This was originally posted on my old blog on 25 April 2017.

The film When Harry met Sally is famous for That Orgasm Scene, where Meg Ryan’s Sally proves to Billy Crystal’s Harry that women can fake it, by faking it right there in a restaurant. I remember the film for something much quieter, but to my mind a much more profound message. The film is interspersed with different couples filmed in the same setting, what looked like an old-fashioned sitting room with couch. Their stories are mildly interesting, but not gripping, and in some cases a little boring. Then we see this wonderful story told of a developing relationship between two people, the ups, the downs, the close call, then finally the elation of them making it, kissing, getting together. As the camera zooms out of the kissing scene, a voiceover begins of this couple describing what we just witnessed, and the scene fades to them sitting on the same old-fashioned couch, telling us the story of how they met. It sounds just as plain, mildly interesting, borderline boring as the other stories we’d been told by couples on that couch.

The profound lesson that stuck with me from this romantic comedy was that people’s boring lives can be deeply interesting if you just listen in the right way, or, there is a story behind every face you see. As I progress in my media studies, I realise this lesson can be inverted: the most exciting stories can be boring if you don’t tell them right.

Media organisations have long ago discovered this lesson. Facts are boring, even quite dramatic and exciting facts. You have to use the same techniques used in storytelling to keep your audience gripped.

Continue reading “Narratives and Stories”

This was originally posted on my old blog on 20 March 2017.

Our boiler is one of those that directly heats water instead of warming a whole tankful. It’s been acting up for months, but it always managed to revive itself and work if you just left it a while and tried again later. We hoped to hold on until its service was due in July before getting it fixed, as our landlord passed away just after Christmas, so we wanted to leave the family alone as long as possible. Alas, last night it finally died beyond all hope of revival. Today I will have to arrange to have it fixed, and some guy (never met a woman boiler mechanic) will come around to fix it.

All this morning I loathed that this happened. As I made breakfast, it occurred to me that the thoughts and feelings, the imagined scenarios around the impending visit went beyond just the inconvenience of having a stranger in our house (which we hate). I soon figured out why. In my life, I have most often been treated like an imcompetent bimbo by people fixing mechanical type stuff for me.

Continue reading “I am not an idiot”

This was originally posted on my old blog on 18 March 2017.

I’m a sucker for the written word. I have been fascinated, since way before starting my studies, with how words are used to give subtle meaning to a written text, the reader not always realising they are being manipulated. Yet written text leaves out many intriguing aspects of communication. One of these is the impact of conversationalisation.

Conversationalisation is the effect of the audible delivery of a text (remember in media analysis ‘text’ refers to a media artefact, not only the written word). It is the tone of the speaker, their choice of words, grammar, accent, the regionally or culturally specific ‘lingo’ they may use. These factors or choices are as critical to the meaning of the message as the actual words in the sentences; in some cases, more so.

Consider this old advertisement from South African television, first aired in 2008:

The first time I showed this to a friend in Ireland, she asked: “What language are they speaking?” Well, they’re all speaking English, but this ad captures a range of specific ways of speaking English in South Africa which are typical of various cultural groups. The brilliance of the ad lies in tapping into the country’s pride of its cultural diversity, and in making a hero out of the African Mama who was in the past often the least respected member of society.

Continue reading “You say Pu-tay-toe, I say Pu-tah-toe… (Conversationalisation)”

This was originally posted on my old blog on 6 March 2017. It was for an assignment for the Media Discourse and Analysis module in my final year of undergraduate studies.

Media analysis can be extra interesting for me as an immigrant. I grew up and lived in a world far removed from the one I live in now. Famous names and faces can mean nothing to me. I often have little knowledge of issues, scandals and challenges that are part of the social memory here.

Yet even I had a vague recollection of seeing Jeremy Paxman’s (in?)famous interview with John Howard. Until I watched it again for a Media Discourse and Analysis assignment, I would not have associated those names with the memory. My task this week is to analyse this interview through the lens of what we learned in class. To begin, I watched the clip with a “clean slate” – I looked up nothing about the interview except the date on which it took place. I had no idea who Michael Howard is, what his role was at the time, which may help me to better focus on the techniques used by both interviewer and interviewee in this encounter.

