Pop Culture TEST 4

Know in what area of society the problem of incivility is considered to be the worst

Politics

McLuhan's "The Medium is the Message" and some examples

* Technology itself changes us, not just the content - McLuhan was dead before the Internet and social media, but these technologies offer even better examples of what he is talking about, how technology itself changes us, who we are, how we act. Ex: Movies, originally conveyed the passage of time by showing clocks or cars and eventually people got trained to realize when a storyline jumps ahead through things like flashbacks. Ex: We more willingly disclose our private selves, including to perfect strangers. Technology taught us how to jump back. - Social Media and celebrities "Confessions": we can all be like celebrities in reality tv shows because of technology. Airbrushed photos: The media tools and strategies employed by celebrities and their handlers—airbrushed photos, carefully coordinated social interactions, strategic se- lection, and entourage maintenance—are now in a sense available to everyone, and increasingly are employed in everyday interpersonal interaction. Promiscuous friending: On a technical level, becoming a ''friend'' requires only a few clicks of the mouse, rather than any investment in conversation or social support.

Understand the concept of Social Distance and some examples of it

*The distance between different groups in society rather than location. - This includes differences such as social class, race and ethnicity, gender or sexuality, but also the fact that the different groups mix less than members of the same group. - In journalism, there is "social distance" between broadcast and print journalists, or between PR people and journalists. Ex: there was social distance between the hotel employees and the Chinese couple because they rarely interacted.

Know what incivility is & some examples of it from pop culture

*rude or unsociable speech or behavior - The word incivility is derived from the Latin meaning "not of a citizen." The intent is for democracy to operate in a healthy manner, civilians need to conduct themselves in an ethical and respectful way. Ex: TV shows like the Housewives, bullying chefs, belittling contest judges, talk show guests yelling over each other

Citizen Paparazzi

- Amateurs - Camera phones, free blog hosting sites - These visual technologies the second reason for paparazzi importance - Do for money and excitement

Know McLuhan's thoughts on pop culture and technology, the good and bad about it, and also what his "Global Village" idea is

- As technology changes so does pop culture and as pop culture changes so does society - While the electronic media do in fact make information and culture instantly available/accessible to larger and larger groups of ppl, they also tend to engender a general feeling of alienation in us bc the medium in this case separates us from others and physically becomes their replacement - Participating in pop culture content is an activity of engagement in our senses and emotions

Effects incivility can have on people

- Damages self-esteem - Increases anxiety & stress - Destroys social relationships - Reduces the quality of public debate - Causes teen suicides - U.S. losing stature as a nation

Criticisms of celebrity news: (tabloids that you buy at a supermarket)

- Dumbing down content and quality - Distracts from important issues - Focused on consumption

Know about citizen paparazzi and how they differ from professionals, what led them to it and why they do it

- Fans and critics alike are empowered by technologies such as camera phones, digital cameras and free blog hosting sites, which gives rise to a massive, non-regulated online resource for entertainment news gatherers hunting - growing demand for paparazzi images that aim to be as intimate and revealing as possible allowed opportunities for 'amateur' photographers to enter the market - The structure of the paparazzi landscape is thus evolving to include 'citizen' photographers, who are also technologically equipped to add to the visual serialization of the celebrity's public life and, as the agencies claim, earn large sums of money for being in the right place at the right time - often seen as opportunistically operating for commercial purposes. In addition, the existence of citizen paparazzi also emphasizes the tension between professional photographers who take pictures of celebrities, and a newer, lessskilled breed of photographers who have profited from innovation in camera technology and have identified the field as a potentially lucrative and exciting form of work *Much cheaper, fun, do it for the entertainment

Understand the economics of celebrity news and the press practices by which it is produced

- Hugely popular with audiences - Celebrity news owes, according to many of its more principled practitioners as well as its political advocates, an allegiance to the democratic good but only persists because it can make sizable profits for global conglomerates. - In other words, celebrity news pays the bills when political and hard news does not. - news about celebrities is managed by those who are generating it - that is, by the celebrities themselves, through their personal or organizational promotions and publicity machines. - News about celebrities is usually generated mostly for commercial rather than informational purposes. It is generated via direct contacts with the news organizations; it is most often intended to serve the interests of those it is about. - Journalists highly dependent on publicity firms, paparazzi, press releases, press kits, access to events - Filtering agent vs news gatherer (journalists sort out their choices from the plethora being offered but doing as little as possible by way of independent investigation, fact-checking or backgrounding)

Dan Crenshaw's Basic rules for civil discourse

- Ideas are fair game; attacking a person is not - Attacking intent behind the idea is not appropriate either - Ask for (or grant) forgiveness

Understand how social media and Web 2.0 are different from other forms of technology and media

- In the Web 2.0 world, we now experience the media stage as a 2 way process, not the one-way process that characterized virtually all previous stages - In previous eras of pop culture, a few ppl decided what would be put on a stage in view of gaining popularity - Now, the decision of what becomes popular is influenced by virality and memes-the spreading of info through cyberspace - Social media is where popularity is now made and installed

Know about aggression on reality TV

- Increasingly aggressive, and sometimes violent, forms of verbal confrontation are found on reality TV - Relational aggression -- Gossip, rumors, excluding, manipulating - Encouraging people to be more aggressive by allowing the viewer to participate by either voting for the characters they want evicted or those they want to stay (American Idol, Big Brother) - Realistic aggression likely to be imitated

Know what about social media is blamed for encouraging incivility

- It makes it easier and faster to be uncivil. It bypasses the traditional filters of editors in traditional media. - Anonymity: if you don't know the person, you're ruder - Social distance

