A language dies every 14 days

A talk on the globalisation of English.

Did you know that Einstein was dyslexic?

Does language shape the way we think?

An interesting article about debates over the years as to whether language constricts the thoughts and feelings we can have or not.

Disney(fication) Material

A few websites I bumped into when looking into Disney and Disneyfication (not vouching for their reliability, I'll leave that to you).

New Internationalist: Inside Disney's Dream Machine - Various articles on Disney(fication)

Global Media Giants - Information on the biggest media conglomerates

Media Conglomerates, Mergers, Concentration of Ownership on Global Issues Website created by Anup Shah. The site has over 550 articles and 7000 links to external articles on issues like trade, poverty and globalization, human rights, geopolitics, the environment etc. etc.

What we've been waiting for?? the iPad..

Dear Mibnacs,

after an entertaining term in the grips of media sociology for many of us, with occasional forays into the world of ebooks, I am interested to see what becomes of the iPad. An interesting clip:

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

I am interested to see if this does spark a whole new way of reading. I think if it is going to do better than the Kindle-y type of thing, they are going to have to start dealing with issues of copyright and ownership which have remained bleak for the average reader in the amazon. Although the apps are just awesome, I want to know that what I buy is not going to be taken back at the whim of a larger corporate interest, or some censorship debacle. But hey, if I could afford this...Additionally, how will this shape consumption? Whereas the Internet has broken the cycle of mass media (again) with user generated content, the iPad seems to return to the older "arts" of "passive" reading, although you can update and share, really long texts etc. are not the idea...As for advertising etc etc...

One medium which could get a real boost is the Newspaper? Maybe? thoughts?

MLA Style Guides on the Web

Found this very concise MLA style guide that has examples of most of the Works Cited entries. Probably will not solve all problems but at least it's a small help to the rrrreally complex world of the MLA Style! It has an updated version of the 7th (2009) edition of the MLA!

And here: Purdue's MLA guide - also very good!

Introduction to Modern Literary Theory

Dr. Kristi Siegel's page "Introduction to Modern Literary Theory" with short introductions + pretty extensive further references to each theory.

Journal of Ecocriticism

The fairly new (publ. since 2009) Journal of Ecocriticism. All articles available as free PDFs!

Clay Shirky: How social media can make history | Video on TED.com

Clay Shirky: How social media can make history | Video on TED.com


Hi Media Sociologists,

I think this is an excellent video about how the media is shifting. Shirky uses a similar model of understanding media to that of the circuit of culture.
What does this tell us about Media Sociology? Do you think that what he is saying is very different to how media works? What I find is that although his ideas take the circuit a step further, he still holds to a traditional idea that media has, till now, promoted a discourse or set of discourses which have been unquestioningly taken up by the general population/ audience. As we know from reception studies, people have been producers of meaning for a lot longer, although his point about the interaction within the audience community is probably the mitigating factor here. What do you think?

Media Sociology Blog

Hi people, found a new blog I would like to share which has a lot of great media insights, and wonderful photos:
The Kisseloff Collection

Also a link to a New Yorker article about tv which is just peachy. The writer is Jeff Kisseloff, and he has written a number of books about media/tv...

Including : The Box: an oral history of television

Which looks great, sort of a combination of audience studies and cultural memory. Available on Fernleihe...enjoy...

Does Dropping iPods and not Bombs Actually Work?

The Internet and especially the blogosphere have been widely heralded as new, extremely effective tools of free speech, of spreading democracy or revolting against tyrannies. Most notably in the case of the recent protests in Iran, sometimes called the "Twitter Revolution".
Evgeny Morozo, however, does not agree at all. He even claims that the Internet can help keep dictators in power and that for every "Cyper-activist" there is a Cyber-captive". This speech is about 12 min. long and I do not agree with everything he says, but it is an interesting and discussion-worthy opinion:

Lecture on Camp; "Popliteratur"

Some of you might be interested in this taped lecture by Stefanie Roenneke on the subject "Adieu Tristesse! Wieviel Camp steckt in Popliteratur". The lecture was given at the University of Hamburg as part of the lecture series "Poetik der Oberflächlichke: Die deutschsprachige Popliteratur der 1990er Jahre".

