Rationalities such as this echo my own justifications for mindlessly pirating music online. However, there exists a tension between the definition and legal conception of this technology, and its practical application. Peer to peer software itself is not illegal. The issues surrounding file sharing technology relate more so to established notions of copyright. Through platforms such as LimeWire, KaZaA, BitTorrent, and (some would argue the father of P2P, napster), users are infringing the copyright owner’s right of communication to the public, as well as unlawfully exercising their reproduction right.

At the crux of the debate surrounding peer to peer file sharing is the ethical and moral dilemmas it poses. Why is it that many of us have no qualms about downloading songs from limewire (I myself have in excess of 1000), and yet would never consider stealing a CD from a music store. What is it about the Internet that has triggered this contingent behaviour? Is it indeed wrong, as the major record labels would have us believe? Or, can it be justified? If so, where then, do we draw a distinction between stealing and sharing?

Whilst I personally do not have the answers to these questions, I would admit that even attempting to confront these issues forces me to question my own moral and ethical rhetoric. On the one hand, I can appreciate the argument propagated by many, that it is difficult to empathise with huge multinationals such as the Warner Music Group, and supergroups such as U2, who have fleeced us loyal fans for many years now, and enjoy the spoils of our devotion. That being said, the advertisements proclaiming that “stealing is a crime” do muster some guilty feelings within my conscience.

As such, I believe that this is an issue that is socially important and globally relevant. It is situated within the context of an increasingly networked society that is continually undermining the foundations of traditional media. In essence, it represents the very heart of the modern media dilemma – how to reconcile the old with the new. In this way, I would assert that, whilst we are undoubtedly in the midst of a time of great technological (and thus arguably social) flux, the questions raised by peer to peer file sharing technology are representative of the continued challenges posed by the economic, political and social agendas vested in contemporary media practice.

In this tute we discussed notions of balance, debate and media discourse. In order to frame this dialogue, we considered the issue of climate change (which had arisen in the preceding lecture), and how it has developed as a media discourse.

Firstly, we looked at the ‘The Great Global Warming Swindle’ from the ABC website (http://www.abc.net.au/tv/swindle/). This helped us to consider the way in which a particular issue can be presented as an open, balanced debate, particularly given the context of the ABC attempting to cater for a plurality of opinions. Within this discursive space, viewers of all beliefs could participate in the discussion, becoming testament to the democratising power of the media.

Similarly, various other examples were considered in relation to these themes. Rachel brought a recent newspaper article titled ‘Turnball takes climate change message online’ (http://www.smh.com.au/environment/global-warming/turnbull-takes-climate-change-message-online-20090811-egsd.html), which seemed to promulgate McLuhan’s view that “the medium is the message.” By utilising YouTube to convey the Opposition’s climate change opinions, Turnbull is clearly attempting to appeal to a younger, new media focussed generation in delivering his conflicting viewpoint.

Sally’s example was a website and documentary entitled ‘Not Evil Just Wrong’ (http://noteviljustwrong.com/).

• Supports similar ideas to the ABC documentary, but in a more propaganda-like way (especially in the trailer), stating that scientists, the media, and everyday people are speaking out
• Shows global warming as a multifaceted issue and asks the question of what are we going to do about it now?
• Raises economic and unemployment issues that demonstrate the shifting nature of the argument and media discourse

Ultimately, the key issue is how this message is framed within the media, as situated within broader implications of the economy, security, and an overriding societal resistance towards change.

In the last half of the tute, we examined a few of the key concepts from the Miller and Rose reading, in order to assist us in our upcoming assignment. Margie told us that the importance is not so much what they say, but rather how they say it. Specifically, this will apply to the interwoven relationships between the political rationality, problematisation, governmental programme and governmental technology, which operates like a metaphorical machine.

During’s reading explores the concept of identity, and how it represents both a constitutive feature of the relationship between individuals and society, as well as a fundamentally ambiguous term that is difficult to define, remaining “something of a theoretical enigma.” He asserts that “identity is won at the price of reducing individuality”, a statement which I found quite confronting, in that prior to this week’s lecture and the associated readings, I had not considered the distinctions between identity and its connotations of individuality and uniqueness. Thus, this reading highlights many important aspects of the construction of identity, being an intrinsically social, political and contingent process, as (ironically) opposed to being chosen by the individual of which it represents.

