Media Representation, Journalism - Essay Example

?Media Representation Introduction Media today have evolved to become one of the most influential day-to-day “commodity” or aspect of living. It is capable of a lot of things from providing information, news, entertainment, forming opinion, mobilizing individuals or groups of peoples into action, and many others which impact on most if not all of its consumers. Incidentally, the media has also evolved in form. Previously, it began as a hand-written matter for personal use, and soon, posted on prominent places or spaces as a public announcement, or a smaller version that is passed from one reader to another when the printing press has not yet been introduced. But upon the age of industrialization when the printing press went out in the market, the fray for information and various data that printed matter can provide started. The use of the airwaves soon contributed to the evolution of mass media as radio became portable and mass produced. The forms of entertainment also expanded to fill the void that news, opinion and information left for listeners and their anchormen. Television also provided a turning point, not only for the media industry but for world history. It became a milestone invention and product that every home had to own. And more than that, every room of a home need to feature like a basic commodity. Today, mass media encompass many other forms but the latest phenomenon has become the computer and its peripheral products and services courtesy of the information and communication technologies (ICT). This paper will discuss and analyze media representation in a specific article “Liking Is for Cowards. Go for What Hurts” by Jonathan Franzen published in May 28 at New York Times print and online editions. It is an adaptation from a commencement speech he delivered on May 21 at Kenyon College. Discussion Media representation refers to the various direct and indirect messages conveyed to the audience or reader of any form of communication. In a certain page, whether a magazine, a newspaper, or a website, various messages are delivered across the audience. These messages are dependent on several factors that have been intentionally or unintentionally provided by the media entity. Media entities are the various imprints, sites, stations, competing publications or publishers, or products of a media conglomeration. The messages provided by the media may reflect their representation. Conway (65) discussed the danger of representation where journalists were left on their devices and decision-making on how to interpret a memorandum issued by their supervisor. At length, Conway noted that: “The question of who represents whom is politically fraught, especially when it is journalists who make the decision. In their coverage of the constitutional debates in 1991 and 1992, for instance, CBC and Radio-Canada journalists followed identifiable professional norms when choosing representatives to speak on behalf of the groups identified by McQueen, the end result being that they favored certain speakers while leaving others out. In other words, through their exclusions they failed to meet the task McQueen had set for them.” (65). She was referring to the task given by McQueen as head of the news and current affairs of Canadian Broadcasting Corporation to her staff to provide their viewers a chance to hear the point of view of various groups affected by the debate. Representation in this manner was limited by the inadequacy of the media personnel to identify objectively their sources of information. There are various ways that representation may be interpreted. This paper will proceed to discuss and analyze a New York Times article with regards to its media representation and messages imparted. Media Article: Political Commentary Jonathan Franzen’s (1) commentary begins with the popular trend of technological consumerism. He narrated how he, too, was a gadget user who fell for the hypes and commercial aspects of products specifically the PDA Blackberry series. He soon went on to point out the formation of marketing strategies in social networking sites such as the “like” button of the website FaceBook. In many respects, other buttons also denotes base actions that individuals may employ on their virtual pages: “share”, “email”, “digg”, “tweet”, “blog”, among other verbs that have become in the online community. Franzen commented that the sleekness of the “latest” products cater to the needs and requirements of the individual user, as well as reflect or add a “personality” or characteristic to the new owner or consumer. He contrasted “like” from “love” as “like” was the social media commodification to destroy an enemy – the enemy being the uglier aspects of reality. Here, the individual or the consumer is empowered to pick only which he wants, and these may be downloadable programs or features intended for the gadget or the web page (2). In this portion of the article, Franzen was speaking of the business aspect of media representation. He represents the viewer or consumer, a victim. The business aspect of the media is equated to ownership where the commitment is on investors (Murdock, Graham & Peter Golding, 78). Business is an overriding incident, an investment for sustainability and probable growth and prosperity for any media capitalist. Many media