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WATSON
WORKS
Blog 34
Watsonworksblog.blogspot.comJames Watson
Friends and contributors
A Writers’ Notebook
CONTENTS
Photo of the MonthGable end, Derry, July 2012
Media: that ‘demotic turn’
Part 2 Preface to 8th edition of The Dictionary of Media & Communication Studies (Bloomsbury Academic, 2012)
Contributions
Saved within the saved
Auschwitz: a prospect
Tony Williams
Two Dialogues
Bron O’Brien
Poems of Place (11)
Prayer cards at Ilam
Correspondence
‘Getting under way’: A letter from Councillor Morgan informing us of Ned Baslow’s letter campaign to put Wickerstaff-cum-Fernhaven annual festival on the international map. Concessions to readers.
Media: that ‘demotic turn’
In Blog 33 an edited version of the Preface to the 8th
edition of The
Dictionary of Media and Communication Studies (Bloomsbury Academic, 2012) by
James Watson and Anne Hill asked whether the phone-hacking scandal that
engulfed the media empire of Rupert Murdoch has brought about a fundamental
change in the way the media go about their business in relation to government,
the police and the public.
Less
sensational than the hacking saga, but of equal interest is what Graeme Turner
calls ‘the demotic turn’. In Ordinary
People and the Media: The Demotic Turn (Sage, 2010) Turner
writes that the media audience ‘is mutating from a model of receptiveness we
might identify with broadcasting, towards a range of more active and more
demotic modes of participation that vary from the personalised menu model of
the YouTube user to the content creation activities of the citizen journalist
or the blogger’.
As for whether increased public (demotic)
participation is, as some digital optimists believe, also empowering,
whether the new media are a force for democratisation, Turner remains
sceptical, believing that outcomes ‘are still more likely to be those which
support the commercial survival of the major media corporations rather than
those which support the individual or the community interests of the ordinary
citizen’.
Primacy
of entertainment
The demotic turn
is a shift ‘towards entertainment’ and this ‘may prove to have constituted an
impoverishment of the social, political and cultural function of the media; the
replacement of something that was primarily information – as in, say, current
affairs radio – with something that is primarily entertainment – as in, say,
talk radio – is more realistically seen as generating a democratic deficit than
a democratic benefit’.
The 8th edition of The
Dictionary of Media and Communication Studies recognises the options
and the possibilities with regard to technology and cultural change but also
acknowledges that the pace of change of one is more rapid than the other.
It is undoubtedly true that the Internet
has opened portals to individual and group participation and interactivity that
permit a diversity of viewpoint and expression rarely if ever experienced in
the past.
Salem and Slim
Cyberspace is a
constellation of bloggers, a territory of streams emerging from and flowing in
to and across contemporary life, and on a global scale. Salem 9, blogging from
Iraq, fed an information-hungry western society glimpses of life in an invaded
and occupied country which traditional news reporting could not match.
During the so-termed African Spring of
2010-11, blogger Slim Amamou’s invitation to join the interim government of
Tunisia was described by Jo Glanville in her Index on Censorship (No. 1,
2011) editorial, ‘Playing the Long Game’, as ‘one of the most remarkable
acknowledgments of the role of digital activists in civil society, not to
mention the symbolism of his appointment in a country that has stifled free
speech for decades’.
Twitter ‘revolution’?
Yet for every
optimist such as Glanville there is a pessimist such as Evgeny Morozov whose The
Net Delusion: How Not to Liberate the World (Allan Lane, 2011) puts the
case that the ‘twitter revolution’ might do more harm than good to the cause of
democratisation.
The jury is out, as it is on the efficacy
of what has come to be termed citizen journalism. This raises lively issues
concerning the relationship between amateurs and professionals particularly in
the light of the cost-cutting in news services by traditional media
organisations intent on putting profit before public service; the result,
Graeme Turner’s ‘impoverishment of the social, political and cultural function
of the media’.
Threat to the open network
Equally we note
the concerns of Tim Wu, inventor of the term net neutrality (and author
of The Master Switch: The Rise and Fall of Information Empires,
Knopf/Atlantic Books, 2011), when he posits the theory that traditional media
moved from the freedoms of the open prairie to corporate enclosure and this
process may be being repeated in the network society.
