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Teachers reading here: Have you ever given a YouTube-based class assignment?
Students reading here: Have you ever received one?
I'm thinking of doing one in my Digital Media Cultures class this Spring. In this class, students will be reading old chesnuts (Baudrillard, Virillio), some stuff on the public and counter-public spheres (Habermas, Warner) as well as new material on social capital, networked individualism, and online subjectivity (Wellman, boyd, Shirky). I also throw in a bit of my stuff on micro-celebrity. For one of their essay options, I've been thinking about designing YouTube Competition that asks students to do the following: 1. First, students are asked to make a 1-2 minute YouTube video on a subject of their choosing. The video can either be posted as public, or friends only. Students who feel awkward with a video camera can animate some PowerPoint slides, or even upload a still image with audio over it. I don't really care. 2. Next, students submit their YouTube link to me, telling me whether or not I have permission to screen their material in class. 3. Throughout the semester, I award in-class prizes to students for their videos in the following categories: --Speed of release (i.e. Who from class is the first to get their material up on YouTube --Production value (i.e. Whose material looks the most professional. This business of 'professional' is absolutely subjective on my part, and I will harbor no debate from students, hopefully for reasons that are clear by the end of this email) --Entertainment value (i.e. Whose stuff is most interesting, funny--again, subjective!) --Most UNIQUE USERS TO POST on each student's page (of course this could include comments from sock-poppet versions of students themselves, just as it does on YouTube) --Highest NUMBER OF COMMENTS generated on each student's page (not the same at all as unique users--it's not uncommon to see a comment thead of 100 posts of more dominated by 5 users.) --Most 'linked to' videos (These could be videos from other YouTube videos, but if the student wanted to create multiple videos and link to his/original just to rack up points in this category, it's certainly do-able) 4. In class, we talk about the prizes as they are awarded, discussing what one gains and loses by focusing on speed over content, or unique users over sustained conversations, etc. Case studies from Web 2.0 are used to show students how these issues play out in the 'real world' (e.g. The criticality of speed on gossip sites; the allure of of unique users on social activism sites; the importance of being linked to by someone 'connected' on business sites, etc.) 5. For their final essay, students have an option of writing a piece in which they valuate their participation in the YouTube exercise. Of course, I'm particularly interested in hearing whether or not they think the exercise is worth doing again next year, but really are free to talk about anything they wish in their essays. There is only one hard and fast rule, which is that as they write, they employ at least two theoretical ideas from our class readings to discuss their experiences. IMPORTANT: I think it's important to give students the choice of making their YouTube videos public or 'friends only' (of course, I'd have to be on the friends list to evaluate it.) In addition to respecting students' privacy anxieties, it's also an interesting way to provoke finer-grained thinking about social capital, connectedness and self-branding. For instance: Common sense says a video posted 'friends-only' wouldn't do particularly well in categories like "most unique commentors," but common sense isn't always right. Someone with thirty keen people on their friends list could create a fair amount of traffic on a locked posting, where an video ostensibly open to the world might get no traffic at all, if the creator of said video doesn't get some buzz around it. And of course, the class and social politics of 'buzz' is worthy of an entire class discussion... Okay, that's enough from me. Interested in what other people are thinking and doing!
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I’m writing this quickly, and may come back to edit later, but wanted to get my thoughts down:
Recently, Clay Shirky asked why the women he teaches at the Interactive Telecommunications Department at NYU don’t seem able to self-promote their capabilities in the technology sector as well as the men he teaches. I’ve had occasion to work with Clay at ITP in the past, and I know he is an incredibly decent and deeply fair person. Maybe that’s why I was surprised to be so frustrated by what he wrote.
Clay is probably right to suggest that to if you are a young professional who wants to get ahead in the areas like social media, you are probably going to need to be able to self-promote. Where he’s wrong is in his answer that women need to pull themselves up by the bootstraps and stop being ‘nice.’ This advice isn’t just condescending as hell, it also exhibits a pretty massive blind spot to the historical lack of women role models in the tech sector.
Yes, I know there were always women in computing. I also know that once computing became associated with programming and the ENIAC was developed, you could count on two hands the amount of women employed in computer programming. There’s an old saying that the children of cops want to be lawyers, the children of lawyers want to be judges, and the children of judges want to be on the Supreme Court. Until the last generation, the daughters of female tech sector workers at best hoped to move up from the typing pool. There were almost NO women we could watch laboring in boardrooms, backrooms, locker rooms, pool rooms—all the places corporate culture power plays take place.