entities claim of the traditional adage, mission and commitment of journalists as provider of news, information, and opinion in fair, objective and truthful manner. A service to the public. However, due to the need of resources and maintenance as well as aspiration for growth, publishers and their management need to succumb to sustainability measures that include catering to advertisers and patrons who could help and contribute to the growth of the media entity (Doyle, 14). Forms of branding and market segmentation are also implemented in media entities in order to differentiate their audiences and easily reach out to their intended viewership or readership. He views the media, gadget or web page as “sexy” and noting how one can “impel[ing] them to action with voice commands, or doing that spreading-the-fingers iPhone thing that makes images get bigger — would have looked, to people a hundred years ago, like a magician’s incantations, a magician’s hand gestures; and how, when we want to describe an erotic relationship that’s working perfectly, we speak, indeed, of magic,” (Franzen, 1). Here, Franzen demonstrates the effect of the media to his emotions and daily existence. He becomes enamored by it for he believes that it empowered him, until he realized that “The message, in each case, is that if you love somebody you should buy stuff,” (Franzen, 2) which is the commodization of the media. However, through media or otherwise, Franzen also was able to see beyond a prevailing media message, that is, to love. He becomes committed and sees the negative and ugly side of reality that has been kept from him by the media. By loving, he was able to discern more important things about living that media, too, helped him learn and understand. In this aspect, we see the public commitment aspect or media as a Fourth Estate. Being the fourth estate makes media a constitutionally protected device, a medium for expression and the right to speak out and be heard. Some editorial or management systems were formed by the media entities to cater to certain services and public expectations, a medium for the fourth estate (Rayner, Wall and Krueger, 83). They are expected to deliver what their viewers or readers expect them to – un-biased news, extensive event coverage, well-researched and expert opinions, quality entertainment, and important information that affect the daily lives of peoples from all walks of life (Schultz, 17). When Franzen spoke of his devotion to birds, their environment, and their conservation, he was speaking and acting to be heard. Here, he also plays a more sublime aspect of being a part of the media as columnist: to enlighten, influence, and discuss about going beyond the self, beyond “liking” and shattering the narcissistic self. By thoroughly explaining this human capacity to care and sacrifice a part of the self, Franzen hopes to influence his gadget-crazed and FaceBook-user readers to seek for themselves their own realities and be able to do something for the natural environment. He consciously or unconsciously (or the editors who picked his speech) implores the power of the media to influence readers or viewers (Watson, 51) not only to understand his thoughts and beliefs but also to emulate his actions because he, too, was as human and as consumerist just like them. Therefore, there is also a high probability for them to start caring for the environment even when at some parts of their lives, they have been beyond salvation. There are political and economic forces where media entity operates and this may be localized in nature. Despite the integration of the ICT internationally, local forces remain as dominant factors in the delivery of media services. Leadership in any given locality cast their power on some if not all media entities that operate in their domain. While domination may not be absolute, some leaders find ways to manipulate or subject the various forms of media and their staff to their desires (Murdock et al, 71). Political events, too, may also influence media content and message. In the course of popular demand or even impending uprising, the media can be swayed to defy political pressure and move with the local flow. In Franzen’s discussion, political influence was not directly indicated. While this is integrated to media systems, his article was taken on a personal note. The political aspect of the content may be referred to his indirect assailing of consumerism, a product of political and economic forces (Chomsky, 4) which has gone global by now. The economy of a nation and the globe has at most dictated the culture in media and almost all aspects of human existence. As Franzen noted, there is the tendency to reduce the individual as a mere “consumer”, a prevailing practice that is quite permanent and inevitable. Another media representation that was touched by Franzen’s article is resources. Resources refer to the ability and limitation of an editorial team or media management to gather materials and may employ extensive manners. It may also involve only a certain reporter, editor, opinion writer or columnist, anchorman, or the show’s host. It may also involve a team or a group without necessarily reflecting the whole of the media entity (Fenton, 9), so that many forms of disclaimers can be noted in almost all pages of publications or websites. On the article, Franzen