Identity politics refers to the phenomenon of political action to advance the identities of particular groups, who tend to be disempowered, marginalised or oppressed. During uses this concept, and historical examples such as the 1960’s civil rights movement in the USA, to infer that the universal “desire for recognition”, in spite of social and political differences, has posed many challenges for “white hegemony.” In this way, it is clear that identities are “culturally inflected”, representing the priorities and “power relations within a community.”

However, During counters this with the concept of hybridity theory. This refers to the construction of identity as being fluid, evolving and mutating depending on the context of situation. I would tend to agree with this theory more so than that of identity politics, in that it accounts for much more individualisation in recognising that people possess multiple identities. In saying that, however, both concepts rely on the premise of binary opposition, and so perhaps in focusing more on this idea, in conjunction with individual processes of interpellation, media theorists would achieve a more holistic understanding of the nature of identity.

This text examines the implications of multimodal texts, specifically, the effect of image and verbiage on individual interpretation of events, in this case, the 2001 ‘children overboard’ affair. Macken-Horarik asserts that “a multimodal metalanguage has to face in two directions,” of contributing to the “textual ensemble” as well as representing an individual communicative mode.

One of the key concepts to come across in this reading is the constitutive, normalising function of a discourse, with Macken-Horarik stating that “multimodal texts like front page news are a crucial public resource in the production of social attitudes towards particular groups of people.” In this way, the symbiotic, mutually dependent relationship between stories and photographs is made clear, with “public acceptance of the ‘children overboard’ claims” depending “on a working faith in the complementary truths of word and image.” Thus, through the construction of a homogenous, shared voice that attempts to reflect the values and beliefs of society at large, Macken-Horarik seems to be contesting the seemingly established notion that contemporary media has increasingly seen consumers as producers. This occurs through the invocation of the tools of Genericisation-Specification, Categorisation and Role Allocation.

 Genericisation-Specification is a concept employed to explain the way in which social actors are aggregated into a story. As the term suggests, this occurs through people being portrayed as “identifiable individuals or as classes or groups of people.” This has a fundamental impact on the relationship between the actors and the audience, as through genericisation, the protagonist is treated as a homogenous, indeterminate entity that is “symbolically removed from the reader’s world of immediate experience.” Similarly, the roles and groups to which people are assigned denote further categorisation that is fundamentally connotative, developing more complex associations and links between actors and audiences.

I believe that Macken-Horarik’s example of the ‘children overboard’ affair is symptomatic of a general societal inclination to classify people in terms of power, contact and affect. In everyday life, we see a myriad of sub-cultures rising that are testament to this threatening of the established status quo, with notable examples being “emo’s” and “Goths.” The moral panics that have come to be associated with these groups represent the inherent complexity in understanding competing discourses within the context of media, interaction and the complementarities of meaning.

This reading discussed the concepts of semiotics and meaning, considering the relational, arbitrary, and culturally conventionalised processes that come to characterise people, things, actions and experiences. Drawing on the established theories of Saussare and Volosinov, Schirato and Yell attempt to arrive at a conclusive definition of the ambiguous relationship between signs and meaning, paradoxically through an inherent recognition of the vagueness of these terms.

Schirato and Yell establish that semiology, as proposed by Saussare, holds that “meaning is relational rather than substantive.” This means that it is established and institutionalised through difference, and through a consideration of the system of relations available. In this way, concepts such as power, politics and social context are imbued within meaning, and thus make any instance of meaning relative to individual and social circumstances.

Binary opposition is introduced as an important component in the understanding of the relational nature of meaning. This continues the theme of difference that distinguishes between various signs, indicating that absence is as of much significance in meaning as presence. The implicit consequence of this assertion is that “interpretation of a signifier is always made through another signifier”, and furthermore, “meaning is…contingent and tied up with politics.”

Finally, the reading recognises that, in the production of meaning, individual practices are learnt experiences that are both naturalised and contested. Schirato and Yell affirm that “the production of meaning is an area of ideological contestation,” in which conflict and denigration denote the various implications of particular labels.

I would wholeheartedly agree with the overriding contextual emphasis the authors place on semiotics and meaning. The recognition that “communication cannot be completely controlled by the intention of the sender” mirrors the inherent concerns that many people have about the connotations of what they do or say against the backdrop of an increasingly media savvy society. These concepts are central to not only the media, but more so the entire communicative organisation of the social order, and thus the importance of lexical choices cannot be underestimated.

Couldry’s text emphasises the paradigm shift that has occurred in defining a media audience. He considers the various forces and features that have contributed to this shift in the development of a participatory media culture, in which “the worlds of the audience and media production are not sealed off hermetically from each other”. Ultimately, he asserts that the boundaries between producer and consumer have become blurred, ensuing as an apparent by-product of the way in which “media are not just consumed as stand-alone texts, but embedded in the whole sensory environment in which we conduct our lives.”

