Forestfortrees's Favorite Links on media from Diigo

Harold Adams Innis: The Bias of Communications

Tue, 19 Aug 2008 15:07:53 -0000

Tags: media innis theory philosophy epistemology

Confessions of an Aca/Fan: How Fan Fiction Can Teach Us a New Way to Read Moby-Dick (Part One)

Tue, 19 Aug 2008 14:54:07 -0000

Highlights and Sticky Notes:

Another one chose Elijah, the prophet, and the awful dilemma of being able to see the future and no one believing or understanding what you're trying to tell them. "I'm going to warn you about this, but if don't heed my warning this is what's going to happen," and the awful dilemma that you face. His story was about 9/11. "I'm trying to tell you this is going to happen," and then nobody listened, and how awful he felt that he knew and couldn't stop it.

If there is a shared agenda within the diversity and fragmentation that has often characterizes the American media literacy movement, it has come through a focus on five core questions students and teachers have been taught to apply to a range of texts:

1. Who created this message?

2. What creative techniques are used to attract my attention?

3. How might different people understand this message differently from me?

4. What lifestyles, values, and points of view are represented in, or omitted from, this message?

5. Why is this message being sent?

What's not in the text is seen here as consciously or unconsciously excluded; often there's a hint that certain ideas or perspectives are being silenced, marginalized, or repressed. This formulation sets the reader in ideological opposition to the text while maintaining a clear separation between producers and consumers. This understanding reflects a moment when the power of mass media was extensive and the average consumer had no real way to respond to the media's agenda except through critical analysis. In a participatory culture, however, any given work represents a provocation for further creative responses. When we read a blog or a post on a forum, when we watch a video on YouTube, the possibility exists for us to respond -- either critically or creatively. We can write a fierce rebuttal of an argument with which we disagree or we can create a new work which better reflects our point of view.

Schools have historically taught students how to read with the goal of producing a critical response; we want to encourage you to also consider how to teach students how to engage creatively with texts. Under this model, we should still be concerned with what's not in the text; the difference is in what we do about it.

Tags: literacies media education

Posted by: forestfortrees

Is Google Making Us Stupid?

Wed, 13 Aug 2008 23:38:17 -0000

Tags: google technology media article opinion

Posted by: forestfortrees

A pragmatic essay on media practices and processes « media/anthropology

Sun, 10 Aug 2008 11:17:37 -0000

Tags: pragmatism anthropology media technology research

Posted by: forestfortrees

Grassroots leadership and media technologies: bibliographic references « media/anthropology

Sat, 21 Jun 2008 10:58:14 -0000

Tags: media anthropology power reference articles

Posted by: forestfortrees

Framing Science : Colbert on Obama's Elitism

Mon, 16 Jun 2008 21:09:29 -0000

Highlights and Sticky Notes:

Tags: obama politics news media humor

Posted by: forestfortrees

Adobe - Design Center : Design anthropology: What can it add to your design practice?

Mon, 09 Jun 2008 16:34:52 -0000

Highlights and Sticky Notes:

to answer the question of design "success" requires that they answer that question of how the processes and artifacts of design help define what it means to be human. This "humanness" can range from how humans control the environment through tools (homo faber); how high-heeled shoes affect natural ways of walking; to moral issues of how participation in the design process empowers marginalized communities. In this space, the practice and theory of design anthropology has emerged.

standard card sorting exercise, but I also did research into how humans classify information

The focus of design anthropology is on connecting the process of design to the meanings and functions designed artifacts have for people.

Design anthropology does not place separate emphasis on values, or design, or experience, which are the domains of philosophy, academic design research, and psychology, respectively. Rather, design anthropology focuses on the interconnecting threads among all three, requiring hybrid practices. The outcomes of design anthropology include statements providing some deeper understanding of human nature as well as designed communications, products, and experiences.

four problem areas of anthropology:

The nature-nurture problem (ex. Is it biology or environment that causes humans to respond to something in a particular way?)
The evolution problem (ex. How do things expand and change over time?)
The internal-external problem (ex. What are the ways in which behaviors are influenced by values or environmental conditions?)
The social facts or emergent properties problem (ex. How are people influenced by social forces that emerge from the interaction of humans, but which transcend individuals?)

One of their main insights was that Chinese parents viewed the computer as a distraction from their children learning Mandarin for school, which was an answer to the nurture question. But also, as part of their design process, Intel would have tested how adults and children interact with the hard and software features of the PC. The result was a physical lock-and-key mechanism that, from across the room, could alert Chinese parents to when the PC was being used in an "open mode," which allowed for surfing the web of playing games, versus in an "education mode," which restricted their child to schoolwork.

How do designed communications, artifacts, and experiences spread, change, or grow over time? The evolution problem requires longitudinal approaches that explore the relationships among artifacts, time, and place. Methodologically, these can take the form of multi-year studies within a region and/or the creation of image databases that can be re-mined over time.

early discovery and later design phases were structured to contribute general statements about how design translates values of democracy, transparency, accountability, and efficiency into tangible experiences. Something as simple as providing graphical illustrations to explain the voting method on a ballot can make someone with low literacy feel like the government is being more transparent about the process, which increases his or her voting confidence.