solely attributed all contents as his except for the mention of another name Alice Sebold whom he quoted to have said about love as “getting down in the pit and loving somebody.” He also mentioned Donald Trump the realtor-tv host, but only as a personification of a confused consumer. Conclusion Franzen provided several aspects of media representation in the article “Liking Is for Cowards. Go for What Hurts”. At most, his article reflects a New York Times manner of presenting opinions and views in personalized manner, speaking in a way that a certain issue affects them personally, like ordinary citizens of the United States. Here, Franzen maximized his targeted audience in an economically-conscious manner by including the discussion of what is currently popular – tech gadgets and social networking sites. He also made an effort to make himself identifiable with the audience and indirectly saying “we are all victims of consumerism” which is a negative and destructive state that the target audience should understand. Finally, Franzen’s article flowed on his major message about environmental consciousness and the need for individual contribution towards retarding environment degradation; that we all have an important, positive role to play when it comes to the environment; that we can channel the ubiquitous and useless “liking” of consumer products towards more important issues of existence, such as conservation of birds; that we can actually endure getting hurt and ignored, as well as capable of loving. In conclusion, Franzen utilized several media representations to get across his message. Since the article gained prominence in New York Times readership as one of the most popular for several days now, Franzen successfully utilized the representations. Works Cited Chomsky, Noam. 'A Propaganda Model' in Manufacturing Consent: the Political Economy of the Mass Media. New York :Pantheon. pp.1-35. 2002. Conway, Kyle. Public Service Broadcasting and the Failure of Political Representation. The Velvet Light Trap 64, Fall, 64-75. 2009. Doyle, Gillian. 'Media Concentration and Pluralism', in Media Ownership: the economics and politics of convergence and concentration in the UK and Europe. London; Thousand Oaks (Calif.): Sage. pp.11-29. 2002. Franzen, Jonathan. Liking Is for Cowards. Go for What Hurts.Opinion, May 28, New York Times, 1-3. Accessed from http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/29/opinion/29franzen.html?src=me&ref=general Fenton, Natalie. 'Bridging The Mythical Divde: Political Economy And Cultural Studies Approaches To The Analysis Of The Media', in Eoin Devereaux (ed.) Media Studies: Key Issues and Debate. London Sage. pp. 7-29 McChesney, Robert W. ' The Emerging Struggle for a Free Press', in Robert W. McChesney, Russell Newman and Ben Scott, The Future of Media : Resistance and Reform in the 21st Century. New York: Seven Stories Press. pp.9-20. 2005. Murdock, Graham & Peter Golding. 'Culture, Communication and Political Economy', in James Curran & Michael Gurevitch, Mass media and Society. London:Hodder Arnold.pp60-83. 2005. Rayner, Phillip, Peter Wall and Stephen Kruger. 'Media Ideology', in Media Studies: the Essential Introduction. London; New York : Routhledge. pp.80-86. 2001. Rayner, Phillip, Peter Wall & Stephen Kruger. ' Image Analysis (codes etc.)', in Media Studies: the Essential Introduction. London & New York: Routledge.pp.29-43. 2001. Schultz, Julianne. ' Redefining the Fourth Estate', in Reviving The Fourth Estate: Democracy, Accountability And The Media. Melbourne: Cambridge University Press. pp15-22. 1998. Revised edition: 2007. Watson, James. ' Hegemony an Overview'; 'Signs, Codes, Texts', in Media Communication: an Introduction to Theory and Process (3rd edition) New York: Palgrave. pp. 22-28;49-58. 2008. Watson, James. 'Ideology and the news' in Media Communication: an Introduction to Theory and Process, (2nd edition) New York, Palgrave, pp.142-147. 2003. Appendix: News Article: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/29/opinion/29franzen.html?src=me&ref=general Op-Ed Contributor Liking Is for Cowards. Go for What Hurts. By JONATHAN FRANZEN Published: May 28, 2011 A COUPLE of weeks ago, I replaced my three-year-old BlackBerry Pearl with a much more powerful BlackBerry Bold. Needless to say, I was impressed with how far the technology had advanced in three years. Even when I didn’t have anybody to call or text or e-mail, I wanted to keep fondling my new Bold and experiencing the marvelous clarity of its screen, the silky action of its track pad, the shocking speed of its responses, the beguiling elegance of its graphics. Enlarge This Image Illustration by Sarah Illenberger, Photograph by Ragnar Schmuck I was, in short, infatuated with my new device. I’d been similarly infatuated with my old device, of course; but over the years the bloom had faded from our relationship. I’d developed trust issues with my Pearl, accountability issues, compatibility issues and even, toward the end, some doubts about my Pearl’s very sanity, until I’d finally had to admit to myself that I’d outgrown the relationship. Do I need to point out that — absent some wild, anthropomorphizing projection in which my old BlackBerry felt sad about the waning of my love for it — our relationship was entirely one-sided? Let me point it out anyway. Let me further point out how