Chapter 6

As someone who has studied journalism and is really interested in the entire business surrounding the media, I particularly enjoyed this chapter. Not only as a student was this relevant, but also I felt like the author was speaking right at me when she said "We may find ourselves anxious when these systems of communication and consumption fail us." I have MAJOR separation anxiety from my cell phone and when I was in the library yesterday and couldn╒t get my wireless Internet to work, I felt completely disconnected from the world. It is absolutely incredible how much communication technology has woven itself into our everyday lives.

Media is changing and changing rapidly. We are not only the consumers, but also the authors. We are no longer a massive, uncritical, generalized audience who passively accept messages presented to us by media. It has become a reciprocal relationship, a complex system where everyone actively participates to some degree. It is no longer only used for the wealthiest class or for the government to ╥inject╙ their ideology into the uneducated working masses. We are constantly making choices and interpellating information presented to us.

The term cyberblitz is used to describe ╥the escalation of random and unpredictable media forms, images, and information that have bombarded us in postmodern society.╙ This chapter also talks about the newfound power in YouTube, which I learned of first hand in Washington last semester. I was able to profile anyone for an article and I chose James Kotecki, a 23-year-old working at Politico.com. In 2007, at 21, James was an undergrad at Georgetown University and bought a webcam so that he could stay in touch with his long-distance girlfriend. He wondered what else he could use the webcam for and started making short clips to put on YouTube. He then wanted to start some kind of regular videoblog and see what kind of following he could get. He decided to comment on politics since that was what he was most interested in, but also wanted to add something new to the conversation so he chose to discuss the presidential nominee╒s use of YouTube in their campaigns. After a few months of videos full of pencil puppet candidates and silly college banter, he received the first ever interview granted by a Presidential candidate in a dorm room. James interviewed Ron Paul, and soon after the popular media caught hold of his extraordinary story. He was interviewed by the Washington Post and called by Economist magazine "the foremost expert on YouTube and political campaigns." Kotecki went on to interview several other prominent politicians and candidates and after graduating in three years from Georgetown was offered a full time position making humorous videos for Politico. This December, YouTube hosted a live concert full of celebrities, musical artists and self-made YouTube "stars." James was invited to talk for a segment about his fame and showed his first pencil puppets that started it all. I just think this story is the ultimate example of the role reversal from mass media conglomerates injecting us with ideology, to the everyday man being able to broadcast for himself his view of information in the world today.

The spectacle is another important term in this chapter as it refers to ╥an event or image that is particularly striking in its visual display to the point of inspiring awe in viewers.╙ We learned a lot about the philosophy behind the spectacle in Sexuality in the Cinema, but it is interested that the same concept can be applied to entertainment movies that are fictional, as well as news and media that is supposed to be a representation of real life.
The example of a spectacle that occurred within our lifetime and that we are the generation of is 9/11. This unprecedented event sent shockwaves across the globe with the haunting images of black, ghastly, billows of smoke coming from iconic buildings, of planes hanging out of windows, of people jumping from hundreds of stories, and of people running through the streets of New York City completely covered in ash and debris. It should have been a movie, it shouldn╒t have been real life, but it was. The Newseum in Washington DC has an incredibly emotional exhibit on the news media╒s coverage of this tragic event. It makes you really think about where the media draws the line between getting the public the information they need, and being just an average citizen themselves. While most people ran as fast as they could from Ground Zero, those that consider getting us images as their duty ran the opposite direction, trying to get the best angle they could. I really liked when the book said ╥The point is not that spectacle is more important than real violence, but that spectacle is understood to have the potential t generate vast, global shockwaves of violence that go beyond the actual destruction of life and property in the single event.╙ When people bring up September 11th, the image that pops into my head is pretty much the image from the book in fig 6.13. The terrorists intended for the destruction to be a spectacle that represented the demise of Western culture.