Is the interviewer maintaining a stance of “formal neutrality”? Or can we see some form of bias?

Continue reading “That Famous Paxman Interview”

This was originally posted to my old blog on 20 February 2017.

Cultural theorist Stuart Hall suggested that mediated information must be examined through the lens of what he dubbed the Circuit of Culture:

Image Source

The circuit shows how every element influences and is influenced by every other element. Nothing stands alone, nothing escapes the effect of the discourse in which the message is delivered. Let’s examine an article I saw shared on Twitter through the lens of this circuit. You can read it here. I’ll wait (but I also summarise the content below).

Let’s ask ourselves a few questions:

What, more or less, does this article say?

I want to summarise and highlight the following reported facts:

The headline:

Village vigilante who informs on illegally parked cars dubbed a ‘prat’ by furious traders

Take note also of the sidebar in red text on the left, in this snip of how the article is presented:

A summary of the content:

An anonymous vigilante has caused outrage in a village by reporting illegal parking. Many drivers were consequently fined. The mystery vigilante “has been accused” of going around looking for illegally parked cars to report to the traffic warden. Drivers “popping into shops” have been reported by the “informer, making them and traders furious”.

The anger of a trader who wrote a strongly worded letter is described.

It is mentioned more than once that attendants of a pantomime were “reported and given tickets”.

“The issue has become so heated and caused so much outrage in the village, councillors have held talks with parking officers over concerns too many tickets will deter shoppers.”

A Conservative councillor is quoted saying that the matter has caused a lot of upset, that she agrees people should park correctly but that “the biggest thing about Rottingdean is the survival of the High Street. ‘Anything that upsets that is not welcome. Traders are having a hard time and there are a lot of empty shops at the moment.'”

The final paragraph states: “Parking compliance in the village is considered by Brighton and Hove City Council, East Sussex, to be ‘quite good’, with just 162 tickets issued in six months.”

Two images are included, a councillor interviewed about the matter:

And a photo of an “angry letter” penned and displayed by one of the traders interviewed:

Who created this message?

The Article appeared in The Telegraph, a UK newspaper known to have a politically conservative slant. It is considered a broadsheet rather than a tabloid. We’ll look at the significance of its perceived political association in more detail later.

What makes it newsworthy?

The issue is framed as one that threatens the livelihoods of traders in the village. Since the 2008 financial collapse, economic struggle has been an emotive topic, at the forefront of people’s minds in Britain. The village in question is on the South coast of England, within commuting distance of London. While this area has not felt the impact of the financial crash as much as places farther North, the fear and insecurity brought about by the collapse is widespread.

Moreover, drivers are a a dominant social group in the UK. Most people travel by car, and therefore see the world from the perspective of drivers. The article focuses entirely on the perspective and interests of drivers, framing the story as being about a mean-sprited “prat” causing hardship for motorists.

What creative techniques are used to draw one’s attention?

The use of a borderline profanity uses shock value to grab the attention. There is also a photo of a “strongly worded letter” which a “furious trader” had put up in a window.

How might different people understand this message ‘differently’?

This is where it gets interesting, and where the blunt bias of the reporting becomes obvious. Imagine if you’re a wheelchair user, or a parent who regularly pushes their child in a pram. You may view the issue of illegal parking in a very different light from the frame chosen by the writers of the article in the Telegraph. This Louth Leader article, for instance, takes a very different tack, accusing drivers in the headline of being irresponsible. The article describes the frustration of a wheelchair user who finds drivers parking illegally impair his ability to get around.

The facts are that people broke the law, got reported, and in many cases were fined as a result. We don’t know from the article whether there is a shortage of legal parking spaces in the village, which may have been another way to frame the story. So we could have written the headline as follows:

Anonyous Hero Takes On Scoff-Law Drivers

or

Lack of Parking Leaves Fined Motorists Furious

or

Lack of Parking Threatens Village Traders

The story could have been framed differently, either through the lens of those who would sympathise with the person reporting the violations, or sympathise with motorists but suggest poor infrastructure is to blame (and by implication the councillors or government officials responsible for its development), or sympathise with traders and suggest blame as described above. It could even be shown from the perspective of a quaint village being overrun by illegal parkers. That begs the question:

Why was the article in the Telegraph framed the way it was?

