly got up to go home. He used his father’s gun and afterward returned to his friend’s house to play video games, pretending that nothing had happened. The next day he went with his friends to a mall, then (according to one story, also linked earlier in this article) invited a large group over to his house for a party. Upon arrival, he feigned surprise in front of his horrified friends who had been told that his family was out of town for the weekend. Another statement is that a friend’s father drove him home from the mall, and after entering his house Nicholas came outside to tell the father that something was wrong.
I seized upon the video game detail. Whether or not video games are the direct cause of violence is difficult to know, and studies have been done which point bothways on the issue. In the case of Nicholas Browning, there may have been other elements involved–relatives and friends told the defense psychiatrist that they had seen Nicholas being by parents, and that he and his parents abused alcohol as well. Friends recall Nicholas venting a great deal of anger about his father, and that he joked about killing his family. However, I think there is something to Nicholas’ recollection of being in a trance-like state on the night of the killings, and also to the reports that he was playing video games immediately before and after the killings as well as the day following. Nicholas may have played video games every day of his life, so logging several hours in front of a console (his house had two) might not have been unusual, but that doesn’t weaken the point that the teen may have had an unhealthy relationship with video games. It can be hard to distinguish between fantasy and reality, especially when video games are used as a retreat–the world you want to live in and the world you actually live in start to blur together.
In themselves, video games are not necessarily a bad thing, but like any other unchecked addiction, too much time spent with them can lead to trouble. Nicholas Browning certainly represents a worst-case scenario; more often, video game addicts grow alienated from friends and family, or their health suffers from a sedentary obsession. None of the above is acceptable, and it is just one reason why all of us here at the LAMP feel so strongly about media literacy. If you’re worried about violence in your community, media literacy might not take away the guns but it can take away a lot of reasons for pulling the trigger. Violence is glamorized in many aspects of popular culture–as a path to fame, fortune, strength, power, sex and more–and that has to stop. It will stop when we demand that it stops, and not a minute sooner.
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If you have children, you probably already know how difficult it is to find age-appropriate websites that you will be comfortable to let them to visit regularly. Far too many of the children sites out there are nothing more than advertising ploys for kids TV shows and toys.
Woogi World games, activities and adventures teach and promote positive behavior and character development. Woogi World is a social networking site and an online world for children with the goal of training elementary-age children to use the internet safely and to balance that with community service and family time so that children may become good influences in their homes, schools, and communities. Woogi World is also a resource for parents and teachers to use to teach children about Internet safety and some great characteristics, such as leadership, community service, responsibility, health and nutrition and, surprisingly, how to balance being online with being offline.
For many of us, we can condone certain Internet games and activities if we perceive that there is an educational benefit to them. To our children – it’s fun. But to a parent and an educator we want the benefits that we see in activities such as soccer, basketball, baseball and playing house –the all important benefits of exercise and teamwork and letting one’s imagination grow.
Woogi World’s parental interaction feature allows parents to monitor the amount of time their child is online and determine if they want their child to “chat” with other Woogi’s. A parent can also limit the days and amount of time the child can play as well as view the history of the account.
To sum it up, Woogi World offers a safe environment for children to get connected, socialize, and keep up with world around them. To that end, Woogi World launched an “Every Kid Votes” Campaign that allows children to participate in the voting process. Here, children get the opportunity to vote and learn the importance in our nation’s democratic process by involving children in the upcoming election, the Republican and Democratic parties, the candidates, and the candidates’ platforms.
Although my child isn’t learning his ABC’s and 123’s from Woogi World (I’ll save that for our Mommy and PoohBear reading time), he is nevertheless learning valuable skills. So, if you’re looking for an educational, and a fun place for your child on the Internet, go to Woogi World, create your own Woogi and one for your child, and have some fun — especially since Woogi World is absolutely free!
In one of our adult workshops about a year ago, we got on to the topic of credibility in blogs and of web news in general. One student raised his hand and said that he gets confused because you can’t trust everything you read on the web, but you can trust what’s in a newspaper, which is why he doesn’t read blogs or online news.
It’s true that you can’t trust everything you read online, and we at the LAMP encourage our students to ask questions rather than take something at face value. However, you also shouldn’t trust something in print just because it’s in print. In fact, I would argue that in some ways you should be less trusting of print news than of web news, all for a little thing called the hyperlink. When I read a news story online, I love it when every claim made by the author is backed up with a hyperlink which brings me to the source of the information, because it helps me make my own decisions about what I’m reading.