The emergent properties problem frames the majority of design anthropology projects, because it tends to lead product and service innovations.

better understand how the social forces of digitalization and globalization influenced people's behaviors

Key Question posted by forestfortrees

So the approach of "living with people" and observing, interviewing, participating in activities, and giving them prototypes to play with might provide some insight into new ways in which people are relating to artifacts and to each other.

act[s] as an emissary for people like the barber or the shoe-shop owner's wife, enlightening the company through written reports and PowerPoint presentations on how they live and what they're likely to need from a cellphone, allowing that to inform its design.

The outcomes of design anthropology include statements providing some deeper understanding of human nature as well as designed communications, products, and experiences.

Tags: anthropology design research technology media

Posted by: forestfortrees

Clay Shirky vs. Cultural Studies? | Snurblog

Sat, 07 Jun 2008 10:10:04 -0000

Highlights and Sticky Notes:

collective "cognitive surplus" that is now being harnessed by participatory, Web 2.0, produsage initiatives

media habits, media diets are beginning to shift, and that this is likely to have profound implications especially for participatory, collaborative, produsage projects

The shift, then, is not in the first place from passive media consumption to active media participation (and this is where Shirky's rhetoric is most problematic). But it is a shift from the reception of one-way, broadcast media, for which I would suggest meaning-making practices remain more often internal to the receiver, to the reception (at first) of two-way, online media for which meaning-making practices can more easily lead to the externalisation and sharing of receiver's responses.

Tags: media technology web2.0 participation social

Posted by: forestfortrees

Confessions of an Aca/Fan: MC Lars, "Ahab," and Nerdcore

Sat, 07 Jun 2008 10:06:58 -0000

Tags: hiphop media literature nerdcore videos

Posted by: forestfortrees

thedigitalist.net » Manifesto Download

Sat, 07 Jun 2008 09:49:42 -0000

Tags: manifesto publishing books media technology

Posted by: forestfortrees

Op-Ed Columnist - Paul Krugman - Bits, Bands and Books, Paying for Creativity in a Digital World - Op-Ed - NYTimes.com

Fri, 06 Jun 2008 11:16:17 -0000

Tags: economics economy2.0 technology media opinion

Posted by: forestfortrees

Hypermedia and Synesthesia

Thu, 05 Jun 2008 17:16:15 -0000

Highlights and Sticky Notes:

But what distinguishes such “multimedia texts” from other forms of multimedia production, such as computer games, virtual reality simulations, television productions, documentaries, and other such mixed media? The distinction lies in the fact that hypermedia consists of a symbolic system that incorporates images into the textuality of the piece as a whole, rather than turning text into just another of a range of images

Tags: media synesthesia technology academic article

Posted by: forestfortrees

FORA.tv - Videos Covering Today's Top Social, Political, and Tech Issues

Wed, 04 Jun 2008 18:22:51 -0000

Tags: education politics media culture lectures

Posted by: forestfortrees

…My heart’s in Accra » David Weinberger and the Ninja Gap

Wed, 04 Jun 2008 15:20:38 -0000

Tags: media anthropology technology

Posted by: forestfortrees

Welcome to Produsage.org | Produsage.org

Thu, 29 May 2008 15:55:02 -0000

Tags: produsage culture research concept media

Posted by: forestfortrees

Fields and networks « media/anthropology

Thu, 29 May 2008 10:12:42 -0000

Tags: media technology anthropology culture politics

Posted by: forestfortrees

Wired on imaging ‘neurohype’ « Neuroanthropology

Thu, 29 May 2008 10:05:51 -0000

Tags: neuroscience critique anthropology culture media

Posted by: forestfortrees

Conversations Below Sea Level: Geert Lovink

Wed, 28 May 2008 10:40:51 -0000

Tags: media technology identity agency ethnicity

Posted by: forestfortrees

This Blog Sits at the: Between William Gibson and William Faulkner (aka all worlds at once)

Wed, 28 May 2008 10:16:22 -0000

Highlights and Sticky Notes:

the future is already here, it's just badly distributed.

In the South, not only is the past not dead, it's not past.

we are getting better at producing more futures faster.

The first anthropological question is how we have managed to get ourselves stretched between Gibson's futures (the ones that get here early, I mean) and Faulkner's pasts (the one that won't go away, I mean). The second is how we live in a world when the present isn't actually very orienting, when what we live in is, potentially, all worlds at once. Economies just not to be responsive. Culture need to be something more than that. They need to be orienting.

Tags: culture anthropology equity time technology

Posted by: forestfortrees

Confessions of an Aca/Fan: The Further Adventures of The "Henry Jenkins" Cartoon Character

Fri, 02 May 2008 16:30:21 -0000

Highlights and Sticky Notes:

Tags: media criticalpedagogy academia symobolic comics

Posted by: forestfortrees