In Com Theory last week we touched upon Mead’s Theory of Symbolic Convergence, and one of the primary principals of it is the concept of the “Other,” which is the version of ourselves that we create based on society’s view of us. Without delving too deeply into the theory, basically when we refer to ourselves as “me” we are referring not to what we are, but what everyone else has labeled us as. And, in light of all of this, i just feel like i am in a constant power-struggle to keep “I” somewhere close to “me.” If you take that a step farther you could imply that people’s definitions of me inevitably reflect on my behaviour because i am either conforming to their expectations or trying to subvert them.
If you can’t see how fucked up it is for that to be imposed on a still-developing person for the entirety of their adolescence and young-adult life i’ll have to lend you my textbook sometime.
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There’s a boy in Models and Theories of Communication whose class participation features an unusually high signal to noise ratio. It’s something i expect, to an extent; everyone is tempted to talk about themselves and how our latest theory applies to them and their father, girlfriend, or pet hamster. In this particular case, at first i was convinced that there was a point or intention — the source of this noise is extremely well read, multilingual, and studious. However, in class those well aimed shots of his hands up into the air always wind up with me taking a deep breath and shooting one up in return because he seems to be missing the point, or obviously hasn’t done the reading, or is being wholly irrelevant.
Tonight we were talking about Berger’s Theory of Uncertainty Reduction as it pertains to interpersonal relationships, the number two axiom of which has to do with affilial physical behaviour and how it relates to how certain you are about someone (how well you know/understand them). Suddenly in my peripheral vision up goes a hand to me left, and it’s all i can do not to brace with a deep breath and a sideways glance to Jeff. Then comes the noise… what about people who develop their relationships online? A valid circumstance, to be sure, and an interesting debate to be had, but nothing that we really need to touch upon in the span of our three hour lecture. To even ask the question seemed highly noisy… obviously online relationships subscribe to a different communicative paradigm, and to try to apply them to many of our theories would require massive restructuring whenever they mention tone or physicality. I personally think if you step away from being argumentative with the interpersonal theories that they apply well to many of the relationships i’ve formed since i began this page, but the noisy boy had his own agenda and he was pressing forward with it as i seethed next to Jeff.
“What about people that keep open online journals? What is the explanation of how they fit into this scheme?” Of course, i had my hand raised and a sentence ready to fire about how journaling is really not an intentionally reciprocal communicative act so much as it is a journalistic one unless we are explicitly examining the interactions of a journaler with a peer. Before any of that could could get fired off, it was time for mid-period break, and i hauled Jeff out into the hallway with me to kvetch.
I was just getting to railing about how irrelevant blogging was to Berger and how i certainly knew better about that than some random classmate might when Noisy walks up to our conversation. I am not shy, and so i quickly point out his signal to noise ratio, and when he plays dumb about it i brought up my peeve only to find that his noise might have been a little more direct than i had initially thought.
Somewhere in my Communications Theory book it says something to the effect of art introduces a new or original way of looking at life. Right.
I have been having some fussy bitchy unjustified issues with Laurel lately. Don’t ask me why, because there is no why; any issue i ever have with Laurel exists entirely inside of my own head. But, anyway, the first day she got back i just got this vibe from her that Laurel Had Returned and that i had gotten shuffled way down to the bottom of the deck from where i had been before she left. And, why not? Laurel is the pretty one, the talented one, the intelligent one, the castable one. Of course, i never saw it that way at first; all i knew was that i had a dream where we kissed and that it didn’t seem like such an awful idea.
Two years later, the situation is more tangled in my head, and who knows what the situation is like in hers. Tonight when we started talking in our production class all the petty resentment i was starting to build quickly faded out because face to face there was nothing… only things i had created and surmised.
Before tonight’s round of auditions Laurel gave me a ride to my house, and while we were there i played her some songs … two she already knew and three i wrote while she was away. Sometimes i question whether or not anything i do is vaguely artistic by anyone’s definition let alone by the one i mentioned at the top of the post, and today while i was playing songs for Laurel i was playing all my usual games … glancing up and away, shutting my eyes, carefully watching my picking even though i surely know the patterns tried and true. When i inevitably got to “Under My Skin,” Laurel sang along just like she did on the demo recording, and looking at her she was really meaning something when she was singing the words… not just intonations and syllables, but something beyond. I’m not sure if she’s even applying the lyrics to the same time and place that i wrote them about, but suddenly they have life and meaning for her, and according to my communications book that’s one tangible step closer to art.
