Tag: Media Theory
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Information is not in itself harmful…
As an addendum to a comment I left on a post this morning by Prof. Dunleavy, here’s a bit of Harry Blackmun from Virginia State Board of Pharmacy v. Virginia Citizens Consumer Council, 425 U.S. 748 (1976). “There is, of course, an alternative to this highly paternalistic approach. That alternative is to assume that this…
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Trickle-Down Technology
In discussions about international communication, I often hear the argument that neither this “blogging” thing in specific nor the internet in general are not on the radar in places like Africa, where they “don’t even have phones, much less internet access” (or so goes the myth). The people who expound on this sort of angle…
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Semiotics 101
Does it matter what we call things? Does it matter what words mean? Does it matter if it’s a “War” or a “Conflict” or a “Conflagration” or a “Military Event”? Does it matter if it’s a “newspaper” or a “magazine,” a “blog” or a “message board?” From my grandmother’s point of view, my blog is…
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Another J-School Prof Wondering What To Teach Us
Denny Wilkins writes at Editor & Publisher: “I teach journalism for a living to college students now. So I think a great deal about the newsrooms and the journalistic life my students will eventually enter. Should I teach them how disheartening it became for me at the end? Or should I teach them about, as…
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Laptop Riot
CNN reports: Panic Ensues In Rush For Cheap Laptops. from CNN.com (AP/Richmond Times-Dispatch) Okay folks, this is pretty good proof that people want technology to be more affordable. The next time a school system sells its used laptops off ($50/iBook), PLEASE CONTACT ME so I can research what the people DO with the darn things.…
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More Journalistic Heresy: Jay Rosen’s List of Things He Doesn’t Teach Anymore
Jay Rosen of PressThink has posted his list of “Things I Used To Teach That I No Longer Believe”. Jay writes: “I used to teach that the ethics of journalism, American-style, could be found in the codes, practices and rule-governed behavior that our press lived by. Now I think you have to start further back,…
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Free Like Freedom
Today finds me too vacation-dazed to really want to make sense of anything but SJSU bureaucracy (don’t ask), but after paring down the list of feeds in my aggregator to a workable 206, here’s an attempt to connect the dots: Jimbo Wales, the Wikipedia guy, Lessig’s guest-blogger at the moment, is running down a list…
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Pay No Attention To The Genocide Behind The Curtain
Salma Ghanem, chair of the University of Texas-Pan American communications department, writes in the Dallas Morning News: “Let’s hope journalism students aren’t learning from example.” She asks students in her introductory journalism class to define “newsworthy” and then delineates several “news values,” wondering aloud which values, if any, some of today’s most sensationalized stories are…
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Cass “The Daily Me” Sunstein Standing In For Lessig This Week
Sunstein is sitting in at Larry Lessig's blog this week, and the conversation has begun. I'm excited to see someone so entrenched as a counterpoint in recent New Media theory taste-testing the Aggregation-flavored Kool-Aid. Follow the thread, see where it goes.
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New Frontier Thesis
In 1893, Frederick Jackson Turner presented a paper called “The Significance of the Frontier in American History” at a meeting of the American Historical Association coinciding with the World’s Fair in Chicago. The fair was commemorating the Columbian spirit of exploration. (It was 1893, and no one was really into commemorating the spirit of conquest…