Photofilmic Art, Part 1. Negotiating Fraught Images in a Contemporary Public Sphere (original) (raw)

'Emergent' media and public communication: Understanding the changing mediascape

Public Communication Review, 2010

Scholars and practitioners are widely agreed that media and public communication are undergoing significant change deserving of close attention and, along with widespread popular media discussion, a body of scholarly research on the changing 21 st century mediascape is emerging. The term "new media" is widely used in the literature to describe interactive online communication forms including blogs, social networks, photo and video sharing sites, microblogging, and virtual worlds enabled by what is referred to as Web 2.0. A number of studies cite so-called "new media" as the "fourth media revolution" and make effusive predictions concerning their effects ranging from the "end of journalism" to the transformation of the public sphere through the birth of e-democracy. This paper critically reviews changes taking place and provides an overview of implications for public communication. It challenges the term "new media", arguing that it is inaccurate and unhistorical, and attempts to look beyond hype and "cyberbole" that often distort discussion to identify substantive changes taking place. It argues these are located in social and cultural practices rather than technology and explores four foundational shifts which have significant implications for media and all areas of public communication practice including journalism, political communication, advertising, public relations and organisational communication.

MISSION, REALITY AND CURRENT CHALLENGES OF THE MASS MEDIA IN THE 21st CENTURY

2013

The mass media plays a significant liaison role of providing the social reality to recipients of the current society. During such commercial period as of today, however, the mass media prefers the entertaining function, while minimizing, or even eliminating, the informative, canvassing, cultural and educative functions, thus fails to realize its public role for the society. Most media, today, from news to advertising, rely on spectacle, simplification and exaggeration to grab and hold audiences. Much of the current media is beset by idealization and demonization in which media manipulators depict themselves and their allies as heroes and saints, and their opponents or targets as villains, fools and disturbed characters, both to create exciting stories and win battles. What is missing is precisely the information, which would discredit the system and result in reforms that would lock out many of those who now work to maintain the system solely for their own benefit.

MEDIA AND THE PUBLIC SPHERE - FALL 2016 - CU/SCHOOL OF JOURNALISM AND COMMUNICATION STUDIES

Scope of the Course: The effects of media on the social, economic, political and cultural spheres of life have been increasing significantly since the nineteenth century. In fact, there is a curious overlap between the transformation of the public sphere and the rise of mass media. This course will examine the points of juncture between the public sphere and mass media at the intersection of capitalism, liberal democracy and patriarchy. More specifically, this course will investigate the concepts of the public and the private; the social and the intimate as well as the relationship between public morality, private morality and media; the 'public,' 'publicness' and communications; alternative publics and alternative media through the lenses of different theories of the public sphere. In this course, we will read The main questions this course will ask are: 1) What are the junction points between history and theory in the transformation of the public sphere and the rise of the mass media? 2) What are the (non-)normative implications of different theories of the public sphere on the understanding of media? 3) How can one conceptualize alternative mass media and social media in terms of public-private distinction? 4) What is the significance of public sphere in the mediation of human communication? Why? At the end of the term the students will have accumulated knowledge of the theories of public sphere with a historical perspective; acquired theoretical and methodological knowledge, which are required to assess the effect of the mass media in the construction, narrowing down, extension and transformation of the public sphere; and developed a critical perspective on the function of the mass media in the transformation of the distinction between the public and the private in late-capitalist societies. The course also aims to investigate the possibilities for revealing the immediacy of the connections between the " theoretical " and everyday experiences through communication. In this respect, the course will also offer a venue for a collaborative autoethnographic preliminary study that involves cooperative research agendas of the students and the lecturer. The collaborative study, which will center on the question of the differentiations in the way audience/readers understand and communicate through the public-private distinctions will evolve through three lines: 1. The students' and lecturer's daily notes about the weekly discussions on the theoretical approaches, covered in the course with a view to a. their daily experiences b. which media they use most frequently in conveying these experiences and how; 2. The students' and lecturer's interactive readings of and notes on the three films that will be watched throughout Fall 2016; 3. Discussions on cross-cutting reflections of ethnicity, gender, class and age on the way our subjective and cooperative readings on the public-private distinctions.

The Integrated News Spectacle, Live 8, and the Annihilation of Time

Canadian Journal of Communication, 2007

In this article, the recent strategic turn by U.S.-based media corporations toward the use of broadband technologies, particularly online video, is assessed as a turning point in how news is being conceptualized, distributed, and consumed. Using the heuristic tool the integrated news spectacle, and its application to political, economic, and technological developments propelled forward by the 2005 Live 8 concerts, the authors analyze contemporary trajectories concerning the news and their more general implications regarding what Innisians refer to as the annihilation of time.

The Visual Power of News Agencies

Nordicom Review, 2017

While staff photographers are losing their jobs, news agency networks have become main suppliers of visual content to the news media. A global news site such as the Guardian leans to news agencies for most of its selected visuals. In tandem with the expanding visual power of new agencies, the ethical standards of the wholesalers are challenged by increasing amounts of user generated content, distant editing, and the live-streaming of breaking news. This article discusses editorial dilemmas prompted by proliferate, high tech processing of visual content by the news agencies’ global networks, exemplified by the coverage of terrorism. The analysis is grounded in a variety of empirical data, and aspects of Manuel Castells’ theory on communication power provide a theorizing framework for the discussion. The study suggests that the visual power of today’s news agencies rests on three interconnected processes of handling imagery: agency infrastructuring, technological infrastructuring and ...

The Politics of Wire Service Photography: Infrastructures of Representation in a Digital Newsroom

This article examines the politics of image brokering in the daily rituals of a major wire service's photography division. Specifically, it investigates crises of visualization: moments when routine visualization itself is challenged due to changes in infrastructures of representation. The transition to digital transmission has changed work of image brokers—people involved in the creation, validation, packaging, and circulation of images. New image brokers and changed infrastructures of representation challenge established hierarchies and who provides and polices news images. At a moment when the war on terror is also a war of images, battles over the infrastructures of representation are battles over visual worldmaking. [digital, infrastructure of representation, photography, Agence France Presse, journalism, crisis of representation, wire service, visualization, Iraq]