Already, he writes in his Introduction, ‘there are
signs that the good old days of a completely open network are ending’.
Acquisition, alliances, expansion, synergies are pursued with missionary zeal
by the new leviathans. Industries become empires. Jostling for attention
becomes jostling for control, not unlike that exercised by governments rarely
hesitant about legislating against freedom of expression.
It could be said, to look on the bright
side, that the difference is that new technology has greatly loosened up
patterns of hierarchy and may even have made inroads on hegemony. Students of
communication would do well to carefully scrutinise competing visions of the
future of the ‘networking society’, in particular the role of information and
knowledge in a context driven by economics and ‘must have it now’ public
attitudes.
Above all, the
case must be made and re-made that in the information age the communications
industry is, in Tim Wu’s words, ‘fundamental to democracy’, needing to be
resistant to wholesale appropriation and to the controlling ambitions of
governments.
Saved within the saved
Auschwitz:
a prospect By Tony Williams
We
have seen the images so often, the watchtowers, the railway tracks, Arbeit
macht frei, endless rows of barrack huts in Birkenau. What I was not
prepared for on a visit this summer was the masses of visitors being bussed in
from all over the world and the total absence of the feared tourist carnival
atmosphere. People went from station to station in silence, only registering
their visit with the ubiquitous phone cameras.
There are at least five stations of homage:
the former Jewish area of Kasimierz in Krakow, Auschwitz, Birkenau, Oskar
Schindler’s factory, the Wielicka Salt Mines. Including the latter might seem
odd since it is not a sad place and not directly linked to the Holocaust. But
there is a link.
Notices of
dismissal
One
Sunday afternoon in 1943 one of the underground caverns hollowed out by salt
miners over the centuries and famously decorated with religious sculptures in
salt, was the scene of a works outing, a banquet provided by the Schindler
factory in Krakow.
After the meal was over all the workers were
handed envelopes which they were not to open until they had reached the
surface. This envelope contained their wages and a mystifying notice of
dismissal together with a stern warning never to approach the Schindler Enamel
Factory again.
The following day the factory was paid a
Gestapo visit and over the loudspeakers a list of workers’ names was read out.
After each name the works secretary said ‘dismissed’. So they missed their call
to the gas chambers. Saved within the saved.
Another note on the Schindler story. Not
content with sticking his neck out to save his Jewish workers, Schindler
actively engaged in war sabotage. The Zossen munitions plant south of Berlin
had to discard the bulk of war munitions and supplies received from the Schindler Enamel Factory as worthless.
Fighter plane radiators, for instance, contained traces of tin which melted
when hot and blocked the valves. Unbelievably the neck which Oskar Schindler
stuck out did not end under the guillotine.
******************************************
Two
Dialogues
By Bron O'Brien
Dialogue
1: A*
‘Daisy, you’ve got to persist with these things if you are to please Mr. Gove. I told you when you were poo-pooing Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina for falling for a soldier, give credit where it’s due. Perhaps it was the English translation.’
‘I read it in Russian, Dad.’
‘Okay, it’s a great book in any language.’
‘To be honest, I’m too taken up with Chopin at the moment to focus on reading, regardless of Mr. Gove’s view that music butters no parsnips.’
‘You’re strong on mazurkas. But your Grade 8 in piano shouldn’t suggest you rest on your laurels.’
‘Why do we talk in idioms all the time, Dad?’
‘Forget the idioms, how about your maths?’
‘Are these problems really degree level?’
‘Taken from a Finals paper.’
‘Does that mean I could start my PhD next year?’
‘Harvard won’t consider anybody under ten. Just concentrate on the National Curriculum.’
‘School’s dropped it.’
‘So it’s become one of Gove’s academies despite your letters to the prime minister.’
‘We’re to have four hours a week of spelling and punctuation. That could help with my novel, only I was planning to write it like James Joyce and forget the full-stops. Dad?’
‘Was that you on Radio 4 this morning?’
‘Yes me and Teddy. He’s been worrying about me again.’
‘Meaning?’
‘Teddy thinks I’ve been overdoing it.’
Dialogue
2: E-
‘Dad? How
could I win 21 gold medals?’
‘Pinch ‘em.’‘But if I was honest.’
