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April 17th, 2012
Upcoming LAMPcamp, our work with U.S. Dept of State and more: April news from The LAMP!
For the past few months, LAMP Executive Director D.C. Vito and Education Director Dr. Katherine Fry have been meeting with journalists from around the world, as part of the 
April 16th, 2012
How The LAMP is working with the U.S. Department of State to promote news literacy
For the past few months, LAMP Executive Director D.C. Vito and Education Director Dr. Katherine Fry have been meeting with journalists from around the world, as part of the International Visitor Leadership Program of the U.S. Department of State. Participating journalists come from Africa, the Middle East, South America, Eastern Europe, Asia and Central America, and face challenging political climates for transmitting and gathering news. However, many of these journalists are fighting the status quo of an extremely restricted press. Voices that have long been silenced and which can finally now be heard—like those of the women from Afghanistan beginning their own radio station—are significant contributors to growing democracies.
But a move towards free expression places new demands on cultures which have grown accustomed to a very narrow above-ground press. News literacy is perhaps more important than ever as new governments take shape, and that’s where The LAMP comes in. Dr. Fry is an expert in the way people engage with news media, which has informed the curricula she wrote for The LAMP’s News and Reporting Track as well as her Check Out The News! LAMPlit Resource Guide.
The first meeting was with Afghan journalists, who spoke about the dangers they face as journalists because their fellow media professionals are frequently considered combat targets. (They also asked the group to imagine how much more difficult this must be for the female journalists.) They understood the need for a free press, and more importantly, media literacy, due to the heavy amount of propaganda in newspapers and on the airwaves. The visiting journalists were clear that their ability to report what actually happens in their communities is vital to progress in Afghanistan. At one point, one of the journalists broke from the topic and asked the group to hear him out as he detailed some of the limitations journalists face in his country. He said he recognized this wasn’t the proper forum for the subject, but he didn’t feel he’d have many more opportunities to discuss these issues in an open forum.
Another meeting consisted of over thirty journalists from a variety of countries. We showed them our LAMPlatoon videos and the campaign that we’re waging to teach youth and parents and educators to actively talk back to the media corporations by using their own product against them. This was very popular amongst the journalists. They really liked the defiant and inquisitive aspects of LAMPlatoon, and also recognized that we have a huge, monstrous task on our hands. At one point, a journalist asked if we believed that media literacy could be practiced in a society that didn’t have a free press or media. We responded that we think it could, but that it would definitely have to be handled differently as the risks and dangers were ever more prevalent. However, we also pointed out the limitations of freedom in our own press and media, considering media company consolidation—we went from fifty companies holding ninety percent of our media in 1983, down to six companies in 2011. How free and diverse are our perspectives when ninety percent of the media are produced by these massive corporations whose only goal is to maximize profit?
By meeting with journalists from around the world, The LAMP is leading the way to build a critical mass of engaged media users. You can click here to support this work, or send us an email at info@thelampnyc.org to learn more about how you can get involved.
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April 13th, 2012
Spotlight: Rachel Kerry, Stage Director and LAMP Facilitator
Rachel Kerry
As a stage director and multimedia designer, Rachel Kerry brings a unique perspective of media and communications to her work with The LAMP as a workshop facilitator. Read on to learn about the intersection of theatre and media, her upcoming trip to the Edinburgh Fringe Festival, choreographing a 175-person dance in Times Square and working with LAMP students to talk back to intolerance and prejudice.
We first learned about you from your work with the Institute of Media Literacy at the University of Southern California, but you also got your B.A. in theatre from USC. How did you come to media literacy from a theatre background? My initial participation in USC’s Institute for Multimedia Literacy program began on a lark. I was drawn to new ways of interpreting media bombardment and it spoke to my love of fancy technology. But I didn’t initially see a connection to theatre, they were separate in my mind. As I worked more with them though, I noticed that media literacy began affecting how I saw theatre pieces. I was far more conscious of the different means through which people speak with images and the nuances of different modes of storytelling. Suddenly a lot of theatre seemed archaic because here was a venue where many different mediums could mingle and coexist. So during my final year at USC, I chose to direct and design a theatre piece that merged ideas of media literacy with my own artistic vision. Media literacy empowered me to create and stage performance in a way I hadn’t considered before: I was able to interweave text, original music, dance, and projected animation. And I wanted to see if projected images in rehearsal could affect an actor’s performance the same a way a Laban movement verb could. And it did! What I took from my experience was, why aren’t all theatre artists engaging in dialogues about media literacy? It is so vital.