Representation and Identity

The identity of the paper’s readership is politically conservative. This political view corresponds with a neoliberal philosophy, in which focus is on smoothing the way for the wealthy and powerful first and foremost, arguing that their prosperity will benefit all. Conservatism is also linked to support for driving over green transport, and for lack of support or concern for social welfare – those most reliant on walking for transport, and therefore most likely to be adversely affected by illegal parking, are often in a lower socio-economic band, a class for which politically conservative people have little sympathy (pp. 8-11). Drivers are generally considered the more powerful and wealthy, with greener transport options such as walking and cycling sometimes associated with a lower socio-economic status, while car ownership confers (p.7) prestige and status. It should not be surprising then that there is a correlation between liberalism, which is more associated with socialism, and support for cycling and walking. The framing of the article can therefore be seen as catering to the views of the target consumers, and conforming to the current dominant discourse surrounding traffic and transport issues.

The person who reported the parking violations is called a prat (though of course this is presented as a quote from a trader). This term is used or shown five times in the report: in the headline, twice in the written content, in a photo of a hand-written note, and in a prominent, highlighted sidebar. This person is also called a vigilante and an informer – both terms laden with negative associations.

Production

In the course of production, interviews were only conducted with people whose views aligned with that of a frame that may have been chosen before the reporter even arrived to collect data on the matter. No attempt at neutrality or balance is evident.

The article is distributed online, and I have been unable to ascertain if it was also included in a print version of the paper. If so, it is possible space restriction could have played a role in its production.

It also seems the identity of the person who reported the crimes is not known, though the writer of the “strongly worded letter” refers to a gentleman, and elsewhere a business owner is quoted as referring to a man. The person who reported the crimes could therefore likely not have been interviewed for their point of  view, and to explain what motivated their actions. The journalist may not have had the means to travel to the village and gather first hand data – everything in the article could have been gathered by phone, email, and other remote means. This may have restricted their ability to find people with opposing views, or to notice and follow up such problems as insufficient legal parking spaces.

Regulation

This refers not only to government laws, policies, and rules; but also to more subtle “unwritten” rules which dictate “what is considered acceptable and unacceptable within a given cultural context” (quote from class notes distributed by my lecturer). On the face of it, people broke the law, were reported, and were fined, and other people were angry because they believe this enforcement of the law will impact their livelihood. Because the law-breakers were drivers and the law they broke is considered socially acceptable to ignore, the person reporting the crime is painted as the villain. Consider what sentiments would be if the law-breakers were a gang of thieves. If a trader complained about the impact on their business if the thieves were jailed, it is unlikely the resulting story would be framed as the “prat” vigilante daring to report transgressions of the law.

The cultural context and regulation allows for law-breakers to be portrayed as the victims and the person reporting their infractions to be portrayed as the villain.

While the article skirts dangerously on stoking hatred against the person who reported the violations, and an extremely one-sided view is presented, no official laws or regulations are broken.

Consumption

This article is available online, and it is a written news item. As discussed, the readership is thought to be mostly politically conservative, and likely to be drivers who will be able to decode the message through their frame of reference and experience, which will enable them to sympathise with the emotions felt by drivers fined for parking illegally.

However, the internet is a wider thing than just the intended readership of the Telegraph. I laid eyes on the article because it was shared on Twitter by an account dedicated to advocating for the case of pedestrians and cyclists, placing particular emphasis on how they are endangered and marginalised by the behaviour of drivers. They in turn were retweeting someone who shared the link to the article, whose profile picture is of someone cycling, and whose description is “Likes bikes.” Their comment: “Not all heroes wear capes.”

