President Obama’s State of the Union-A Wordle

Sometimes, the best way to analyze is to simply count the words…

Check out this Wordle I created from the President’s State of the Union address tonight using www.wordle.net.  Click the photo above and it will take you to a page with the full size Wordle.

In Case You Missed It: PBS’ FRONTLINE “Digital Nation: Life on the Virtual Frontier”

In cased you missed this, the entire episode of PBS’ FRONTLINE “Digital Nation” – it’s available online at this link.

Of interest to GMLP members… PBS’ Frontline, partnering with producer Rachal Dretzin and media correspondent Douglas Rushkoff, present “Digital Nation: Life on the Virtual Frontier”.

“The pace at which our lives and world are changing as a result of digital technology is staggering. Digital Nation as a multiplatform project is public media at its best, illustrating the awesome power and challenges of living in a digital world,” said Amy Shaw, KETC/Channel 9’s vice president of education and community engagement. “Frontline on KETC/Channel 9 continues to be the gold standard for content that connects people around the issues that are most important to them.”

PBS’ Frontline News Release

Here’s the trailer:

‘Parenting in the Digital Age’ Offered February 4th

MySpace? Facebook? Digital Camera? Texting?  Sexting?  X-Box Live?  Runescape? Cyber-stalking?
Join us for a parents-only evening to discuss the unintended consequences that occur when our children make mistakes in this new digital age.

Judge Rick Zerr, Administrative Judge of the Family Court, 11th Judicial Circuit in Saint Charles, will present the laws that govern our children’s use of technology, along with the legal consequences for its misuse.  If your child owns a cell phone, uses social networking, or plays online videogames, you’ll want to join us.

• Thursday, February 4th
  Hollenbeck Middle School, St. Charles, MO
  7:00 pm
  Please RSVP to Hollenbeck at 636-851-5400

President’s Message: Wake-Up Call is Mandate for Media Literacy Education

Hello, Media Literacy Proponents and Enthusiasts,

Welcome to 2010 and to GMLP’s re-launched web site. We hope you visit our web site often for your media literacy education needs and interactions with others similarly focused.

No doubt, you’ve already heard or read about the Kaiser Family Foundation’s landmark study, Generation M2: Media in the Lives of 8- 18-Year-Olds.”   Detailing youth’s use and hours spent with their numerous media, the findings are  mind-boggling, like the previous Kaiser studies, from 1999 and 2004, were, for their times.

While GMLP likes to mainly cover regional news about our field, we also like to link to resources that aid an understanding that local media habits can be inextricably tied to the rest of the nation’s, in various ways, including what the overall impact for the nation and the world might be.     I’m sure, once you see the Kaiser documentation and summaries, you’ll better understand the implications of youths’ immersion in their media (tv, cell phones, computers, video games, print ), and maybe even have an Ah Ha! moment regarding the economic-development implications of the study, here and around the country.   This study, in itself, is a mandate—a wake-up call and call for action– for working hard  to meet our communities’ need to achieve and sustain media literacy.

More specifically, it’s up to groups like GMLP to keep this information front-and-center, giving  that “wake-up call” every day, as loud and regularly as Revelie at bootcamp, for we know, all too well, the news of this report will have made headlines and saturated our media for only about a week or so, only to be supplanted by other news!

Toward that end, we are especially committed to continuing our work with Missouri’s Department of Elementary and Secondary Education (DESE), especially because it’s been working to revamp its media literacy education standards.  And we’ll hope to kindle a relationship with Illinois’s department, this year.  As you’re most likely aware,  it is an especially key time as both states vie for important national funding, and in the face of a national standards push.  Whether or not the these states win the funding, we are committed to working with them and school districts, given more-and-more of what we know about youth’s immersion in media.

As GMLP moves  forward with its strategic planning, we know we must be relentless media literacy ambassadors, advancing our field so more-and-more teachers in formal and informal education settings can learn how to teach our youths the critical-thinking skills necessary in a media-saturated world, without media-bashing and censorship.