ubiquitously the word “sexy” is used to describe late-model gadgets; and how the extremely cool things that we can do now with these gadgets — like impelling them to action with voice commands, or doing that spreading-the-fingers iPhone thing that makes images get bigger — would have looked, to people a hundred years ago, like a magician’s incantations, a magician’s hand gestures; and how, when we want to describe an erotic relationship that’s working perfectly, we speak, indeed, of magic. Let me toss out the idea that, as our markets discover and respond to what consumers most want, our technology has become extremely adept at creating products that correspond to our fantasy ideal of an erotic relationship, in which the beloved object asks for nothing and gives everything, instantly, and makes us feel all powerful, and doesn’t throw terrible scenes when it’s replaced by an even sexier object and is consigned to a drawer. To speak more generally, the ultimate goal of technology, the telos of techne, is to replace a natural world that’s indifferent to our wishes — a world of hurricanes and hardships and breakable hearts, a world of resistance — with a world so responsive to our wishes as to be, effectively, a mere extension of the self. Let me suggest, finally, that the world of techno-consumerism is therefore troubled by real love, and that it has no choice but to trouble love in turn. Its first line of defense is to commodify its enemy. You can all supply your own favorite, most nauseating examples of the commodification of love. Mine include the wedding industry, TV ads that feature cute young children or the giving of automobiles as Christmas presents, and the particularly grotesque equation of diamond jewelry with everlasting devotion. The message, in each case, is that if you love somebody you should buy stuff. A related phenomenon is the transformation, courtesy of Facebook, of the verb “to like” from a state of mind to an action that you perform with your computer mouse, from a feeling to an assertion of consumer choice. And liking, in general, is commercial culture’s substitute for loving. The striking thing about all consumer products — and none more so than electronic devices and applications — is that they’re designed to be immensely likable. This is, in fact, the definition of a consumer product, in contrast to the product that is simply itself and whose makers aren’t fixated on your liking it. (I’m thinking here of jet engines, laboratory equipment, serious art and literature.) But if you consider this in human terms, and you imagine a person defined by a desperation to be liked, what do you see? You see a person without integrity, without a center. In more pathological cases, you see a narcissist — a person who can’t tolerate the tarnishing of his or her self-image that not being liked represents, and who therefore either withdraws from human contact or goes to extreme, integrity-sacrificing lengths to be likable. (Page 2 of 3) If you dedicate your existence to being likable, however, and if you adopt whatever cool persona is necessary to make it happen, it suggests that you’ve despaired of being loved for who you really are. And if you succeed in manipulating other people into liking you, it will be hard not to feel, at some level, contempt for those people, because they’ve fallen for your shtick. You may find yourself becoming depressed, or alcoholic, or, if you’re Donald Trump, running for president (and then quitting). Consumer technology products would never do anything this unattractive, because they aren’t people. They are, however, great allies and enablers of narcissism. Alongside their built-in eagerness to be liked is a built-in eagerness to reflect well on us. Our lives look a lot more interesting when they’re filtered through the sexy Facebook interface. We star in our own movies, we photograph ourselves incessantly, we click the mouse and a machine confirms our sense of mastery. And, since our technology is really just an extension of ourselves, we don’t have to have contempt for its manipulability in the way we might with actual people. It’s all one big endless loop. We like the mirror and the mirror likes us. To friend a person is merely to include the person in our private hall of flattering mirrors. I may be overstating the case, a little bit. Very probably, you’re sick to death of hearing social media disrespected by cranky 51-year-olds. My aim here is mainly to set up a contrast between the narcissistic tendencies of technology and the problem of actual love. My friend Alice Sebold likes to talk about “getting down in the pit and loving somebody.” She has in mind the dirt that love inevitably splatters on the mirror of our self-regard. The simple fact of the matter is that trying to be perfectly likable is incompatible with loving relationships. Sooner or later, for example, you’re going to find yourself in a hideous, screaming fight, and you’ll hear coming out of your mouth things that you yourself don’t like at all, things that shatter your self-image as a fair, kind, cool, attractive, in-control, funny, likable person. Something realer than likability has come out in you, and suddenly you’re having an actual life. Suddenly there’s a real choice to be made, not a fake consumer choice between a BlackBerry and an iPhone, but a question: Do I love this