Foundational to Couldry’s argument is the concept of technology, primarily in relation to how an audience is challenged and engaged by the “media technologies with which they typically interact.” As a consumer of media, attempting to reconcile traditional media with its contemporary counterparts is a daily task, and on a personal level, my experience of the media within my own lifetime has undergone fundamental change, from being broadcast based to increasingly digitised. As a result of this process, media has become at the same time individualised as well as diffused, which is indicative of the temporal, spatial and political changes that have occurred synonymously.    

The diffused audience which Couldry espouses as one (problematic) model of defining a contemporary media audience essentially asserts that “in contemporary society, everyone becomes an audience all the time.” This relates to concepts such as daliness and mobility, as it becomes increasingly difficult to distinguish between the media and the processes of everyday life. The media saturated culture to which we belong has spawned the phenomenon of reality television, which is perhaps the most appropriate illustration of the inclination to participate in the media. Through this discourse, the roles of production and consumption have been fundamentally blurred, with two processes grounding this shift – spectacle and narcissism.

Ultimately, I would tend to agree with Couldry’s assertions, in that through a democratisation of media production there does remain distinctions between media institutions and audiences, as well as intersections between individuals within such audiences. The proliferation of reality television, to use just one example, clearly indicates the inherent paradox evident in new media audiences, that is that whilst “everyday people” seek to interact with the media they consume, they do presuppose that some power differential remains, in an effort to maintain the distinction between the media and everyday life. Thus, the complexities of media experience are still paramount, albeit increasingly ambiguous.

Rizzo’s text discusses the concept of networking, using examples of media that have become domesticated into daily life, to infer that the concept of the playlist as both a “scheduling application as well as a practice” has had many profound implications for media consumption. To further this argument, Rizzo asserts that the playlist has aligned the propensity for viewer control over the media they consume with the fundamental shifts in media consumption that characterise the 21^st century.

Essentially, Rizzo affirms the notion that any discussion of networking will consider the intrinsic relationship between the media, technology and social structure, producing significant cultural outcomes that are distinct to any particular social aggregate (on an increasingly global scale). To qualify this argument, concepts such as viewing practices, spatiality, audience engagement, mobility and flow are employed to illustrate the institutional paradigm that organises producers and consumers of media in this Information Age.

Rizzo suggests that a new understanding of Williams concept of flow is essential to explain the “kind of relations that are possible between institutions, users and applications such as the playlist.” This accounts for the “multiplicity of connections” that arise, which allow for increasing interactivity and engagement, thus creating networks. The temporal and spatial shifts which are inherent to this process are symptomatic of a much broader power shift – that from producer to consumer. Rizzo argues that through digital technologies such as the iPod, YouTube and Foxtel iQ, the broadcast experience has been fundamentally changed to “one of co-participation and interactivity”, with the ultimate authority lying with the productive, creative and critical audience.

The concept of networks, and this reading in particular, raises some interesting questions about the ambiguity of the media as a social institution with significant power. Whilst I personally definitely agree and wholeheartedly support the propensity for increasing consumer participation in the media, I would question the extent to which this will be achieved. I believe that there is a proverbial grey area evident in this concept, which must be accommodated in order to ensure that a balance between traditional institutional power and contemporary audience clout is reached. Whilst the implications of the shifting power structures have not yet been fully realised, I would assert that such fundamental change cannot produce entirely positive outcomes for society.

In this reading, Jenkins uses the popular culture phenomenon of American Idol (and the discourse of reality television in general), to articulate the notion of media convergence. Essentially, Jenkins asserts that the synergistic combination of different media platforms exemplified by American Idol, represents the shifting power structures lying “at the intersection between old and new media.”

At the heart of this realignment of power is the concept of asynchronous participation, which refers to the emotional investment and subjective affinity fans have with a particular program and/or contestant. The “fantasy of empowerment” that is offered through convergence allows fans (of varying degrees) to have a direct stake in the ultimate outcome, which is achieved via an enormous proliferation of media entities – watching the program on television, voting through a text message or call, discussion and debate on online forums etc. By manufacturing (and some would argue exploiting), the emotions and experiences of consumers, it is clear that the extent to which this perceived participation is achieved is quite ambiguous.