As we witness and hear about the horrors of natural disaster, 24/7, brace ourselves for an H1N1 come-back, and absorb all the messages about our economic welfare in the face of terrorism and unemployment, how can we NOT be thinking about how all these messages affect us?  For those of us who choose the Internet for our news and possible philanthropy, we must, for sure, be vigilant about the trustworthiness of our media sources.  For those of us interested in healthcare,–and who’s not at some level?–we need to know the right questions to ask about the media we encounter; and we must also be mindful of and honor those who work to safeguard our ability to access numerous sources of information, all the time.

Normally at this time of the year, it’s about resolutions.    I will go “there” in just a moment.   But first,  I want to send a message of gratitude to ALL who have made GMLP successful in its early organizational life.  Thank you….for the GMLP board’s tireless efforts; for its rich and meaningful committee work; for our organizational members, sponsors, and local and national speakers, who contributed to the best GMLP Media Literacy Week, ever, in October ’09.  for our individual members who have chosen us as a membership organization worth their support; for our devoted interns and volunteers; to the community for being interested in us and wanting to collaborate in our programming efforts;. to those around the country  and internationally who are interested in us and have worked for us when we asked them to; and  to all those individuals and organizations we don’t even know, yet, whose paths we’ll cross because they believe media literacy is important.

Finally, you may recall In July I commented on computer-scientist/ inventor/ legend, Alan Kay, following his visit to St. Louis University,  and I can still remember one thing he said that especially  moves me, today, as I close with that resolution for GMLP.

In the context of what makes an inventor succeed or fail,   Kay pointed to positive outlooks and positive perspective as playing key roles toward an inventor’s success.  In the context of GMLP’s moving forward and refining its work,  I’d like to say, despite the slow pace at creating clarity  for folks about what  media literacy means, may we continue to be media literacy education ambassadors, bringing more understanding to the term, and  help GMLP to become an even greater  force in our community, in the process.  And, with that positive outlook and positive perspectives that have gotten us this far,  may we further pave the way to make on-going media literacy education a reality in our communities.    Please join us.

With gratitude,

Jessica Z. Brown

The Kaiser Family Foundation Releases New Study

The amount of time children spend with media is an issue close to the hearts of media literacy education proponents and members of GMLP.  It’s refreshing to see the Kaiser Family Foundation’s study Generation M2: Media in the Lives of 8- to 18-Year Olds gain attention in national media outlets such as The New York Times and NBC News.  Check out the press release for an overview of the study.

The study finds our young people’s use of media up drastically from Kaiser’s study five years ago, mostly due to mobile devices like cell phones and iPods–bringing the daily total of time engaged with media to over seven and a half hours a day!  In addition, the M2 study addressed the issue of “media multitasking”–using more than one medium at a given time.  If you add those multitasking minutes, children and teenagers can cram more than ten hours of media use into those seven and a half hours.

Other items included in the study: texting, parental monitoring of media use, racial differences in media consumption, social networking, and the impact of media use on students’ performance in school.  Below are two videos from NBC regarding the M2 study:

Parent Perspective: A Mother’s Longing for Squeaky Clean Fun

My husband and I discovered early on in our tenure as parents that our kids were very sensitive to visual imagery and loud sounds.  This made trips to the movie theater practically non-existent and only possible with the guidance of the outstandingly detailed reviews posted at http://www.commonsensemedia.org– a real sanity saver for parents with kids like mine.

Last summer, the kids and I decided to try Alvin & the Chipmunks and we set out for the theater on a hot summer afternoon.  I expected some bathroom behavior and ridiculousness, but was not prepared for an homage to Hollywood and rap culture or the outright fright our youngest sensed from the main human character, Ian (David Cross).  When she requested we leave the theater early I was happy to oblige.

A couple of weeks ago we were invited by some friends to see Alvin & the Chipmunks: the Squeakquel.  I asked my friend if she was as disappointed by the first remake as I was.  She replied “I don’t understand why they have to modernize everything.”  I said “Is it modernize or sexualize?”  We both sighed.

