Time for a change

I had to close on this note. I can’t think of anything more newsworthy in my lifetime.

America’s first black president. OK, mixed-race, influences from Africa, Indonesia and Hawaii, even better.

(Clicking on the title gets you here: http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2008/11/06/2411482.htm)

In an interview on Australian radio station JJJ a few days before the election, musician Michael Franti, no mean campaigner for peace and understanding himself, summed up Obama’s recipe for success with something along the lines of: ‘Look at where he’s from. Look at his parentage. He knows how to talk to anybody. He knows how to put people at ease. He’s a superstar.’

Unlike the article attached to the title link, I don’t think Obama has to invoke a biblical quote from Moses like his predecessor Martin Luther King.

How about just being someone who can bring disparate groups together and give forgotten groups some sort of chance? That’s miracle enough.

Incidentally ABC’s website provided for me easily the best coverage of the election, with their nifty little map at the bottom, and they had the results up before anybody else. Media-wise, this is a coup for the ABC and a fantastic example of what the internet can provide by way of something really useful and inclusive.

Well done ABC, well done Obama, and well done American voters, most of whom don’t get time off work to vote, have to line up several hours, and managed to get there anyway for the most important election in our times.

I have to credit McCain with the most gracious concession speech I’ve ever heard. I wouldn’t expect anything else from someone who refused to be released early from a POW camp while his men were still captive.


‘Oh brave new world, that has such people in it’ – Shakespeare, The Tempest

The War Briefing

(SBS television documentary, screened 4 November 2008, 10 pm Adelaide time)

I watched this program by chance, and was compelled by the chilling portrayal of the ‘forgotten’ war, mainly being carried out by US troops in Afghanistan.

Although Iraq is the main recent US conflict that the media has focused on, the Taliban in Afghanistan is a far more intractable foe, mainly because of the symbiotic nature that organisation has with the inhabitants.

Several military advisers stated that without significant more troops, resources and time, it is a war that simply cannot be won, and this was made painfully apparent with images of soldiers being pinned down by enemy bombardments in the mountains.

A visit to one village resulted in a meeting in which only a few elders were present (the younger men suspiciously away apart from one, who it was hypothesised remained to ensure none of the older men co-operated too fully with the US soldiers).

While a documentary of this nature could never be said to be entirely unbiased, and the point of the US as an invading force has been made elsewhere several times, my heart went out to the young American soldiers who had already lost two of their number that month, surviving constant shelling and traversing deadly quiet mountains where the bullet that kills you can come from anywhere.

As a media issue, Vietnam was the first war extensively covered by media on the ground, then we had the 24-hour coverage of the Gulf War. Who decides what war is newsworthy? Some would say the public, and this is partly true, but ultimately it's owners of media publications, big business (that sponsors advertising) and governments (look at China!).

More media attention on Afghanistan, whatever people might say about propaganda, can only be a good thing to try and shed some sort of understanding on this terrible situation.

Kicking On

Being a soccer fan, I enjoyed this story in The Big Issue (no. 316, 4- 17 Nov 2008) about the Homeless World Cup.

(Clicking on the 'kicking on' title above gets you to: http://www.abc.net.au/stateline/vic/content/2005/s1356594.htm)

Martin Hughes, former editor of The Big Issue, recounts in this article how he first heard of the event at an international street papers conference in Buenos Aires in 2005.

The idea of an international street papers conference is in itself an intriguing one.

Given that papers like The Big Issue are printed once a fortnight and would have far lower circulation figures than major newspapers, it is testament to the power of ‘word of mouth’, or ‘grassroots’ media that firstly, it can spawn international conferences, and even more impressively, an international event like the homeless World Cup.

Hughes volunteered an Australian team for the event, held in Edinburgh in 2005, before having organised either players or sponsors.

In a dualistic act of faith and pragmatism, ABC TV’s Stateline program filmed two possible follow-ups on Hughes’ struggle to garner funds: one had him regretfully announcing the project’s demise, the other jubilantly announcing a major sponsor.

Faith won, with the CEO of Smorgon Steel (and chairman of the Essendon Football Club) Ray Horsburgh providing the air fares for the team the morning after the program aired.

So we have an alternative street paper piquing the interest of a non-commercial television station, attracting the interest of a major industry player who puts in funds and interest into a project that major media would kill for.

I love it – and that’s in addition to the warm fuzzy glow we get from hearing how this street soccer competition has given homeless people a purpose, social contact, and a way back into society.

Despite the ignominy of seeing soccer villain Kevin Muscat ( Melbourne Victory captain and long-time enemy of Adelaide United fans) posing in feel-good photos with the Aussie street soccer team, I can only conclude that on occasions like this, the world actually gets it right, with some help from ‘little’ media.

Follow-up: the (2005) Stateline story attached to the title link above stated that Melbourne hoped to host the Homeless World Cup in 2008. They will - next month.

How prose and graphics interact

This was a talk I did summarising a reading (Schriver 1997, full reference below) describing how prose and graphics interact, and how effective are various combinations of both.

As one might expect, in many cases information is conveyed more effectively when pictures are used together with text.

However, the reading did qualify this by showing that this depends on the information conveyed, the literacy of the reader, and even cultural considerations.

I really enjoyed presenting 'old-school' on the whiteboard, mainly because I'm suspicious of technology, and found it easier to get things across using my simple cartoons.

