New Media

DALLAS W SMYTHE (1907-1992)

Smythe was a Canadian-born scholar who worked as an economist in a number of government agencies in the United States in the early 2oth century. He was vocal about his socio-political stances, which often left him at odds with authorities, including difficulties getting published when he turned to teaching at the University of Illinois during the 1950s. See his Wikipedia page for more, or see this encyclopedia entry.

The International Association for Media and Communication Research gives an award named in honor of Smythe for quality scholarship dedicated to exploring the relationship between media and political economy.

Dependency Road: Communications, Capitalism, Consciousness, and Canada (1981) is Smythe’s most widely known and excerpted work. He has a number of journal articles credited to him. An essay collection is also dedicated to him, and is, ironically enough, extremely expensive.

“On the Audience Commodity and Its Work”

Our excerpt, taken from Smythe’s 1981 book, seeks to recast critical Marxist theories about mass media, grounding them in a more “objective and realistic” theoretical framework (p. 231). In his estimation, previous efforts were, at best, incomplete because they did not consider “real life processes” (p. 231) that determined the relationship between media, advertisers, and audiences. He develops the concept of “audience power,” which he defines as an audience’s ability to “buy goods and spend their income accordingly” (p. 243) so as to perpetuate capitalism and therefore reify state-held power (p. 233). To accomplish this, Smythe argues that free- or leisure-time is really only an illusion that hides actual work and the commodification of virtually the entire life of any given individual who lives in a capitalistic society. By focusing conscious attention on the spectacle contained within media, “the real situation is mystified out of existence” (p. 241). Instead of viewing advertising as a necessity for creating and broadcasting media, Smythe views “non-advertising” content as a trojan horse really designed to sneak advertising into the homes, lives, and thought processes of audiences — what he terms a “free lunch” (p. 242-3). The effect, as he puts it, is to “reaffirm the status quo and retard change” (p. 243).

Questions and Connections

Several questions stick out to me:

• Is his approach any more realistically grounded than those he dismisses?
• How does his theory compare to other cultural materialist theories of media?
• How does the participatory internet alter or affirm his notion that industrialization destroys creativity (p. 233)?

Smythe is a determinist, but not in the same way as McLuhan. Whereas McLuhan sees all (or at least most) human agency as irrelevant in the face of technological form, Smythe sees technological form as an extension of market capitalist ideology, and as the site of a “social process” through which the relationship between people and commodities is formed. Instead of being the actor with the most agency, technology becomes the conduit through which agency is controlled. He’s similar to Williams in this point, yet the audience is just as unable to affect this process as they are in McLuhan’s scheme. The use of the “free lunch” is distracting enough to hide the areas in need of critical examination.

Thus, I find him oddly reminiscent of Gramsci, in spite of his insistence that he’s more “objectively” and “realistically” grounded than Gramsci and others. Really, he seems primarily intent on providing empirical evidence of media as a hegemonic process. Yet, he does seem just as guilty in over-generalizing his theories, particularly with respect to print journalism pre-WWI.

Thoughts?

Click to go to Ducheneaut's PARC information page.

Nic Ducheneaut completed his PhD in 2003 at the UC Berkeley School of Information.

He works as a senior researcher at the Xerox Palo Alto Research Center (PARC). He primarily studies online game communities.

You can find a summary of his current projects here, and an extensive list of publications here.

He has a LinkedIn account and a Twitter feed. However, his Twitter stream is locked from general view.

Click the image to go to Moore's MySpace page.

Robert J. Moore formerly worked at Xerox PARC, and has also worked extensively as a game designer. Clicking the image will take you to his MySpace page, which seems to be his primary web-presence.

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Click image to go to Rutter's CRIC homepage.

Links**

Rutter’s page @ Center for Research on Innovation and Competition. He’s a researcher for the Manchester Institute of Innovative Research.

RCCS book review of Virtual Methods (2007)

Rutter’s Digiplay Initiative, focusing on games studies.

Digiplay Twitter

Introductory Chapter of Understanding Digital Games (2006), edited by Rutter and Bryson.