One of your early notable projects was a 175-person dance you directed in Times Square—which is not only a mecca for oversized ads and media, but also for Broadway theatre. How did the multimedia and live performance aspects of the site inform your final piece? To be honest, the largest consideration with performing in Times Square was making sure no one accidentally danced into on-coming traffic. I also had to take into account that Cirque Du Soleil founder Guy LaLiberté’s non-profit organization, One Drop (whom we were performing on behalf of), had rented a dozen Times Square billboards for us; the dance was directly commented on by the screens. These massive LCD monoliths were connecting the physical dancers to the context of the event. It was fitting because Times Square has its own unique energy and culture — there is a distinctly frenetic quality that all of those flashing lights and images create. The performers had to match that same energy. After all, the dance was happening in the grandest, flashiest landmark in the world. But because the dance was also being filmed, every dance move had to work for a single dancer as well as en masse. My choreographer (the immensely talented Sean Roschman) and I kept saying in rehearsal, “this has to look as good on an iPod as on a 30 foot screen.” This attitude was most rewarding when we saw just how many tourist-shot videos were posted on YouTube. Some of them looked better than the professional footage. In fact, during one take of the dance, I looked up and saw a double-decker tour bus waiting at a stoplight. The top level was filled with tourists snapping photos and video. It was a very human reflection of Times Square.
Your current project, Daughters of Lot, is on its way to Edinburgh, and focuses a lot on gender and sexual stereotypes. In developing the play, did you talk at all about where these stereotypes come from, or why they endure so strongly? Going into Daughters of Lot, my playwright (Alexis Roblan) and I had lengthy conversations about how to compose these rather grotesque gender stereotypes and their affect on the audience. The fascinating thing about the script is that it features a comprehensive spectrum of competing and contradictory gender stereotypes, almost all of which are pulled directly from mainstream media. In fact, much of the thrust of the piece was inspired by a particularly exploitative Dr. Phil episode about pedophilia. In staging the work, I chose to focus less on having an opinion about the underlying message and instead focus primarily on stylization and spectacle, making these malicious archetypes as sexy and glamorous and palatable as possible. Gender stereotypes in the media boil down to simply making money on sexual fantasies. I think that is why so many hyper-sexualized depictions of gender roles endure so heavily – they’re titillating. So I’ve sought to make the audience disturbed by their own excitement.
With The LAMP, you’ve been working with students in Queens on using media literacy to combat intolerance and prejudice. What has surprised you the most about the experience? The students in Queens have really impressed me, primarily because they’re just so gung-ho about everything. After watching a few PSA examples they were very quick to come up with really thoughtful and creative approaches to the topic. On a visual and intellectual level, they have been very advanced. I was both surprised and pleased by how many times I had to say, “That’s a really amazing idea! The technology to make that doesn’t quite exist yet, but maybe you’ll be the first to use it.”
What is one of your favorite ‘light bulb’ stories from working with The LAMP? Just this past week I was working with three 5th Graders to make a short documentary on something. They originally wanted their topic be narwhals, but quickly changed their minds when they learned that narwhals are not an endangered species. We decided to focus on a local animal shelter instead. On one hand, it was very fulfilling to work with 10-year-olds who are so determined to create something that raises social awareness about a topic. But it was also interesting to see them quickly understand what topics may or may not resonate with a viewer. It was probably more of a light bulb moment for me than for them. I’m that much more excited to see what they come up with.
April 11th, 2012
Math and Media Literacy Unite!
When it comes to standard curricula taught in most K-12 schools, it’s easy to think about media literacy purely in terms of language arts. But this does a huge disservice to the breadth and scope of the fundamentals of media literacy, which begin with critical thinking skills that are (or should be) stressed in every facet of basic education. Like math.
In an age where STEM is everything, no one disputes the value and importance of teaching math, and the discipline gains an extra boost because proficiency in it can be easily captured in standardized tests. In contrast, media literacy does not sort nicely into a standardized test format, so it can easily be lost when educators feel pressured to “teach to the test” rather than take a more holistic approach. That’s why we’re really excited that today, The Partnership for 21st Century Skills (P21) released a curriculum map yoking Common Core math standards and 21st century learning together on the same path. As it happens, The LAMP already uses many of the examples in the P21 map–depending on the workshop, students keep journals of the media they encounter on a regular basis, ask questions about data and sources of information and understand how and why pieces of information are used to construct a specific message with a specific audience and intent.
