Media
Media
Ad Watch and the Ego Research
Submitted by Aldon Hynes on Wed, 10/11/2006 - 09:47(Cross posted at MyDD)
This weekend, I watched the film, The Ad and the ego which has caused me to stop and rethink my view about political advertisements. What is it that we remember from political advertisements that we carry with us? We are perhaps not the best sample to work with because we pay close attention to politics. However, if we sit back and try to recall general reactions to the political advertisements we’ve seen, perhaps we can get some new ideas about what really works?
Please, take a few moments to recount what you remember for general feelings from political advertisements you’ve seen. My thoughts about Connecticut advertisements are below the fold.
Community Film Centers
Submitted by Aldon Hynes on Mon, 10/09/2006 - 13:05At the Action Coalition for Media Education summit, one of the sessions I attended was Jay Craven’s Local Film Voices – The State of Independent Regional Cultural Media. As I listened to him speak about showing films at schools, libraries, and churches across Vermont, it struck me that part of fighting for independent media should include establishing a network of Community Film Centers.
Fifteen years ago, the Community Technology Center Network was established. CTCNet is “a national membership network of community technology centers (CTCs) and other non-profits, united in their commitment to provide technology access and education to underserved communities.”
Jay was encouraging people to build communities of people interested in watching independent films. We talked about what it costs to rent films, working out deals with public libraries, mailing lists, etc. I suggested that we need a good ‘how to start a community film center’ document, and hopefully Jay and others can help put something like this together. Likewise, it would be great to have a mailing list of community film center organizers, where they could share tips and where independent film makers could promote their films.
Already, there are the seeds for such communities. Iraq for Sale is being shown across the country. Brave New Films has their list of screenings. DFA has its list. MoveOn organizes film screenings, as is CodePink.
Yet Jay was concerned about more than just the current set of popular documentaries. The communities gathering around such films can and should watch other films, films with regional perspectives, films that explore our cultural heritage and perhaps define ourselves as more than the Hollywood depiction of what it means to be an American.
For me, this ties back Lisa Goldman’s talk about how gifted girls are portrayed in films today. We need to build communities where films with positive messages, and not only documentaries, can be shown and discussed.
So, who’s in for helping build a Community Film Center Network?
Media Education
Submitted by Aldon Hynes on Mon, 10/09/2006 - 08:32(Cross posted at MyDD)
This weekend, I participated in the Action Coalition in Media Education Summit in Burlington VT. We spend a lot of time complaining about the media, yet what do we do about it? This is a group of educators that are really doing something about the media.
The first plenary speaker was Diane Wilson, author of An Unreasonable Woman and co-founder of Code Pink. If you haven’t read her book, you really should. The first evening ended with a viewing of The Ad and the Ego. Everyone who comments on Ad Watches, should really watch this video. It has changed my thinking a lot about where political advertisements should be going. When I get a chance to decompress and to watch the movie a few more times, I hope to put up more concrete suggestions.
I attended a session on the portrayal of gifted girls in the media. This is an issue that is close to my heart and I wrote a personal blog entry about this.
On Saturday Morning, Jerome Armstrong was a keynote speaker, talking about Crashing the Gate. Of course I hope and expect everyone has already read the book, and perhaps even heard Jerome and/or Markos talk about it. His talk was one of the few intersections between the media educators world and the blogging world, and we need to see much more of that.
At lunch time, I spoke on a panel, Beyond the Dean Scream. Kate O’Connor, Zephyr Teachout, Tom Hughes, Amanda Michel, and myself spoke about experiences of the Dean campaign and what it means for future campaigns as well as for media education. You can listen to an audio of our talk.
The conference ended up with Amy Goodman of Democracy Now! delivering a great closing plenary session, and a viewing of Robert Greenwald’s Iraq for Sale.
It was a great conference. I came away with a lot of ideas that I hope to expand upon in coming blog posts. I encourage everyone concerned with media reform to get involved with the Action Coalition in Media Education and other media education organizations.
Unreasonable Women
Submitted by Aldon Hynes on Sat, 10/07/2006 - 16:11It is a beautiful autumn day as I take a few moments off to sit and write about the ACME Coalition Summit in Burlington, VT. The first speaker in the opening Plenary was Diane Wilson, author of the book “An Unreasonable Woman”. It is a great book that I encourage everyone to go out and read. She spoke well, as did Bill McKibben after her and Jerome Armstrong this morning. However, the session that really jumped out at me was “Expecting to Fly: Giftedness, Girls and Women, and Media”.
Lisa Goldman spoke about the paucity of positive role models for gifted girls. Being the father of gifted girls, I was particularly interested in the subject and sat in on the talk. There were a couple other sessions at the same time that I was really interested in as well, so I thought I would pop into Lisa’s session and then maybe catch a little bit of some other sessions as well. That wasn’t to be the case. Lisa had a great presentation that really grabbed me.
Gadgets
Submitted by Aldon Hynes on Sun, 10/01/2006 - 10:26Recently on the Media Giraffe Forum there has been a lively discussion about Sony finally releasing its eBook reader, the Sony PRS 500. It will cost $350 and will start shipping in November.
Generally speaking, most people on the list seemed pretty unimpressed. The feeling was that the device hasn’t found its niche. The thread evolved into a very interesting discussion about reading habits, the way people use different media, and the implications for journalism.
I’ve been thinking a lot about the different topics, and hope to have a few different takes on this over the coming days. Right now, I want to contrast the eBook to a few other gadgets out on the market or soon to be on the market.
First, it is worth noting that Sony put information about their eBook in the “MP3 and Portable Electronics” category. In the specifications, they say that it supports the MP3 audio format.
This made me think of another MP3 player that also supposed to start shipping in November, the much heralded Microsoft Zune The Zune will cost $250, and unlike the PRS 500 reader, will support color and have WiFi as well as an FM transmitter. It will be a much more collaborative device.
Robin Miller posted about the Nokia 770. It is currently shipping and costs $360. They list it with their phones, although they call it a ‘Internet Tablet’ and the only telephony you can do with it seems to be using the “Voice over the Internet Protocol (VoIP)”. It has Wifi and Bluetooth. When you are not near a WiFi hotspot, they suggest using 3G services on a phone connected with Bluetooth.
What is particularly interesting about the Nokia 770 is that it runs Linux. As such, it has the potential for a vibrant community to develop new types of tools changing the way people can connect.
Later, I hope to write a little bit more about what some of these new connectivity tools could look like.
