Prologue to the Research #RaisingDissertation

#RaisingDissertation is a way to keep me sane and connected to the outside world while working, at times in isolation, on my dissertation research. From time to time, and depending on my mood, I will post draft excerpts from my dissertation research to this public blog. I welcome dialogue from subscribers, readers, and lurkers. I acknowledge that ideas belong to the universe. That said, however, if you wish to write about my research elsewhere, you must cite my work here. For those in the press reporting about the media and technology uses among 'disconnected' youth, and youths involved in foster care and juvenile justice systems, feel free to contact me directly. I'd love to share my research with you; this should not to be confused with doing your research for you. For others researching in this area, I also welcome your insights here. As always, I'm happy to connect. The following is an excerpt from an ever-growing dissertation involving the mediated lives of vulnerable or 'disconnected' youth in New York City.

Prologue to the Research

While I was completing a master’s degree in Women’s Studies I spent long hours in my room reading and writing about people dislocated from their communities as a result of natural disaster and social conflict. Also during this time I was taking care of my father whose health was deteriorating. Throughout graduate school and while living with my father in rural North Texas, I became isolated and somewhat disconnected from the local community. Because of these social and familial circumstances, I retreated into reclusively, and likely as a result, I found affinity with a Macbook computer and online social networks.

Media were tools that I used to not only document research but they also provided a means of escaping, albeit temporarily, from the grind of graduate school and the solitude of caring for a dying parent. In 2006 I posted my first YouTube video online. There was something about performing in front of a digital camera and then uploading a four-minute video to a social media site (SNS) for strangers to comment on and ridicule that provided me with a sense of community and place. While locked in my room researching one day, my father, who was checking-in on me asked, "What are you writing on your computer?" His question, imbued with both care and wonder, has stayed with me years after his death.

My father was born in 1930; one year after the U.S. stock market crashed that subsequently gave rise to The Great Depression. He never used a computer, and it was only during his late sixties and throughout his seventies that he used a cell phone. He would have never described his relationship with a cell phone through affinity, but rather perceived the mobile artifact as an inconvenient sign of the times. As I reflect back to that moment when he asked me about what I was writing on the computer, I think about his orientation to technology. At the time, I would not have described what I was doing on my computer as writing. However, my father’s way of knowing how a computer functioned was intuitive, and in fact true. I do write on my computer, as in mark, produce, and compose—just not with a led pencil or ink pen.

Thinking too about my father, who was a writer and oil painter, and his relationship to the pen and paintbrush, these were technologies through which he found catharsis, just as the button and mouse are instruments through which I can connect digitally with others and express myself. As a child of the Great Depression, and a nomad of this digital world, my father and I, respectively, used the technologies and media of our generations to write our ways into knowing, participate in culture, and to find a sense of place in the world.

When I first began to work with young people who were involved in foster care and juvenile justice systems, I noticed that they too were finding ways to connect with others using social, digital, and mobile media. They were composing on and connecting to publicly mediated networks, engaging in what Alice Marwick, Ph.D. calls ethnography of display[1]. Some of these young people had lost parents at an early age, transitioned in and out of school, and had difficulty finding work. Despite lacking supportive ties to family, school, and work, these young people still managed to find ways to digitally participate in the circulation of culture and knowledge, even with limited access to computers, cell phones, and the Internet.  I spent time working closely with young people who, when given access to borrowed computers and Internet WiFi (wireless technology that enables connection to the Internet) would log on to Facebook or WordPress (a popular blogging web platform), connect with friends and share media artifacts like digital pictures and videos. These young people were not simply consuming media, but also participating—despite their circumstances, in the meaning making processes through relatively public and mediated social networks.