In order to qualify this participation, Jenkins introduces the concept of affective economics, a marketing theory, to further explain the profound implications of convergence on the media. Quoting Coca-Cola President Steven J. Heyer, Jenkins refers to the “empowerment of consumers who now have an unrivalled ability to edit and avoid advertising…A consumer trend toward mass customization and personalization.” In order to confront (and possibly overcome) such challenges, many advertisers and marketers now measure consumer affinity by “expression”, which positions the brand in its socially/culturally/historically relative context.  This is achieved through establishing an emotional attachment between the consumer and brand, thus ensuring brand loyalty. In order to elicit such a connection, “marketers…develop multisensory (and multimedia) experiences that create more vivid impressions and tap the power of stories to shape consumer identifications.” Tangibly, American Idol showed 4151 product placements in its first 38 episodes during season 7, according to Nielson Media Research.

Whilst the rhetoric of audience participation and affective economics seems, on the surface, to be a harmless by-product of convergence, the reality of such statements is quite different. Jenkins implicitly suggests that that the commercial and relational structures of broadcasting have significant inroads to make in order to fully realise the ideals of creative consumption and fluid boundaries that are the hallmarks of media convergence, and which have (in my opinion), thus far only been truly realised within the medium of the Internet.

The concept of mediation, particularly in relation to space, plays a very important role in contemporary society. Moores articulates many ephemeral notions of temporal and spatial boundaries that suggest how the media has “transformed ‘possibilities of being’”, in order to (to some extent) double reality.

Of particular significance is his focus on how the shifting peripherals of space are changing social relationships between individuals. The implications of this notion are far reaching, accounting for the ubiquitous omnipresence of social networking sites such as www.facebook.com, whose presence has become an inherent component of daily routine (i.e domestication). The “capacity for the virtually instantaneous transmission of information across sometimes vast spatial distances”, has allowed anyone with access to a computer or mobile phone to be in communication with both proximate and remote others, effectively “pluralizing relationships”.

Another way in which time-space arrangements have been affected by electronic and broadcast media is through the coverage of public events that destabilise the daily routine. Moores uses the examples of Princess Diana’s funeral (1997), and the September 11 terrorist attacks (2001), to emphasize the emotional engagement that a mass audience feels to a particular event, which is largely congruent with the nature and extent of its media coverage. He quotes Scannel, Dayan, and Katz as authorities on this concept, stressing that mediation has given rise to a sense of involvement in the “changing situational geography of social life.”

I would tend to agree with Moore’s central argument on the doubling of place, as the fundamental communication structures across spatial realities have unquestionably led to an altered sense of being. In fact, I personally would go so far as saying that this has been the constituent impact of the Internet more so than any other media in the past ten or so years, its unforseen implications certainly coming to the fore with websites such as www.secondlife.com. The public affiliation with space has (paradoxically) never been more pervasive than it is today, with both temporal and performative qualities articulated through new media. Ultimately, as Moores acknowledges, the “compulsion for proximity” still underlies any technological development, and thus the individual negotiation between the various social realities remains the paramount concern.

In this excerpt, Michael explores the notion of domestication by studying the abstract sociological concepts of the remote control and the couch potato. He considers the relationships evident between these two intertwined social constructs, and further, raises questions about the extent to which they correlate to evoke the priorities of society at large.

“Disciplined and Disciplining co(a)gents: The Remote Control and the Couch Potato”, seeks to address the culturally embedded perception that “there might be a general trend…to attach directly the wills of humans to what technologies have to offer”. Whilst to a certain extent, this is proven true throughout the text, Michael opens up a broader consideration of the concepts of self regulation and socially instituted limits that are inherent to any discussion of media, culture and everyday life.

In developing this argument, a number of key concepts and ideas arise, which work to holistically infer that the discourse of the couch potato has been born out of the process of domestication of media technologies (namely, the television and remote control). Michael focuses specifically on the role of technology in fostering the identity of the “pilloried” couch potato, yet then counters this with an overriding thread of the “normalising” effect of such a discourse, in terms of both reflecting and creating a distinct cultural identity that is an intrinsic to the modern, Western world.

Michael presents a balanced argument that raises many questions for the reader, and ultimately encourages them to come to their own conclusion as to the extent to which the discourse of the couch potato, and the act of losing the remote control, constitute degrees of embodiment and disembodiment. I tend to sit somewhere in the middle, in that, whilst “technology is fundamental in the mediation of human relations”, it can also be argued that “technical artefacts become embroiled in a world that can never be wholly predicted for them”.

 Such an ambiguous conclusion elucidates clearly the inherent problems we face in trying to define the interrelationship between the media, culture and technology.

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