For more, check out the document from P21. The media literacy-specific stuff is on pages 21-23, but in truth, you can find elements of media literacy throughout the whole map. If only we had this when we were kids…
Follow The LAMP on Twitter: @thelampnyc
April 9th, 2012
Banned Books, eBooks and Facebook: Highlights from the State of Americas Libraries Report for 2012
The New York Public Library at Bryant Park
At The LAMP, we love our public libraries. It’s not just because we’re based in New York City, which is blessed to have one of the most famous public library systems in the world, but also because libraries are key to our mission of building a critical mass empowered to make smart decisions and demand more from our mass media producers. Where else can you go for access to hundreds of thousands of print and digital resources, free public programming (like ours), and a safe, quiet space to focus?
However, like so many others, we’ve sadly grown accustomed to increasingly dire news about the plight of our beloved public libraries during an economic crisis. The release today of the American Library Association’s State of America’s Libraries Report for 2012 does little to assuage fears of even further budget cuts, but it does present a useful snapshot of how libraries are evolving with new media and technologies, and how people nationwide are more dependent than ever on these pillars of their communities. A few highlights:
The Top Ten Challenged Books of 2011
Let the eye-rolling begin. While I personally don’t think any of these books should be banned, I understand why some would be offended by a few of them. The first book in The Color of Earth series is certainly explicit, opening as it does with a beetle threesome and a literal pissing contest, and ttyl hits you with a pubic hair chat by page two. Brave New World hit the Top Ten list for the second year in a row, having been spared at least since 2001, and while it was one of my favorites in high school, I do see how the book’s politics are abhorrent to some in our current hyperpartisan, fear-mongering culture. But, To Kill a Mockingbird? In 2011? You’ve got to be kidding me.
ePublishing is Breaking the Book Bank
You might think that even though publishing companies are just like any other in their need to make money, they’d be a bit more altruistic in their approach towards sales to libraries. Not so, apparently, when it comes to ebooks. Last March, Random House increased its ebook price to distributors by 100%-200%; the distributors can then add their own increases when selling to libraries. Also in March 2011, HarperCollins’ absurd 26-loan policy went into effect, meaning that its most popular titles (and only its most popular titles) can be loaned as ebooks for a maximum of 26 times, at which point the library has to repurchase the lending license. Previously, ebooks could be loaned an unlimited number of times on a single license purchase.
LLFB: Libraries Love Facebook
Facebook is far and away the most widely-used tool for promoting library services and events, with 88.8% of surveyed libraries using the platform to connect with patrons and followers. At 45.8%, Twitter comes in at a distant second place. As of January 2011, Facebook had more than 15,000 urls which included the word “libraries,” and eight out of ten libraries serving 500,000 or more patrons have a Facebook presence. The report also notes that while only a handful of libraries (including the New York Public Library) are using Google+, the service only allowed organizations to create their own pages beginning in November 2011. Be on the lookout for the numbers coming in for next year’s update.
–Emily Long
Follow The LAMP on Twitter: @thelampnyc
Follow me on Twitter: @emlong
April 5th, 2012
NY Times Magazine Scores with a Gameable Article
Click above to visit the article and play the game!
The New York Times Magazine is getting gamey–literally. For a recent piece about addictive video games, they embedded their own game, in which you can shoot at and destroy pieces of the website. But it’s more than just a cool way to spend time and blow up advertisements, it actually supplements the story itself, demonstrating the value and draw of mostly mindless video games that provide little more than the pleasure of breaking things. Personally, I think it’s a must for anyone who doesn’t understand the phenomenon behind Angry Birds. In terms of visuals, the design is about as sophisticated as Pong, but that’s not the point.
There’s a kind of brilliance that this comes from the New York Times Magazine. While e-publishing has come a long way, ‘magazine’ still generally refers to print media, but nobody who picks up the magazine in this Sunday’s weekend edition will be able to experience the piece in its entirety without going online. Of course, you can make the argument that this is the case for almost all print news; when is the last time you read an article that didn’t link or refer to some video or interactive graphic online? Still, this is different. I would even go so far as to posit that you miss the crux of the article if you don’t spend just a couple of minutes with the game. We often quote the great Marshall McLuhan when we talk about medium literacy, insisting that the medium is the message. In this case, it’s pretty evident.
