I am almost finished with my grad thesis, so I thought I would post the abstract here for the world to read.
Coming into the age of globalised media coverage, major media events once limited to a specific country are now shared across the world. The semiotic and representational systems employed in the media coverage of these events shape our understanding of international relations, power structures, and public opinion. Royal weddings and political demonstrations have recently found a transnational audience, binding them together in a common cause or celebration. This project analyses the local appropriation of global media events, the media coverage that facilitates adoption, and the semiotic translations involved in the process.
Hofmann told the Guardian: “Desires for media may be comparatively harder to resist because of their high availability and also because it feels like it does not ‘cost much’ to engage in these activities, even though one wants to resist.
From The Guardian (via @nickdenardis)
The new magnetic or world city will be static and iconic or inclusive.
Reversal of the Overheated Medium. Understanding Media.
“Steve Jobs is dead” read the headline on many a news blog last evening. For more than three hours my Twitter stream was filled with quotes, condolences, epiphanies of the frailty of life, and tributes to one the greatest inventors, innovators, and marketers ever to live in this earth. A connected globe of humans mourned this man’s passing in the same instant, connected to each other, united with each other, by way of their media extensions. Millions of people who, even six years ago, would mostly be considered strangers in the others’ minds were instantly family.
The transient nature of these connections is interesting–and probably a deeper topic for another post–and it led to a specific group of people (call them trolls or otherwise) who just could not understand the outpouring of tribute for a man they had never met. “Why,” they asked, “would we mourn someone who made mistakes? Who behaved, sometimes, like a terrible person? Whose life was focused on business?” ¶ Read More…
The drama of the paranoid computer still maintains its tension, though it no longer seems amazing; the beginning with the monkeys is still a fine piece of cinema, but those non-aerodynamic spaceships have long lain in the toybox of our now-grown children, reproduced in plastic (the spaceships, I believe, not our children); the final images are kitsch (a lot of pseudo-philosophical vagueness in which anyone can put the allegory he wants), and the rest is discographic, music and sleeves (p. 145).
“The Multiplication of the Media”. (1983)
Eco, U. (1986). Travels in hyperreality. (W. Weaver, Trans.). Orlando, FL: Harcourt Brace & Company. (Original work published in 1983).