But rather than staying stuck in history, let’s imagine a future in which things for women in the tech sector move forward, rather than staying the same (or moving backward.) Let’s go one step further and imagine what a strong, secure, female role model in a computer-related industry might be like.
In the Victorian Age, people became obsessed with the idea that technological history might yield a "New Woman"--independent, autonomous (and to be fair, often the site of derision.) Let's imagine what a sort of "New Woman" might emerge from a tech sector with female leadership for more than a generation or two. What sort of statements would she be able to make about herself? What would be her ethical code?
In the spirit of hippy-dippy hopefulness, and with a tip of the hat to Peggy Macintosh, I provide ten statements coming from such an imaginary ‘new woman’ of the future. Truthfully, I have yet to meet a woman (myself included) who has been fortunate to claim even three of the statements. I’d be interested in how other people react to this thought exercise, which I blame on New Year optimism as much as anything else.
TEN STATEMENTS FROM A ‘NEW WOMAN’ OF THE TECH SECTOR
1. As a child, I had regular contact with a female role model--a grandmother, mother, aunt, sister, or older friend—who worked the industry in which I now find myself working (in a position other than support staff).
2. As I grew older these women professionals became unofficial mentors to me. They offered me opportunities to observe their worlds at a safe distance or even officially through mechanisms like internships, demonstrating how one exhibits professional codes of conduct and effectively networks with those outside one’s own family.
3. As a student, I routinely noticed that there were large numbers of female teachers and professors teaching subjects that interested me and were considered to be valuable and ‘job worthy.’
4. As a student, I was fortunate enough to be counseled by a teacher, advisor, or internship coordinator who facilitated regular group activities involving myself and other young women training in my field. Rather than competing with one another, we began thinking of ourselves as an ‘old girls club.’
5. As a graduate, I feel comfortable asking some of these women from my past to recommend me in at least two categories: as a rising ‘star’, and as a decent colleague capable of acting in a group’s best interest.
6. As an employee, I’m pleased to say that the place I work employs fairly equal amounts of men and women in technical, ‘creative’, managerial AND service roles.
7. As a work colleague, I believe I am where I am today as a result of others’ concerted acts of care and education on my behalf. I don’t think it’s a sacrifice to work for and with other people: I think it’s a gift given back in honor of those who got me where I am.
8. As a spokesperson for my industry, I question moments when I seem the token women on a panel, or (even stranger) why so many discussions about ‘what women want’ seem dominated by men. No, it’s not something I like. Yes, I worry I won’t be asked back. I do it anyway, because it’s my responsibility. Let someone call me ‘that bitch’; I can take it. I was raised right.
9. As a teacher, I understand that my students’ perceptions of their abilities often maps to larger questions regarding gender, sexuality, race, class, ability, and age (among others.) These aren’t topics reserved for classes called ‘identity politics’ and ignored in ones with titles like ‘information society’, ‘digital media’ or even (God help me) ‘universal design.’ If you really want to get to why someone undersells their technical prowess, you are going to have to engage with some basic facts of peoples’ histories; these personal facts are almost always the stuff of political discourse.
10. As a grandmother/mother/aunt/sister/friend, teacher/mentor, I believe in holding out my hand to other women BEFORE it’s asked for, and keeping it out past the point it is self-effacingly rejected, or bitchily refused. I know that for most women, the only thing harder than asking for help is staying around to offer it after it’s been rebuffed.
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About six months ago, I did some question and answer stuff about micro-celebrity with students from the Columbia Journalism Review. I would change some of this now, but I still think it's a good primer for thinking about micro-celebrity, so I'm putting it up for those who want to talk/write more about this. I did have this up in out-of-sequence pieces earlier; I've gone ahead and cleaned it up here.
( Read more... )
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Anyone know a journalist who wants to do some freelance work for Berkman Center's Youth & Media Policy project? Drop me an email at t.senft@uel.ac.uk and I'll pass on your name to the great people who run the show there.
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This is a piece I am working on for the Harvard University's Berkman Center. It will probably go through one more round of edits. All thoughts welcome!