Let’s make an example: Suppose Jimmy Journalist claims that yesterday the sky was green and the grass was blue in Boise, Idaho. To me this sounds crazy, and I’m inclined to ignore it, until I click on the hyperlink attached to the claim and see for myself that the source he used is a highly respected professor who is able to explain, from a scientific perspective, how and why this phenomenon is possible. I still don’t have to believe it, but I have respect for the fact that the journalist made his reporting transparent enough that I can check things out for myself. Imagine if William Randolph Hearst and Joseph Pulitzer had to use hyperlinks when writing about the destruction of the Maine.
Therein lies part of the problem–nobody is required to use hyperlinks today. Most articles I read in online versions of print newspapers (like the New York Times) do not link back to their sources. This makes sense sometimes, as not all sources are from the Internet, but in most cases there is something online that can be used to back up a claim. As far as I know, it’s never been standard practice for newspapers to include complete bibliographies for every article I print, but I wish it was. Until then, long live the hyperlink, and journalism that makes use of it.
Upon hearing of plans by the MTA (New York City’s subway authoritative body) to ramp up their advertising throughout their property, it brought to mind a scene from Steven Spielberg’s Minority Report where the main character is trying to avoid surveillance in a world where advertisements are customized based on a scan of your retinal that identifies who you are.
The MTA has already rolled out plans where they are placing ads on the floor and ceiling of subway cars, but also now they are placing ads on the exterior shell of the subway car. The bombardment of the captive commuting audience is reprehensible, blurring the lines between the real world and the advertised world even further. But, it doesn’t stop there.
The MTA plans to gobble up every available piece of its real estate, and slather it with advertisements. That means soon the turnstiles will be covered in Nike Swooshes, the platforms of the subways will be pasted with Absolut Vodka ads, and even the walls of the tunnels will serve up the latest Microsoft gadget they’ll do their damnedest to convince you that you can’t live without.
In a city where the average adult sees over 600 instances of advertisements already, how much more are we going to take? How much more can we handle? How much more invasion into our daily thoughts and activity will we tolerate?
In our news workshops, we talk a lot with our students about how the news is made. One thing we discuss is why some stories get lots of coverage, and others get none at all–essentially, what is traditionally considered news and what is not. The lesson that “if it bleeds, it leads” is not an easy one, especially when there are so many other important stories out there which also deserve the level of urgent reporting that is afforded to a story about a car crash. So, on Blog Action Day, when we’re asked to consider poverty, think about it: How often does poverty make the news?
With this in mind, I started doing some research and found that the answer is, for the most part, not very often. Poverty is an ageless problem, and like AIDS or cancer, it’s hard to imagine it being eradicated. There have always been poor people in the world, and we know that, even if we don’t all have to think about it every day. Generally, we’re not interested in the news media telling us something we already know, and so the challenge becomes making an old issue newsworthy right now.
We have seen that this is no minor feat. Before he confessed to the media about cheating on his wife, John Edwards was one the most prominent Americans especially devoted to the issue of poverty in our country. In May, he announced the Half in Ten campaign to cut poverty in half ten years from now, and embarked on a three-day tour of some of America’s most impoverished communities. As reported by journalist Peter Dreier, only one major newspaper covered the event in Philadelphia where the campaign was unveiled, perhaps because it was drowned out by news of Edwards’ pending endorsement of Barack Obama. The 2007 poverty tour got more coverage, happening as it was during the North Carolina senator’s campaign for the Democratic Party presidential nomination. In both cases, we have to wonder if John Edwards or poverty was the real story. If John Edwards runs a 2009 poverty tour, will the coverage be about the issue, or will it be about a fallen politician trying to restore his career? (Let’s also not miss the irony that coverage was minimal when Edwards was trying for change that actually affects our lives, but coverage on his private life was top priority.)
As I continued to look at poverty in the media, I realized that perhaps an even greater issue may be the way that poverty is represented. Impoverished individuals and nations are often portrayed as “the other,” making it hard for us to relate to them or otherwise be inspired to help. There also exists the pervasive stereotype that poor people are a class of uneducated, unemployed, lazy addicts who may even be abusing the federal welfare system paid for by our tax dollars. When statistics about poverty are presented, it’s easy to feel that the problem is so overwhelming that it is totally out of our hands. Giving up is simpler. Move on to something more manageable.
