note

metaphor for media and society: escher's hands drawing hands
-- product alters process alters product
-- reflexivity
-- heisenberg's uncertainty principle

study not just the content of media, but the production of the content as well.
-- what values, technology, skills are incorporated into the content? what ideology?
-- there is information not in just the content, but in how the content is organized, produced, and put together.

process to media:
old metaphor--> stimulus / response
-- messages are like bullets, they hit you and you react to them. (ex. media causes violence)
newer metaphor: two-step flow of communication
-- stimulus is mediated through a group before you interpret it. your group identity helps process messages
present theory: symbolic interactionism
-- message reaches you and you interpret the symbolic elements and meanings and then there will be results dependent on what meanings you ascribe to the symbols.

"messages w/ moral meaning have influence on behavior"
change as opposed to reinforcing effects-- messages with moral meanings are very difficult to change. they're embedded (to a certain extent) in our environments / cultures.

naomi klein -- illegal to market directly to kids?? (in canada)

examples of interpretation battles in media:
was this "torture" or "strenuous communication"?
rush limbaugh, in reference to guantanamo, "this was a fraternity prank."

norman lear -- producer of "all in the family"
-- meant to change society
-- characters have symbolic meaning
-- lear intended to illustrate the point "bigotry is bad" however research demonstrates that in some small canadian towns it had the opposite effect of reinforcing bigotry.

culturally created SCRIPTS (situations) that get combined into NARRATIVES (with beginning, middle and end.)

ray surette -- social ecology of crime in entertainment media
-- three layers: "criminal wolves" which were fought by "crime fighting sheep dogs" who shielded "public citizen sheep"
-- interesting note: how you interpret these three layers is somewhat dependent on your experiences with law enforcements (i.e. race.)

people like to be reinforced-- "identifying things you already believe"

tony schwartz -- "the responsive chord"
-- "the best advertising is one where the viewer fills in the details."
-- this "chord" is a chord of meaning

sidebar: "this version of government is diluted fascism."

crack / cocaine and heroin: programming and government manipulation of networks and the media system.
-- robert blake -- "beretta"
-- epstein -- "agency of fear": this results in shifting language and meanings in order to talk about the subject
-- len bias -- boston celtics player died from an overdose of cocaine
---- tip o'neill: powerful congressmen (from boston)

Immediately upon returning from the July 4 recess, Tip O'Neill called an emergency meeting of the crime-related committee chairmen. Write me some goddamn legislation, he thundered. All anybody up in Boston is talking about is Len Bias. The papers are screaming for blood. We need to get out front on this now. This week. Today. The Republicans beat us to it in 1984 and I don't want that to happen again. I want dramatic new initiatives for dealing with crack and other drugs. If we can do this fast enough, he said to the Democratic leadership arrayed around him, we can take the issue away from the White House.

In life, Len Bias was a terrific basketball player. In death, he became the Archuke Ferdinand of the Total War on Drugs. What came before had been only skirmishing; the real Drug War had yet to begin. Within weeks, the country would be marching, bayonets fixed.

( from http://blogs.salon.com/0002762/stories/2006/06/18/lenBiasTheDeathThatUsh...)

"media logic is the ghost in the machine." what's running it? what shapes and frames what we see?

iconography
-- religious studies that look at what's been added and taken away from an icon over time. in particular, the associated meanings.
-- the ability to establish an icon and meaning is an act of power. (power is the ability to define a situation.)
-- "there is no meaning independent of human agency."

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from the standpoint of those attacking the towers, the people in the towers were "little eichmanns"
-- rationality of brutality
-- "television creates its own memory"
-- giovanni beckoloni: what is the source of our memories?

media, popular culture and blending of wars

top gun --> "highway to the danger zone" --> now, pilots play that song during bombing runs

lighthouses and frenl lens -- fear builds upon itself, narratives about the other, group membership, etc.
-- howard becker: sociologist focuses on "insiders and outsiders"
-- "the other" becomes a source of fear.
-- through multiple self-reflections and magnifications, the fear becomes more powerful.

