Group 1
1. Rachel Damelio
2. Maeve Cambria
3.Izzy Hodess
4. Kaitlyn Gendron
Group 2
1. Alex Dwyer
2. Chelsea Kerker
3. Elise Brown
4. Isabella Gervasoni
Group 3
1. Luke O'Hara
2. Will Adams
3. Andrew Martin
4. Max Rockhold
Group 4
1. Jennifer Gil
2.Rachel Beresin
3.Briana Owens
4. Melissa Dey
Group 5
1.Godffrey Lucas
2.Matt Allchin
3.Christopher Falci
4. Annalise Haldeman
Group 6
1. Kris DiNardi
2. Kayla Hurowitz
3. Ellis Boyd
4. Joe Gutberlet
Group 7
1.Ted Economo
2.Gordon Blaxall
3.Steven Churchill
4.Eric Newton
Group 8
1. Joe Guido
2. Stephen Latham
3. Jillian Gothelf
4.
Monday, February 29, 2016
Sunday, February 28, 2016
Thursday, February 25, 2016
Source URL: https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/hollywood-studios-whitewashed-given-failing-868097
Hollywood Studios "Whitewashed," Given Failing Diversity Grades in New Study
The USC report also finds that an "epidemic of invisibility" runs top to bottom through the industry for women, minorities and LGBT people.
In one of the most exhaustive and damning reports on diversity in Hollywood, a new study finds that the films and television produced by major media companies are "whitewashed," and that an "epidemic of invisibility" runs top to bottom through the industry for women, minorities and LGBT people.
A study to be released Monday by the Media, Diversity and Social Change Initiative at the University of Southern California's Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism offers one of the most wide-ranging examinations of the film and television industries, including a pointed "inclusivity index" of 10 major media companies — from Disney to Netflix — that gives a failing grade to every movie studio and most TV makers.
Coming just days before an Academy Awards where a second straight year of all-white acting nominees has enflamed an industry-wide crisis, the report offers a new barrage of sobering statistics that further evidence a deep discrepancy between Hollywood and the American population it entertains, in gender, race and ethnicity.
"The prequel to OscarsSoWhite is HollywoodSoWhite," said Stacy L. Smith, a USC professor and one of the study's authors, in an interview. "We don't have a diversity problem. We have an inclusion crisis."
The study, titled the "Comprehensive Annenberg Report on Diversity," examined the 109 films released by major studios (including art-house divisions) in 2014 and 305 scripted, first-run TV and digital series across 31 networks and streaming services that aired from September 2014 to August 2015. More than 11,000 speaking characters were analyzed for gender, racial and ethnic representation and LGBT status. Some 10,000 directors, writers and show creators were examined, as was the gender of more than 1,500 executives.
The portrait is one of pervasive underrepresentation, no matter the media platform, from CEOs to minor characters. "Overall, the landscape of media content is still largely whitewashed," the study concludes.
In the 414 studied films and series, only a third of speaking characters were female, and only 28.3 percent were from minority groups — about 10 percent less than the makeup of the U.S. population. Characters 40 years or older skew heavily male across film and TV: 74.3 percent male to 25.7 percent female.
Just 2 percent of speaking characters were LGBT-identified. Among the 11,306 speaking characters studied, only seven were transgendered (and four were from the same series).
"When we start to step back to see this larger ecology, I think we see a picture of exclusion," said Smith. "And it doesn't match the norms of the population of the United States."
Behind the camera, the discrepancy is even greater. Directors overall were 87 percent white. Broadcast TV directors (90.4 percent white) were the least diverse.
Just 15.2 percent of directors, 28.9 percent of writers and 22.6 percent of series creators were female. In film, the gender gap is greatest: Only 3.4 percent of the films studied were directed by women, and only two directors out of the 109 were black women: Ava DuVernay ("Selma") and Amma Asante ("Belle").
Following a request made in May by the American Civil Liberties Union (which cited previous USC studies, as well as those by UCLA and the Directors Guild in claiming women have been "systematically excluded" from directing jobs), the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission last year began investigating gender discrimination in Hollywood.
The federal investigation is just one element of growing scrutiny for the industry. But for protesters, finding a target for what some consider a systematic problem isn't easy. Even many of those, like Spike Lee, who have criticized the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences, have insisted the issue goes far deeper than Oscar nominees. When academy president Cheryl Boone Isaacs recently announced dramatic steps to diversify the overwhelmingly white and male film academy, she said: "The academy is going to lead, and not wait for the industry to catch up."
USC's study, which the school has been publishing in various forms for the last 10 years, also seeks to add a new metric in the conversation. The "inclusivity index" is a report card for the performances of 21st Century Fox, CBS, NBC Universal, Sony, the Walt Disney Co., Time Warner, Viacom, Amazon, Hulu and Netflix. Those companies encompass all the broadcast networks, most major cable channels, all of the major movie studios and three of the dominant streaming services.
Each was rated by their percentage of female, minority and LGBT characters; and of female writers and directors. None of the six major studios rated better than 20 percent overall; Time Warner fared poorest of all with a score of zero. The report concludes that the film industry "still functions as a straight, white, boy's club."
Disney, Sony, Paramount, Fox, Universal and Warner Bros. didn't immediate comment Sunday night.
Some of the same companies, however, scored better when their TV and digital offerings were evaluated. Disney, the CW, Amazon and Hulu all scored 65 percent and above.
"When we turn to see where the problem is better or worse, the apex to this whole endeavor is: Everyone in film is failing, all of the companies investigated," said Smith. "They're impervious to change. But there are pockets of promise in television. There is a focus that change is possible. The very companies that are inclusive — Disney, CW, Hulu, Amazon to some degree — those companies, if they're producing and distributing motion pictures, can do this. We now have evidence that they can, and they can thrive."
USC researchers also, for the first time, added analysis of those 10 companies' executives. Researches didn't have racial or ethnic background information, but found that women represent about 20 percent of corporate boards, chief executives and executive management teams.
"As prestige or power of the title increases, we see fewer women at the top," said Katherine Pieper, who co-authored the study with Smith and Marc Choueiti. "Film still has a prestige to it, so we see fewer women filling those positions."