From Personal Property to Speaking Subjects:
Teens and the Right to Credit in an Attention Economy
Theresa M. Senft
Senior Lecturer, Media Studies
University of East London, UK
t.senft@uel.ac.uk
If you are an American female born after 1960, you probably have a memory of slumber parties: those Heathers-esque affairs in which best friends join girls who barely know one another for a night of ‘fun’. Although I did a enjoy a slumber party from time to time, I cannot recall one from which I woke up refreshed, but then, the point of such things was never sleep. What slumber parties were about—their real purpose in American girlhood—was the provision of a liminal time away from family and school, a zone of imagination in which (theoretically, at least) nobody but the chosen were permitted. Slumber parties are my first memory of a time in which I was asked to prove loyalty to a family of choice, rather than one origin, by enduring in a series of tests designed to push the limits of my personal and emotional boundaries. All while wearing pajamas.
Last year during summer holidays, two fifteen year-olds from Indiana were goofing off at a slumber party by taking pictures, which they then uploaded to a 'friends only' section of their MySpace accounts. Among the photos were some in which the girls posed licking and kissing multi-colored 'phallic' lollipop. There were others in which the girls stuffed in their underwear. According to the American Civil Liberties Union (we’ll get to that later) “They intended this to be humorous and all the participants considered it to be so.” 1 The joke might have ended there, except that the photos were later copied and given to the school principal. Arguing that the images constituted a “disruptive influence on the discipline, good order, moral, or educational environment” at the school, the principal banned the girls from fall semester extracurricular activities. He also required they attend counseling sessions and apologize to the all-male Athletics Board for 'discrediting' the image of the school with their behavior.
For feminists who have been following the recent panics surrounding teen ‘sexting’, none of this story comes as a particular shock. Teenaged girls have always acted out sexually, and authorities have always scapegoated those they perceive as transgressive in this way. Around the time the girls in Indiana were receiving their punishments from school, thirteen year-old Hope Witsell committed suicide in order to escape the constant bullying and shaming she received as a result of an indiscreet phone photo that made its way into public circulation. 2 The more cynical among us would say that the wholesale endorsement of ‘tough love for sluts’ allows authorities to side-step actual give-and-take conversations with teens about responsible sexual behavior, but that's an argument for another time.
What makes the story of the MySpace teens in Indiana unique is that in late October, the girls enlisted the help of the ACLU to file a class-action suit against their principal, high school and the school district. In its complaint, the ACLU alleged that by curbing the girls’ extra-curricular activity, forcing them apologize to the Athletics board, and ordering counseling, the principal violated the girls' First Amendment rights to free expression. What’s more, they argued, these prohibitions had a knock-on effect: they have ceased posting photos to friends online, primarily because they fear additional punishment.
( Read more... )
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Here's the beginning of a very short piece I did for the Oxford Internet Institute's Forum on Relationships and the Internet.
Position paper: The Case of Online Micro-celebrity Gangsta Flirtation
Theresa M. Senft, Senior Lecturer Media Studies, University of East London UK
I'd like to spend my time here telling a specific story about a specific type of flirting among a specific group of students occurring over the Internet today. I tell it because I think it's important to begin studying this demographic (Black U.K. working class users between the ages of 18-25.) I also tell it because I think it shows why we need to supplement existing psychological and sociological literature on Internet relationships with an approach to representation derived from areas like performance and cultural studies.
Earlier this year, a student approached me to talk about a trend he noticed on Facebook: many of his friends were posting pictures of themselves as so-called 'gangstas' –displaying gang signs, pointing to images of guns, or flashing cash. When I asked him what he found unusual about this, he nearly shouted: "These guys aren't rough. Half of them sing in the church choir!” I asked why he thought this sort of thing was transpiring. His answer was simple: it was for the girls.
Fascinated, I canvassed young women at the University of East London to see what they thought of this dynamic. Many of them confessed that they found the idea of dating a "soldja” somewhat sexy and interesting, provided that the guy in question was playing at this role, rather than actually involved in crime himself. I began talking with the girls about their own photo performances online, discussing the various sexy outfits they wore, the friends with whom they posed, asking whom they wanted to attract through such performances. Through it all, they peppered their conversation with references to hip hop performers like Rhianna and Lil Wayne.
( Read more... )
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A few years ago, I decided to help out a few friends and students who were struggling with applications to graduate schools in the humanities. They were especially baffled by the request for a Letter of Intent. to. If you find yourself in this position now (or know someone who is) feel free to check my advice for writing a Letter of Intent, here.
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I am in the middle of writing something about the global reception of the "Neda" video last June. Building on the theory of 'paranoid reading' (where you see in something what you want to see), I've constructed five different positions from which people have made the statement "I am Neda" after viewing the video of her murder. These scenarios are fictional but based on reading blogs and watching YouTube.
