Rethinking media and movements

Todd Gitlin’s work helped us to understand the tremendous barriers to left movements speaking freely through commercial media and the potentially destructive impacts of media imperatives on movements. Edward Morgan adds another warning: today’s organizers must overcome a media history of the 1960s that demonizes or trivializes the era’s struggles for justice. But must we also overcome some of our own thinking about how movements create change and their relationship to the media? Certainly, coverage of anti-Vietnam War organizing is one case study worth revisiting to recover an accurate past that can inform contemporary mobilizations. But there is also a danger that in drawing generalized conclusions from the New Left’s experience (for, as I will argue, it is really the New Left, not the broader antiwar movement, to which Morgan and Gitlin’s conclusions apply), we can sink into a debilitating pessimism about organizers’ ability to speak successfully through mainstream media or, just as important, to speak unsuccessfully and still affect policy and public opinion

The digital divide

Many have argued that inequalities of access to the Internet in an information-driven society pose a serious social problem and that public investment is needed to solve it. Others contend that the digital divide is a minor concern that will resolve itself without government involvement and spending. The positions we take on this debate depend upon our understanding of how new technologies spread throughout society, whether we think Internet access is a frill or a necessity, and our vision of whether government can and ought to help broaden access

Broadcast Network Documentaries

Documentaries are nonfiction programs that convey experience, provide information, and offer analysis. Many memorable and respected programs in American television journalism were documentaries. In part this is because documentaries offer journalists the luxury of more airtime to explore a single topic in greater depth than the shorter-format evening news or newsmagazine programs. In addition, documentarians are often freer to express their own conclusions on controversial issues than beat reporters, who are more constrained by the demands of objectivity and balance. Although the line between documentary and docudrama is often blurry, documentaries are less likely to dramatize or re-enact events. In contrast to talk shows, documentaries aim to go beyond “talking heads” offering opinions to convey the lived experience of people, places, and events. Documentary makers usually construct their programs from some combination of recordings in the field, compilations of archival materials, interviews, graphics, and animations. Many types of broadcast documentary have emerged over the years, including investigative, social, political, historical, cultural, biographical, diary, and those focused on nature

The political-economic origins of Reali-TV

From the sea change in American television in the 1980s emerged a programming trend variously described as “infotainment,” “reality-based television,” “tabloid TV,” “crime-time television,” “trash TV,” and “on-scene shows.” The welter of terms created by television critics to describe these new programs masked their underlying connection as a response to economic restructuring within the industry. In this essay I offer a rough categorization of these programs, sketch the industrial context from which they emerged, and point to the economic problems they were meant to solve. I focus mostly on the distinctive conditions of prime-time series, putting aside made-for-TV docudramas and entire cable channels (such as Court TV) that may have similar production practices and genres

The political economy of Reali-TV

From the sea change in U.S. television in the 1980s emerged a programming trend variously described as infotainment, reality-based television, tabloid TV, crime-time television, trash TV, and on-scene shows. [1][open notes in new window] The welter of terms created by television critics to describe these new programs masked their underlying connection as a response to economic restructuring within the industry. This essay offers a rough categorization of these programs, sketches the industrial context from which they emerged, and points to the economic problems they were meant to solve.[2] Although my focus here is on political economy, rather than on textual or audience issues, I do not want to imply that these programs\u27 cultural significance can be reduced to their relations of production and distribution. Yet without understanding the political-economic forces which drove the spread of this genre, textual and audience studies risk reifying it as an expression of audience demand, or of their creators, or of a cultural, discursive, or ontological shift unrelated to the needs of those who run the television industry. If this genre exhibits a kind of textual excess, its emergence reflects a relative scarcity of means. I conclude with suggestions for how textual and audience studies might link the new reality of television to shifts in the larger U.S. political-economy since the mid-1980s

Libel

Defamatory statements are those which harm an individual’s reputation in the eyes of the community. The law distinguishes between slander (spoken defamation) and libel (written or broadcast defamation). Libel law attempts to balance the interests of journalists and others with the rights of individuals and organizations to protect themselves against false and injurious attacks. American libel law has changed significantly since the 1960s, offering greater freedom to journalists to criticize public figures. At the same time, libel law has also become more complex, creating ongoing uncertainty about when journalists are on safe ground. Libel lawsuits are still the most common legal complaints filed against the news media. Defense against these can be time-consuming and costly; suits occasionally result in large monetary damage awards, and can be abused by the powerful to divert attention from their own wrongdoing and muzzle their critics. Despite these problems, attempts to reform libel law have rarely succeeded, in part because of opposition from news organizations

Moving from Dialogue to Deliberation about Campus Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion

Campus communities continue to become increasingly diverse as the U.S. grows more sensitized to, yet polarized over, issues of social justice. In response, many institutions of higher learning are placing greater emphasis on students’ experiential learning about diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) in co-curricular experiences such as new student orientation and in coursework. Experiential educators can help students forge links between learning about DEI in the co-curriculum and curriculum, and to move from intergroup dialogue to deliberation, which allows student learning to inform institutional learning. This article describes the design, outcomes, and implications of a course on dialogue and deliberation that engaged students in consulting their peers and forming recommendations for administrators about how to improve DEI learning at an undergraduate-focused, liberal arts institution

A safer SCU: Report of a student forum on bystander intervention to prevent sexual assault

The Issue: All across America, sexual misconduct exists on college campuses, but seldom is it properly addressed or even discussed. This is a serious problem, as the vast majority of sexual misconduct incidents go unreported on college campuses, including at Santa Clara University (SCU). 1 Amidst growing national attention to the problem, SCU recently committed itself to “a zero tolerance policy for gender-based discrimination and sexual misconduct,” including sexual assault, dating and domestic violence, stalking, and sexual harassment.2 The University’s Violence Prevention Program (VPP) has formed a committee of faculty, staff, and students to design a bystander intervention program to transform the campus culture and prevent sexual misconduct before it happens. The Forum: Because this issue is both timely and important to the health and wellbeing of our campus, students in a Communication course on Dialogue and Deliberation (COMM 128B) organized a forum to gather student input on designing the bystander intervention program. Over 40 students participated in the forum. In this report, we share our findings with the VPP and the campus community

Engaged Communication Scholarship for Environmental Justice: A Research Agenda

As a discipline of crisis and care, environmental communication needs to address questions of environmental justice. This article argues that the most appropriate approach to studying environmental justice communication is engaged scholarship, in which academics collaborate with community partners, advocates, and others to conduct research. The article reviews prior engaged communication scholarship on environmental justice, and proposes four streams of future research, focused on news and information, deliberation and participation, campaigns and movements, and education and literacy

Engaged scholarship for environmental justice: A guide

This guide was written for distribution at the Environmental Justice and the Common Good Conference, hosted by Santa Clara University’s Ignatian Center for Jesuit Education in May 2019. The conference convened representatives from Jesuit and other universities with a broad range of community organizations to strengthen our common understanding and advancement of community-engaged scholarship for environmental justice (EJ). Given its immediate audience, the guide focuses primarily on the U.S. context, although it also discusses the major global causes and impacts of EJ, and how Americans have been inspired by engaged scholars around the world, from whom we have much to learn. The conference emerged from the Ignatian Center’s 2016-2018 Bannan Institute, Is There a Common Good in Our Common Home? A Summons to Solidarity. The Institute was motivated in part by Pope Francis’ landmark encyclical, Laudato Si’, in which the Pope called on people of all faiths to recognize that care for the environment is inextricably linked to care for people in poverty, and to work together to create a more just and sustainable world