Not all heroes wear capes https://t.co/Nice17FrrC

— Steve Cromwell (@steveocrom) February 18, 2017

My own bias is no doubt clear in my analysis. As someone who cycles or walks everywhere I go, I often experience first hand the frustration and sometimes danger caused to me as pedestrian by motorists parking illegally. I therefore read the article through that frame of reference. It is not possible to escape our biases, but we must recognise them and actively try to be fair and balanced in both the messages we send, and in our assessment and analysis of the messages we receive.

This was originally posted on my old blog on 18 February 2017.

It is impossible for any of us to know everything. Considering that there are 196 countries in the world, if only a single interesting thing happened in each of them every day, it would be a full time job to keep abreast. We therefore rely on mediators to do that for us, and even then, they specialise in areas, or topics, or narrow their scope down in some way to keep the volume of information they have to process to a manageable level. We call the mediators of our information journalists, or reporters.

Reporters have to decide what, from the ever-flowing river of data, they should lift out and bring to our attention. In other words, they have to decide what is newsworthy. These decisions are never free from bias, no matter how much the reporter tries to stay neutral (and many make no such attempt). What factors do they need to consider as they decide what to report, and what to leave out? In no particular order, the following are among the many issues which affect what goes into our news reports:

1. The person creating the report. Their personal tastes, political and social beliefs, likes, dislikes, goals, sensitivities, acquaintances and more can affect what they choose to report on.
2. The people who will consume the report, the target market. What will grab the attention of a farmer in Louth may be of no interest to a nurse in Galway.
3. The source of revenue. Reporters can seldom afford to offend advertisers, or the owners of their publication.
4. Available space or time. Stories can be dropped simply because there is not enough space on the page or time in the television slot, or edited to fit what is available.

Such factors form a narrow gate through which potential news stories first have to pass before they can even be brought to my and your attention. Passing through that gate also shapes and changes what we eventually consume. With ‘fake news’ being an issue lately, I believe basic media analysis skill is becoming something we should all have. When you read, hear, or watch something, you should consider the following five questions:

Who created this message?

Try to become cognisant of the possible biases built into various publications, or the personal biases of various reporters. For instance, in Ireland, in a report on media ownership, it was pointed out that the vast majority of media were owned by the state broadcaster and an individual businessman. These two entities between them control almost all of what we see, hear, and read in Ireland. This problem of ownership controlling what can be reported, and how it is reported, was demonstrated by the Denis O’Brien affair in 2015. While these owners don’t personally write what we read, the reporters working for their publications are aware of and affected by their bosses’ preferences.

Publications also have certain standards, orientations, “party lines”, an often recognisable voice. What they report to you is shaped by all these “personality traits” of people or institutions.

How did they shape this to grab my attention?

Or, what creative media techniques did the creators of the message use to grab my attention? Reports are often shaped in such a way as to interest us, putting the most sensational aspects in the most noticable places. Headlines are written to make us want to watch the snippet, or read more, click the link or at least not switch the channel. Yet these headlines can be misleading at best, and downright false at worst. This story in The Sun, for instance, is called out in this tweet for linking singer Lily Allen’s name to a story to sensationalise it, claiming she was not in any way involved.

Hi @TomGillespie1. Why link this tragic death to Lily Allen? She never played at the event and your pic is from an event 8 years earlier pic.twitter.com/SKXilZciRZ

— The Sun Apologies (@SunApology) February 18, 2017

How might someone different from me understand this message?

Our cultural and social background affects how we interpret a message, and what it says to us. Age and congnisance of online culture can also result in different messages meaning different things to different people. While this is most often subtle, Donald Trump demonstrated the difficulty of trying to communicate with a wide audience when he recently referred to Easy D. Young, internet-savvy consumers of his message understood it to mean something hopefully different from what he intended.

Another example of a cultural reference lost on certain social groups is

What values, lifestyles and points of view are either shown in or left out of this message?

Certain lifestyles and points of view are presented in the media as important, through a myriad of subtle signs. Over and above years’ conditioning about who and what is important, this question links with our consideration of who is shaping our messages. We should consider that journalists are (at least in the USA) overwhelmingly white males. We are for the most part presented a picture of reality viewed through the eyes of this social group. This bias has been shown to affect how reports are framed, often with serious societal consequences.