–Emily Long
Follow The LAMP on Twitter: @thelampnyc
Follow me on Twitter: @emlong
April 2nd, 2012
Where “Bully” Went Wrong
Alex Libby, one of the main subjects in Bully. Screengrab by Wired.
Leaving the theatre where I saw Bully, I felt sad for the tormented children and their families, angry with the adults who blamed victims while ignoring pleas for help—and deeply disappointed in the filmmakers. Of course, I wanted to walk away and fiercely advocate for a film raising awareness about a serious issue plaguing millions of young people every day. But how do you make a movie about bullying in the 21st century and ignore the role of media and technology?
I will be among the first to declare that bullying has been a problem long before the Internet and social media gave rise to the phenomenon of cyberbullying. However, purporting to have an honest, blunt discussion about bullying and say nothing of these technologies is at best tone-deaf and at worst irresponsible. After all, this is a movie—one of our most popular forms of media—and this movie in particular made great use of social media in its own promotion, so the filmmakers can hardly claim indifference to its power.
Indeed, before seeing the movie, I read an interview in Fast Company with director Lee Hirsch, who said, “I’m just awestruck by the power of social media. We’ve reached out to social media companies from day one and asked them to partner with us on this journey and we could’ve taken a very different approach and said, ‘Oh, we’re gonna get them, for the role that they played.’…there’s been so much support, it’s been extraordinary.” Going into Bully, I was hopeful that the producers weren’t going to give media a pass, and instead were going to be candid yet fair in painting a full picture of a complex issue. Yet the most substantial mention of social media was when the father of Ty Smalley, a bullied boy in Oklahama who committed suicide at age eleven, pointed to the solace and support he has received from going online and using Facebook to communicate with other families and mobilize against bullying.
Bullying has been a problem since I was a kid, as it was when my parents and grandparents were kids. But we now live in a world of camera- and video-ready cell phones, online sharing platforms, a 24-hour news cycle, reality television shows which thrive on manufactured conflict, and a culture in which free speech is at once an inalienable right and a shield for ignorance, hate and malice. Despite my disappointment in the film’s naïve attempt to look behind the curtains on the lives of young people, I do still think it should be seen, and hope that people heed its call to action. However, just as we have a long way to go in the fight to end bullying, Bully is itself also woefully incomplete.
–Emily Long
Follow The LAMP on Twitter: @thelampnyc
Follow me on Twitter: @emlong
March 26th, 2012
How “The Hunger Games” calls for media literacy
Movie poster for The Hunger Games
[Warning: There are SPOILERS in this post!]
I’m not usually interested in reading YA literature, but being the older sister to a teenager, and considering the immense publicity surrounding the book, I felt the need to read Suzanne Collins’ The Hunger Games as well as see the recent film adaptation. Young love in a dystopian world is an ever-increasing trend in YA literature, but Collins’ The Hunger Games is different in that it provides the predominantly young audience with a foreboding and complex message on media literacy. Although the novel leaves much to be desired in regards to the quality of writing, I could easily grasp why it has become such a worldwide phenomenon. After seeing the film adaptation, which builds on the limitations of telling a story from a 16-year-old girl’s perspective, I was pleasantly surprised with how much more effectively the filmmakers were able to convey the message of the original source material, and can only hope that it will facilitate a conversation amongst its audience on the need for a media-savvy public.
The story unfolds in District 12 of Panem, a dystopian vision of what was once known as North America. Each region serves a purpose, and District 12 is the coal mining district. Every year, as punishment for an attempt at rebellion, the Capitol requires that each of the 12 districts send one boy and one girl between the ages of 12 and 18 as tribute to fight in the Hunger Games, a televised death match in which there can only be one winner. The tributes are chosen during a ceremony known as The Reaping, which begins with a propaganda film portraying the rebellion of the districts against the Capitol as an insidious assault, claiming that the Hunger Games serve as a reminder of the sacrifice necessary to ensure that it must never happen again. The winner of the Hunger Games receives fame and fortune, which is of course extremely advantageous to those from poorer districts who are struggling on a daily basis to survive. Unfortunately, the tributes from the wealthier districts often win the Hunger Games, as they have the resources to be trained from an early age, leading to them being referred to as “career tributes.”