As I approach this research, I am again drawn back in time to the question my seventy-year-old father asked me nearly ten years ago. A question that at its core wants to know: What do we do with media and networked technology, and why do we do it, particularly during episodes in our lives when we seem dislodged from support networks that are meant to ground us? MIT specialist, Sherry Turkle writes in her book Alone Together (2011) that “[t]he network is seductive [and] if we are always on, we may deny ourselves the rewards of solitude” (pg. 3). While it may be true that relentless connection to networked technology can impose new communication challenges for people and our relationships, one might consider how networked technology can mediate information-seeking practices and connection, particularly for those who, during moments of difficult transition, find solitude a nuisance, whose offline supportive ties are scarce commodities, and for those whose privacy is complicated by federal legislation and institutional regulations.

This subtle consideration about our relationship to/with each other and networked technology, along with the question that asks what is it that we do with media guides this research. I am compelled to know more about how young people who are characterized as disconnected and vulnerable might find a sense of community and place, if at all, through media and technology. Furthermore, I think about what these findings might reveal about the organization and space of their social ties and networks. My inquiry here is motivated by care for and wonder about the lives of young people I have had the privilege of working with for nearly two years. This exploratory research is also an ode to my father’s loving question years before. And as Cris Beam writes in her book about youth in foster care, To The End of June (2013), this research is a way for me to look.

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[1] On February 20, 2014 during a presentation at Teachers College, Columbia University, Alice Marwick, Assistant professor of Communications and Media at Fordham University described the writing and producing that we do via web media as “ethnography of display”. Marwick noted that during the earlier days of blogging and online journaling, text was the primary mode of displaying information. The current web landscape complicates what it means to write our ways into knowing and being because of visual media like images and video. The term “ethnography of display” encapsulates both how people produce publicly online and how these practices overtime tell a story about self-presentation.

Why vine is a perfect medium for comedy

Two words: Jump cut

In film, the jump cut, or abrupt transition from one frame to the next, functions like a quick, confusing, and incongruous utterance. The viewer is required to fill in the missing rationale or logic, although she doesn't realize it. In humor theory, incongruity theory describes "laughter in response to a perception of incongruity." The jump cut evokes humor, as seen on Vine, the popular short video mobile app with a growing number of aspiring and established comedians.

Because Vine is a short 6-second video platform that allows the user to manipulate time and space by pausing and dragging a scroll bar on a mobile screen, it's the perfect medium to evoke humor through incongruous--or (also conceptualized as) bizarre, queer, inappropriate, odd, discordant, contrasting, "ridiculous" imagery.

The jump cut transition, along with the cutaway is oftentimes a meta comedic device also found in the popular animated sitcom Family Guy.

So there you have it: The medium, in this case, Vine, is the message, humor.

https://vine.co/v/hL9nHAZrt5W

Media Analysis On Violence, Rape, and Little Red Riding Hood

RED, from directors Jorge Jaramillo and Carlo Guillot is an interpretation based on the fairy tale "Little Red Ridding Hood". Jaramillo and Guillot's interpretation is gruesomely violent, and yet (as I will further explore below), is also a beautiful take on a classic story. Here is a description of the piece from the directors:

"Based on a true fairy tale. As the silhouette of a lonely girl runs through the woods, something in the shadows is lurking her. RED is an animated short film, which presents a new version of the classic tale "Little Red Riding Hood" by Charles Perrault. The directors Jorge Jaramillo and Carolo Guillot explore more thoroughly the drama, horror, and realism of the story. A journey of feelings and moments, with visual and musical elements existing only to carry a clear and strong narrative. In RED the directors based on traditional shadows animation, giving it a new perspective by using technology to create a new concept, while maintaining the visual and narrative force of the classic technique."