The research offers the chance for comparison between mediums. Do streaming services adhere to the established patterns of traditional television or deviate from them?
In some cases, they do, but in many, they don't. Netflix (20 percent on the inclusion index) scored about the same as NBC Universal, CBS and Fox. There were far fewer female directors working in digital series (11.8 percent) than in broadcast (17.1 percent), in the shows studied. Broadcast, cable and steaming series also all revel in sexualized female characters and nudity more than movies do.
But some of the study's most troubling finds are simply absences. Roughly 50 percent of the examined content didn't feature one Asian or Asian-American character; 20 percent didn't include one black character. Researchers argue for change beyond "tokenism," including making target goals public and creating a system of checks and balances in storytelling decisions.
"People are still erased. It's 2016 and it's time for a change," said Smith. "We've laid out concrete actionable steps because we don't want to do this again in 10 years."
A study to be released Monday by the Media, Diversity and Social Change Initiative at the University of Southern California's Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism offers one of the most wide-ranging examinations of the film and television industries, including a pointed "inclusivity index" of 10 major media companies — from Disney to Netflix — that gives a failing grade to every movie studio and most TV makers.
Coming just days before an Academy Awards where a second straight year of all-white acting nominees has enflamed an industry-wide crisis, the report offers a new barrage of sobering statistics that further evidence a deep discrepancy between Hollywood and the American population it entertains, in gender, race and ethnicity.
"The prequel to OscarsSoWhite is HollywoodSoWhite," said Stacy L. Smith, a USC professor and one of the study's authors, in an interview. "We don't have a diversity problem. We have an inclusion crisis."
The study, titled the "Comprehensive Annenberg Report on Diversity," examined the 109 films released by major studios (including art-house divisions) in 2014 and 305 scripted, first-run TV and digital series across 31 networks and streaming services that aired from September 2014 to August 2015. More than 11,000 speaking characters were analyzed for gender, racial and ethnic representation and LGBT status. Some 10,000 directors, writers and show creators were examined, as was the gender of more than 1,500 executives.
The portrait is one of pervasive underrepresentation, no matter the media platform, from CEOs to minor characters. "Overall, the landscape of media content is still largely whitewashed," the study concludes.
In the 414 studied films and series, only a third of speaking characters were female, and only 28.3 percent were from minority groups — about 10 percent less than the makeup of the U.S. population. Characters 40 years or older skew heavily male across film and TV: 74.3 percent male to 25.7 percent female.
Just 2 percent of speaking characters were LGBT-identified. Among the 11,306 speaking characters studied, only seven were transgendered (and four were from the same series).
"When we start to step back to see this larger ecology, I think we see a picture of exclusion," said Smith. "And it doesn't match the norms of the population of the United States."
Behind the camera, the discrepancy is even greater. Directors overall were 87 percent white. Broadcast TV directors (90.4 percent white) were the least diverse.
Just 15.2 percent of directors, 28.9 percent of writers and 22.6 percent of series creators were female. In film, the gender gap is greatest: Only 3.4 percent of the films studied were directed by women, and only two directors out of the 109 were black women: Ava DuVernay ("Selma") and Amma Asante ("Belle").
Following a request made in May by the American Civil Liberties Union (which cited previous USC studies, as well as those by UCLA and the Directors Guild in claiming women have been "systematically excluded" from directing jobs), the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission last year began investigating gender discrimination in Hollywood.
The federal investigation is just one element of growing scrutiny for the industry. But for protesters, finding a target for what some consider a systematic problem isn't easy. Even many of those, like Spike Lee, who have criticized the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences, have insisted the issue goes far deeper than Oscar nominees. When academy president Cheryl Boone Isaacs recently announced dramatic steps to diversify the overwhelmingly white and male film academy, she said: "The academy is going to lead, and not wait for the industry to catch up."
USC's study, which the school has been publishing in various forms for the last 10 years, also seeks to add a new metric in the conversation. The "inclusivity index" is a report card for the performances of 21st Century Fox, CBS, NBC Universal, Sony, the Walt Disney Co., Time Warner, Viacom, Amazon, Hulu and Netflix. Those companies encompass all the broadcast networks, most major cable channels, all of the major movie studios and three of the dominant streaming services.
Each was rated by their percentage of female, minority and LGBT characters; and of female writers and directors. None of the six major studios rated better than 20 percent overall; Time Warner fared poorest of all with a score of zero. The report concludes that the film industry "still functions as a straight, white, boy's club."
Disney, Sony, Paramount, Fox, Universal and Warner Bros. didn't immediate comment Sunday night.
Some of the same companies, however, scored better when their TV and digital offerings were evaluated. Disney, the CW, Amazon and Hulu all scored 65 percent and above.
"When we turn to see where the problem is better or worse, the apex to this whole endeavor is: Everyone in film is failing, all of the companies investigated," said Smith. "They're impervious to change. But there are pockets of promise in television. There is a focus that change is possible. The very companies that are inclusive — Disney, CW, Hulu, Amazon to some degree — those companies, if they're producing and distributing motion pictures, can do this. We now have evidence that they can, and they can thrive."
USC researchers also, for the first time, added analysis of those 10 companies' executives. Researches didn't have racial or ethnic background information, but found that women represent about 20 percent of corporate boards, chief executives and executive management teams.
"As prestige or power of the title increases, we see fewer women at the top," said Katherine Pieper, who co-authored the study with Smith and Marc Choueiti. "Film still has a prestige to it, so we see fewer women filling those positions."
The research offers the chance for comparison between mediums. Do streaming services adhere to the established patterns of traditional television or deviate from them?
In some cases, they do, but in many, they don't. Netflix (20 percent on the inclusion index) scored about the same as NBC Universal, CBS and Fox. There were far fewer female directors working in digital series (11.8 percent) than in broadcast (17.1 percent), in the shows studied. Broadcast, cable and steaming series also all revel in sexualized female characters and nudity more than movies do.
But some of the study's most troubling finds are simply absences. Roughly 50 percent of the examined content didn't feature one Asian or Asian-American character; 20 percent didn't include one black character. Researchers argue for change beyond "tokenism," including making target goals public and creating a system of checks and balances in storytelling decisions.
