Cultivation and Video Games

Here's an interesting video on cultivation and videogames that a student seems to have made. Very slick, very accurate, very impressive.



the link to the youtube page

More Cultivation from the O.G., Original Gerbner

Another late 90s gem from the Media Education Foundation featuring UPenn's brightest star in MassComm. Here, Gerbner expans on the sorts of characters and types of stories that tend to be told on TV and reiterates his theory of its effects.



Please note that the MEF videos use a version of remix that passes as a sort of "academic culture jamming." They select certain clips and display them out of their original contexts to support their points. Then, this for profit (albeit small) enterprise criticizes big media for constructing messages with "something to sell." This has raised the ire of some as hypocritical (their videos cost $150+). With the accessibility of editing software and a multitude of pop culture clips free on the web, now students can practice their own culture jamming as an exercise of democratic speech. That's what I'll be asking you to do with the remixing assignments we take on this semester.

Finally, here's the ultimate hip-hop expression of cultivation theory and "big media effects" concerns:



And here is a link to the lyrics.

Gerbner's Cultivation Theory

Here is the man himself, the myth, the legend, talking about his theory. This was produced in the mid 90s by the Media Education Foundation out of UMass Amherst. It's a trailer for a 1/2 hour educational video called "The Electronic Storyteller."



Most profound in the video for me is Gerbner's notion that we do not learn from specific acts or shows, but from recurring plots and characterizations--what he calls "casting" of social roles. Griffin focuses on the violence and mean world aspects of the theory, but this video also emphasizes race and gender roles as cultivated by TV.

Of course, this theory and its supporting research was developed through a time when home entertainment was dominated by the TV, and most people had 3-6 Broadcast stations to choose from. I wonder, do you think the Internet cultivates distorted perceptions of the real world? Is their a "mainstreaming" effect that happens with Internet users? Are their prominent portrayals of certain people in certain roles doing certain things that a majority of people on the web see over and over in different sites everyday? How could we study it?

Comment—Cybernetics and Terminator

Well, I see how you thought of cold machines like movie cyborgs when you read about cybernetics. For a tradition that focuses on a human act like communication, cybernetics sure seems very technical. I remember some scenes from those Terminator movies that were pretty funny because the machine could not understand some local cultural practice that wasn’t just about information and uncertainty, as cybernetics seems to be like when Schwarzenegger’s character uses lingo he picks up in arcades. Or, in the beginning of the first movie when he is walking around in a naked human form and doesn’t understand why people are surprised until he gets the information.

These local, human perspectives on meaning and reality seem to fit more with the socio-cultural tradition. Your post about cyborgs shows me how different that view is from cybernetics.

I also think that your comments about the effects of seeing violent and dark versions of the future associated with artificial intelligence are pretty interesting. You could see that as a socio-psychological question about how lots of movies and videogames that make smart machines into villains might shape people’s attitudes about technology. It could also work as critical tradition question, I guess. Some entertainment might actually be challenging the mainstream notion that science always works to produce good things. Then again, Adorno seemed to think that if media entertains you, it must be distracting you from a serious issue. So, maybe the games and movies make light of a real danger, or let us release all our emotions instead of acting on them.

Thanks for bringing up a crazy memory of scary movies I used to like. I would have never thought of that connection here.

Comment--Cybernetics & Terminator

I don't really know much about Terminator and I can't tell much from the photo other than people being half machines.

So, i checked out another post on the X-team blog about cybernetics and this photo synth tool that lets you see the inauguration from any viewpoint using pictures uploaded by thousands of people who were there.

To me, this shows how cybernetics leaves out a lot of the human experience of communication by focusing just on information and reduction of uncertainty. That tool, when it gets perfected, will make us feel like we're really there--except we're really missing all the energy of braving the elements and being with other people. Seeing something with your own eyes and hearing something with your own ears, even from a mile away is a valuable and important experience even though it holds much less "information" than this tool could provide.

I do think the tool is really cool, and has a lot of potential for citizen journalism as the article says. However, I think it is important to view it from different communication traditions as well.

Thanks for sharing it!

Cybernetics and Inauguration Photos

Hey everyone,

I wanted to share this amazing photo synth tool I found on CNN. Here's a link to an article about the CNN photo synth to give some background. Read it and check out the tool, then share what you think of the experience and how it might be viewed from one of the communication traditions in our reading for chapter four.

I'll start us off by thinking about the tool from a cybernetics point of view. Cybernetics sees communications in a very technical way, which makes sense since it was founded by Norbert Wiener of M.I.T. "to describe the field of artificial intelligence" (Griffin, 2008, p.43). It's interesting to view such a human act as something so scientific. This photosynth tool takes pictures taken by thousands of people and combines them to make a virtual, visual experience that can give you almost any view of the event. Cybernetics views communication as a balance of uncertainty and information, which is simply the reduction of uncertainty. The whole time I was watching the inauguration on TV, I was wondering what it would really look like if I was there. I thought the same thing every time they showed people in the crowd. What would it be like to see it from their perspective? What would it be like to be able to move my head and choose what to see? So, this tool seems to balance that uncertainty about how the event really looked with loads of information. The tool expands on Shannon and Weaver's model of communication to make the information sources anyone with a digital camera who took snapshots (seemed to be everyone there) and uploaded them to CNN (the transmitter part. CNN then uses the software to create a signal from all the sources and send it to Internet receivers. I get the signal, but I get to move around to change the message to address any uncertainty I have with new info. That is just too cool!

There is a lot of noise in the communication, though. The tool is kind of jumpy and jittery. I bet they'll be able to work those bugs out of the system eventually though--that seems to be the whole goal of cybernetics according to Griffin.

I wonder how this technology will effect people though. I mean, why would I go freeze my butt off there if I can see more at home, from any angle I want? It's like, more real than really being there. I think that happens with sports sometimes also. I mean there will always be the fun of being in a crowd of excited people, but you can see the game so much better on TV. I also wonder what it would feel like to know your photos contribute to an event like this, to the history, to the journalism. Makes me a little jealous.

Cybernetics and the Terminator

Cybernetics reminds me of cyborgs. They mentioned artificial intelligence in the book and it made me think of the Terminator. I know it's only sci-fi, but I've been really into the idea of intelligent machines ever since I saw this movie as a kid. The weird thing is that all these movies about smart machines that probably come from cybernetics seem to paint the future as dark and violent, or at least inhuman. Movies like the Matrix and stuff. Anyhow, I just thought of this image when I read about cybernetics, and how an MIT scientist came up with the whole idea. MIT guys are always the ones making Robocop or some other cyborg in the movies. There's alos lots of videogames based on that cybernetics idea of machines going out of control with artificial intelligence. I guess it's a way to make communications seem inhuman. Then, if it's not human, you can just shoot up the stuff and have no worries. Total carnage, I love it! (That's a line from Smash TV an old classic Nintendo shooting game with lots of robots. It was made after another Arnold movie--the Running Man). So, I guess the cybernetics thing is really everywhere in pop culture now. What do you think about cyborgs and A.I.?