Katniss Everdeen, the main character who is portrayed in the film by Jennifer Lawrence, is District 12′s female tribute, after volunteering in place of her little sister, who was originally selected. She is far wiser than the average 16-year-old, having taken on the responsibility to care for her family after her father’s death in a mine explosion and her mother’s subsequent mental breakdown. Understanding how exploitative the system is, she is no believer of the Capitol’s propaganda. However, the film version of The Hunger Games offers an alternative perspective that is difficult to grasp in the book: that of the loyal and desensitized masses of the wealthier districts, which do not wait for the Hunger Games with agonizing dread but rather an eerie fervor. It is a televised event and therefore the more gruesome and violent the death, the more “entertaining” it is for the audience. Wealthy viewers can become sponsors for the most popular tributes, sending them items necessary for survival such as medicine when they are injured or food when they are starving. If there is not enough drama for the audience, then the game makers behind the event introduce obstacles into the arena, such as some natural disaster or feral, monstrous-looking creatures.
President Snow, portrayed in the film by the brilliant Donald Sutherland, has a chilling conversation in one scene with the main game maker. By this point in the film, Katniss has emerged as the unlikely favorite to win, outsmarting and surviving many of the tributes from wealthier districts who were seemingly all but guaranteed victory. When the main game maker tries to convince the president that everyone loves an underdog, the president asks him if he has ever visited the poorer districts, such as District 12. When the game maker replies that no, he has not, the president explains that he has, and that these are the districts that provide the rest of Panem with essentials: coal, minerals, and crops. Upon visiting these districts, he asserts in a disparaging tone, you would not think of them as the underdog. This conversation confirms that those from the poorer districts are seen as nothing more than serving the purpose of providing essentials for those from the wealthier districts, and are used as tools in the Capitol’s propaganda to maintain control. They are considered lesser beings by those in power. Anyone who contradicts this notion, and refuses to accept that wealth and power define an individual’s importance in life is deemed an apostate, and is singled out for instigating rebellion. Towards the end, Katniss realizes that the career tributes she has been fighting against for survival are not the enemies, but rather the Capitol itself. The career tributes are pawns of the Capitol as much as those from the poorer districts, all of them at the mercy of its propaganda.
While there are flaws in the storyline, and neither the novel nor the film are a classic in the making, it does offer a message not commonly targeted for the youth audience, and I believe that is what makes it worthwhile. Of course, there is a love story and other formulaic, Hollywood elements to appeal to their juvenile inclinations, but compared to the novel, the storyline of the film relies slightly less on this. The love story, as well as Katniss’ desire to protect her family, could even help younger audience members understand her reasons for defying the Capitol, as they are basic emotions that individuals tend to grasp from an early age. I found it worthwhile to encourage discussion with my teenage sister, and used The Hunger Games as an opportunity to talk about the need for media literacy. The omnipresence of the Capitol and its control over the desensitized citizens of Panem represents life in a media illiterate society: no well-informed individual would accept an event as gruesome as the Hunger Games, a televised broadcast of teenagers fighting to the death, as necessary to maintaining peace and security. As with all dystopian fiction, it is an extreme, worst-case scenario, but it nonetheless serves as a warning that cannot be ignored.
–Caitlyn Garcia
Caitlyn Garcia is a student at William Paterson University, double-majoring in French language & literature and political science.
March 22nd, 2012
Infographic: Girls in STEM
Check out this infographic sent to us by engineeringdegree.net, and behold how gender stereotypes are contributing to women’s career choices and self-esteem. One of the most tragic things about this report is the way it shows how although gender stereotypes are clearly making a significant impact in the lives of girls and women, too few women are working in media with the power to end media messages that reinforce those stereotypes. Are you a woman or girl who has shied away from a STEM-related career because of gender issues? Tell us about it in the comments section!
Created by: Engineering Degree
March 21st, 2012
Tomorrow–Meet The LAMP for cocktails!
There are still tickets left for our cocktail party tomorrow at ReBar in DUMBO! Join us for cocktails, appetizers and the rare occasion when we can get so many of our busy workshop facilitators and board members in the same room at the same time. This is a great chance to meet the people who make The LAMP happen every day, talk with us about what we do and learn how you can get involved. All proceeds benefit The LAMP and are tax-deductible. Click here to buy tickets today!
- Click here for tickets!