The class was really supportive and I think the humorous element of my stick-figures helped.

I dug up some really interesting info on how our brains see text - firstly as a series of pictures before we recognise it as words (Medina, 2008).

The 'sand talk' used by aborigines (Simpson, 2006) intrigued me because it's a really good, classic example of text (the words spoken) and graphics (what's drawn in the sand, then scrubbed out as the story progresses) combinations.

There are five main types of prose/ graphics interactions mentioned in Schriver:

1) Redundant – visual / verbal content identical, repetition of key ideas

2) Complementary – different visual/ verbal content, both elements needed to convey key ideas

There's a great stick-figure cartoon illustrating complementary interaction at

http://xkcd.com/260/ - ( webcomic by Randall Munroe)

( If you click on the title of this blog, you'll be taken straight there- it's the only way I can make any hyperlinks work on this site. )

3) Supplementary – different content in words and pics, one dominates (main idea) the other reinforces/ elaborates main point

(a cool Charlie Brown cartoon example of this is at the link below)

http://www.emaki.net/blog/

4) Juxtapositional – different content in words and pics, key ideas created by clash / ‘semantic tension’ between ideas in each mode

5) Stage–setting – different content in words and pics, one mode forecasts content– eg. newspaper headline over a picture.

All in all, a highly relevant topic because we see it everyday on tv, newspapers, magazines and websites. Ironically because of my lack of technical ability, still haven't worked out how to paste a picture into my blog or even make a hyperlink active.

Definitely old-school for me.

References below:

Cohn, N 2008, Diversity in visuals, viewed 15 August 2008, http://www.emaki.net/blog/.

Medina, J 2008, 12 rules for surviving and thriving at work, home and school, viewed 15 August 2008, http://www.brainrules.net/vision.htm.

Munroe, R 2008, webcomic viewed 15 August 2008, http://xkcd.com/260/.

Schriver, K A 1997, Dynamics in document design: creating texts for readers, Wiley Computer Publishers, New York, pp.407-432.

Simpson, J 2006, Sand talk - and how to record it, viewed 15 August 2008,
http://blogs.usyd.edu.au/elac/2006/10/sand_talk_and_how_to_record_it.html.

Second life for kids - what happened to the first?

One thing which filled me with a sense of wonder and trepidation was the news that Disney were releasing a 'second life' site for children (Lara Sinclair's article 'Club Penguin suits Disney's virtual aims', in The Australian media supplement, p. 33, Thursday 7 August 2008).

Touting itself as an 'online children's community', it offers virtual playgound-like environment online, where each child's character or 'avatar' (represented in this case by an individual penguin) can interact with others.

The site doesn't allow any exchange of personal information (which supposedly keeps it safe for children).

Club Penguin is the most popular children's website in Australia. The site is free to visit, and has more than 12 million( ! )active players worldwide, and 700,000 paying subscribers. While it is free to chat on the site, customising one's penguin character or igloo comes at a cost of $5.00 (US) per month.

Doing the maths, it's little wonder that Disney paid $350 million (US) to purchase the site last year.

( The site is listed below, or if you click on the title of this blog you'll automatically navigate there. )

http://www.clubpenguin.com/

The main media focus on this issue is technology and profitability, with a small concession made for the safeguarding of the child users.

Apart from the fact that having accessed the site, there doesn't appear to be any particular impediment to an adult visiting it, my main concern is this: whatever happened to kids being kids, kicking a ball, running around outside with their mates? Is Australia not in the grip of an obesity epidemic where children's levels of activity are already alarmingly low?

There are obvious arguments that sites like these could be educational and facilitate children adopting necessary technologies, but I think so much care needs to be taken here - a crucial balance needs to be struck between the possible benefits of 'second life' and the long-term risks to health.

Blogs move boundaries for US news

Geoff Elliott (Washington correspondent)'s article in The Australian media supplement (31 July 2008, pp.31 and 35 - click on the title and you'll navigate there) is a topical introduction for me to the idea of blogging as a means to both report and affect events.

Elliott states that the abundance of US blogs and how they are 'influencing the narrative' should be taken into account by politicians, citing an example where he critiqued a statement made by former US Democrat hopeful Harold Ford (that Australia 'wanted to pursue nuclear weapons'). This was picked up by several US blogs, leading to much discussion (and derision for Ford).

A piece on Barack Obama written by Elliott was picked up by blog site 'The Drudge Report':

http://www.drudgereport.com/

Inside of an hour Elliott had been contacted, and within a day he was appearing on US national public and Fox radio stations in hour-long discussions on Obama. Mainstream media picked up his article as did several blog sites.

The most fascinating insight for me in all this was that several Americans stated that they went to foreign websites for their US political news. The immediate thought occurs that perhaps foreign press may be seen as more impartial, however I wouldn't see Australians doing the same thing for our political news!

The point is...

This blog, as the Hamlet quote suggests, is about perception.

Basically, my perception of life, the media's perception, and how one may influence the other.

We read and view things in various media formats and we're affected by this.

My main comment on blogs is that they're one way people can turn the circuit around.

The purpose? Connecting with people, sharing ideas, maybe even practising the art of the first nascent steps to considering how, as writers, to develop an audience (something retiring types like me are really not very good at).

So this blog is three things: a (strange) new environment to explore, a community to invent, and a way to influence my surroundings in a small way.

Enjoy!