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American Idol – Most brilliant idea, evah?

Thursday, May 21st, 2009

idol

As 28.8 Million American television viewers crowned Kris Allen the latest American Idol, thus potentially launching the young man onto stardom, the conversation about whether he deserved his crown didn’t end. It happened in the newscasts that evening, on the radio the next morning, and throughout the country’s newspapers. It happened at the water cooler, and for me, even at lunch. That’s where it occurred to me how brilliant the show ‘American Idol’ truly is.

Simon Cowell created the show, which just completed its eighth season. The show offers the view that they are making someone’s dream come true (i.e. the winner), but the real accomplishment is Simon’s growing fortune. In every episode, the show essentially goes to the consumers themselves, in their living room, and asks them to pick the future popstars they will want to listen to, download their music and attend their concerts. This is taking the guess work out of the process that used to occur in the privacy of the music company’s board room. And on top of that they are making MILLIONS OF DOLLARS in advertising revenue, doing this before the Idol sells a single album. Like i said, the conversation about these Idol champions do not end as the final vote is cast. People all over the country, on Twitter, and during their lunch hour are debating whether Kris should’ve won over Adam (the runner-up), thus continuing the work for Idol beyond their living room.

Simply brilliant. And I wouldn’t have come to this understanding if I myself hadn’t been part of a conversation about a TV show (that admittedly, I’ve never caught an episode of).

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Tuning out

Thursday, April 2nd, 2009

Recently, I had the pleasure of fulfilling my responsibility as a citizen of the United States by heading down to the Kings County Supreme Court building and serving jury duty. Once we were called into the the courtroom, the presiding judge walked us through the selection process as well as the particular trial for which we were being considered. During his introduction he made a comment that I found quite telling.

“And for those of you who are big Law and Order fans, forget that stuff. This is not like that.”

It got a chuckle from a few fellow jurors, but the notion of how media constructs our views on the world didn’t end there. During the voir dire process, the prosecuting attorney asked the selected 16 jurors if any of them enjoyed watching cop shows on TV. Almost everyone rose their hand. He again asserted what the judge had prior: that we should not let our impressions of a courtroom through a television show influence how we act as jurors.

I myself have never seen an episode of Law & Order but recognize its popularity. Once I was called up for consideration, I couldn’t help feel like I was sitting inside an episode of HBO’s The Wire. Was this the wrong thing to do?

We here at the LAMP believe that media are not merely things we can tune in and tune out of and then their influence ends. In fact, we believe that media informs all of our lives, informs how we interact with each other and informs how we look at the world – including a courtroom.

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Actually, this is REALLY cool

Wednesday, January 28th, 2009

In an article published on January 26th in the New York Times, Stephanie Clifford discusses a new campaign put out by the Advertising Council to address a growing problem: harassment via multimedia between teenagers who are dating.

What this means is that there is a dysfunction that is creeping into young relationships that the various media seems to exacerbate. A teenage boy may get hounded via a flood of text messages from his girlfriend wanting to know where he is and what he’s doing at all times. A teenage girl may have her social network profile broken into by her suspicious boyfriend, invading her privacy. And an even more alarming situation is where one of the partners is pressuring the other to send racy pictures, against their will taken with the camera on their always accessible phone.

This has taken so many people by surprise that an entire website has been crafted. But it’s not your typical website, where all it does is provide one-sided PSAs that instruct the audience how to handle or deal with an issue. Instead, in a way that validates the use of media technologies, it engages the very youth who would seek counsel on the harassment problem by inviting them to create their own PSAs and videos addressing it.

ThatsNotCool.com

Once again, I’m blown away by the use of media to democratize the solution to a problem. Instead of insisting that it is the technologies themselves, this incredible website is demonstrating that in order to get a hold of difficult situations that have arisen with new, digital media we need to have a dialog about them (and what better way than to have that conversation using the media themselves).

These matters are not new problems. There has been peer pressure, lack of trust and insecurity in relationships since humanity began. But what we’re seeing is that we can use new media to address problems – instantly, as soon as they are created. We need to use media instead of them just using us. And we need a basic understanding and education on media in order to be on the offensive.

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Where’s the fat?