And, unfortunately, this is true. The problem of poverty is not something one of us can fix on our own, and it isn’t manageable if only one person is addressing it. But when we all work together, the fight against poverty is one we can win, and one that must be won. If you think you’re not affected by the fact that, as of 2007, 37.3 million Americans are at or below the line of poverty, then think again. When massive amounts of a population cannot afford permanent housing, basic healthcare or food for their families, we are all at risk. Microloans, like those given out by the Grameen Bank, have proven effective–58% of Grameen Bank borrowers have been lifted from poverty. Poverty is a huge problem, but you do have the power to make a difference. Visit the Blog Action Day website for organizations to which you can make a donation, or, if you can’t spare the money, take time out to volunteer. Work at a soup kitchen or food pantry, donate clothes and blankets to the homeless, build houses, help out at a free clinic–the possibilities are endless, and they won’t cost you a dime. I like volunteermatch.org and idealist.org for volunteer opportunities, but there are several websites that can help. Perhaps years from now, poverty will be a thing of the past.
Resource guides offer real-world ideas for cyber-world issues
Brooklyn, New York: The LAMP (Learning About Multimedia Project) launched the first volume in its LAMPlit series of multimedia resource guides, entitled “LAMPlit: A Beginner’s Guide to Going Online.”All of the guides in the LAMPlit series will be available for free download from the LAMP’s website at www.thelampnyc.org/lamplit.The guides are written and disseminated by the LAMP without corporate sponsorship.
The first guide focuses on helping adults and young people have a safe and positive experience online, and is released in coincidence with National Cyber Safety Awareness Month.During Symantec’s Norton Online Living Report in 2007, 1 in 5 children reported doing things online that their parents would disapprove of, while only 50% of parents have spoken to their kids about practicing safe online habits.One reason parents may be hesitant to get involved is because parents tend to hear more about the bad things that can happen online, says LAMP Executive Director D.C. Vito.
“The stories about online predators and cyberbullying tend to be the ones that get the most coverage,” says Mr. Vito.“It creates a culture of fear around the Internet and new media, and we’ve seen a lot of emphasis on the negative.We wanted to create a guide that is balanced and fair, that does not deny any of the bad things that potentially can happen online, but that also hits on the ways that the Internet is really a great thing.People just have to know what they’re doing.”
In addition to addressing privacy concerns, LAMPlit also aims to support parents who might avoid getting involved in their children’s online activities because new media can be overwhelming.
“It can be difficult for parents to start a conversation with their kids about what they’re doing online, but it’s absolutely imperative,” says Katherine Fry, Ph.D., Associate Professor of Media Studies at Brooklyn College and Education Director for the LAMP.“Too often, adults are intimidated by new technology, so they just ignore it.They miss using media as a chance to bring their family closer together instead of farther apart.”
All of the guides in the LAMPlit series will be available for free download from the LAMP’s website at www.thelampnyc.org/lamplit.Future LAMPlit guides will target gaming, social networking, Internet ethics, news, advertising and more.
About The LAMP:
The Learning About Multimedia Project (The LAMP) is a non-profit organization which strives to provide critical media literacy skills to the inter-related groups of youths, their parents and educators throughout New York City.Free media education workshops and events offered by the LAMP demystify the constant flow of media these three groups encounter, bridge the digital divide, and provide workforce development skills for future generations.
Here at the LAMP, we love when we learn about ways that teachers are integrating multimedia into their classrooms. We’re strong believers in teachers, students (and parents) exploring the unlimited possibilities presented with new media and media education, so it was with great pleasure that saw a post in the New York Times’ Lesson Plans blog by an Alaskan schoolteacher, Doug Noon. Mr. Noon is a middle school teacher, and for the last three years his students have been sharing their writings on a blog called Tell the Raven. The posts are about a wide range of topics–sometimes students write about something that happened in class one day (like dissecting a moose heart) or something a little more personal (like their cat). The blog also has its own wiki, photo gallery, and sections with bookmarks to different subjects being covered in class.
As Mr. Noon notes in his post on the New York Times blog, Tell the Raven is still a work in progress. He hoped that the blog would help connect his students with other schools in Alaska, but so far that hasn’t happened–although they have been connecting with students in Australia. I admire that the students are encouraged to write and share their thoughts, and that they have an adult mentor like Mr. Noon to review their posts and help them consider how they want to present themselves to their classmates and to the world. The students get to learn about everything the Web has to offer, and have a guide to show them how to have a positive experience online. For Mr. Noon, he gets to learn more about what his students are doing and what interests them in class, and of course parents get learn more about their children. Everybody wins.
If you’re a teacher using multimedia in the classroom, tell us about it and share your ideas!