person? And, for the other person, does this person love me? There is no such thing as a person whose real self you like every particle of. This is why a world of liking is ultimately a lie. But there is such a thing as a person whose real self you love every particle of. And this is why love is such an existential threat to the techno-consumerist order: it exposes the lie. This is not to say that love is only about fighting. Love is about bottomless empathy, born out of the heart’s revelation that another person is every bit as real as you are. And this is why love, as I understand it, is always specific. Trying to love all of humanity may be a worthy endeavor, but, in a funny way, it keeps the focus on the self, on the self’s own moral or spiritual well-being. Whereas, to love a specific person, and to identify with his or her struggles and joys as if they were your own, you have to surrender some of your self. The big risk here, of course, is rejection. We can all handle being disliked now and then, because there’s such an infinitely big pool of potential likers. But to expose your whole self, not just the likable surface, and to have it rejected, can be catastrophically painful. The prospect of pain generally, the pain of loss, of breakup, of death, is what makes it so tempting to avoid love and stay safely in the world of liking. And yet pain hurts but it doesn’t kill. When you consider the alternative — an anesthetized dream of self-sufficiency, abetted by technology — pain emerges as the natural product and natural indicator of being alive in a resistant world. To go through a life painlessly is to have not lived. Even just to say to yourself, “Oh, I’ll get to that love and pain stuff later, maybe in my 30s” is to consign yourself to 10 years of merely taking up space on the planet and burning up its resources. Of being (and I mean this in the most damning sense of the word) a consumer. When I was in college, and for many years after, I liked the natural world. Didn’t love it, but definitely liked it. It can be very pretty, nature. And since I was looking for things to find wrong with the world, I naturally gravitated to environmentalism, because there were certainly plenty of things wrong with the environment. And the more I looked at what was wrong — an exploding world population, exploding levels of resource consumption, rising global temperatures, the trashing of the oceans, the logging of our last old-growth forests — the angrier I became. Finally, in the mid-1990s, I made a conscious decision to stop worrying about the environment. There was nothing meaningful that I personally could do to save the planet, and I wanted to get on with devoting myself to the things I loved. I still tried to keep my carbon footprint small, but that was as far as I could go without falling back into rage and despair. BUT then a funny thing happened to me. It’s a long story, but basically I fell in love with birds. I did this not without significant resistance, because it’s very uncool to be a birdwatcher, because anything that betrays real passion is by definition uncool. But little by little, in spite of myself, I developed this passion, and although one-half of a passion is obsession, the other half is love. And so, yes, I kept a meticulous list of the birds I’d seen, and, yes, I went to inordinate lengths to see new species. But, no less important, whenever I looked at a bird, any bird, even a pigeon or a robin, I could feel my heart overflow with love. And love, as I’ve been trying to say today, is where our troubles begin. Because now, not merely liking nature but loving a specific and vital part of it, I had no choice but to start worrying about the environment again. The news on that front was no better than when I’d decided to quit worrying about it — was considerably worse, in fact — but now those threatened forests and wetlands and oceans weren’t just pretty scenes for me to enjoy. They were the home of animals I loved. And here’s where a curious paradox emerged. My anger and pain and despair about the planet were only increased by my concern for wild birds, and yet, as I began to get involved in bird conservation and learned more about the many threats that birds face, it became easier, not harder, to live with my anger and despair and pain. How does this happen? I think, for one thing, that my love of birds became a portal to an important, less self-centered part of myself that I’d never even known existed. Instead of continuing to drift forward through my life as a global citizen, liking and disliking and withholding my commitment for some later date, I was forced to confront a self that I had to either straight-up accept or flat-out reject. Which is what love will do to a person. Because the fundamental fact about all of us is that we’re alive for a while but will die before long. This fact is the real root cause of all our anger and pain and despair. And you can either run from this fact or, by way of love, you can embrace it. When you stay in your room and rage or sneer or shrug your shoulders, as I did for many years, the world and its problems are impossibly daunting. But when you go out and put yourself in real relation to real people, or even just real animals, there’s a very real danger that you might love some of them. And who knows what might happen to you then? Screen shot: Read More