Philadelpha Inquirer: Kiss My Ass! I left a phone message and email for the writer of this story only knowing that it would be about blogging teens and not about the disaster angle. Wouldn’t you know that she didn’t email me back about it even though i was (as far as i know) one of the first Philly blogs to feature any reliable fact-based coverage last Tuesday. Not only did she not email me back about being interviewed, she used Brendan at Bokane in her story as per my recommendation of him… again, with no email correspondence. Of course, Brendan can be located easily via Google and i am but a drop in the bucket of teenaged reactions to last week’s events, but i still feel vaguely shafted by the whole thing. You should read the article, although it’s honestly a sortof “bringing blogging to the masses” kind of thing; nothing shocking.
So, now it is the morning after and more tiny details are creeping out about cell phone calls and arrests in Florida and etc. However, i won’t be linking the majority of this day two news, and i want to talk about the reasons why.
I am a student of Journalism and, while i lack a vast majority of the knowledge i will (hopefully) eventually be in possession of, i am both very aware and very critical of the dissemination of information in America. In fact, that is probably part of the reason that i am so continually interested and involved with personal publishing.
I am of the very concrete opinion that in a crisis of national importance the networks over-report the most basic and inconsequential of details and too often ignore the most basic facts of an investigation. What is excellent about obtaining breaking news online is that while news can be continually updated it doesn’t have to be continuously live. This means that the facts of a situation can continue to be present while the latest news can be appended to the top of the file.
Despite this fact, the major news outlets with normally reliable websites remained wholly ignorant of how to report such an important situation online. Simple facts like the time of impact were wholly absent from early versions of the story, and i had to view four different news services before piecing together my initial post with the NBC news photo.
I won’t touch upon the inadequacy of internet servers to handle crucial amounts of traffic because the situation became all-too-evident yesterday as CNN and MSNBC pitched all of their various bells and whistles overboard to save on bandwidth. I am primarily concerned with the way we report news, and what we report. Today coverage is focusing on individual families and acts of heroism, and this is totally appropriate and puts a human face on such a mind-boggling situation. However, in the early hours of a tragedy it is not what the general public most needs to initially see and hear.
Essentially, when an entire nation brings their focus to bear on a single state, city, or square block, the news media should be concerned with providing and maintaining an accurate narrative, correct and up-to-date statistics, and reliable eye witness reports. This does not include bringing in blood-thirsty “military experts” who are practically volunteering to deliver bombs themselves to “whoever” is responsible. It does not include repeatedly asking for the obviously unavailable casualty numbers throughout the early afternoon and into the evening. It does not include asking any and all New Yorkers to contribute yet another description of one of the airplanes’ impacts with the World Trade Center.
Human interest is definitely a point of any breaking news story, but my primary concern yesterday was to distill all of the news that had emerged so that anyone could see a single picture or read a single paragraph and glean important facts. The network coverage on ABC and MSNBC broke reports of the flight numbers and the names of the aircraft carriers shortly after noon yesterday, yet the flight numbers didn’t reach a rapid rotation in the coverage for well over an hour and this morning news outlets are reporting the presence of the aircraft carrier as though it slunk it under cover of night. There is a certain something to be said for continuously involving the viewer in the events so that they feel as though they are part of the journalistic process, but i find it disturbing that we have so few high-end news outlets in America when there is obviously a whole nation who are not hungry for death tolls or perpetrators, but who just want to know what is happening to their friends & family in other parts of the country.
Networks are afraid to cut away from coverage for any reason, and rightly so; there is always the chance of more breaking news and always a fresh viewer tuning in. However, not everyone wants a continuous feed of repetitive news, and that is why i turned on my computer at work before i turned on a radio or a television. As was pointed out by various sources yesterday, the internet is truly amazing because it is an entirely decentralized means of obtaining information, and it was this decentralization that provided the most important details as yesterday progressed. However, it is not unreasonable to expect a few reliable sources to be intermingled with this rush of facts from all sides, and i suppose i’m just surprised that the most consistently reliable source that i have found so far is not necessarily a formal news site, but the personally owned public forum at MetaFilter. Perhaps i simply need to change my ideas about a reliable source is, but i think that we all equally need to change our ideas about what we should be expecting from these sources.
I have no personal response to yesterday’s events yet because at the very root of me i am still numb about it all. However, just as yesterday morning my first instinct was to physically confirm news and then distribute it to my co-workers, my primary continuing concern is the inadequacy of some of the reporters and news services who we were relying on to inform us of the most basic details about this national emergency. I suppose in the face of such a disaster the only way i can feel like i have an impact on anything is to do this.
Blagh.