Why is this message being sent to me?

To answer this question, we need to try to pull the curtain back and see what ultimate monster may be operating the levers. News reporting can and very often does have a purpose well beyond merely informing you. Again, this question ties in with who is behind the message. Media owners are people with political and economic points of view and biases. For instance, Rupert Murdoch may have used his spectacular power in British media to help orchestrate Brexit for his own gains.

I personally think basic media analysis skills should be taught in school, as a fundamental part of civic and social education. Without knowledge, we are controllable, and when we can be controlled, we can en masse be used by the wealthy and powerful to direct even thicker streams of wealth and power into their hands.

This was originally posted on my old blog on 4 February 2017.

The echo chamber effect works in two ways. First, it’s when you only get exposed to media which reflect your ideology, never challenging your already cemented views. Second, it’s when an opinion is uttered, and repeated in the media you are exposed to so often that you start believing it’s fact. The echo chamber effect is particularly associated with conservative media. A liberal echo chamber also exists, but it is more associated with the first than the second characteristic of the echo chamber.

Politics works differently in Europe and the left/right divide is more complicated (because in Ireland, where I live, for instance, there are nine political parties in parliament right now, with more having representatives at local government level. Compare this to the USA where they’re one party away from being a one-party state, and may already be there – but more on that in another post). Nevertheless, it’s safe to say I’m on the liberal side. I am as susceptible to the echo chamber as anyone else, and mostly see the liberal framing of news. I have noticed a worrying echo chamber effect in my news feed.

Take, for example, the recent Bowling Green Massacre gaffe. Trump aide Kellyanne Conway cited a massacre that never happened to justify the recent Muslim ban. Conway was roundly mocked on social media for her mistake. My Twitter and Facebook feeds abounded with examples of witty responses which I admit I found very amusing. Yet something bothered me. The way this was all framed was that Conway was being schooled, roasted, owned, trolled. It was all framed as this triumph over her, that she was embarrassed. That those so cleverly mocking her achieved a victory over her, and over the Trump administration. So… what was Fox, bastion of right wing media, reporting?

That she misspoke, and corrected  herself. Then the report goes into great detail of the story she was actually referring to, and this in itself serves a purpose: it achieves what she was trying to achieve with the interview in which she made the mistake.

See, here’s the problem: those opposing Trump are creating this fantasy world in which they’re winning. We paint a picture where our clever social media burns actually matter to these people. They don’t. The people who got them into power, and the people who got Britain out of the EU, and the people who are likely to put Marine le Pen into power: our clever social media burns never reach their eyes or ears. Their echo chamber doesn’t report on those. The people who achieve the trolling are not in their Twitter or Facebook feeds. They live in a fantasy world where all these developments are building their utopia, while we live in a fantasy world where our intellectual warfare is actually affecting the Trumps, the Conways, the Farages, the Le Pens.

And while we each create and live our fantasy where we are winning, the wealthy and powerful are sucking the world around us dry, amassing the riches that will see them through the catastrophe their rape of earth’s resources will bring about. It’s like they’re feeding us drugs to keep us high, to keep up our illusion, so we don’t notice ourselves starving to death.

This was originally posted on my old blog on 3 February 2017.

The successful reporter is one who can find a story, even if there is no earthquake or assassination or civil war. If he cannot find a story, then he must make one.

These words perfectly explain the current flood of misleading or even outright fabricated “news” that pours over our senses day in, day out, until it’s a mammoth task to separate reality from fiction. Yet they were written almost sixty years ago. The quote is from historian Daniel Boorstin’s book The Image, first published in 1961. In it, he posited that what we observe can be divided into three categories:

• Genuine events are things that happened.
• Media events are things that would probably have happened, but which take on certain peculiarities because of reporting. The main concern in these events is staging a story.
• Pseudo events are fabricated for reporting, for the cameras. They are totally staged happenings which would not take place if reporting was not a thing.

