MEME’S VS RON BURGUNDY
So, we’ve all watched the Anchorman right? Well if you haven’t for one, I’m so disappointed, secondly, that amazing fight scene, well this shows how a small minority of News teams fight it out for the audience’s attention, with very little competition, each news team takes the same event and adds their own twist to make a unique story and attract an audience, this is the case of legacy media. Where each team finds an event which is current and begins closed framing it around how they wish to portray it to the public.
As an example of how the media changes events to attract an audience, I’ve posted a few links below which will take you to some articles covering the current trial between Johnny Depp and Amber Heard. I strongly encourage you to view if not all, a few links to see the differences between articles, in an act to draw attention to each publisher’s article, the question left to be asked are you getting the same story from several different news outlets?
- THE WASHINGTON POST https://www.washingtonpost.com/arts-entertainment/2022/05/26/johnny-depp-amber-heard-final-day-court/
- THE GUARDIAN https://www.theguardian.com/film/2022/may/26/johnny-depp-amber-heard-trial-testimony
- THE ECONOMIC TIMES https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/magazines/panache/johnny-depp-amber-heard-dramatic-defamation-case-reaches-its-end-jury-to-begin-deliberation-after-hearing-closing-arguments/articleshow/91835016.cms
- NPR https://www.npr.org/2022/05/04/1096655258/amber-heard-johnny-depp-trial-testimony
- ABC NEWS https://www.abc.net.au/news/2022-05-26/kate-moss-denies-johnny-depp-threw-her-down-stairs/101100586
Facebook, Snapchat, Instagram, Reddit, Pinterest and the newly popular Tik Tok are all forms of a recently introduced term ‘distributed media‘ in which the roles between author and audience merge and become one. Distributed forms of media now produce artefacts which are no longer generated in a traditional format as a package, produced by an author and released to an audience via a many-to-many.
YOU ONLY SEE WHAT YOU’VE BEEN SHOWN
In the world of propaganda, where we only see what the producers want to show us. So you may be asking, what is propaganda? Propaganda is most often used in an effort to manipulate people by creating a picture or illusion in the audience’s mind, to often contradict their own prior beliefs or perspectives of particular events or subjects in motion.
Propaganda is shared over several mediums, this coherent and systematic frame allows the producer to target particular audiences and alter their views. Much like propaganda, media framing works by directing the attention of the audience to what the producers want them to see.
Meme’s are a great example of propaganda and media framing as they adhere to the existing patterns of relationships, using that to their advantage, to associate new information with a previously accepted policy which sits within the Overton window.
Media framing works by classifying the enormous amount of information into categories, such as: what is relevant, what may be expected from an audience, what is perceived as important data and what is related to the topic.
IS THIS PLACE REAL?
“Hyperreality is a concept that is defined by the inability of consciousness to distinguish reality from a simulation of reality.”
Hyperreality is commonly known as the term used to describe the fine line which lies between reality and the augmentation of reality. This line is often blurred as in today’s society, technology is already so advanced and only continues to develop, therefore sometimes it can be quite difficult to distinguish what is in fact real.
Due to the large variation of media implicated within society, what our minds perceive as ‘real’ can often be altered into a hyper-realistic extension of what it actually is, as the abundance of multimedia can often fabricate the original event or experience.
Potential DA Idea
Throughout this module I was mostly interested in the idea of simulation and hyper-reality, with that being said, I found it quite interesting to discover how far simulation has advanced and started to become intertwined in our daily lives. Therefore, I thought an interesting DA could conclude with a mini simulation experiment, which shares short clips over a platform such as Tik Tok or Instagram reels, with filters and effects which simulate a hyper-reality situation. I believe a younger audience would find this quite appealing and become very engaged with the idea.
WHAT AM I DOING? 