Nevertheless, our oldest and I decided to see The Squeakquel while our youngest opted out.  I was prepared for the experience—prepared to be disappointed by the movie and just enjoy the company of good friends.  The movie lived up to my lowered expectations especially in the portrayal of the Seville family matriarch, Aunt Jackie (Kathryn Joosten.)

Aunt Jackie’s physical appearance is gender neutral (baseball cap, t-shirt and lack of make up or jewelry) and she’s using a wheelchair but willingly shows up at the airport to caretake the Chipmunks in a grandmotherly fashion.  Her portrayal made me assume some young male Hollywood director and/or producer and/or writer created a disposable woman good enough to step in and babysit the Chipmunks but not worth the effort to make as attractive as the other humans.  The juxtaposition of Aunt Jackie’s appearance next to all the other human characters was stark.   I kept these thoughts to myself—after all, I was in a darkened movie theater.

But when Chipmunk antics lead Aunt Jackie to the hospital, Alvin tells Dave she isn’t at the house because she is “practicing her pole dancing.”

Pardon?!  When I heard the pole dancing line my brain had to reconfirm that I was indeed at a show intended for children ages 10 and under—released just two days before Christmas (high family season.)  Of course many adults in the theater were chuckling, but I couldn’t help but wonder how many children would later ask their parents “What is pole dancing?”  I had to admit, that in reality, it would take a pretty strong memory for a child to remember that line by the end of the movie.  And there were numerous other audacious lines kids could take away.

So, what then, once the Squeakquel is released to DVD and some young children have the opportunity to watch the movie over and over, memorizing it line by line?  I can only imagine the discussions that will ensue—hopefully with parents, but, more likely, with siblings, classmates and playmates.

And how did Boomer grandmothers in the audience feel when seeing Aunt Jackie’s portrayal as less capable than her constantly gaming, slacker nephew/grandson Toby (Zachary Levi)?

The movie ended and as the credits rolled I noticed that Betty Thomas was the director—Betty Thomas, Hollywood veteran actress past her Hollywood prime.  Obviously, I don’t know Betty personally but when I watched her performance as Lucy Bates in Hill Street Blues, I sure felt like I did.  That role, as a forerunner portraying a woman in a traditionally male occupation, informed me and my generation that girls could grow up to pursue any occupation and bring to those occupations our feminine perspective.

My disappointment was now staggering—if “Betty Thomas, Director” couldn’t marshal the authority and leadership to have the pole dancing line rewritten to any of a million other throw away lines, who could?

It’s possible that Betty has experienced the rampant lookism and ageism many aging Hollywood actresses experience—maybe they even drove her into directing.   Recent pictures of Thomas show that she’s not into Hollywood glitz and make-up (neither was her character Bates) so perhaps Aunt Jackie’s appearance reflects that of a woman who has accepted the aging process. Since I’m not an avid user of makeup and jewelry I can accept Aunt Jackie’s physical appearance, but I’d still like to believe Betty could have encouraged Aunt Jackie to be portrayed as effectively able-bodied, even if the plot required an accident that sent her to the hospital.

These changes would have incurred minimal production costs but added loads of character.

I’m longing for a movie with good clean family fun and lack of fearful imagery to appear in theaters more than once every two years.  And while it would great if there was someone in Hollywood who makes it their business to consider creating age appropriate fare for our children and youth to view on the big screen—like in Kit Kittredge: An American Girl and Charlotte’s Web– I’m not holding my breath for that to happen.

I realize that my disappointments are not widely shared in our youth- oriented, sexualized culture and these incidents were simply de rigueur.  So while parents like me wait for that next G-rated movie to be released, we can consider spending our entertainment dollars on something I just heard about–the ClearPlay DVD player and subscription service. According to the ClearPlay website “The ClearPlay DVD player seamlessly skips and mutes content based on 12 categories that you can set. ClearPlay Filters are hand-crafted by at team of Filter Developers who watch the movie and masterfully select where the player will remove content.”  ClearPlay may not filter out ageism and lookism but for sexual themes, violence and language it’s the best solution I’ve heard of so far and the popcorn at home won’t cost seven bucks!

