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.
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!
Dates: Tuesdays and Thursdays from September 16 through October 30
Ages: 3rd grade
This fall, the LAMP is in residency with P.S. 107, exploring news and reporting with third graders. In the workshops held twice a week for six weeks, students will explore the news and how it is made, exploring what makes news, where it comes from, how it is made, how it changes in print and digital formats, the use of text and pictures to tell a story, and more. Students will also work hands-on in creating their own news stories, conducting interviews, writing and researching stories, while also creating and editing photography and video footage.
If you are interested in having the LAMP at your school, we would love to speak with you. We can design curricula tailored to your needs and interests. Please call us at 718-789-8170 or send us an email.
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.
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.