"People are still erased. It's 2016 and it's time for a change," said Smith. "We've laid out concrete actionable steps because we don't want to do this again in 10 years."
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Wednesday, February 24, 2016
Historical and Cultural Context (Media Timeline-- NOTES)
Historical and Cultural Context
LANGUAGE
The birth of spoken language marked a major development in the evolution of our species. By necessity, oral-based societies became very dependent upon their members to have exceptional memories. The challenge was to accurately pass down from generation to generation as much information as could be remembered. That limitation, however, caused our collective knowledge and information base to grow slowly. As hunter-gatherer societies evolved into more complex agricultural societies, our need for better record keeping intensified.
WRITING
Two problems needed to be solved before writing emerged: (1) what symbols to use to represent sounds and ideas, and (2) upon what type of surface could these symbols be recorded.
Sign Writing Vs. Phonetic Writing
The first problem was solved in two ways: (1) with systems that used graphic symbols to represent objects, sounds and ideas, e.g., Chinese pictographs and Egyptian hieroglyphics, and (2) with systems that used symbols (later known as alphabet letters) to primarily represent sounds; groups of letters made a word and groups of word made a sentence, a complete thought. The Phoenicians are generally credited for creating the first alphabet. The Romans later modified our alphabet to its present 26 characters.
Clay vs. Paper
Writing surfaces evolved. In Sumeria, soft clay tablets were inscribed with wedge-shaped tool. Egyptians wrote on woven papyrus plants made semi-smooth by rock polishing. Greeks used parchment made from sheep or goat hides; parchment sheets could be stitched together to form scrolls. The Chinese made paper from a pressed pulp made of tree bark and fibrous materials; in use by 100 AD, but unavailable in Europe for another 1,000 years.
Social Impact of Writing:
. created a new division among people; those who could write and read, and those who
could not, the result was an access or non-access to power garnered through knowledge
. facilitated the birth, growth, and maintenance of powerful ancient empire civilizations
. knowledge could be accumulated by preserving and passing it down to new generations
. laws could be codified and applied consistently throughout the land
The Middle Ages
Began with the fall of Rome in the 6th century. Demand for books continues to rise, but the slow, error-prone, expensive, method of hand-copying each manuscript kept supplies minimal.
Monks in monasteries often took a year to copy just one commissioned book. Mistakes were common and cumulative, and there was no standard book filing or cross-indexing system in use.
By 1150, trade routes were expanding, the idea of universities was emerging, strong central governments began forming, and the need to accumulate information continued to grow. Over the years the demand for more books continued to increase, and eventually book production moved from the religious to the secular arena. Helped by the widespread introduction of paper from China, writing shops, or scriptoria, opened all across the European continent. Nonetheless, supplies were still limited by the number of books that scribes could hand-produce.
PRINTING
Though early Asian variations of printing existed before Johann Gutenberg, his use of moveable metal type in 1453 revolutionized communication. Printing could become cheap, quick, and error-free.
Effects of the Gutenberg Revolution
. helped standardize and popularize vernacular (everyday) languages (as opposed to Latin),
which in turn helped spawn the growth of nationalism in Europe in the later Middle Ages
. information quickly became more accessible to a wider range of people
. more books fueled the demand for literacy which in turn created a demand for more books
. generated new schools of social and religious doctrines during the Reformation era, such as Martin Luther’s Protestantism
. accelerated the publication of and interest in scientific research
. helped encourage exploration by the timely publishing of maps, geographical information,
and the colorful accounts of early explorers
. had a profound effect on the growth of accumulated knowledge, with more books resulting
in an increased number of scholars and students; helped make possible the Renaissance of the 16th Century
. led to the development of current concept of “news”
Technology and Cultural Change
If we ascribe too much credit for cultural change to a specific technology, we risk viewing social development through the narrow lens of technological determinism, the view that technology drives historical change. A more moderate position might suggest that technology functions with various social, economic, and cultural forces to help bring about those changes.
The introduction of moveable type marked the start of what we generally define as mass communication, a critical event in Western history.
CONQUERING SPACE AND TIME:
THE TELEGRAPH AND TELEPHONE
Development of the Telegraph
Before the telegraph, messages traveled only as fast as the fastest form of transportation; but with one invention the speed of communication went from 30 miles per hour (train) to 186,000 miles per second (the speed of light). It was the first device that made possible instantaneous point-to-point communication at huge distances. The word telegraph comes from Greek words meaning “to write at a distance.” It was also the first technology to use digital signals—dots and dashes.
Using a device to vary the time an electric current was sent across the wires, the telegraph made point-to-point communication possible by sending codes across the wires. Samuel Morse’s code of telegraphic dots and dashes, still in use today, is the most famous.
Cultural Impact of the Telegraph
. by 1850, almost every city on our Western frontier was linked with other cities
. in 1866, the U.S. laid a trans-Atlantic cable connecting America with Europe
Parallel to the expansion of the railroads, the telegraph helped change the way we moved goods, coordinated services (particularly military actions), and helped speed up communication between buyers and sellers. Because of near-instant communication, market prices between cities were standardized and stabilized. The telegraph also affected the flow of news, making it both possible and a commercial “must” to carry up-to-the-day’s events from far distant points. News stories also became shorter due to the fact that telegraph services charged by the word.
Government and Media
Unlike other countries where the telegraph was seen as an extension of the postal service, and therefore under logical control and operation of the government, the United States followed a model of private ownership and commercial development.
A Change in Perspective
The telegraph changed how people thought of distance; as the new device reconfigured old concepts of space and time, every “there” became a “here.” We began rethinking our world, as mass media writer Marshall McLuhan came to describe it, as a “Global Village.” Thanks to the telegraph system, most countries on the planet became inextricably linked together.
Soon after the telegraph, the telephone began linking people together by voice, eliminating the need to understand telegraphic codes. Its ability to network and offer private communications made it a “must have” in homes and businesses. And just as big business came to dominate the telegraph industry (Western Union), AT&T (which later acquired Western Union) quickly became the giant of the telephone industry.