Understand the relationship between technology, the media, and pop culture

- Mass printing technologies made it possible for the emergence of pop literary forms like magazines and radio/TV spread pop culture even more - The technologies associated with the online stage, especially the mobile ones, make content personalized & transportable and thus more and more embedded in all aspects of everyday life and just as fleeting

Understand McLuhan's concept of "The Medium is the Message" and some examples of it

- Media are extensions of ourselves; technology changes us - Printing press = first mass distraction, created books - Recording technology allowed music to be preserved, radio promoted music - Everything important would be transformed into entertainment

The two main reasons for the rise of paparazzi agencies

- Media convergence, more profitable (try to do everything that a media company would do) - New visual technologies

Social Causes:

- One study found celebrities play a growing role in bringing awareness of important political and social causes to the public's attention. (Angelina Effect) - Another study found that exposure to admirable media celebrities from racial/ethnic outgroups is an effective, proactive, and viable strategy for prejudice reduction and intergroup harmony.

Understand the Mean World Syndrome and some examples of it

- People who watch a lot of entertainment TV - Skewed version of reality, world is "meaner" - They also think there are more cops, lawyers, doctors than in reality

Know some of the effects of celebrity news on people who consume it, both positive and negative

- Propagates consumerist values - It articulates the mainstream ideology of market capitalism. - In fact, one study found that the more celebrity news one consumes, the more materialistic one becomes, especially women - The logic of traditional news is geared toward public service and the greater good, looking at audiences in the understanding of a citizenry that needs to be supplied with relevant news to make informed political decisions - celebrity is probably the key area where we can see consumers unproblematically accepting gossip or rumor as news - consuming a lot of celebrity news makes people more materialistic

Some solutions to incivility:

- Real-name policy for social media (online identification leads to accountability & promotes civility) - Prior approval of comments - Eliminate comments - Parents block or monitor kids' use - Legislation - Cybershaming - Don't talk politics - Bosses lead by example - Be a role model

Know about the gendered messages on reality TV

- Reinforces stereotypes that promote incivility to women - "Housewives" series denigrates value of women's work inside the home - Promotes women as vapid, superficial, catty, vain - Conspicuous consumption

The distinction between the two definitions of a tabloid

- Size of newspaper ex: The Daily Texan - content - celebrity, gossip, crime, sensational news

The primary purpose of celebrity news, some positive and negative aspects of it

- Sole objective: to treat news as a means of entertaining its audience. - Celebrity news serves very different functions in terms of informing the citizenry than those traditionally attributed to journalism. - The principles of celebrity news are not the high-minded principles and purposes of the communication of politics and journalism's intentions to provide information of importance for the public. - Celebrity news is not and may never be an entirely respectable branch of journalism.

Know what the American Dream is and how celebrity news relates to this

- The American Dream is the belief that "anyone can make it in America" with hard work and dedication. - Tabloids' celebration of celebrities' conspicuous, lavish consumption reflects the American Dream and Americans' hope for upward social mobility. - Tabloids illustrate the priorities and aspirations of the American public. - Celebrity news outlets are a paradoxical reflection of the American Dream and the American belief in equality of all people.

Know what the reading says about why the Paparazzi agencies became so important, and where the name came from

- The name of Signore 'Paparazzo', the character of a news photographer in the film, was apparently derived from 'papataceo', a large type of mosquito, which was used to describe how these photographers are likened to swarms of pests following people - Given the ability of such agencies to create and distribute exclusive stories, the globalization of paparazzi content has increasing ramifications for new forms of information-based entertainment - Given the rise of new media outlets, the paparazzi industry is booming - Paparazzi agencies have expanded their use of new media production and distribution methods, from developing a commercial client base of regular media providers (business to business) to involving fans and gossip seekers through social networking applications and their own blog sites (business to consumer)

Understand the concept of "trolling"

- Those engaging in provocative online speech. - One of the primary motivations of trolling is to instigate other trolls. - This sets up one of the central difficulties in confronting trolling: Shedding light on trolling may only encourage it

Paparazzi in celebrity news

- Took off in the mid-1980s, coupled with the relaxation of the standards of what people might expect of such images of naked, 'candid' or otherwise unauthorized shots - There began a significant decline in the print media's employment of staff photographers, reflecting economic factors influencing the creation of popular culture. - Paparazzi photography presently constitutes the largest genre of visual celebrity news on the internet along with red carpet photography, according to one study - The tactics used to secure the Princess Diana crash photographs have not reduced the appeal of the paparazzi's product - Where paparazzi photographs might once have been the staple of low prestige or tabloid publications only, they have become mainstream in recent years with the market demand for images of celebrity only growing - Paparazzi agencies have become a new kind of news provider - Now paparazzi is mainly large, multinational agencies with their own websites

Understand Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs and some examples of it

- You need to satisfy the most basic needs of food and shelter before attempting to satisfy needs like self fulfillment. - The wealthier you are, the more you can focus on these higher level "needs." *Celebrities fulfill the social belonging level of needs - This says that at the bottom of the hierarchy, the most basic need is to feed and shelter oneself. Once that is achieved, people move up the ladder to get their needs met, with the top of the ladder being self-actualization. Celebrity media use is probably somewhere in the social belonging stage. But the point is that you have to have some basic wealth in order to get to that level. People in third world countries don't consume celebrity news like we do.

Know about society news journalists or "gossip columnists"

- the most well known and most popular reporter on staff, with the most read stories of anyone. Ex: Liz Smith