"the discourse of evil is ecclesiastical"

p 78 - How did the Bush administration introduce a link between Saddam and 9/11, when there was no evidence that Saddam had been involved in planning the 9/11 attacks? White House communications strategists set out, instead, to suggest a "relationship" between Iraq and al Qaeda. Every high official of the administration delivered the same message to journalists. Condoleeza Rice, national secuirty advisor, claimed that al Qaeda "clearly has had links to the Iraqis, not to mention Iraqi links to all kinds of other terrorists." Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld said "There is no question but that there have been interactions between the Iraqi government, Iraqi officials and al Qaeda operatives." Vice President Cheney noted that while there was no evidence that Saddam helped plan 9/11, "there is a pattern of relationship going back many years." And President Bush claimed that "We know that Iraq and al Qaeda have had high level contacts that go back a decade." Even though outside experts tried to point out that there was littler or no hard evidence to support these claims, and that there was a good deal of evidence that Saddam was one of the secular Arab regimes that Osama opposed, the high volume of repeated administration messages primed the news for months leading up to the war.

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"If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it. The lie can be maintained only for such time as the State can shield the people from the political, economic and/or military consequences of the lie. It thus becomes vitally important for the State to use all of its powers to repress dissent, for the truth is the mortal enemy of the lie, and thus by extension, the truth is the greatest enemy of the State."
-- Joseph Goebbels
"Minister for Public Enlightenment and Propaganda"
(for Hitler)

p 212 "... some people, me included, believe that punk is just the most recent manifestation of this, this spirit, this feeling, you know, that things aren't right and that in fact things are so wrong that the only thing we can do is to say Fuck It, over and over again, really loud, until someone stops us."
"Yes," Bobby says quietly, his face glowing with an almost religious fervor under his spiked hair. "Yes."

p 213-14 "I was thinking about those kids. The Baby Punks."
"Oh, yeah. What about them?"
"I was trying to figure out what would cause that kid--"
"Bobby."
"--Bobby, to revert, to latch on to music that was made the year he was born...."
"Well, I was really into the Beatles," Clare points out. "They broke up the year before I was born."
"Yeah, well, what is that about? I mean, you should have been swooning over Depeche Mode, or Sting or somebody. Bobby and his girlfriend ought to be listening to the Cure if they want to dress up. But instead they've stumbled into this thing, punk, that they don't know anything about--"
"I'm sure it's mostly to annoy their parents. Laura was telling me that her dad won't let Jodie leave the house dressed like that. She puts everything in her backpack and changes in the ladies' room at school," says Clare.
"But that's what everybody did, back when. I mean, it's about asserting your individualism, I understand that, but why are they asserting the individualism of 1977? They ought to be wearing plaid flannel."
"Why do you care?" Clare says.
"It depresses me. It's a reminder that the moment I belonged to is dead, and not just dead, but forgotten. None of this stuff ever gets played on the radio, I can't figure out why. It's like it never happened. That's why I get excited when I see little kids pretending to be punks, because I don't want it all to just disappear."

p 12 Several days later Murray asked me about a tourist attraction known as the most photographed barn in America. We drove twenty-two miles into the country around Farmington. There were meadows and apple orchards. White fences trailed through the rolling fields. Soon the signs started appearing. THE MOST PHOTOGRAPHED BARN IN AMERICA. We counted five signs before we reached the site. There were forty cars and a tour bus in the makeshift lot. We walked along a cowpath to the slightly elevated spot set aside for viewing and photographing. All the people had cameras; some had tripods, telephoto lenses, filter kits. A man in a booth sold postcards and slides-- pictures of the barn taken from the elevated spot. We stood near a grove of trees and watched the photographers. Murray maintained a prolonged silence, occasionally scrawling some notes in a little book.
"No one sees the barn," he said finally.
A long silence followed.
"Once you've seen the signs about the barn, it becomes impossible to see the barn."
He fell silent once more. People with cameras left the elevated site, replaced at once by others.
"We're not here to capture an image, we're here to maintain one. Every photograph reinforces the aura. Can you feel it, Jack? An accumulation of nameless energies."
There was an extended silence. The man in the booth sold postcards and slides.
"Being here is a kind of spiritual surrender. We see only what the others see. The thousands who were here in the past, those who will come in the future. We've agreed to be part of a collective perception. This literally colors our vision. A religious experience in a way, like all tourism."
Another silence ensued.
"They are taking pictures of taking pictures," he said.
He did not speak for a while. We listened to the incessant clicking of shutter release buttons, the rustling crank of levers that advanced the film.
"What was the barn like before it was photographed?" he said. "What did it look like, how was it different from other barns, how was it similar to other barns? We can't answer these questions because we've read the signs, seen the people snapping the pictures. We can't get outside the aura. We're part of the aura. We're here, we're now."
He seemed immensely pleased by this.