CAPTURING THE IMAGE:
PHOTOGRAPHY AND MOTION PICTURES
Early Technological Development
Two inventions were needed to make photography a reality:
. a way to focus light rays from a subject onto a surface
. a way to permanently store (and copy) those images
In the 16th century artists discovered that they could project an inverted image of a subject in the end of a dark box through a pinhole at the other end of the box, a device called the camera obscura (dark chamber).
In the 1830s, two Frenchmen, Joseph Niepce and Louis Daguerre, found a way to capture images on glass plates treated with silver iodide. Early photos (called Daguerreotypes) required long exposure times, and made them particularly suitable for portrait work. At about the same time William Fox Talbot, from England, found a way to store images (and subsequently produce multiple copies) on paper. In the 1890s, George Eastman introduced and marketed his new box camera, the Brownie, thus making photography accessible to the masses.
Mathew Brady
Brady was the first to capture war—in this case our Civil War—on film, giving a more accurate, rather than glorified, record of what war was actually like. Though most of his glass plate negatives were lost, enough survived to show generations then and now the real horrors of warfare; his pictures, and their impact on the public, were a forerunner to what television would show us 100 years later in the Vietnam war.
Photography also affected art, dispensing with any need art may have had to accurately depict the real word. Photography freed artists to interpret the world and events in new and unique ways. Photography itself became its own art form, however, and spawned such noted photographers as Alfred Steiglitz, Margaret Bourke-White, Edward Steichen, and Ansel Adams.
Photography’s Influence on Mass Culture
Once in the hands of the masses, photography enabled people to create a permanent record of their personal histories. Printing advances made it easy to publish photographs in magazines and newspapers, creating a new profession—photojournalism. The 1920s saw a surge in time-saving devices, and the spread of photographic news added to that movement; Americans could now see, rather than have to read, newsworthy events. Printed columns soon decreased while space devoted to pictures increased; the movement later gave birth to such popular picture magazines such as Life and Look. Partly as a result, our definition of news became visually biased; news became that which could be shown.
Pictures in Motion
Helped by the advent of three great social movements (industrialization, urbanization, and immigration), the demand for film entertainment flourished in crude store-front theaters around the 1900s. By 1910 there were over 10,000 of these nickelodeons, which helped create the motion picture industry.
Motion Pictures and American Culture
Eventually, only the large companies who could afford to produce feature length films survived. They soon dominated the production, distribution, and exhibition of movies. The film industry killed Vaudeville and forever altered our concept of leisure time activities. In part due to photography and the mass appeal newspaper, a mass culture of idolized film stars, movie images, and popularized portrayals of model “American” values and cultural icons was created.
Film gave impetus to a perceived need to study what impact motion pictures (and later other media) might have on the public psyche; the 1930s Payne Fund was one of the first serious efforts to investigate the media’s potential effects. During the 1930s film also injected itself into journalism in the form of newsreels, ten-minute short takes of various news, sports, weather, and human interest stories. Dying out in the 1950s under pressure from TV news, the newsreel format continues to influence the conventions of present day TV news formats.
NEWS AND ENTERTAINMENT AT HOME:
RADIO AND TELEVISION BROADCASTING
A byproduct of electromagnetic research in physics, the advent of radio (or wireless as it was first known) in the 1910s made it possible for one source to send a message to multiple receivers. In World War I military planners quickly saw radio’s applicability to warfare, thus encouraging both research and development in the medium while at the same time ending some long-standing patent wars that had delayed radio’s development.
Broadcasting
Radio’s one-to-many communication format, known as broadcasting, was the first medium to bring sports, music, talk, and news into the American living room. Manufacturing radio sets, the original profit motive for radio, was soon replaced in the 1920s by advertising (selling air time, or rather supplying audiences to businesses for a fee).
Radio growth was so frenzied, however, that the government was forced to intervene in 1927 by establishing the Federal Radio Commission to regulate radio’s technical side. In 1934. the FRC was replaced by the Federal Communications Commission; after that, the government opted to take a hands off approach to radio content, leaving radio’s fortunes in the hands of business.
Paralleling an era of newspaper consolidation, two national radio networks (later three) emerged. Radio content quickly moved toward mass appeal programs, which provided huge audiences for major advertisers. During the 1930s, economic pressures from the Great Depression forced many out-of-work Vaudeville performers to enter radio, thus increasing the level of professionalism and appeal of network programming. In the late 1930s, radio journalism came into being as a new and strong news medium and strongly rivaled the newspaper industry.
Cultural Impact of Radio
. radio helped popularize different kinds of music
. radio introduced a new entertainment genre, the soap opera, which by 1940 accounted for
some 60 percent of all daytime network programming
. radio was first medium to introduce mass content aimed at children, thus recognizing
children as a viable commercial market
. radio was first to introduce situation comedies, a program genre that’s become a staple on
television
. radio news came of age in the 1930s-40s as a result of serious world events.
. radio personalized news, giving rise to trusted and well-known news celebrities
. radio changed how Americans spent their free time – by the 1930s-40s, radio had become
the prime source of American entertainment and news in usually during the early evening hours, later known as prime time.
Television
Halted during WW II, television’s growth surged during the prosperous era of the early 1950s. Pent up consumer demand fueled spending (and thus TV ad dollars) following the war years. Sales of TV sets took off (it took only 10 years to be in 85 percent of U.S. homes), and an increasing amount of American leisure time was now being spent in front of the TV set.
Cultural Impact of TV
Television is in 99 percent of all households, and the set is on for over seven hours a day. It’s become our third largest time consumer (third only to sleep and work), and in the process it’s transforming almost every aspect of our culture, from politics, to religion, to news, and to the way we learn.
Today we routinely expect live coverage of events from anywhere at anytime. Time and space no longer seem important, and we have all come to share a national, even global, consciousness through the common visual icons provided by television—the Japanese Tsunami, the Arab Spring, President Kennedy's funeral, the Apollo moon landings, the Challenger explosion, and the planes striking the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001, etc.