I'm posting them here because I am interested in whether anyone can think of critical ones to add beyond what I've come up with. I'm trying to display a range of positions related to gender, age, nation, diaspora, political leanings.
I AM NEDA: THE RESPONDENTS
• Like all protesters in Iran, I am Neda. Like her, I took to the streets of Tehran and faced state-sponsored violence. True, she was killed for her actions and I haven’t been, but the fight is long from over. For all I know, I may find myself joining her. Neda is a martyr for resistance in Iran, and though the images of her death are shocking, we need them to circulate as widely and graphically as possible, to counter the Iranian government’s white-washing, denial and lies about the incident.
• Like all Iranian citizens who hope for an end to this unrest, I am Neda. This video represents an orchestrated sacrifice by the West of an ordinary Iranian girl in order to turn international sentiment against the current government.. Neda is a martyr to the West’s murderous need to enforcement of its own geopolitical aims, and to circulate these images is to co-conspire with the murders themselves.
• Like all members of the Iranian diaspora, I am Neda. I’ve been following what’s been going on in Iran over the news and via Twitter, so I knew there was violence. But watching the video was a very different experience, very galvanizing. There is something so heartbreaking about Neda’s face as she looks into the camera for the last time. If my parents hadn’t left Iran, Neda would have perhaps been me. I think this material needs to circulate as a wake up call to the world that something important is going on in Iran and can’t be ignored.
• Like all feminists worldwide, I am Neda. Neda stands for every woman in the world who has been targeted by masculine rage in times of political unrest. Here, what we see is a women gunned down for walking in a relatively quiet section of a street, outside of the main protests. The only threat she could have possibly posed to anyone was her symbolic presence as a young female who didn’t choose to wear hijab as she walked towards the protests. Neda was martyred for her nascent feminism, a far bigger threat to Iran than the Green Party could be.
• Like all decent people who believe in democracy, I am Neda. I don’t follow politics very much, but I linked to the video on my blog because I think it’s important people know about it. I guess I sometimes forget that there are countries where people gun down one of their own in cold blood! I don’t think anyone should watch the video more than once, though. We need to circulate this footage with sensitivity.
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Love in the time of Snuff: Social Media, Intimacy, & the Death of Neda Agha-Soltan Theresa Senft, Programme Leader & Senior Lecturer, Media Studies, University of East London, UK
On a hot June day of protests in Tehran, a young woman named Neda Agha-Soltan is murdered while walking towards her car in broad daylight. A doctor rushes to save her, while a friend of the doctor’s videos the event. After she dies, the doctor uploads the video YouTube. The forty-second video sweeps across the net, galvanizing both activists and casual viewers of Iranian politics. There is something about this video--a beautiful woman, staring into the camera as blood pours from her orifices, legs splayed open--that impossible to forget. In this presentation, I plan look deeply at the production, consumption and internet-based recirculation of the Neda video. I am particularly interested in interrogating a claim that at least part of the Neda video’s impact on its viewers has to do with the fact that it is constructed like a perfect ‘snuff’ film. Using Susanna Passonnen’s writing on affect and pornography, Judith Butler’s work on the politics of photography at Abu Graib and Jacques Ranciere’s thoughs on ethics in the age of the ‘emancipated spectator’, this talk will consider my own love of social media as a tool of political change against the ‘snuff aesthetics’ of the Neda phenomenon. I argue that in order to produce an ethically robust theory of digital intimacy, we must first account for the fact that online or off it, intimacy is composed of a range of constituent localized parts including (but not limited to) affect, arousal and abjection.
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People, it is the PERFECT fall (people here say autumn) day! It's crisp enough for a sweater (people here say jumper) but not so cold you want to go indoors. I'm sitting outside on a picnic bench typing away with free wifi. There is a coffee the size of my head next to me. If Denzel Washington showed up to offer me a date and a bag of money, that would make the day better. Otherwise, it's perfect as it is.
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Hi Pals,
I'm in the middle of thinking about three separate, though often overlapping, groups of people:
1. People who read (or sneak peaks in the supermarket) at celebrity-based magazines like People, Us, or in Heat (in the U.K.)
2. People who look at celebrity-oriented websites like PerezHilton.com
3. People who participate in making fan fiction (writing or film-based)
I'm wondering where people fit into these categorizations?
Personally, I get a kick out of celebrity magazines and websites, but don't really engage in fanfiction much.