With the various advances made in new media over the past few years, media consumers are now able to bypass a key part of what makes media possible: advertisements. We can skip through ads on Tivo or just rent the DVD. A study by Sharpe Partners found that of 865 active online video viewers (”Super Sharers”), 75% of them are finding a way around ads. All of this might be convenient for us, but it’s not so great for the people who create the media we watch. When people stop watching commercials, not only does the airtime become less valuable and effective, but media producers have to work harder to make ends meet. Spot ads on television have been falling in 2008, and are not expected to improve for 2009.
As a result, the time-honored practice of product placement is on the rise. In an ideal world for advertisers, product placement is done so seamlessly that viewers don’t even realize that someone is trying to sell them something. To even the playing field, films and television shows are required by the FCC to state that a sponsor has paid for their product to be used. Usually this is done at the very end of a show or movie, after the credits. Now, the FCC wants to further regulate media and make product placement more explicit by expanding the visibility of sponsorship notices.
As much as I might not like being persuaded to buy something when all I’m trying to do is relax with a story, I do recognize product placement as a necessary evil. On the one hand, a product placement alert might help people better understand media, and I’m all for that. On the other hand, it could spin way out of control, as the technique becomes more refined, and I also think that such close policing doesn’t really solve any problems. I’d rather actively learn about product placement, and really understand it, rather than be passively told when it’s happening (by a government agency, no less).
Like banning athletes from social networking, this seems like a coverup for the real issue. The buying of stuff and the selling of stuff is fundamental to any economy, and we all need to have an understanding of the many complex meanings behind media messages. However, this can be done without sucking the enjoyment out of media, and it can be done in a way that makes people more independent thinkers. If the FCC is truly concerned with educating and informing the American people about media, they might start with, well–media education.
You are cordially invited to celebrate OneWebDay this weekend in NYC.
*The goal of OneWebDay is to focus attention on a key internet value (this year, online participation in democracy), focus attention on local internet concerns (connectivity, censorship, individual skills), and create a global constituency that cares about protecting and defending the internet. So, think of OneWebDay as an environmental movement for the Internet ecosystem. It’s a platform for people to educate and activate others about issues that are important for the Internet’s future.
We celebrate OneWebDay every September 22nd in locations all over the world. This year, in New York City, festivities kick off on Saturday the 20th and culminate in the main event on Monday the 22nd.
**9/20 - 2-4pm - Educational Workshops* *
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*Eight workshops to help you make the most of the web. Located at NYU’s Courant Institute at 251 Mercer St., corner of W. 4th St.*
**How Wikipedia Works:* Mike Verilli will cover the basics of how and why Wikipedia <http://www.wikipedia.org/> is so successful, and how you can edit an article.
*The Open Video Project: *The purpose of the Open Video Project is to collect and make available a repository of digitized video content for the digital video, multimedia retrieval, digital library, and other research communities. Dean Jansen will walk you through the theory and practice behind this user-powered project.
*Creative Commons Licenses: *Fred Benenson will walk you through the Creative Commons <http://www.creativecommons.org/> licensing scheme and teach you how to share your work and protect it at the same time.
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**Media Literacy — Breaking Ads with Digital Media - The LAMP: *We’re way past the age of only receiving one-way, top-down, corporate media messages. Today digital media and the Internet allow us talk back, interrogate, and re-create corporate-produced persuasive messages. In this session you’ll see commercials broken down to their persuasive essence, then re-created to reveal the truths left out. How are digital media and the web used to do it? Why would we want to do it? Is it legal? Find out here.**
*Citizen Journalism: *Mike Meyers of NowPublic.com will teach you how to get started as a citizen journalist.
*An Introduction to the Grassroots.org Web Builder: *Representatives from Grassroots.org <http://www.grassroots.org/> will show you how to build an effective web presence for your nonprofit in a single afternoon.
*SEO and Google Grants: *Kevin Lee will cover how and why search engine marketing is a critical tool for non-profits including some tips for both organic SEO best practices and how to maximize the return from your Google grant, as well as how to apply for a Google grant if you don’t have one.
*Understanding CRM for nonprofits and activists: *Develop an understanding of how/why online databases and organizing tools are game changers when it comes to lobbying, fundraising and communications. Presented by Charles Lenchner of Democracy in Action <http://www.democracyinaction.org/>.
**9/20 - 7-9pm - Tech Demos - The Latest Tools for Online Participation in Democracy**
Grassroots Web <http://web.meetup.com/27> and OneWebDay have teamed up to provide our own version of the New York Tech Meetup. We’ll be hosting 6 demos, all in tune with this year’s theme of online participation in
democracy. Here they are:
