Week 1: Communication and Social Change PDF

CMNS 130: Communication and Social Change Columbia College Instructor: Dr. Jean Hebert Week 1: Introduction  About Jean & how to contact him? Jean Hebert, PhD (Communication, SFU, 2018) Contact me via my Columbia College email address (jhebert@columbiacol...

CMNS 130: Communication and Social Change Columbia College Instructor: Dr. Jean Hebert Week 1: Introduction  About Jean & how to contact him? Jean Hebert, PhD (Communication, SFU, 2018) Contact me via my Columbia College email address ([email protected]). This is best for messages that demand short, easier answers. If you need a broader discussion or understanding of readings or exams or if you need more academic assistance I suggest that you meet me in Office Hours (see next slide) I check my email daily, and can respond to your inquiry within 24 hours. Sunday/Monday is my weekend. If you contact me late on Saturday, please anticipate that I will not have a reply for you until the following Tuesday. However, there are better ways to stay in touch...  Office Hours Mon/Tue (Zoom) 12pm-1pm Wed/Sat (in person) 12pm-1pm [Room 530 (main campus)]  Classroom Etiquette This digital classroom is a respectful and inclusive space. Please speak to me and to one another with respect and openness to perspectives with which you may not agree, and which you may not understand. Oppressive language and actions are not welcome here, but people of all races, ethnicities, genders, gender identities, political or religious beliefs, and physical abilities are welcome. Disruptive behaviour (showing up late, using a different device for unrelated things during class) will not be tolerated. Often, if you're late, you will miss out on participating in activities going on during class – this affects your mark even moreso. DO use your computer (or paper and pencil) to take notes. At times I may ask you to work in small groups, and then present findings or discussion points to the class. This kind of participation is extremely valuable, and cannot be made up for outside of class time – our time together is very limited, and valuable. DO ALL REQUIRED READINGS before class begins. We will be discussing the readings as a large group as well as in small groups, and those who try to discuss things they haven't read are being disruptive.  Preference Surveys Complete the handout and hand this in...  Ice-breaker Get with a partner. Take turns introducing yourself to your partner by saying – Your name – Your city or town where you grew up, and – ONE OF: the musician, movie, TV show, OR video game (etc) you shared in your response to the question in the survey Take 10 minutes or so. Take notes. Once we regroup as a class, introduce your partner to the rest of the class.  Ice-breaker Impostor twist! Everyone close your eyes. Open your left hand, face up on your desk. I will go around the room and place something in the hands of ONE person in the room. If you receive something in your hand, do not reveal this to ANYONE (except your partner). Put it away in your pocket, then put your hand back on your desk, face up. DO NOT OPEN YOUR EYES UNTIL INSTRUCTED  Ice-breaker Impostor twist! In the next exercise, those people who were instructed to be IMPOSTORS need to LIE and deceive their partner. Make up your name, your hometown, and your favourite thing. Make it believable. We will then take turns introducing each other to the class as normal. As others introduce each other, watch and listen carefully! Decide for yourself who the impostors are. We’ll try and guess them as a class. If not, the impostors win.  Activity: Course Outline Questions Part One: Get into small groups, with 4 other people. Appoint one person as note-taker and another person as presenter. – For the next 10 minutes, Discuss: What are your most high priority questions about the class? Come up with 2-3 of your highest priority questions for me. Write them down. – Pass your list of written questions to a different group for part two of the activity...  Activity: Course Outline Questions Part Two: Consult the Course Outline. Now, in your groups, your job is to search the Course Outline for answers to the questions you received from the other group. – Write down the answer (if you find it) and the page number from the Course Outline (if you do not find the answer, make note of that, too). – I’ll call on each group’s presenter to ask (and answer, if possible) each question, in turn.  Saturday Video & Discussion: Black Mirror S3 E1 (“Nosedive”) Lecture: Utopia/dystopia  Do media shape us? Do digital media really transform us? Both the hopeful and the critical perspectives of media answer “yes”. The concerns and hopeful thinking are sometimes correct, but they’re often wrong. The problem with these two types of thinking is that they ignore the full context of media or technology. We’ll grasp that fuller context soon enough, but for now, let’s examine these two types of thinking about media...  Case Study: Black Mirror Black Mirror: Season 3, Episode 1 (“Nosedive”) (it’s on Netflix, for review purposes) Question for viewing (i.e., take notes): – What forms of media are shown in this episode? Make a list as you see them being used, or in the background. – What media technologies shown in the episode are (1) socially beneficial or (2) socially destructive in this story?  Black Mirror Small group discussion. Get into groups of 5- 6... Discuss: – Why are we sometimes (like Black Mirror) dystopian about new media? – Are we always dystopian about new media tech? Can you think of ways that new media tech has improved your life, or the life of your community? Utopia / Dystopia  Utopia and Dystopia Utopia: “a place of ideal perfection especially in laws, government, and social conditions” Dystopia: “an imagined world or society in which people lead wretched, dehumanized, fearful lives.” (Merriam-Webster, emphasis added) Media technologies are often thought to bring one of these states about...  