In this German language lecture, Roenneke briefly discussed a notion of camp based on Jack Smith and Susan Sontag and then discusses the German pop lit. book Tristesse Royale.

Longer abstract, bibliography and the video available here.

The Media Education Foundation.

(We had a lively discussion elsewhere and I briefly commented on it on my personal blog, yet I decided that it would make sense to repost this on this blog for future reference and for those not involved in the earlier discussion)

The Media Education Foundation is a website and production company producing documentaries to " to inspire critical reflection on the social, political, and cultural impact of American mass media." Most of these documentaries on a large number of topics are related to our field of study and are available as full-length Internet previews for personal home use (the university license/ DVD is quite expensive). For example, there are lectures and speeches by bell hooks or Stuart Hall. Below is a trailer for the documentary that brought the site to our attention, Sut Jhally's Dreamwolds 3: Desire, Sex & Power in Music Video.

Little Helpers.

Probably all of us have heard of Zotero, the research tool and bibliography management extension for Firefox. If you haven't already, do check it out. You need to get used to it, but then it's really helpful to get and stay organized.

I found another helpful add-on for Firefox: You can add Google Scholar to the Firefox search bar (upper lefthand corner). That way you can, after selecting the Google Scholar option, simply highlight a term and run a Google Scholar search with a right-click. Pretty convenient.
Haven't found an add-on for our library catalog or the MLA/EBSCO database - yet.

Gaze & Phychoanalysis etc.

Hey you potential perverts,

Here's a link to Daniel Chandler's website, which has more sections concerning 'the Gaze' (e.g. Mulvey's female gaze we talked about in the Auto-Tutorial).

And here's Dino Felluga's website. It has stuff on psychoanalysis (though some of the info is a bit contradictory I would say comparing to some other sources we had a look at for the presenation so look with your own discretion), marxism, narratology, postmodernism, new historicism and gender and sex.

Steampunked environments

Picking up where Mr. Lukas left off, some fantastic videos about steampunk, well worth a watch. I love the way a 100 years or more of historical trends are rolled into this ... it's also an interesting reaction to the sparseness of a lot of everyday trends at the moment...




And here a convention ( I suppose this means it's already mainstream, right?) The costumes are just awesome...

Let it FLOW

Hey everyone!

I just came across this amazing website FlowTV. The description says it's a "critical forum on television and media culture published by the Department of Radio, Television, and Film at the University of Texas at Austin. Flow’s mission is to provide a space where the public can discuss the changing landscape of contemporary media." Some of the articles are crap, but I also found a whole bunch of very interesting ones. If you're looking for a thesis topic or some intriguing stuff on TV studies, check out this website. Praise postmodernism - and its anything goes principle!

The sendung mit der maus lol. For a five minute summary of the Disney book on core texts look no further...
Jonas brothers=teenie band





really really funny!!

Use of language and swearing

Today I came across a club who is against swearing. I wanted to see their logic so I went to the site and it really got me thinking. Lots of people on the site write about how we are allowed/supposed to use language and how certain words affect us (e.g. the argument "they're just words" vs the idea that words can actually hurt people).

http://www.nocussing.com/memberstories.html

Adaptation

It's probably too late for the John Adams class, but Salman Rushdie had a really interesting article on novel to film adaptation in The Guardian this morning.
It seems he was teaching a similar course to Adams at the same time! He mentions The Age of Innocence, No Country for Old Men amongst others, and he takes apart Danny Boyle's capitalist, colonialist, chauvanist, crowd-pleasing Slumdog Millionare.

Ideas for a Masterseminar?

Mr H said we should approach the dept with our suggestions for a seminar aimed at Master students. I think this is a good idea as it does present us with a possibility to have another class together next summer and I think we should do it. What are the ideas for topics? Someone mentioned conspiracy theories and I know a lot of us want to do media and popular culture. I wouldn't mind something on news dissemination (modern journalism and news programs) or the use of imagery in today's world.