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In this assignment, you use the medium of a basic webpage to provide a media profile of yourself. A media profile describes how you use media to define and situate yourself in a mediated environment. What media do you use frequently? What purposes do they serve for you? Describe your activities and interests: your transportation, news sources, entertainment, musical interests, sports, fashion, magazines, movies. What media do you use to communicate: letters, telephone, email, chat, photography, art, dance, music. Link to important sources of information and recreation. How does your use of the media define who you are? What do you think your choices of media communicate about you as a person? What is your understanding of your self, your character and personality? You should provide an image of yourself--artistic or otherwise--and write in a style that reflects your personality. Edit your writing carefully for errors.
Length: at least 500 words.
This webpage must be functioning on the internet; be prepared to demonstrate your profile during the lab. Send the URL of your page to the instructor (soules@mala.bc.ca)
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Write short (100 to 200 word) essay-style responses to 5 of the following 7 questions. Each question will be worth 5 (out of 25 total) so try to articulate at least 5 separate ideas or points in your answer. Be as specific as possible, and try to avoid over-generalizations. Write well.
Include a statement at the end affirming that the exam has been written by you alone.
Email your responses to soules@mala.bc.ca before 1:30 p.m. February 20th. In the subject line of the email, insert your name and "Media 112 midterm." I will confirm that I received your work by return email sometime Wednesday evening.
As I mentioned in class, some email servers clip off the ends of long paragraphs of text in the body of email messages. If you have any concerns about this, you can send your midterm as an attachment that I can read in MSWord. Please keep a copy of your midterm in case transmission goes awry.
Thanks, and good luck!
1. What five pieces of advice might James Clifford offer students of the media in their study of culture?
2. What is the "public sphere" according to Habermas, and how is it influenced by public relations?
3. For Naomi Klein (in No Logo), what specific developments account for the recent growth of "anticorporate activism" around the world?
4. What is your understanding of hyper-reality? Provide examples from your own experience to illustrate your definition.
5. Donna Haraway claims you are already a cyborg. What does she mean and do you agree with her?
6. List five factors that affect social change in the theories of H.A. Innis.
7. How is the medium the message, according to you and Marshall McLuhan?
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Create a hypertext web-page feature on the theme of local (Vancouver Island) popular culture. Since these projects will be brought together to form an electronic journal (Pacific Rim) for the course, the details of format and page design will be established through class discussion, and then posted to the newsgroup.
Topic Overview:The creation of popular culture is one of the main themes of the course and is explored in some of the early readings. While many people assume that popular culture is defined by major media, it might equally be claimed that it is created and enjoyed by people in their local cultural environments. This assignment asks you to document some aspect of popular culture that you are either involved in, or can become a participant-observer in. Try to address any of the following questions which seem particularly relevant:
- What are the characteristic activities of this culture, and with what purpose?
- How would you characterize the style or charisma of this culture? To what extent is fashion, appearance, or uniformity of dress important?
- Who participates?
- Who is excluded from participating and why are they excluded?
- What common values, beliefs, ideologies, or goals are shared by the participants?
- What initiations, rites of passage, or rituals are involved?
- What knowledge or skills are required to participate?
- What equipment, technologies, or media are necessary?
- What kinds of hierarchies exist?
- What mechanisms of control are involved: rules, laws, policing, security?
- How does this popular culture promote itself?
- How is it received (appreciated, supported, discouraged) by the surrounding culture?
- What threats or challenges does this sub-culture face?
Imagine that the audience for your feature is an extended demographic: 18 to 50, male and female, well-educated, culturally sophisticated world citizens (ie, not necessarily North American) who are interested in the vitality of popular culture and might want to visit Vancouver Island. These readers will be interested in what is often called "local colour." Write about your subject with enthusiasm and understanding, and an appropriate degree of skepticism if you feel it is warranted. Humour is welcome. This assignment should be between 1000 and 1500 words with appropriate acknowledgement of sources. (We will discuss the characteristics of feature writing in class.) Include an image which adds substantively to your article, less than 50 K in size, and with no copyright infringement.Your grade will be based on the quality of your writing and research, and your ability to communicate insight into your subject.
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After researching a range of arguments for and against "globalization," write a persuasive essay on (1) what globalization is, and (2) how it affects mass media and popular culture. Make sure you address relevant counter-arguments in your essay. You can use specific examples of local culture to illustrate the effects of globalization. Identify your sources of information, either by references in your text or in a Works Cited at the end.
Length; minimum 750 words plus references. Plan your argument carefully for maximum impact.
You can do this assignment as a web-page for publication on the WWW, a feature for print publication, or an extended letter to the editor, but it must show responsible research and balanced reasoning. Imagine that your readers are tired of one-sided views on the subject and will be looking for information and insight.
Some common themes in the globalization debate include:
- cultural appropriation and homogenization
- cultural imperialism
- expansion of empire (see Innis)
- distribution of wealth
- creation of wealth, increased standards of living and health
- distribution of technologies
- global communications networks (internet, satellite, wireless)
- intellectual property rights
- trade liberalization and regulation (WTO, NAFTA, GATT)
- the influence of trans-national corporations
- branding and trade monopolies
- regulation of drug patents
- impact on agriculture
- foreign investment
- media ownership and monopolies
- alliances between government and corporations
- multi-lateral agreement on investment (MAI)
- environmental protection / degradation
- displacement of local populations
- relocation of business / dislocation of local economies
- political influence
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- Posting #1: Jan. 16 (5 %): Your first newsgroup posting will be the equivalent of a welcome message: in 200 to 300 words provide a media profile of yourself. The writing you do for this assignment can be used as a basis for the first assignment described above. It is important that you use the first week of the course to set up your internet access and familiarize yourself with posting to the newsgroup.
