BEYOND DISTRACTION the need for media activism in the 21st century
URGENCY! ‘the next 20 years are going to be nothing like the last’ Chris Martensen’s Crash course limits in the 3 E’s http://www.peakprosperity.com/crashcourse As a teacher and parent, the urgency I feel about media reform has been best crystalized by a few distinct ideas. One of the most recent is by Chris Martensen in his series of webisodes called The Crash Course. In it, he says that we expect our future to be largely similar to our past, but due to immanent limits in the Economy, Energy, and the Environment, the next 20 years promise to be nothing like the last.
JERRY MANDER How do you respond to the argument that technology is not inherently good or bad, it’s how we use it that matters. That's the major homily of our time. And it's a very serious mistake. The idea that technology is neutral -- that it doesn't have social, political and environmental characteristics -- is really dangerous. Consider nuclear power and solar power. Both are energy forms, but they have entirely different effects on the system. Nuclear power is an inherently centralized technology. It requires centralized military-industrial institutions. Nobody knows what to do about 250,000 years of dangerous wastes. If we were to judge energy only in terms of who uses it, that would be like saying, "Well, if some good people got together and ran the nuclear power industry, the wastes wouldn't have to be safeguarded for 250,000 years." But these things are intrinsic to the technology. It's not a question of whether good people use them. Solar technology is the exact opposite -- it is inherently localizing. A couple of people can easily put it together, it's not expensive to use, the community can run it without having to hook up to the grid, and it has no lasting negative effects. The work of Jerry Mander- beginning with these 2 books, and continuing as the founder of the International Forum on Globalization promotes the idea that technologies have inherent, built in, tendencies that cannot be reformed.
NOAM CHOMSKY Consensus Trance manufacturing consent The Propaganda Model of Media http://www.chomsky.info/onchomsky/2002----.htm In Chomsky’s Manufacturing Consent and Propaganda Model of Media, he details the ways in which mainstream media undermines democracy and serves the power elite by creating a consensus trance, an invisible system of propaganda that noone thinks is propaganda.
NEIL POSTMAN amusing ourselves to death technopoly Postman writes in Amusing Ourselves to Death that the 2 prominent 20th century cautionary tales of futuristic dystopias, Orwell’s 1984 and Huxley’s Brave New World provided di fg erent visions of what our world could become. Postman posits that our culture was so vigilantly on guard against the potential horrors of 1984 that it became much more like Huxley’s Brave New World. He writes that there is no need to ban books when people have no interest in reading them.
NEIL POSTMAN
AL GORE inconvenient truth 2006. The film ‘An Inconvenient Truth’ pushed the idea of climate change into Mainstream Media and to the forefront of public consciousness. One of the most compelling moments from the film was Gore’s somewhat comical illustration of the hockey stick graph showing exponential rise in atmospheric carbon.
HOCKEY STICK GRAPHS
PEAK OIL Not long after this, a colleague introduced me to the concept of Peak Oil with the movie ‘The End of Suburbia’
WHAT A WAY TO GO life at the end of empire http://www.whatawaytogomovie.com The same colleague introduced me to the filmmakers Tim Bennet and Sally Erickson on their tour screening their documentary ‘What a Way to go- life at the end of empire’... more hockey stick graphs among other ideas.
RICHARD LOUV last child in the woods generations raised seperated from nature separated from nature? from food supplies groomed to consume? the Federal government dropped its annual survey of farm residents. Farm population had dwindled so much—from 40% of U.S. households in 1900 to just 1.9% in 1990—that the farm resident survey was irrelevant.
consuming kids hockey stick resource Campaign for a Commercial Free Childhood Consuming Kids DVD and Summits. Highlighting the rise of Media geared to create lifelong consumers and brand loyalty. (highly recommend subscribing to their newsletter and attending their summits)
JOURNALISM & DEMOCRACY Jeffersonian Ideal- Democracy requires informed citizenry last reporter please turn out the lights downsized record and film industries implications of web changes in higher education Free Press and NCMR sounding the alarm about the decline of the 4th estate, print journalism, and the resulting implications for democracy.
RICHARD DAWKINS MEMES Realization that in activism and advocacy... that you can not change public policy without first changing public perception. The most powerful tool we have to change public perception is modern mass media. I think the key to subverting corporate controlled mass media lies in an understanding of memetics. what memes are and how they work.
MEDIA ACTIVISM Building academic programs that recognize the degree to which mainstream media shapes the dominant consciousness, and the ways in which alternative media can lead to new ways of thinking is an appropriate response to changing paradigms of communication, education, journalism, and democracy. Media Activism generates citizen-producers committed to creating a more critically engaged public sphere. Media Activism can include work spanning Graphic Design, Journalism, Multimedia Production, Documentary, Advocacy and Activism. It combines critical analysis with the theory and practice of making media. A degree in Media Activism prepares media makers to enter into the necessary public conversations that generate critical thinking and dialogue.
MEDIA ACTIVISM Media Activism teaches people to be active audiences as well as producers. With new, more participatory technologies, the line between consumer and producer is blurring. To be truly media literate now also means to be production literate. The BA in Media Activism at Burlington College is conceived explicitly for those who want to become media activists. Through technical training rooted in history and theory, students are encouraged to apply media making technique, craft, and art to issues of advocacy, activism and social change. What does a Media Activism Major look like? What courses might it include? and what do students learn and produce? Join us to expand the conception of a future that calls media activism into being. Add your insight and vision to a session that includes work from media activists who are engaging with today’s pressing issues and making their own media and cultural inroads.
Bachelor of Arts Degree in Media Activism Burlington College Vermont USA Find out More: burlington.edu/media-activism
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