THE DIGITAL REVOLUTION
Nicholas Negroponte, MIT’s Media Laboratory Director, summed up the digital revolution as the difference between atoms and bits. Information, once solely comprised of atoms (material goods such as paper, film, tapes, and CDs) and which moved to and from the marketplace relatively slowly, is rapidly being replaced by the instantaneous transfer of bits—electronic zeros and ones.
Digital technology is a system that encodes information—sound, text, data, graphics and video—into a series of on-and-off pulses, denoted as zeros and ones. Once digitized, information can be easily copied and transported at extremely low costs. Digital technology and the Internet have triggered a revolution in the way information is stored and transmitted.
Digital technology is now mainstream (iPods, YouTube, Twitter, Facebook, MySpace, DVR, Digital TV, HDTV, Hulu, etc.).
Social and cultural implications of the digital age are considerable.
. many of the creative arts have embraced digital technology.
. the notion of what “community” means may have to be rethought, with relationships that
can be formed on the basis of needs and interests rather than locale
. consider what the digital age might mean for politics; perhaps representative democracy
could be rivaled by a digital democracy made possible by direct and instantaneous links
between the people and their government.
. there’s the problem of the digital divide, or the problem of the “have” and “have-nots”—
those who can afford the technology and have the training to use it, and those who can’t
and don’t.
THE NEXT REVOLUTION?
WIRELESS HANDHELD MEDIA
Smart phones, laptop computers, and tablet computers share common characteristics:
. they are linked together using wireless technology
. they are portable and allow users to access information from anywhere
. they are interconnected and allow users to hook into the worldwide phone network or the
Internet
. they combine features of mass communication and interpersonal communication
These devices will eventually merge into one, and have the potential to transform traditional media drastically and to alter American culture. Some of the changes we've already seen include:
. they have changed the practice of journalism, replacing pencil and paper as the tools of the
trade, and allowing reporters to send text, audio, and pictures from the field
. many media organizations are distributing content to wireless media
. wireless mobile media have taken on some of the surveillance functions of the media
. they facilitate mobile parenting
. they have "softened" the concept of time
. on the downside, they allow people to coordinate illegal activities, they can impair driving,
they can create social annoyance, and they cost money – will the digital divide increase?
CONCLUDING OBSERVATIONS
. it’s difficult to accurately predict the ultimate use of any new medium.
LANGUAGE
The birth of spoken language marked a major development in the evolution of our species. By necessity, oral-based societies became very dependent upon their members to have exceptional memories. The challenge was to accurately pass down from generation to generation as much information as could be remembered. That limitation, however, caused our collective knowledge and information base to grow slowly. As hunter-gatherer societies evolved into more complex agricultural societies, our need for better record keeping intensified.
WRITING
Two problems needed to be solved before writing emerged: (1) what symbols to use to represent sounds and ideas, and (2) upon what type of surface could these symbols be recorded.
Sign Writing Vs. Phonetic Writing
The first problem was solved in two ways: (1) with systems that used graphic symbols to represent objects, sounds and ideas, e.g., Chinese pictographs and Egyptian hieroglyphics, and (2) with systems that used symbols (later known as alphabet letters) to primarily represent sounds; groups of letters made a word and groups of word made a sentence, a complete thought. The Phoenicians are generally credited for creating the first alphabet. The Romans later modified our alphabet to its present 26 characters.
Clay vs. Paper
Writing surfaces evolved. In Sumeria, soft clay tablets were inscribed with wedge-shaped tool. Egyptians wrote on woven papyrus plants made semi-smooth by rock polishing. Greeks used parchment made from sheep or goat hides; parchment sheets could be stitched together to form scrolls. The Chinese made paper from a pressed pulp made of tree bark and fibrous materials; in use by 100 AD, but unavailable in Europe for another 1,000 years.
Social Impact of Writing:
. created a new division among people; those who could write and read, and those who
could not, the result was an access or non-access to power garnered through knowledge
. facilitated the birth, growth, and maintenance of powerful ancient empire civilizations
. knowledge could be accumulated by preserving and passing it down to new generations
. laws could be codified and applied consistently throughout the land
The Middle Ages
Began with the fall of Rome in the 6th century. Demand for books continues to rise, but the slow, error-prone, expensive, method of hand-copying each manuscript kept supplies minimal.
Monks in monasteries often took a year to copy just one commissioned book. Mistakes were common and cumulative, and there was no standard book filing or cross-indexing system in use.
By 1150, trade routes were expanding, the idea of universities was emerging, strong central governments began forming, and the need to accumulate information continued to grow. Over the years the demand for more books continued to increase, and eventually book production moved from the religious to the secular arena. Helped by the widespread introduction of paper from China, writing shops, or scriptoria, opened all across the European continent. Nonetheless, supplies were still limited by the number of books that scribes could hand-produce.
PRINTING
Though early Asian variations of printing existed before Johann Gutenberg, his use of moveable metal type in 1453 revolutionized communication. Printing could become cheap, quick, and error-free.
Effects of the Gutenberg Revolution
. helped standardize and popularize vernacular (everyday) languages (as opposed to Latin),
which in turn helped spawn the growth of nationalism in Europe in the later Middle Ages
. information quickly became more accessible to a wider range of people
. more books fueled the demand for literacy which in turn created a demand for more books
. generated new schools of social and religious doctrines during the Reformation era, such as Martin Luther’s Protestantism
. accelerated the publication of and interest in scientific research
. helped encourage exploration by the timely publishing of maps, geographical information,
and the colorful accounts of early explorers
. had a profound effect on the growth of accumulated knowledge, with more books resulting
in an increased number of scholars and students; helped make possible the Renaissance of the 16th Century
. led to the development of current concept of “news”
Technology and Cultural Change
If we ascribe too much credit for cultural change to a specific technology, we risk viewing social development through the narrow lens of technological determinism, the view that technology drives historical change. A more moderate position might suggest that technology functions with various social, economic, and cultural forces to help bring about those changes.
The introduction of moveable type marked the start of what we generally define as mass communication, a critical event in Western history.
CONQUERING SPACE AND TIME:
THE TELEGRAPH AND TELEPHONE
Development of the Telegraph
Before the telegraph, messages traveled only as fast as the fastest form of transportation; but with one invention the speed of communication went from 30 miles per hour (train) to 186,000 miles per second (the speed of light). It was the first device that made possible instantaneous point-to-point communication at huge distances. The word telegraph comes from Greek words meaning “to write at a distance.” It was also the first technology to use digital signals—dots and dashes.