Wednesday, December 17th, 2008

New York Gov. David Paterson has proposed a 15 percent tax on non-diet sugary soft drinks in order to generate more revenue. It’s proposed that nearly $400 Million would be generated by the state’s sugary soft drink consumers. It’s being called an “obesity tax” because it will supposedly discourage people from ponying up the extra dough for their sweeter beverages. I understand the reasons for this, especially when you view it in the context of our childhood obesity epidemic. Children and teenagers who consume a large number of soft drinks would possibly think twice if they had to dole out more money. But here’s the catch.

Youth do not just drink sugary beverages because of their taste. Both the major soda companies market their products with advertising budgets in the billions. In 2007, Pepsi and Coca-Cola spent a combined $2 Billion dollars on advertising in the US alone – across all media. And both companies are known to wage ad wars where they enlist the very icons youth look to emulate, rock stars, athletes and pop singers who hawk their product’s lifestyle as being in touch (“Choice of a new generation” anyone?) – enabling a better time.

Making their soda pop more expensive will only partially solve the issue. You also need to make them understand how the advertisements they see everywhere influence their choices, and ultimately their life. This is a basic need if we are truly to address an issue as large as one we’re calling an epidemic.

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Who says print is dead?

Thursday, November 6th, 2008

The historic election of Barack Obama to the post of United States President brings to mind the notion that one would like, no matter which candidate one supported, to collect as much memorabilia as possible for posterity’s sake. In fact, it seems that this is what most Americans did. According to Reuters blog, the New York Times printed an extra 50,000 copies of its November 5th issue, and for the first time in a long time, the New York Daily News printed an “afternoon edition” and longer lines than normal were reported at news kiosks in Chicago where people were buying five or more copies of the Tribune and Sun-Times.

I admit that I too wanted to have a piece of history for myself and purchased a NYTimes on my way into work. It just seemed to make sense, that decades from now, it would be nice to have a keepsake, a single relic that indicated the spirit of how people felt the morning after the first African American was elected to this country’s highest office. It got me thinking about a question I pondered earlier, regarding Google’s tool allowing folks to see how some of their favorite sites looked in 2000 as part of their 10 year celebration. How do we record history when our traditional form of memory-keeping is no longer sitting on shelves, behind glass cases or in a scrapbook? There is much discussion about the supposed “demise” of print media. I understand the argument that people read newspapers on their computers and mobile devices, which causes a decrease in demand for the physical printed material. But, that is primarily for the information we seek and then promptly dispose of. What of those editions that capture history or a unified human moment? I find it hard to believe that we’ll someday be capturing our favorite screenshots of web pages to record important, record-breaking, history-making events. That seems cold and not nearly as warm as a tangible, physical archive.

I could be wrong, but I’m nonetheless reluctant to declare the death of print media.

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Memes the breaks

Friday, October 17th, 2008

I was pointed to an incredible site that displays internet memes in a very unique fashion. Essentially, a meme comes from the Greek word “mimeme” which means “something imitated” (it is also literally translated from the French word for “same”). We’ve all seen them, either on our favorite blog (or our own blogs) or in an e-mail. A very simple form is someone sends you a list that asks you to list five thoughts no one knows that you had when you were a kid. This person has filled out the list with their own five thoughts, and has essentially tagged you to do the same thing, and pass it along to your contacts. And then they perpetuate this cultural game of digital “telephone”.

The term meme was coined back in 1976 by Richard Dawkins, who referred to things such as jingles, melodies, catch-phrases, rumors, etc. What Dawkins wasn’t referring to (because they really hadn’t yet emerged) are viral videos and other viral digital media. That’s where the Internet Memes site comes in. It displays the release and the phenomenon of each big viral video/song/site in four very innovative ways. I always enjoy seeing new refreshing and engaging ways of displaying information, this site is definitely that.

You can see the history of Internet memes as a timeline, that stretches all the way back to August of 1970, where the term “Internet” was developed to refer to the connections that existed with the early web prototype, ARPANET, maintained by the Department of Defense. You can also view each meme as a pushpin in a map, showing you where in the world these came from. I invite you to check it out. It’s likely you’ll find out something new. I did:

In 1982, the first emoticon was created. It was the beginning of a new way of expressing ourselves, some would even say a new language. And to think, our children have never known a world where they didn’t use their characters to make facial expressions.