The Medium is The Masses: 3D’s Reprise

Since its inception in the late 19^th century, the motion picture has successfully adapted to the technological and artistic innovations brought forth by the medium’s most skilled masters.  The first films produced by both Thomas Edison and The Lumiere Brothers were static, with no camera movement whatsoever.  But through advances in technology, the camera was no longer relegated to being stationary and thus more sophisticated cinematography and camera movement was achieved.  The films of Edwin S. Porter and D.W. Griffith introduced the idea of cross-cutting over multiple actions to the world of cinema which gave us the narrative structure we see today.  The introduction of both sound and eventually color, were influential and groundbreaking enough to cause an uproar amongst those in the film industry, who feared they would have to scramble to keep up with the technology at a significant cost.  Today, we sit at the precipice of a potential innovation that could revolutionize film as we know it, or at least reignite America’s love affair with cinema spectacle.

Despite its roots as far back as the 1920’s, 3D filmmaking was not common-place until the boom of the 1950’s.  With television becoming firmly implanted in the American consciousness, the American film industry struggled.  3D was a complicated and expensive technique in its inception, but its ability to bring people into movie theatres made the investment worthwhile.  Despite its brief success when used in horror and action spectacles, the technology faded into obscurity only to be seen again decades later at late night art house screenings.

The factors which have led to 3D’s latest rise in popularity are parallel to those of the 1950’s.  The current influx of consumer technology coupled with America’s recent economic decline has created a citizenry of homebodies.  With a high-speed connection and a computer, a wealth of media and entertainment suddenly becomes accessible (the majority of which is at no cost ).  And with our home televisions growing more bloated and coming in at High Definition, Americans need more motivation to leave the comforts of their own homes.

James Cameron’s Avatar is the first of these new 3D films that attempts to sell this new technology as a legitimate artistic choice.  Unlike the cheesy 3D of previous decades, Cameron uses the technology to further immerse the audience into the world he has created.  What makes the 3D in Avatar so successful, is that the film does not hinge upon the new technology, it uses it to its advantage.  There is, however, and strange irony to a film that so warns of the dangers of imperialism and technological influence, while being almost entirely computer generated with a budget exceeding $300 million.

Critics and columnists have had a veritable field day since the film’s bloated budget was announced some months back, and now that it is a success, the backlash over 3D’s immediate place in the film industry has begun.  It is easy to say that the latest trend of three-dimensional visual media is nothing more than a distraction from cinema’s true purpose, but film history has shown us several examples of how innovations once viewed as crude gimmicks, can reinvigorate one of the world’s most powerful artistic mediums.

Growing Up WIRED

“The sheer amount of time young people spend using media–an average of nearly 6 1/2 hours a day–makes it plain that the potential of media to impact virtually every aspect of young people’s lives cannot be ignored.” Kaiser Family Foundation

ARE KIDS TODAY GROWING UP WIRED?

My name is Mary Pat Gallagher and I am the mother of five fully-WIRED adults (ages 31-23) and the “Lolly” of three yet-to-be WIRED grandchildren. My grandchildren are wee-little people who bring OH SUCH JOY to my life! Frankie is almost two and his little sisters, Ellie and Livie, will be two months old in mid-January. I’m making sure that all three stay away from electronic screens, per the recommendation of American Academy of Pediatrics, until they are two.  I must confess though, Frankie does occasionally watch PBS kids programs now and again, after all grandma used to work for PBS!

I am a career educator, having taught 23 years in a wide-variety of educational settings, including early childhood, elementary, and college environments. I am also a photographer and I ABSOLUTELY ADORE digital media and the convenience it offers. I can shoot a photograph and within minutes send a digital images to my children in Boston, Chicago, and New York, all with the click of my mouse! I must confess, I border on being an e-mail and Internet addict. But I was not raised “socially digitized” as children are today. I walked to school with friends, grew up sharing family meals around the kitchen table, played outside freely in the summer sunshine, and was not allowed to watch too much TV. I did not spend 81/2 hours of my day media-multitasking! Life is not the same in the 21st century for children and families. It is for this reason I share with you the following information. And please note, I share this information not to alarm you but to inform you, because many are simply not informed. Before reading my first paragraph, were you aware that the American Academy of Pediatrics recommends that children under two not be exposed to electronic screens?