[vimeo http://www.vimeo.com/38704159 w=500&h=281]

I should also note that Elizabeth Marshall (2004) argued that classic tales like "Little Red Riding Hood" were initially "tied to practices of childhood rearing . . .and disciplining young readers into normative heterosexual femininity and masculinity" (pg. 261). The original tale of "Little Red Riding Hood" was just as violent in that the story functioned as a psychological ploy to discipline children into gender norms. Now we might understand this piece as relates to the sexuality of young girls and rape culture, as Marshall writes,

“Little Red Riding Hood, like constructions of rape victims in contemporary discourses of law and media, was in unauthorized territory, the forest rather than the home, talking in a free and uninhibited way to a male who wasn't her husband or father. In popular parlance, Little Red "’asked for it’" (268).

"Little Red Riding Hood"'s violent beginnings has since been diluted as a tale of childhood fantasy, that is until now with Jaramillo and Guillot's interpretation.

I'm uncertain about the primary audience toward which Jaramillo and Guillot's piece is targeted. However, given that this piece has since gone viral (largely due to Jezebel.com's write-up) and is readily available on Vimeo, I'm sure the piece has been consumed by people of various ages and groups.

Number of violent acts: 1

The nature of violent acts: RED physically slaughters the wolf with a knife and breaks the wolf's neck, killing the wolf in a violent confrontation. I would be remiss not to mention the psychological violence associated with this exchange. Though RED is an animated girl, one can only imagine that if she were 'real' the pychological impact of such a gruesome act would have long lasting traumatic effects.

Harris' discusses cartoon violence as "stylized and unrealistic" and as a result may "induce[d] fear or desensitization" (pg. 273) in viewers since the events could not happen in 'real life'. In other words, it seems Harris is arguing that viewers might allow themselves to indulge effortlessly in cartoon violence, which can also be humorous, since there is less 'real life' consequences tied to the media itself. Perhaps it is much easier to suspend fear in an animated world. For me, however, this piece is cathartic. If I had to categorize my reaction to the piece based on the readings, I might relate my reaction to the fear-of-victimization effect, with some caveats. I do not necessarily think that RED's cathartic effect has to do with the idea that the more media like RED that I consume, the more I am afraid of becoming a victim of violence (Bushman, et al., pg. 364). However, I do feel a sense of what Harris describes as an "emotional purging" (pg. 276) when I watch the piece. I enjoy watching RED, not necessarily for the violence acts themselves, but rather because the violent acts are perpetrated on a known perpetrator, the wolf. It may be that I am experiencing what Sparks identifies as post-viewing gratification related to the character, RED, herself. I find pleasure, albeit intellectual, in watching RED kill the wolf. She avenges the death of Little Red, whom she apparently drags away at the end of the piece. This act of vengeful violence appeals to my sense that the wolf, or the rapist/murderer, got what he deserved. RED avenges the victim's death, and all (seems) right in the world. Aside from the gratification quality of the work, the technical aspects involved in the piece are quite beautiful.

An aside:

When Walter Benjamin quoted poet Filippo Tommaso Marinetti, "War is beautiful", in The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Production, he was doing so to express the aesthetics of war. For Marinetti, the physical structure of weapons and even the printed propaganda associated with war was artful. In the case of RED, (or the technology involved in the production of RED), this piece has an aesthetic, albeit violent, quality. This is not to say, however, that the violent acts themselves are to be admired.

For me, RED is a beautifully produced piece of technology art. The directors tell a story that is both well-produced and thoughtfully mediated with the use of technology. Aside from it's technical merits, I find that this story is beautiful because I understand that humanity is often found in some of the most gruesome and perverse expressions. RED is essentially an aesthetically stunning piece of callous emotion. Yet I understand that the aesthetics of violence in this case is beautiful only because the nature of the violent act itself is vile.

I also admit that my sense of gratification might be based on prior experiences engaging in domestic violence and sexual assault advocacy as well as my academic background in gender studies. Certainly Marshall's discussions on "Little Red Riding Hood" sat in the back of my mind as I watched this piece. Considering all of the exposure to prior experiences and perspectives, perhaps I was primed (Sparks, pg. 91) for this moment, and reacted according to previous associations with the "Little Red Riding Hood" tale.