Utopian Visions Hoverboards: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=26QM6FFzQOA Dystopian Fears  Utopia/dystopia: Same as it ever was Historically, new media always have boosters (utopians) and critics (dystopians) The styles may change, but the philosophical premises are the same... Some things DO change, though: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JW2Jf29hlXA  Utopian and Dystopian thinking: a highlight reel Let’s look at a few examples from history: – Writing and the alphabet (Greece, 3 rd Century BCE) – Books (beginning in 1450) – The popular press (~1840s) – The telegraph (1844) – Radio (1930s) – Video games (1980s) – Google and Social Media (2000s)  Socrates, on the alphabet/writing “I cannot help feeling, Phaedrus, that writing is unfortunately like painting; for the creations of the painter have the attitude of life, and yet if you ask them a question they preserve a solemn silence. And the same may be said of speeches. You would imagine that they had intelligence, but if you want to know anything and put a question to one of them, the speaker always gives one unvarying answer. And when they have been once written down they are tumbled about anywhere among those who may or may not understand them, and know not to whom they should reply, to whom not: and, if they are maltreated or abused, they have no parent to protect them; and they cannot protect or defend themselves.” -Plato, The Phaedrus, a dialogue between Socrates and Phaedrus (c.370 B.C.)  On the Overabundance of Books “We have reason to fear that the multitude of books which grows every day in a prodigious fashion will make the following centuries fall into a state as barbarous as that of the centuries that followed the fall of the Roman Empire. Unless we try to prevent this danger by separating those books which we must throw out or leave in oblivion from those which one should save and within the latter between what is useful and what is not.” -Adrien Baillet, Jugemens des savans sur les principaux ouvrages des auteurs (Paris,1685) Kierkegaard on newspapers (the popular press) “The public... this lazy mass, which understands nothing and does nothing, this public gallery seeks some distraction, and soon gives itself over to the idea that everything which someone does, or achieves, has been done to provide the public something to gossip about.... The public has a dog for its amusement. That dog is the Media. If there is someone better than the public, someone who distinguishes himself, the public sets the dog on him and all the amusement begins. This biting dog tears up his coat-tails, and takes all sort of vulgar liberties with his leg--until the public bores of it all and calls the dog off. That is how the public levels.” Soren Kierkegaard, “The Present Age” (1846)  The telegraph and utopian visions “how potent a power, then, is the telegraph destined to become in the civilization of the world! This binds together by a vital cord all the nations of the earth. It is impossible that old prejudices and hostilities should longer exist, while such an instrument has been created for an exchange of thought between all the nations of the earth” -Briggs and Maverick, cited in Carey, James (1983) "Technology and ideology: The Case Of The Telegraph.” Catfishing But moral panics and utopian visions aren't the only lasting anxieties about new media. Consider the fear of fraud in 'online' dating, from the 1870s... Catfishing: “the phenomenon of Internet predators fabricat[ing] online identities and entire social circles to trick people into emotional/romantic relationships” (Urban Dictionary) A novel published in 1879, Wired Love: A Romance of Dots and Dashes (by Ella Cheever Thayer), attests that this behaviour existed in the telegraph era too:  Moral panics and radio/television “The popularity of this new pastime among children has increased rapidly... This new invader of the privacy of the home has brought many a disturbing influence in its wake. Parents have become aware of a puzzling change in the behavior patterns of their children. They are bewildered by a host of new problems, and find themselves unprepared, frightened, resentful, helpless. They cannot lock out this intruder because it has gained an invincible hold of their children.” -Azriel L. Eisenberg, on radio, 1936 Moral panics and video games A “moral panic” = a sensationalist, false public perception that some phenomenon (often some new form or genre of media) is corrupting a group of people (often children) Examples: Momo challenge, violent video games, rap music lyrics, etc.  Is Google Making Us Stupid? “The deep reading that used to come naturally has become a struggle.” (Carr) Do we really have “problems” with attention? As students of media, we know that the conventional way of “literacy” isn't normative we shouldn't determine what ought to be based on what is (naturalistic fallacy) Popular criticisms of popular media What are the complaints about “media”? – Distraction – Losses in productivity – Somehow affects face-to-face interaction – Narrowing political perspectives – 'inauthentic' communication – Exposure of children to inappropriate material – Identity fraud Nothing new here..is there?  For next week... Get acquainted with our Moodle page. Read Morley’s, “Mass”, and “Media” and McQuail’s, “Concepts and Models for Mass Communication” (note the schedule of required readings in the Course Outline)