In November 1999 the Kaiser Family Foundation (KFF) released Kids & Media @ The New Millennium, which according to KFF is, “one of the most comprehensive national public studies ever conducted on young people’s media use.” This seminal study included 3,000 children and teens ages 2-18. The study reveled very significant findings on children’s media usage, habits, and trends. Two noteworthy findings I’d like to share with  you: On average children and teens, between the ages of 2-18, spend  5 1/2 hours using media, and school aged children 8-18 spend approximately  6 1/2 hours using media. In comparison, these same children spend only about 44 minutes per day reading.

In March 2005 the KFF, in partnership with Stanford University, published a second children and teen’s media usage study titled Generation M: Media in the Lives of 8-18 Year-olds (www.kkf.org). This study anonymously surveyed  2,032 3rd to 12th grade students (8-18 years) in their classrooms about their media usage habits. The KFF reported in a news release prior to the publication of Generation M that “Children and teens are spending an increasing amount of time using ‘new media‘ like computers, the Internet, and video games, without cutting back on the time they spend with ‘old media‘ like TV, print and music.”

The study’s executive summary explains that while “the abundance of media in children and teen’s lives has grown, the total amount of time kids spend with media–and the dominance of TV and music–have remained the same.” One very remarkable change from the 1999 study: while kids in ’03-’04 still consumed approximately the same number of hours of media they did five years previously, 6 1/2 hours, Generation M survey participants reported that they were using more than one medium at a time. For example,  a 15 year-old teen might be listening to music on her iPod, while she is instant messaging and doing Internet research for homework. Generation M participants are truly are growing up digitally WIRED and have become experts at media multitasking! At the time of the study’s release, Generation M children and teens were spending an average of 6 1/2 hours with electronic media per day. According to KFF, since they were using more than one media at a time, in effect they were exposed to 8 1/2 hours of media content per day.

Twenty first century children are growing up in a media rich, some would say media saturated, environment. This contemporary reality begs the question: How is growing up in the digital age affecting children and their development? Before I share my thoughts, I’d like to know what you think…

GMLP’s New Web Site–Welcome!

If it’s been a while since you’ve visited, things look a little different around here.  Over the last month and a half, GMLP’s Communications Committee, consisting of myself, Marteana Davidson, Amy VanDeVelde, Tom Atwood, Andrew Smith and Sarah Berkowitz have worked tirelessly to make this step forward for our organization.

You’ll notice some new features on our site:

• Our new, shorter URL – www.gmlpstl.org
• Content from local bloggers, writing about relevant media literacy issues
• RSS, an E-mail subscription option, and other social media-enabled functions (see the colorful icons below), as well as the new ability to comment on content
• GMLP Mobile – our site works on most mobile phones now
• Resources and member research links

Those are just a few…we’re still working on several items, so check back often!  We’re adding more links to our blogroll on the side–if you see a URL we’ve forgotten, leave us a link below.

Tell us what you think!  We’d love to hear your feedback!

Sincerely,

Communications Committee Co-Chair Jill Falk

Twitter As Newspeak

It can be argued that Twitter has emerged as a legitimate form of communication that could influence how children will spell–and think–in the future. Both Fox News and CNN have adopted the form and syntax of Twitter for their closed-captions, so that Twitter is no longer merely a computer shorthand but has become an integral facet of our mainstream media.

To illustrate: On September 11, 2001, Fox News carried a story about President Bush’s immediate response to the terrorists’ attacks that adopted Twitter as the style for their closed-caption account (he “did rht thin”).