I'm really interested in hearing from fan fiction folks on this one. I have this belief that the fanfic people are radically different from 'regular' celebrity followers, but I could be very wrong on this.
People who want to weigh in to tell us they never, EVER would do something like read celebrity stuff are welcome to chime in, but nobody is going to believe you (kidding, okay?)
Thanks in advance for responses!
T
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Hey, does anyone who reads the technical forums know if there are any plans to include videocam posting abilities into LiveJournal? I know I can embed media from other sites but it would be nice to do it on the fly from here...
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Okay, as promised, here I am!
I'm ready to write, ready to read other people, and generally, ready to come back into the fold. Did you miss me? I missed you. Lots.
Before I write anything I regret later, I wanted to talk about the sort of material I generally make public on this journal, versus what sorts of things I hide from pubic view, and make available only to folks who have access.
Like lots of people here, I like to write, and I like to be read. For me, though, the best part of all this is when I write, someone writes back, then someone responds to that responder, and so on, and so on. I get most excited when my journal starts to feel like a a conversation between like-minded folks. That's how it worked for me when I was hacking my way through my last book. That's how it works for me every time I ask for help brainstorming a syllabus. That's how it online writing works for me when it works.
In my experience, no blogging service facilitates back and forth among users better than LiveJournal. Sure, I'd like the pages to look better, I'd like the archiving to be manageable, I'd like for people to not instantly assume my interests include fan fiction, cutting and the goth lifestyle, based solely on the blogging service I use. But for me, these are small prices to pay for the consistency and community I get from LiveJournal (and let's be honest--I am interested in goths, cutting and fandom from time to time.)
In this spirit, if you would like to be on my Friends List, and you are not right now, let me know. Basically, I am a more the merrier type of person.
On the other hand, if you burn with hatred for LiveJournal and its rule that you must sign up with its service just to read locked posts of others, I get that, too. I don't work for LiveJournal; I just use the damn thing.
For those who would like to read my pre-publication stuff and don't want to go through the hassle of signing in to LiveJournal, I'm happy to put you on an old fashioned one-way mailing list I'm building. Just let me know.
I know some people who have positively byzantine filtering arrangements set up on their LiveJournals, but I basically see things fitting into three categories:
<lj-cut>
PUBLIC STUFF
Public stuff is, well, public.
FRIENDS ONLY (READERS' FILTER)
This would be for pre-publication writing, which I will be doing lots of this year. I suppose I'll keep everyone on my current Friends List on this filter, like I did for the Camgirls book.
If you are a student of mine: Historically, haven't included current students on my Friends List but I'm going to change that since I'm adding a new Personal Filter to which students won't have access. In general, I'm a big yes to students reading pre-publication work, and a big no to students reading me whine that I'm getting old and fat. Not that I do that, but Iike to know the opportunity is there should I need it.
'PERSONAL' FILTER
The personal filter will contain stuff about my mental and physical health, dark nights of the soul, etc. I think I'll keep this to people I know well, or anyone else who says they'd like to be on this filter.
(Interestingly, I've been using Facebook for this purpose over the last few months. I would like to write a bit about this, I think.)
Recap for those who scroll: If you want to be on my Friends list, give a shout. If you want to be on the Personal list as well as the Friends list, also shout. Finally, if you hate LiveJournal and would prefer to be emailed, give a shout. You can do it here or send me a lil email.
Okay, that's it and thanks if you've read this far. Seriously, few things are more dull personal filtering policies, and yet as we grow up, they wind up being necessary evils, don't they?
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This time, I'm really really really going to start writing in here again.
I have three different book projects I am hashing out, and I miss talking with LJ people and getting feedback on things.
Is anyone reading here anymore?
How has your summer been?
This weekend, I went swimming for the first time ever in England.
It was, uh, bracing.
More to come tomorrow morning (really)!
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This is my partner. Two days ago, he donated his kidney to his sister.
Both brother and sister are doing quite well, now.
I think he is amazing. I love him more than anything in the world.
There is a man on the ward who has been waiting for a kidney since 2001.
If you haven't marked 'organ donor' on your driving license, please
do consider it.
Most people in the world don't have a brother like Mike.
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I'm only a year late to their party, but I'm really enjoying the conversation between William Merrin and David Gauntlett on "Media Studies 2.0" at:
http://twopointzeroforum.blogspot.com/
Wondering: why aren't more MS programs doing this sort of work? What would it take to get my program refitted along these lines?
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