‘You’d have to get up before eleven in the morning.’
‘I think I’d like to ride one of them horses that jump over fences.’
‘There’s no grass round here, son, to feed em. They dug it all up for the car park.’
‘I could fetch some in Uncle Joe’s wheelbarra.’
‘We’re not speaking to Uncle Joe. Anyway, where’d you put yer grass?’
‘Hay. I think they call it once it turns yellow. Maybe in Mrs. Ashton’s backyard.’
‘Mrs. Ashton aint speaking to us no more since Rex ate their Sunday joint. Listen, how about me helping you with something I know about? Me as yer coach?’
‘Thievin an connin? Are they in the Olympics, Dad?’
‘Boxin, I mean.’
‘We’ve enough punchbags in this family.’
‘That’s yer Mam talking again.’
‘Swimmin – that looks easy.’
‘You never been swimming.’
‘I fell in once an reached the shallow end in no time. Old Louse-face, our PE teacher, actually clapped me.’
‘He was clappin you drownin, son.’
‘One of them posh bikes with no spokes, then?’
‘Aye, Velodromes, but they’ve no brakes, so you’d do yerself an injury.’
‘So you don’t think I should train for the next Olympics, Dad?’
‘I never said that.’
‘You think I’m in with a chance? Like you got confidence in me. ’
‘I never said that either.’
‘Well what did you say?’
‘I never said nothing.’
‘Then that settles it, Dad.’
‘I reckon it does, son. After all, there’s more to life than bloody medals.’
Poems of Place (11)
PRAYER CARDS AT ILAM
In
the sweet silence of Ilam
Summer-soothed
beside ManifoldAnd beneath Thorpe Cloud
Where lord and lady lie
In death’s stone: read
The prayer cards of the living.
‘Please
God, pray for Katy,
Help
her stop wetting the bed’;‘For my Dad, Oh God,
Who has a drinking problem’ –
Carelessly scattered for interlopers
To leer over: jokes in church.
To keep your face straight.
And yet, here in Holy Cross speaks innocence:
‘Please pray for my family and friends,
Especially my Mum, who does try her hardest
To help with my pony.’
Spoken
from the heart.
Do
I hear you titter, Lord, yet smileWith love at the lonely whispers;
Or do I opt for the cold tomb’s tale
And admit: these missives, being unstamped,
Are returned to sender;
Or gather them in a pile
Marked ‘Not known at this address’?
****************************************
CORRESPONDENCE
Ed: The
editorial team were delighted to hear from Councillor Gilbert Stokoe MBE
announcing the Wickerstaff-cum-Fernhaven international arts festival planned for
the summer of 2013. It is not the first W-c-F arts festival by any means. ‘Lord Gilbert’ as he is popularly known in the locality, explains: ‘The Events Committee decided that to celebrate our 25th, we have opted to go truly international. We have in the past recruited artistes from as far afield as Cromer, Preston, Newcastle-Under-Lime and on two occasions from across the border in Wales, one of our most enjoyed concerts being mounted by the Bodelwydden Male Voice Choir.
A
match for Edinburgh?
Councillor Stokoe's letter continues: ‘As press officer of the Festival, Mr. Ned Baslow has
volunteered to write to a number of celebrities in the world of entertainment
inviting their participation in what we hope will put Wickerstaff-cum-Fairhaven
on the international arts map along with the Edinburgh Festival, Bayreuth, the
Venice Biennial and the Turnditch All-Comers Brass Band Carnival.
The committee
were delighted to be asked by the editorial board of your illustrious blog to
provide copies of Ned’s correspondence as plans progress, with a view to
maximising publicity for the festival. As I think I mentioned in my September
letter, there will be special concessions for your readers, both for the many
outstanding festival events and B & B accommodation at a number of venues,
including the two-star Kilt and Thistle Hotel.’
Ed: Many thanks, Lord Gilbert. On account of the fact that Ned’s letter
suffered an accident with a cup of black coffee and a melting chocolate bar, we
have requested him to avoid using washable drawing ink in future.
Decipherment
has been a problem, but Ned’s wife Betty has kindly promised us a typed copy.
This much we can tell readers: Ned’s first letter is addressed to a penniless
Austrian composer.
********************************************
THANKS FOR READING THIS.
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