Using a device to vary the time an electric current was sent across the wires, the telegraph made point-to-point communication possible by sending codes across the wires. Samuel Morse’s code of telegraphic dots and dashes, still in use today, is the most famous.
Cultural Impact of the Telegraph
. by 1850, almost every city on our Western frontier was linked with other cities
. in 1866, the U.S. laid a trans-Atlantic cable connecting America with Europe
Parallel to the expansion of the railroads, the telegraph helped change the way we moved goods, coordinated services (particularly military actions), and helped speed up communication between buyers and sellers. Because of near-instant communication, market prices between cities were standardized and stabilized. The telegraph also affected the flow of news, making it both possible and a commercial “must” to carry up-to-the-day’s events from far distant points. News stories also became shorter due to the fact that telegraph services charged by the word.
Government and Media
Unlike other countries where the telegraph was seen as an extension of the postal service, and therefore under logical control and operation of the government, the United States followed a model of private ownership and commercial development.
A Change in Perspective
The telegraph changed how people thought of distance; as the new device reconfigured old concepts of space and time, every “there” became a “here.” We began rethinking our world, as mass media writer Marshall McLuhan came to describe it, as a “Global Village.” Thanks to the telegraph system, most countries on the planet became inextricably linked together.
Soon after the telegraph, the telephone began linking people together by voice, eliminating the need to understand telegraphic codes. Its ability to network and offer private communications made it a “must have” in homes and businesses. And just as big business came to dominate the telegraph industry (Western Union), AT&T (which later acquired Western Union) quickly became the giant of the telephone industry.
CAPTURING THE IMAGE:
PHOTOGRAPHY AND MOTION PICTURES
Early Technological Development
Two inventions were needed to make photography a reality:
. a way to focus light rays from a subject onto a surface
. a way to permanently store (and copy) those images
In the 16th century artists discovered that they could project an inverted image of a subject in the end of a dark box through a pinhole at the other end of the box, a device called the camera obscura (dark chamber).
In the 1830s, two Frenchmen, Joseph Niepce and Louis Daguerre, found a way to capture images on glass plates treated with silver iodide. Early photos (called Daguerreotypes) required long exposure times, and made them particularly suitable for portrait work. At about the same time William Fox Talbot, from England, found a way to store images (and subsequently produce multiple copies) on paper. In the 1890s, George Eastman introduced and marketed his new box camera, the Brownie, thus making photography accessible to the masses.
Mathew Brady
Brady was the first to capture war—in this case our Civil War—on film, giving a more accurate, rather than glorified, record of what war was actually like. Though most of his glass plate negatives were lost, enough survived to show generations then and now the real horrors of warfare; his pictures, and their impact on the public, were a forerunner to what television would show us 100 years later in the Vietnam war.
Photography also affected art, dispensing with any need art may have had to accurately depict the real word. Photography freed artists to interpret the world and events in new and unique ways. Photography itself became its own art form, however, and spawned such noted photographers as Alfred Steiglitz, Margaret Bourke-White, Edward Steichen, and Ansel Adams.
Photography’s Influence on Mass Culture
Once in the hands of the masses, photography enabled people to create a permanent record of their personal histories. Printing advances made it easy to publish photographs in magazines and newspapers, creating a new profession—photojournalism. The 1920s saw a surge in time-saving devices, and the spread of photographic news added to that movement; Americans could now see, rather than have to read, newsworthy events. Printed columns soon decreased while space devoted to pictures increased; the movement later gave birth to such popular picture magazines such as Life and Look. Partly as a result, our definition of news became visually biased; news became that which could be shown.
Pictures in Motion
Helped by the advent of three great social movements (industrialization, urbanization, and immigration), the demand for film entertainment flourished in crude store-front theaters around the 1900s. By 1910 there were over 10,000 of these nickelodeons, which helped create the motion picture industry.
Motion Pictures and American Culture
Eventually, only the large companies who could afford to produce feature length films survived. They soon dominated the production, distribution, and exhibition of movies. The film industry killed Vaudeville and forever altered our concept of leisure time activities. In part due to photography and the mass appeal newspaper, a mass culture of idolized film stars, movie images, and popularized portrayals of model “American” values and cultural icons was created.
Film gave impetus to a perceived need to study what impact motion pictures (and later other media) might have on the public psyche; the 1930s Payne Fund was one of the first serious efforts to investigate the media’s potential effects. During the 1930s film also injected itself into journalism in the form of newsreels, ten-minute short takes of various news, sports, weather, and human interest stories. Dying out in the 1950s under pressure from TV news, the newsreel format continues to influence the conventions of present day TV news formats.
NEWS AND ENTERTAINMENT AT HOME:
RADIO AND TELEVISION BROADCASTING
A byproduct of electromagnetic research in physics, the advent of radio (or wireless as it was first known) in the 1910s made it possible for one source to send a message to multiple receivers. In World War I military planners quickly saw radio’s applicability to warfare, thus encouraging both research and development in the medium while at the same time ending some long-standing patent wars that had delayed radio’s development.
Broadcasting
Radio’s one-to-many communication format, known as broadcasting, was the first medium to bring sports, music, talk, and news into the American living room. Manufacturing radio sets, the original profit motive for radio, was soon replaced in the 1920s by advertising (selling air time, or rather supplying audiences to businesses for a fee).
Radio growth was so frenzied, however, that the government was forced to intervene in 1927 by establishing the Federal Radio Commission to regulate radio’s technical side. In 1934. the FRC was replaced by the Federal Communications Commission; after that, the government opted to take a hands off approach to radio content, leaving radio’s fortunes in the hands of business.
Paralleling an era of newspaper consolidation, two national radio networks (later three) emerged. Radio content quickly moved toward mass appeal programs, which provided huge audiences for major advertisers. During the 1930s, economic pressures from the Great Depression forced many out-of-work Vaudeville performers to enter radio, thus increasing the level of professionalism and appeal of network programming. In the late 1930s, radio journalism came into being as a new and strong news medium and strongly rivaled the newspaper industry.
