Mashable

I just came across a handy link...

Mashable - The Social Media Guide
http://mashable.com/

Mashable is a blog devoted to social media news and founded on the principles of Web 2.0. Essential for all social media enthusiasts.

Media Project - Dexter - Identifying the various "actors" involved

Key "actors" that contribute to producing Dexter...

Creator - Author Jeff Lindsay, creator of the Dexter series of novels. Four novel to date, beginning with Darkly Dreaming Dexter in 2001. The novels revolve around the central character of Dexter Morgan, a forensic investigator with the Miami Metropolitan Police Department. By day Dexter attends crime scenes and specialises in analysing blood splatter patterns. By night, he caters to what he refers to as his “dark passenger” and moonlights as a “likeable vigilante serial killer” (Friend, 2006).

Series Creators / Executive Producers - Executive producers Sara Colleton and John Goldwyn took the concepts and characters from the novels with an idea of remediating them into a feature film, with this idea eventually developing into an episodic television drama. Teaming with producer Clyde Phillips, this team takes ultimate responsibility for the overall product, acting as a type of quality control that is involved to some degree with all aspects of the series along with seventeen other series producers who adopt supervising and coordinating roles.

Broadcaster / Distributor - The pilot episode was screened by the American cable television network Showtime Entertainment, a subsidiary of the mass media company CBS Corporation. Interestingly, both Showtime and CBS screen Dexter in the US, but CBS screens a free-to-air primetime version of the series which is highly-edited so as to avoid offence.

Screenwriters - Currently a group of twelve key screenwriters are responsible for producing scripts that will be shot as weekly one hour episodes.

Directors - A small group of directors exercise some create control over the production, liaising with actors, camera and lighting crews amongst others to create an end product.

Actors - A principal cast of nine actors has been involved with the production since the pilot episode. Over the course of last four seasons, a number of additional actors have also been involved in both reoccurring and guest roles that may last for an entire season or just for one episode.

The Geographic Setting - Miami - Key to the action of the series is the physical setting, the city of Miami, Florida. Well-known Miami landmarks including the Everglades National Park, Biscayne Bay, Key West and Little Havana serve as settings for the series. As a consequence of this setting, there is a strong representation of Cuban-American culture. Several key characters are of Cuban descent and Spanish is widely spoken throughout the series.

The Physical Setting - The Miami Metropolitan Police Department - On one level Dexter is a crime series and as a result much of the setting of the series takes place within the Miami Metropolitan Police Department. Many of the cast of characters are employed by the Miami Metro Police and much of the action takes place within the police station or at crime scenes.

Engaging Media - Week Three (Part 2)

The second reading for this week -
Making the Most out of 15 Minutes: Reality TV's Dispensable Celebrity
Sue Collins
Television New Media 2008; 9; 87 originally published online Jan 16, 2008

Reality TV - displacing unionised workers by replacing them with cheaper nonunionised "talent".
Does "celebrity as a cultural commodity" also suffer or are there just different opportunities e.g. the increasing popularity of day in the life style celebrity reality tv shows - Paris Hilton, The Osbornes, Jessica Simpson etc

Reality TV has given rise to a new category of celebrity - what Collins refers to as the "dispensable celebrity" who will enjoy their 15 mins of fame but will rarely be absorbed into the celebrity world long-term. Dispensibility is the defining feature of reality TV.

Gamedoc - a competition based series that portrays "ordinary" people in unique competitive situations e.g. Survivor.

Docusoap - places "ordinary" people in a natural setting and seeks to document their natural behaviour e.g. Real World.

"Celebrity is established by its visibility as a function of its reproducibility, or by its exposure
to audiences, who subjectively participate in the discursive construction and maintenance
of celebrity through their reception." (p.5, 2008).

Celebrity is the result of a "complex interplay among processes of production, mediation, and reception." (p.6, 2008). It is both a cultural and financial commodity.

Celebrities are produced, managed, shaped, promoted and their successful distribution is the key to the producer's profits. There are four stages of cultural production - creation, reproduction, circulation and exhibition. This is a risky and expensive business and producers are increasingly tightening their control on reproduction and circulation as a means of profiting from their commodity.

Collins argues that celebrity value " is best understood as a function of visibility based on potential reproducibility and the subsequent sustaining of an audience base." (p.9, 2008).

Reality TV has constructed its own financial business models e.g. The Survivor business model in which the program is not made with deficit financing but rather uses preproduction sponsorship to offset the costs of producing the show. Wide use of product placement and spin-off merchandise contribute substantially to profits. The producer then hopes that their successful reality TV concept can be sold on to other global markets for adaptation.

The reality TV show can feed off itself by recruiting from within e.g. The second season of The Apprentice "re-employed" talent from the first series to work for the new contestants. Similarly, reality TV success stories will usually go in to make appearances on other TV shows owned by the same network e.g. Bill Rancic of The Apprentice went on to make numerous appearances on other NBC owned shows including The Tonight Show.