This year, a new keyboard was introduced called “Tweetboard.” The traditional keyboard has been reconfigured, so that Twitter symbols assume prominent positions on the top row: @ (reply), # (hashtags), RT (retweet), and via @. Another key is for shortening URLs.

One way to understand the impact of Twitter is to consider another language that is predicated on the elimination and abbreviation of words–the language of Newspeak, found in George Orwell’s futuristic novel, 1984. In the Appendix of 1984, Orwell observes that “Newspeak differed from most all other languages, in that its vocabulary grew smaller instead of larger every year.”

Reduction of vocabulary was regarded as an end in itself, and no word that could be dispensed with was allowed to survive. Newspeak was designed not to extend but to diminish the range of thought, and this purpose was indirectly assisted by cutting the choice of words down to a minimum … The Newspeak vocabulary was tiny, and new ways of reducing it were constantly being devised.

Like Newspeak, the syntax of Twitter is based on economy. Only 140 characters are allowed in a single tweet. Thus, in an online article, entitled “7 Tips to Improve Your Twitter Tweets,” the first tip involves ways to cut the copy:

Abbreviate. If you can say it with less letters, do so! … There are only 140 characters allowed in a single tweet, so shortening a word or using a bit of slang is completely acceptable. Instead of “are,” say “r.” the same goes for “you” and “u.”

Orwell’s comments about the impact of Newspeak on thought may also be applicable to Twitter, in the following respects:

Ideas are reduced to literal meaning

In these reductive languages, the meaning of words is reduced to a literal level; there is no space to examine the implications of meaning. Orwell explains:

“The A vocabulary consisted of the words needed for the business of everyday life–for such things as eating, drinking, working, putting on one’s clothes … Their meanings were far more rigidly defined. All ambiguities and shades of meaning had been purged out of them.”

To illustrate: Danny Ayalon, the Assistant Foreign Minister of Israel, issues daily Tweets to the public. The problem, of course, is reducing the complexity of a 2500-year religious, cultural, and political conflict to 140 characters. On September 9, Ayalon tweeted, “Dilemma is placed on international community by Iran. Need to turn the tables and place dilemma back on Iran. Only with strong sanctions.” This missive provides only surface information, leaving numerous questions unaddressed.

What is the “dilemma”? Why has this dilemma been placed on the international community by Iran? What is meant by “strong sanctions”? How do strong sanctions “place the dilemma” back on Iran? What other options (in addition to sanctions) exist, and what are their relative strengths and weaknesses?

No context to information is provided

Both Twitter and Newspeak operate in an eternal present; there is no room to discuss ideas within a historical or cultural context. Orwell declares, “When Oldspeak had been once and for all superseded, the last link with the past would have been severed.” Thus, Ayalon’s tweet leaves unanswered essential background information, such as:

When was this “dilemma” placed on the international community by Iran? Have sanctions been tried before? When, and with what results? What was the role of other countries in this activity–Israel, United States and Western Allies, other Arab nations

Language assumes a neutral tenor

The use of abbreviations eliminates the emotional connotation of content. Orwell explains:

“Even in the early decades of the twentieth century, … the tendency to use abbreviations was most marked in totalitarian countries and totalitarian organizations. Examples were such words as Nazi, Gestapo, Comintern, Inprecorr, Agitprop. In the beginning the practice had been adopted as it were instinctively, but in Newspeak it was used with a conscious purpose. It was perceived that in thus abbreviating a name one narrowed and subtly altered its meaning, by cutting out most of the associations that would otherwise cling to it.”

One major difference between Newspeak and Twitter, of course, involves function. Newspeak’s purpose was ideological; the government of Big Brother instituted this language as a way of controlling the masses. In contrast, the form and format of Twitter is technologically driven; Twitter has been designed to reach targeted groups of people throughout the virtual world instantaneously. But regardless of intention, Twitter is anti-democratic. It helps create a young generation that not only cannot spell but is also incapable of examining the implications of ideas, challenging information, and thinking independently.

Article posted with permission from the St. Louis Journalism Review; originally printed in Sept-Oct, 2009 issue.

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