Cultural Impact of Radio
. radio helped popularize different kinds of music
. radio introduced a new entertainment genre, the soap opera, which by 1940 accounted for
some 60 percent of all daytime network programming
. radio was first medium to introduce mass content aimed at children, thus recognizing
children as a viable commercial market
. radio was first to introduce situation comedies, a program genre that’s become a staple on
television
. radio news came of age in the 1930s-40s as a result of serious world events.
. radio personalized news, giving rise to trusted and well-known news celebrities
. radio changed how Americans spent their free time – by the 1930s-40s, radio had become
the prime source of American entertainment and news in usually during the early evening hours, later known as prime time.
Television
Halted during WW II, television’s growth surged during the prosperous era of the early 1950s. Pent up consumer demand fueled spending (and thus TV ad dollars) following the war years. Sales of TV sets took off (it took only 10 years to be in 85 percent of U.S. homes), and an increasing amount of American leisure time was now being spent in front of the TV set.
Cultural Impact of TV
Television is in 99 percent of all households, and the set is on for over seven hours a day. It’s become our third largest time consumer (third only to sleep and work), and in the process it’s transforming almost every aspect of our culture, from politics, to religion, to news, and to the way we learn.
Today we routinely expect live coverage of events from anywhere at anytime. Time and space no longer seem important, and we have all come to share a national, even global, consciousness through the common visual icons provided by television—the Japanese Tsunami, the Arab Spring, President Kennedy's funeral, the Apollo moon landings, the Challenger explosion, and the planes striking the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001, etc.
THE DIGITAL REVOLUTION
Nicholas Negroponte, MIT’s Media Laboratory Director, summed up the digital revolution as the difference between atoms and bits. Information, once solely comprised of atoms (material goods such as paper, film, tapes, and CDs) and which moved to and from the marketplace relatively slowly, is rapidly being replaced by the instantaneous transfer of bits—electronic zeros and ones.
Digital technology is a system that encodes information—sound, text, data, graphics and video—into a series of on-and-off pulses, denoted as zeros and ones. Once digitized, information can be easily copied and transported at extremely low costs. Digital technology and the Internet have triggered a revolution in the way information is stored and transmitted.
Digital technology is now mainstream (iPods, YouTube, Twitter, Facebook, MySpace, DVR, Digital TV, HDTV, Hulu, etc.).
Social and cultural implications of the digital age are considerable.
. many of the creative arts have embraced digital technology.
. the notion of what “community” means may have to be rethought, with relationships that
can be formed on the basis of needs and interests rather than locale
. consider what the digital age might mean for politics; perhaps representative democracy
could be rivaled by a digital democracy made possible by direct and instantaneous links
between the people and their government.
. there’s the problem of the digital divide, or the problem of the “have” and “have-nots”—
those who can afford the technology and have the training to use it, and those who can’t
and don’t.
THE NEXT REVOLUTION?
WIRELESS HANDHELD MEDIA
Smart phones, laptop computers, and tablet computers share common characteristics:
. they are linked together using wireless technology
. they are portable and allow users to access information from anywhere
. they are interconnected and allow users to hook into the worldwide phone network or the
Internet
. they combine features of mass communication and interpersonal communication
These devices will eventually merge into one, and have the potential to transform traditional media drastically and to alter American culture. Some of the changes we've already seen include:
. they have changed the practice of journalism, replacing pencil and paper as the tools of the
trade, and allowing reporters to send text, audio, and pictures from the field
. many media organizations are distributing content to wireless media
. wireless mobile media have taken on some of the surveillance functions of the media
. they facilitate mobile parenting
. they have "softened" the concept of time
. on the downside, they allow people to coordinate illegal activities, they can impair driving,
they can create social annoyance, and they cost money – will the digital divide increase?
CONCLUDING OBSERVATIONS
. it’s difficult to accurately predict the ultimate use of any new medium.
. it appears that the emergence of any new communication advance changes but does not make extinct those advances that came before it.
Tuesday, February 23, 2016
Mass Media Project Groups (TR 2:35 p.m.)
Group 1.
1. Zack Myles
2. Patrick McNeeley
3. Hale Douthit
4.David Lane
Group 2.
1.Colin Holmes
2.Jennie Arruda
3.Alexa Luciano
4. Cameron Bain
Group 3.
1. Elizabeth Esten
2. Hannah Paquette
3. Annemarie Lillis
4. Josh Vitchkoski
Group 4.
1.Aden Nasarat
2.Josh horowitz
3.
4.
Group 5.
1.Jess Acosta
2.Michael Pickhardt
3.Damiano Malvasio
4.Jackie Borwick
Group 6.
1.Hunter Haff
2.Maddie Mathers
3.Julianne Salemy
4.Mihir Siddartha
Group 7.
1. Brittany Word
2.Kayla Monteiro
3.Adi Giesey
4. Mike Mortitz
Group 8.
1. Raelyn Giansanti
2. Wo Jarvis
3. Emily Hammel
4.Morgan DeShields-McClure
1. Zack Myles
2. Patrick McNeeley
3. Hale Douthit
4.David Lane
Group 2.
1.Colin Holmes
2.Jennie Arruda
3.Alexa Luciano
4. Cameron Bain
Group 3.
1. Elizabeth Esten
2. Hannah Paquette
3. Annemarie Lillis
4. Josh Vitchkoski
Group 4.
1.Aden Nasarat
2.Josh horowitz
3.
4.
Group 5.
1.Jess Acosta
2.Michael Pickhardt
3.Damiano Malvasio
4.Jackie Borwick
Group 6.
1.Hunter Haff
2.Maddie Mathers
3.Julianne Salemy
4.Mihir Siddartha
Group 7.
1. Brittany Word
2.Kayla Monteiro
3.Adi Giesey
4. Mike Mortitz
Group 8.
1. Raelyn Giansanti
2. Wo Jarvis
3. Emily Hammel
4.Morgan DeShields-McClure
Mass Media Group Projects- TR 1:10 p.m.
Group 1.