- Posting #2: Jan. 30 to Feb. 13 (10%): Remember those story telling games people used to play by passing the narrative (ball) from person to person around the room? A newsgroup narrative is a group collaborative composition that works just like this. You add your posting to the narrative thread begun and advanced by others. You can add to the "end" of the story by threading from the last posting, or you can interject a story element by replying to any previous threads. The medium allows the story to branch off at any point: some threads may proliferate, and others atrophy.
To begin, a participant describes an incident to initiate the story, purposely leaving the ending of the segment open to allow the next posting to continue and develop the narrative and characters. Subsequent postings can advance the story, establish a parallel narrative thread ("Meanwhile..."), or interject a flashback ("Looking back on what started all this off..."). Some postings might be descriptive interludes or character development that fill in details rather than advancing the plot. Characters, of course, can always travel to new places.
It’s possible that this collective narrative could turn into a kind of free-for-all, so I want to recommend a few general guidelines (similar to protocols of improvisation).
- All participants should take some responsibility for the coherence, and the tone and style of the narrative.
- To effect a change of style, ease into it, or project the narrative through the consciousness of another character.
- Try to provide the characters with options and choices.
- Please don’t kill off the main character!
- Avoid blocking the initiatives or leads of other participants; if you don’t want to go in that direction, develop a parallel thread.
- To maintain the challenge of developing a story, let's avoid dream sequences as being too easy.
- If you are offended by someone’s writing or content, don’t judge it. Move off in another direction, or devise a way for the offended character to experience some justice. There’s no need to be politically correct--we’re not writing social policy. This is a story and people do wonderful and frightening things to one another every day.
- If you are so inclined, use humour, irony, and sarcasm to keep the mood of the story playful.
We’ll run the story from January 30th to Feb. 13th to give it some time to develop. During that time, to receive a maximum of 10 %, you need to post a minimum of 200 words and a maximum of 400 words in at least two postings not on the same day. You will be evaluated on the quality of your writing, and your ability to advance the narrative in engaging, interesting ways. Experience has shown that the later you join the narrative, the more difficult it is to keep track of all the details. Those who contribute early have the opportunity and challenge of setting the narrative in motion for the others.
Keep in mind that this is a collaborative creative endeavor, similar to a group musical improvisation: everyone in the ensemble must know how to make music with the other members--that’s a given--and everyone has an equal opportunity to solo by adding to the composition with a distinctive instrumental voice. Timing is important. Listen to the other players.
- Posting #3: March 13 (5 %):Pacific Rim Story Profile
Imagine that you're a reporter who is pitching a story idea to an editor. Post a 200-300 word story profile for your Pacific Rim (feature) article. What's your idea and why is it so interesting? Do you need information that someone else might be able to help you with? Include significant sources of information and try to impress the editor with your credibility and diligent research.
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Final Exam: Wednesday, April 10th (15 %).
Please complete this exam by 12 midnight April 10th, 2002 and email the results to me at soules@mala.bc.ca either as text in the body of the email or as an attachment I can open with MSWord. (With some email services, long paragraphs are arbitrarily shortened in transit. To safeguard against this, I recommend that you send an attachment I can open in MSWord: text, RTF, Word, WPM.) Mail a copy to yourself as a backup, and as proof that you completed the exam on time in case something happens to your email to me. I will notify you by return email sometime on Thursday April 11th that I received your exam.
Answer five (5) of the following questions, each worth 10 marks, for a possible total of 50. Try to include at least five separate ideas, observations, or illustrations. You are free to access all class readings or sources available to you. Make sure you write enough to clearly establish the point(s) you want to make. However, clarity, not the number of words, should be your goal. Please write as accurately and grammatically as you can. To receive credit for this exam, you must include a statement at the end to the effect that you alone have written the contents of the exam, and that full credit has been given to any writing that is not your intellectual property.
Final Exam 2002
1. From the course readings, choose a theory (or set of principles) which you find useful, and summarize this theory. To demonstrate how this theory is useful, apply it to an analysis of contemporary media or popular culture. (10)
2. Discuss the inter-relationships between mass media and popular culture. (10)
3. Write a satirical piece skewering a media phenomenon you believe needs to be exposed. (10)
4. Apply Hakim Bey's notion of the temporary autonomous zone (TAZ) to the use of the public sphere in a democracy? (10)
5. Describe specific examples of conflicts over copyright issues, noting arguments on both sides of these disputes. Conclude with a summary of your thinking on copyright. (10)
6. Paul Rutherford in Endless Propaganda writes: "Postmodern democracy...does have something of a 'refeudalized' quality" (275). What do you think he means by this? Why does Rutherford make this claim? (10)
7. H.A. Innis claimed that "monopolies of knowledge" were traditionally important to the longevity of empires or nations. Apply his thinking on this to contemporary events in your own nation. (10)
8. Apply McLuhan's laws of media to the emerging practise of video activism. (10)
Don't forget your intellectual property statement about the exam.TOP
Grading Profile| A = 90+ | B = 75-80 | C = 60-65 | | A- = 85-90 | B- = 70-75 | C- = 55-60 | | B+ = 80-85 | C+ = 65-70 | D = 50-55 |
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