References

Benjamin, W. (1968). Illuminations. New York: Schocken Books. Bushman, B.J., Husemann, L.R., & Whitaker, J.L. (2009). Violent media effects. In Nabi, R.L. & Oliver, M.B. (Eds.), Media processes and effects. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. Harris, R. (2009). Violence: Watching all that mayhem really matters. In A cognitive psychology of mass media. (5th ed). pp. 257-290. Marshall, E. (2004). Stripping for the wold: Rethinking representations of gender in children's literature. Reading Research Quarterly. 39(3). pp. 256-270. Sparks, G.G. (2010). Effects of media violence. In Media effects research: A basic overview. pp. 80-104. Boston, MA: Wadsworth.

A Theoretical Explanation for Why Someone Would Tattoo Drakes Name on Her Forehead

Uses and Gratifications Theory (U&GT) or perspective "places emphasis on the active role of the audience in making choices and being goal-directed in its media-use behavior” (pg. 37). In other words, this theory looks at the ways in which the viewer chooses to put certain media to use. It also says that depending upon the ways in which the viewer takes pleasure in (or is motivated by) certain media will determine certain behaviors associated with media use. Incidentally, cultivation theory has been reinterpreted in line with a uses and gratification approaches, stressing the active mental activity of the viewer while watching (pg. 35). Harris presents the horror film example to illustrate U&G perspective. That is to say, watching a horror film will vary for different people depending upon how the person develops empathy, or not, to the victim in the film. Perhaps most notable about U&GT involves what Harris deems as the critical issue of “what draws different people to consume different types of media” (pg. 38). For example, why do people watch violent pornography? What use and gratifications come from such a viewing experience? The uses and gratifications perspective may lead researchers to understand other social, cultural, and psychological factors, besides media consumption, that influence why people consume certain types of media, particularly media that are violent in nature. Harris continues to outline six current research directions for uses and gratifications research. These six approaches involve the following:

1. developing taxonomies of communication motives.
2. comparing motives across media. This is particularly important for CMT research.
3. looking at different social and psychological circumstances of media use (e.g. coviewers, personality, lifestyle, or religiousity).
4. looking at how one’s motivations for using media are satisfied or not.
5. examining the role of individual differences in experiences, motives, and exposure on the media experience.
6. studying measurement issues like the reliability and validity of instruments measuring motivation.

Another notable insight for Harris’ section on U&GT constructs concern how people form relationships with media figures they have never met. Harris cites these relationships, whether between viewers and real people or with viewers and fictional characters in media, as parasocial interactions (Klimmt, Hartmann, & Schramm, 2006, etc) (pg. 38). The following are some useful examples that illustrate parasocial interactions, a construct of U&GT:

• Judith Warner's NYT article, Sometimes a President is Just a President is about the surge of Obama fantasies and dreams by U.S. Americans after he was elected president. Warner begins her article by describing a dream she had about President Obama. She then references friends and strangers who have admitted to having sexually explicit dreams about the President and the First Lady, Michelle Obama. The way in which people admitted to identifying closely with the Obamas was not only illustrated through sexually explicit dreams but through fantasies of close friendships. From the article: "These are people for whom the Obamas are not just a beacon of hope, inspiration and 'demigodlikeness,' as a New York lawyer put it, but also a kind of mirror. And the refracted image of self they see is not one they much admire."

• Fan tattoos Drake's name on her forehead. Drake is a popular actor-turned-rapper/artist whose music videos continuously appear on MTV, BET, VH1. His songs are also on heavy rotation on various hip-hop and R&B radio stations around the country. This is probably one of the most bizarre displays of how a a super fan (or stan) illustrates a sense of closeness to a media figure she has never met. I haven't come across her response yet, but for the full interview with the tattoo artist who tattooed the name "Drake" on the women's head, see Vice.

Reference

Harris, R.J. (2009). A cognitive psychology of mass communication. Routledge.