Week Eight: Celebrity Culture

Source: Click.

Professor David Marshall's guest lecture this week was quite an illuminating take on globalisation in terms of 'celebrity culture'. Examples included Prince Harry's leaked photographs and Catherine Zeta-Jones' anger appearing in paparazzi pictures. I was incredibly interested in the idea he introduced about private and public persona, and how the line has become finer and much more blurred with converging technologies.

Marshall (2008, p.498) talks about how it is personalities that the public are interested in, and personalities that are being bought and enjoyed. Marshall also discusses that new media are making possible what was thought impossible about fifty years ago. Media input has become more democratic, and the humiliating, unexplainable acts by celebrities are able to be posted, reported, broadcast and digested by audiences almost within the hour, within even minutes of occurring. 

Source: Click.

I personally do not understand this boom in 'celebrity culture'. and I barely care; especially when the celebrities involved have not earned their media coverage as others have. Celebrities are human and they are free to make their mistakes; but I don't support these mistakes splashed across covers of magazines and in big, bold headline font, by people paid to do it and apparently frame this as 'news'.

More recently people tend to explode with their media coverage; One Direction and individuals associated with Twilight come to mind. I have found that people either care religiously or not at all; both extreme polar opposites. There's the few people in the middle, but most tend to be one or the other.

Are your own experiences something like this? I'm interested to hear what you think!

Marshall, D, 2008, The Specular Economy, Society. Vol. 47.

Week Four: Alternative Journalism and Blogging

It's no surprise to me that alternative forms of journalism and blogging have emerged, due to the apparent oliogopoly of mainstream media. Not to mention the social networking sphere and the desire to share information, regardless of fact or fiction.

Singer (2007, p.118) makes the distinction between journalists and bloggers. Singer acknowledges that blogs can range from individual diaries to political campaigns and more corporate uses.

Bloggers tend to have more of a bias approach, in my experience. I'm not acknowledging that journalists can as well, but bloggers have more freedom in that respect. Bloggers have the potential for a broader audience, can review products and events, and can be more relaxed about the process.

I'm trying to imagine my personal blog being more corporate and I shudder. Having blogged on and off for the past couple of years, I've developed a personal style that I find relates more to my audience (which is mainly people who want to keep up with me). I've never really thought of myself as journalistic; I've only presented my world view and opinions for others to read. Sometimes I tend to review books or music, and sometimes I simply rant about day-to-day happenings.

I'm well aware of Singer's idea that bloggers and journalists seek the truth in different ways (2007, p.121), and what I present is, effectively, my truth.

Source: Click.

Another parallel for you this week is Jude Law's character in Contagion. Without spoiling anything; the role:  his reputation as a journalist and a blogger with an audience of millions is very well played to the film's audience. It also brings forth the awareness of people having an agenda - even in the middle of a crisis - and just how powerful the opinion of one man can be.

Source: Here.
The suit that Jude Law wore in Contagion became an
iconic symbol in the film's promotion and marketing tools.

Sources:
Singer, JB 2007, ‘Bloggers and other “participatory journalists”’, in C Friend & JB Singer (eds), Online journalism ethics: traditions and transitions, M.E. Sharpe, Armonk, N.Y., pp. 115–50.

Week Three: Dominant Media and Oliogopoly

Steven (2003) has a problem with how the term 'mass media' is used, and how it fails to define the media's ability to control and shape society's direction. Steven goes on to explain that 'dominant media' is a better term and describes how the United States model is commercialised. Many other countries have adapted this model as it appears to work effectively.

Steven also refers to the word 'dominant' to mean a 'global arena' of media on the globe (p.40). It's hard not to think about The Hunger Games at this point (and I know there'll be some scoffing at this) but all these individuals fighting for the most ownership and control over more media outlets (Rupert Murdoch comes to mind as well). The amount of differing owners of these outlets shrink as fewer companies can control more outlets and therefore wield more control in shaping the direction of society. Steven refers to this (groups of corporations as opposed to one individual) as oliogopoly.

Picture 1.1: Fighting - for survival or power?

Picture 1.2: Careers or corporate giants?

Considering it is well known that author of The Hunger Games series Suzanne Collins was inspired by reality television and the current war climate, the loom of terrorism currently hanging above our heads. There can be no doubt that the fictional, dystopian world of Panem with its bread and circuses (panem et circenses) can be interpreted as a fear of our current path. I say this with full awareness that every text is subjective.


Even the phrase panem et circenses, or bread and circuses, can be interpreted as our current awareness of the poverty. Do we need games and technology to distract us from our conscience? Alice Schroder discusses the history of the phrase in this article and its use in Roman history.


Is this what we are heading for?

Sources:

Steven, P 2003, The no-nonsense guide to the global media, New Internationalist, Oxford, pp. 37–59.

Picture 1.1: http://cdn.screenrant.com/wp-content/uploads/Hunger-Games-Katniss-and-Peeta-Training-Outfits.jpg last accessed 22/7/12

Picture 1.2: https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgq-1Eu3TudXg7R5xc6kU-ksR1mB63gJ-2nVw1VVwmhdZOyWzGwDj8Uq6YfVtFA8a2Mfvg29a5X9_Che9AmVGlLhhZEgL2mCfFIfZrs5Ev_B1Jdu23D8PJWlA1DFoc75FotxTvlD_LMrNtN/s1600/Hunger-Games-pic-3.jpg last accessed 22/7/12
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-06-02/the-danger-of-living-on-bread-and-circuses-alice-schroeder.html last accessed 26/7/12