1. Bryan Hultgren
2. Erin Berch
3. Hanyuan He
4.
Group 2.
1. Katie Holzman
2. Renee Best
3.Brian Bayer
4.Taylor Abdou
Group 3.
1. Morgan Gjoen
2. Lauren Katz
3. Amanda Cerruti
4. Sam Owney
Group 4.
1. Missy B
2. Yasmeen M
3. Sam D
4. Sam H
Group 5.
1. Brody Armstrong
2. Jordan Gropper
3. Armen Spendjian
4. Kendyl Bennett
Group 6.
1. Alice F
2. Star L
3. Sean M
4.
Group 7.
1.Nicole Decrem
2.Brandon Tate
3.Mike Budres
4.Jessica Rocchino
Group 8.
1. Bailey Doran
2. Hannah Moriarty
3. Lily Cleary
4. Molly North
1. Bryan Hultgren
2. Erin Berch
3. Hanyuan He
4.
Group 2.
1. Katie Holzman
2. Renee Best
3.Brian Bayer
4.Taylor Abdou
Group 3.
1. Morgan Gjoen
2. Lauren Katz
3. Amanda Cerruti
4. Sam Owney
Group 4.
1. Missy B
2. Yasmeen M
3. Sam D
4. Sam H
Group 5.
1. Brody Armstrong
2. Jordan Gropper
3. Armen Spendjian
4. Kendyl Bennett
Group 6.
1. Alice F
2. Star L
3. Sean M
4.
Group 7.
1.Nicole Decrem
2.Brandon Tate
3.Mike Budres
4.Jessica Rocchino
Group 8.
1. Bailey Doran
2. Hannah Moriarty
3. Lily Cleary
4. Molly North
Sunday, February 21, 2016
Reaction #3 Prompt
A few years ago, the famed director Steven Spielberg predicted an 'implosion' of the film industry in the not-so-distant future. At the same time, others have noted (as you'll read) that Hollywood continues to excel at making massive blockbusters (Star Wars, Superhero Movies, Franchises, etc.) and low-budget films (comedies, horror films), but the films that would normally occupy the space between low-budget and blockbuster films are no longer being produced and marketed the way they used to.
For your third reaction piece, read the two articles posted (Spielberg's prediction and Hollywood is Producing Higher Highs, Lower Lows) and write a reaction indicating whether or not you agree or disagree. Why or why not? Can home viewing via television take the place of those "middle" movies? Have serial dramas like Game of Thrones, Better Call Saul, The Walking Dead, etc. taken the place of the movies, except for the big blockbusters? Where do you see the future going?
Write a 250-500-word reaction piece and post it to Sakai under Tests & Quizzes (Reaction #3) by midnight PST, Sunday, February 28, 2016.
For your third reaction piece, read the two articles posted (Spielberg's prediction and Hollywood is Producing Higher Highs, Lower Lows) and write a reaction indicating whether or not you agree or disagree. Why or why not? Can home viewing via television take the place of those "middle" movies? Have serial dramas like Game of Thrones, Better Call Saul, The Walking Dead, etc. taken the place of the movies, except for the big blockbusters? Where do you see the future going?
Write a 250-500-word reaction piece and post it to Sakai under Tests & Quizzes (Reaction #3) by midnight PST, Sunday, February 28, 2016.
Spielberg predicts implosion of film industry (from The Hollywood Reporter):
George Lucas echoed Spielberg's sentiments at an event touting the opening of a new USC School of Cinematic Arts building, saying big changes are in store.
Steven Spielberg on Wednesday predicted an "implosion" in the film industry is inevitable, whereby a half dozen or so $250 million movies flop at the box office and alter the industry forever. What comes next -- or even before then -- will be price variances at movie theaters, where "you're gonna have to pay $25 for the next Iron Man, you're probably only going to have to pay $7 to see Lincoln." He also said that Lincolncame "this close" to being an HBO movie instead of a theatrical release.
George Lucas agreed that massive changes are afoot, including film exhibition morphing somewhat into a Broadway play model, whereby fewer movies are released, they stay in theaters for a year and ticket prices are much higher. His prediction prompted Spielberg to recall that his 1982 film E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial stayed in theaters for a year and four months.
The two legendary filmmakers, along with CNBC anchor Julia Boorstin and Microsoft president of interactive entertainment business Don Mattrick, were speaking at the University of Southern California as part of the festivities surrounding the official opening of the Interactive Media Building, three stories high and part of the USC School of Cinematic Arts.
Lucas and Spielberg told USC students that they are learning about the industry at an extraordinary time of upheaval, where even proven talents find it difficult to get movies into theaters. Some ideas from young filmmakers "are too fringe-y for the movies," Spielberg said. "That's the big danger, and there's eventually going to be an implosion — or a big meltdown. There's going to be an implosion where three or four or maybe even a half-dozen megabudget movies are going to go crashing into the ground, and that's going to change the paradigm."
Lucas lamented the high cost of marketing movies and the urge to make them for the masses while ignoring niche audiences. He called cable television "much more adventurous" than film nowadays.
"I think eventually the Lincolns will go away and they're going to be on television," Lucas said. "As mine almost was," Spielberg interjected. "This close -- ask HBO -- this close."
"We're talking Lincoln and Red Tails -- we barely got them into theaters. You're talking about Steven Spielberg and George Lucas can't get their movie into a theater," Lucas said. "I got more people into Lincoln than you got into Red Tails," Spielberg joked.
Spielberg added that he had to co-own his own studio in order to get Lincoln into theaters.
"The pathway to get into theaters is really getting smaller and smaller," Lucas said.
Mattrick and Spielberg also praised Netflix, prompting Boorstin to ask Spielberg if he planned to make original content for the Internet streamer. "I have nothing to announce," said the director.
Lucas and Spielberg also spoke of vast differences between filmmaking and video games because the latter hasn't been able to tell stories and make consumers care about the characters. Which isn't to say the two worlds aren't connected. Spielberg, in fact, has teamed with Microsoft to make a "TV" show for Xbox 360 based on the game Halo and he is making a movie based on the Electronic Arts game Need for Speed.
Email: Paul.Bond@THR.com
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