So for instance, it rained. That is a genuine event. There was a hole in the roof of the house, so the cat got wet. Reporters are filmed talking about the plight of the wet cat, and people flock to help the cat who may not have been interested if the cameras were not rolling (the people, not the cat. The cat, mildly confused by the sudden interest but enjoying the generous offers of towel rubs, is otherwise unaffected by the presence of cameras). That is a media event. Later, a press conference is organised where the mayor announces a war on dogs. While the event happens live, technical or dramatic techniques are used to make it more attractive for the cameras, and of course to control its unfolding. That is a pseudo event.

Pseudo events are manufactured, and nothing is ever manufactured without a purpose. This doesn’t need to be something sinister, but it can be. Worryingly, pseudo events can by their very nature be more attractive to consumers. This means that even reporting of real events is increasingly undergoing something that can be compared to processing of food. It’s tastier, it’s more attractive, so we gobble more and more of it, becoming fatter and sicker from the poor nutrition it provides.

Understanding of the human psyche has become very sophisticated, leading to the discovery that certain emotions can be evoked by framing news in a certain way, so that you hook a consumer and, of course, make more money. If you control news reporting, you can control what people believe about the world, and subsequently you can control who they vote for, and therefore who commands power. Considering this, the ownership of media organisations should be something we all worry about. These owners are the real rulers of the world.

This was originally posted on my old blog on 27 January 2017.

We all live in the local, moving in and interacting with a limited part of the world. To form a view of and understand what lies outside our personal experience, we rely on the reports of others. In other words, mediators. Media – artefacts created to communicate – especially news media, are meant to act as a mirror which reflects society.

The usual function of a mirror is to allow us to see ourselves. Interestingly, what we see is not quite real, even though it’s a perfect reflection. While many a horror story or film have used the trope of mirrors being, in fact, a window to another world, or something in which a monster or ghost can be captured, in reality mirrors are no more than a surface meant to reflect.

Yet increasingly, this media-mirror has shown life stirring in it of its own accord. There’s a monster in that glass, and instead of reflecting society, it is reaching out and shaping society. This is indeed the stuff of nightmares. Take, for instance, the recent British vote to leave the European Union. Among many issues that were hyped up as an imminent threat was the spectre of thousands of immigrants from Turkey overwhelming Britain, with EU membership allowing their free flow into the country. The fear arising from this spectacle was a critical factor in many people’s decision to vote to leave the EU. Yet it was a false narrative. A similar situation exists in the United States of America, where the new president has made moves to ban Muslims from the country, while the reality is that only a tiny fraction of all acts of terror on US soil have been carried out by Muslims over the last decade. Media is used to create a false narrative, but people accept it as a reflection of reality, and act accordingly, with serious consequences. Media can lead us – whether we think of ourselves as liberal, conservative, libertarian, socialist, or more – to believe something that simply isn’t so.

The mirror, even if it is free of faults that warp what it reflects, cannot help but frame reality in a certain way. The people who tell us the story of what happened inevitably viewed events from a certain vantage point, and filter the story through their own biases, no matter how hard they may try to be neutral. Modern technology has exacerbated the problem: with 24/7 news cycles and competition for consumers, profit and sensationalism drive selection of what to report. People rely on the news media to condense world events in an easy-to-digest ready-meal, and reporters comply, even when the stuff of the meal is too nuanced to compress into a sound bite. It all has to stay fresh, too, so news pours over us too quickly to consider, digest, examine.

The mirror is small and unable to show us all there is too see, it is warped, with a monster stirring inside and reaching out to shape what it should only reflect, yet it is all we have to work on in our effort to understand what is going on beyond our local world. What are we to do?

The answer is not easy. It’s not a ready-meal. We have to teach ourselves to become media analysts. I am privileged to be in a position to formally study media analysis, meaning I can spend the time needed to look beyond the reflection and actually examine the mirror. Not everyone has that time, and that’s a dilemma. I hope to share my journey with you here as I take it. It might give you ideas on how, with the time available to you, you can also look more closely at the mirror’s surface and more accurately understanding the reality it should reflect.