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Blast from the past

Thursday, October 9th, 2008

One of the things we at The LAMP stress when it comes to a healthy and enriching experience on the Internet is the permanence of things we say and do online. If you say on your blog in 2001(the last year the Avs won the Stanley Cup) that you can’t stand the Colorado Avalanche, it’s likely that someone in 2008 could find this even though you’ve come to your senses by declaring your allegiance to the BEST HOCKEY TEAM IN THE WORLD on your blog.

To illustrate this point, I’d like to point you over to Google’s 10th birthday celebration. By typing in “Colorado Avalanche”, the first entry that comes up is the hockey team’s official website. What Google is allowing you to do is see what it looked like back in 2001 (the farthest their most complete index of the Internet goes). By clicking on the View old version on the Internet Archive, it takes you to the webpage as it looked in 2001 at this time of year. And look! The Avalanche are the Stanley Cup Champions again, just like that!

In all seriousness, what this means is that there are hundreds and thousands of copies made of the Internet (aka indexes) by Google and many other organizations and people. So the next time you think to speak poorly online about the finest run hockey club around, you should remember, it’s nearly impossible to take it back.

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The LAMPPost wordle cloud

Friday, September 26th, 2008

Finally was able to make our own Wordle. I took our rss feed and created this interesting tag cloud of our most commonly used terms. This is what we got.

I think it’s pretty cool because it grabs my imagination. (I have to confess that it has the word “media” so prominently in the middle is somewhat validating)

Would love to hear what you guys think!

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The democratization of media

Sunday, September 21st, 2008

Our take on media literacy is that the more people become media literate – understanding media, critiquing media, creating media – the more engaged they become in their environment and the more active they become in their communities. Media literacy opens up the democratic process to more and more people by giving them the ability to critically think about the messages the media delivers and provides them with a voice to participate in the dialogue of how their society should operate. Taking the power to send messages to the masses out of the hands of the few corporate conglomerates who monopolize it and spreading it amongst those who are now media literate will bring new viewpoints and an increased heterogeneity.

On our YouTube channel, we subscribe to another organization’s channel by the name of Common Craft (leelefever). They are an organization that makes videos that breakdown seemingly complex matters – social media sites, twitter, rss feeds, zombies – in fun and approachable videos. In a way, they are expanding the audiences for the different tools and ideas, bringing more and more people into a dialogue that has usually been reserved for those with time and relevant experience to stay informed. The good folks over at Common Craft have actually posted a very timely video entitled “Electing a US President in Plain English”

It does an excellent job of streamlining a very complex and sadly misunderstood elective system, and what with all the talk from both candidates about making this election about you, the voter, and changing a complex system in Washington D.C., you’d think that they would find this video and the larger issue of media literacy quite in-line with their campaigns’ goals. Well, we at the LAMP are patiently waiting.

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Arena rock

Thursday, August 28th, 2008

After his historic feat yesterday, Barack Obama prepared to give his acceptance speech for the Democratic Party’s nomination for President of the United States in front of a reported 75,000 supporters. In a year of unprecedented accomplishments for a presidential election, the spectacle of a party’s nominee addressing his loyal pledges in such an open air manner seems almost a daunting moment of ultra-high expectations. Not just for the DNC, but also for the media covering it.

How does one capture such a massive gathering of political agents and spectators to be broadcast on the small screens of all those Americans tuning in from their living room? Surely, the organizers of this event considered the loss in translation of the scale they propose to the home viewers (and I’m sure, if they had their way, they’d have 10 times the attendees to see this speech). It makes me wonder if perhaps with all of the myriad media formats out there, that TV isn’t the proper way to capture this event. Perhaps somewhere in the new media that are emerging, a more appropriate medium (or mediums) exist. This sets a precedent for future acceptance speeches that should it be successful, generations to come may expect their party’s nominee to speak in front of live audiences this large (at least).

Who knows, there’s only the collective imagination stopping us from watching a presidential hopeful give us their leadership vision via Second Life.

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