Week 5 - Response to Lecture

WEEK 5 LECTURE:

Consumption: (Consumers)

Big Screens
• Cinema (PASSIVE, COMMUNAL)
• TV (PASSIVE, COMMUNAL)
• Computer (ACTIVE)
• Internet (ACTIVE)

Production:

Small Screens (Convergence)
• Mobile Phones (ACTIVE, PERSONAL)
• Apple i-pod (ACTIVE, PERSONAL)

People are not just consumers anymore, thanks to convergence, computers, and internet for example, people are now becoming producers as well.

Due to the internet and smart mobile phones with video capabilities there has been a rise in citizen journalism. (However this can create problems as people are not always honest when reporting the facts)

CNN iReport – Citizen journalist’s upload their stories to this website and CNN vetted any that they confirmed as true.

Fan edit – People download and re-edit their favourite films, sometimes into a different type of genre.

This weeks Tutespark:

What is considered to be the first Culture Jam?

One can attempt to trace the roots of culture jamming in medieval carnival, which Mikhail Bakhtin interpreted as a subversion of the social hierarchy (in Rabelais and his World). Mark Dery's New York Times article on culture jamming, "The Merry Pranksters And the Art of the Hoax"[14] was the first mention, in the mainstream media, of the phenomenon. More recent precursors might include: the media-savvy agit-prop of the anti-Nazi photomonteur John Heartfield, the sociopolitical street theater and staged media events of '60s radicals such as Abbie Hoffman, the German concept of Spaßguerilla, and in the Situationist International (SI) of the 1960s. The SI first compared its own activities to radio jamming in 1968, when it proposed the use of guerrilla communication within mass media to sow confusion within the dominant culture.

Find the most influential Jam?

One particularly influential group that was active in Europe called themselves the Situationists and was led by Guy Debord. Their main argument was based on the idea that in the past humans dealt with life and the consumer market directly. They argued that this spontaneous way of life was slowly deteriorating as a direct result of the new "modern" way of life. Situationalists saw everything from television to radio as a threat[3].

What was the most damaging Jam?

The most famous recent example being an intrusion by an adult pornographic channel that was briefly shown to viewers who were watching the Super Bowl.

OR

The 1986 Captain Midnight incident occurred after the US TV channel HBO began to charge viewers $12.95 per month to access its programming. There were numerous reasons why this was seen by many as a bad deal, and many campaigners called for tighter regulation of the cable and satellite TV industry in order to stop anti-competitive pricing. On April 27th, a satellite engineer named John R. MacDougall working in Florida interrupted HBO's broadcast of 'The Falcon and the Snowman' with a four-and-a-half minute broadcast of a text message that read 'Good evening HBO from Captain Midnight. $12.95 a month? No way! Showtime / Movie Channel Beware!'.