Engaging Media - Week Three

This week's reading -
Jenkins, H. Pop cosmopolitanism : mapping cultural flows in an age of media convergence. Fans bloggers and gamers : exploring participatory culture 2006 ch. 7 pp 152-172 New York University Press

Pop Cosmopolitan - "someone whose embrace of global popular media represents an escape route out of the parochialism of her local community" (p. 152, 2006). A Pop Cosmopolitan embraces new cultural experiences and is keen to explore outside their immediate realm. They will use networked media to seek diversity and interact with like-minded people.

Henry Jenkins work focuses on participatory culture and media convergence. He began focusing purely on American popular culture but soon realised that this was impossible - a global framework was needed due to the extent of globalisation.

What is media convergence?

• borderless, multi-directional and unpredictable circulation of information facilitated by commercial interests and grassroots distribution.


• an ongoing flow of media between various technologies, industries, content & audiences.


• the introduction of enabling technologies that allow the use to process, store and transform media content.

The focus of this essay is to explain how & why Asian popular culture is shaping American popular culture. Jenkins focuses on the forces of corporate convergence and grassroots convergence.

Corporate convergence - a concentration of media ownership in the hands of mutlinational conglomerates.

Grassroots convergence - the digitally empowered consumer and their central role in shaping media content.

Both have a role to play in global convergence.

Young Americans have an increasing appetite for Asian pop culture e.g. Anime, Bollywood films, Hong Kong action films.

Why does the West traditionally dominate global entertainment?

Economic power - the means to produce the product

Cultural power - exerting our own culture over others

Political power - imposing our ideologies on others

Psychological power - the ability to shape others

But is this global domination decreasing? Increasing product from Asian markets is shifting the focus from Western media and large media conglomerates are responding to consumer demands for more international product. It is also now easier than ever before to distribute foreign content to the consumer through widespread use of digital media and the internet. This has led American media companies to recruit increasing numbers of Asian talent and to "borrow" concepts from foreign markets e.g. Big Brother television concept.

The flow of Asian product into the American market is shaped by three specific economic interests -

1. Local media producers who see global circulation as both economically advantageous as well as a source of pride.

2. Multinational media producers who seek to push their product into as many markets as possible for financial benefit.

3. Niche media producers seeking new & unique content to differentiate themselves from the masses.

Japanese media producers have realised that they are able to push their "soft" product (e.g. computer games) on a global level through the success of their "hard" product (e.g. gaming consoles).

Asian producers have sought to push media product including tv series & spin-off toys into the American market but this has been thwarted in many cases due to the fact that many have been remade for the American market and as such have lost their unique Asian qualities. Quite often local producers must adapt their product for global tastes e.g. Sesame Street characters are remade to appeal to the specific local audience or actor's voices are dubbed into the local language.

Otaku - A derogatory Japanese term to define those that obsessively consume pop culture to the point that they lose touch with their own community.

The popularity of product such as Bollywood films and Japanese Anime is largely due to grassroots convergence - small distributors catering to Pop Cosmopolitans and immigrants who then perpetuate the flow of media by showing it to their friends.

Corporate hybridity is on the increase with what is refered to as "combination platter" product - films such as Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon that are made with an array of Asian actors an Asian/American director. An increasing number of products are also co-productions.

Links -

http://instantyang.blogspot.com/ - Jeff Yang's "Instant Yang" Blog

http://web.mit.edu/anime/www/ - MIT Anime Club Homepage

http://www.bertisevil.tv/ - Bert is Evil TV

Engaging Media - Week Two

This week's reading - Asa Briggs and Peter Burke, (2002). Convergence. In A social history of the media: from Gutenberg to the internet.

My initial response to this reading is an immediate sleepy feeling. I found this reading very hard-going - lengthy and not particularly interesting. But, trying to take something from the reading...

Convergence - "the coming together of media and telecommunications industries", "the development of digital technology, the integration of text, numbers, images and sound" and my favourite "the tendency for everything to become more like everything else".

Cable TV - "an electronic communications highway for a wired nation"

Interactive TV - "the ultimate big convergence"

The Telecommunications Reform Act of 1996 was developed with the purpose of deregulating the industry to open it up to increased competition and new investment.

Unprecedented advancements in technology meant that information was more widely available than ever before - an increasing number of people had access to information, this information was more current and this information was available in an endless number of formats. But has this shifted to focus upon the quantity of information as opposed to the quality of information?
Digitilisation has presented great opportunities but has it addressed the historical issue of content? We have access, but access to what exactly?


Some links related to this week's topic...

http://www.tamaleaver.net/ - Dr Tama Leaver's digital culture blog

http://toddgitlin.net/ - website of Todd Gitlin, author of many books including The Whole World is Watching and Media Unlimited.

Remediation Project

Finally... A clear basis for my remediation project. I will be basing my project around the Showtime TV series Dexter. I aim to produce a series of online news reports based upon the events in Dexter as if they were actual news events. I am still unsure how many reports to produce?? Also not sure whether I should base the project on just one season of the series (there have been three to date)?? I am thinking this could get very involved...

Video Games and Violence - Some Links

Violent video games: myths, facts and unanswered questions - Craig Anderson - http://www.apa.org/science/psa/sb-anderson.html

Reality check on video game violence - Benjamin Radford http://www.livescience.com/technology/051204_video_violence.html

ABC Serious games initiative - http://www.abc.net.au/tv/seriousgames/

ADF games website - http://games.defencejobs.gov.au/#/home