**I could find virtually no web presence for Gregory W. H. Smith outside of references to this article and a book titled Analyzing Visual Data (1992). (more…)

Below is my proposal for Social Media Theory. Yeah… I can really pull this off…

Research on Twitter has exploded over the last year as the social networking service (SNS) has become increasingly popular. Since its inception, the service has proven a remarkably agile tool, especially when networked with other SNS sites. Connecting different SNS sites ad hoc has allowed Twitter to thrive as a communication channel. Relying on previous work that establishes the need for adaptable and articulated connections among different social media (Potts, 2009), this paper extends such work by examining the rather different user interfaces (UI) of two third party Twitter applications, Tweetdeck and Twhirl, in light of Activity Theory (AT) and the concept of affordances. Borrowing from the synthesis of AT and affordances offered by Baerentsen and Trettvik (2002), I argue that when combined with third-party clients, Twitter facilitates communication channels as articulated activities. Instead of fostering either synchronous (like IRC) or asynchronous networks (like blogs and message boards), these streams become persistent (McNely, 2009).

From this basis, I will argue that third-party clients more effectively exploit Twitter’s affordances by making the streams, and thus the user’s experience, modular and emergent. They allow real-time modularity in content by facilitating the near-instantaneous exchange of both written and visual information, as well as quick linking to secondary sources of information. By comparing the UIs of Tweetdeck and Twhirl, along with that of Twitter’s own web-based UI, we can assess the how these clients allow the user to adapt Twitter streams to their own communication needs and praxis. The flexibility given to users via such clients serves as a tremendous signpost to the nature of and need for modular experiences in communication channels as information content evolves. Not only do the social networks themselves need to be articulated and modular, but so do the UIs through which users engage with these networks.

References.

Baerentsenj K.B. and Trettvik, J. (2002). An activity theory approach to affordance. Published in the Association of Computing Machinery’s Proceedings of NordiCHI, Arhus, Denmark, pp. 51-60.

McNely, B.J. (2009). Bachchannel persistence and collaborative meaning-making. Published in the Association of Computing Machinery’s Proceedings of SIGDOC ’09, Bloomington, IN, pp. 297-303.

Potts, L. Using actor network theory to trace and improve multimodal communication design. Technical Communication Quarterly 18(3), pp. 281-301.

Here it is!

MARSHALL McLUHAN (1911-1980)

McLuhan was a Canadian scholar who trained primarily in literature, but became widely known as a media theorist and scholar. He began his career at the University of Wisconsin at Madison, and then went on to spend more than 30 years at the University of Toronto. The university’s Program in Culture and Technology is named after McLuhan.

Selected Bibliography

Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man (1964)

The Medium is the Message: An Inventory of Effects (1967)

McLuhan’s famous statement that “the medium is the message” is the summation of his belief that human society evolves in ways that can be directly traced to the rise, use, and impact of technological innovation. Echoing, though not necessarily subscribing to, post-structural theory, McLuhan argues “the latest approach to media considers not only the ‘content’ but the medium and the cultural matrix within which the particular medium operates” (p. 204). However, he diagnoses culture and society as largely “numb in our new electric world” (p. 207). In his assessment, mechanization has given way to electric speed as the primary operating force within technology. This transition is especially distressing to McLuhan, and he cites it as the cause of society’s numbness: “Electric speed mingles the cultures of prehistory with the dregs of industrial marketers, the nonliterate with the semiliterate and the postliterate” (p. 207).

In order to fully assess such technology’s impact on society and culture, McLuhan argues that the scholar must remain detached from the medium and its “lines of force” because “any medium has the power of imposing its own assumption on the unwary” (p. 206). His language always seems to phrase media as a force that operates within culture the way, say, gravity operates within nature. He suggests structurally traceable cause/effect relationships from media to audiences, relationships that have profound effects on the ways audiences (mis)understand meaning. In essence, electric technology overpowers meaning, substituting a kind of spectacle arising from the technology rather than the message’s origin.

Below, McLuhan assesses a 1976 presidential debate between Carter and Ford in light of his theories on media. He argues that neither candidate has any clear understanding of how to operate in a televised medium.

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I have yet to really figure out if or how Torben Grodal’s Embodied Visions (2009) might prove useful from an applications standpoint. But, from a rhetorical one, the book continues to exquisitely express my thoughts on games far better than I have ever been able to. Chapter 7 releases narrativity from the structural confines in which narrative theory tends to situate it and instead articulates it as a functional process inherent to human experiences via neurological mechanisms.

The basic story experience consists of a continuous interaction between perceptions (I see a monster approaching), emotions (I feel fear, because I know or sense that monsters are dangerous), cognitions (I think that I’d better shoot the monster), and action (the actual motor act of shooting that changes the motivational emotion — fear — into relaxation). …

[T]he ability to hold the story (including possible future elements of that story) in our consciousness — an ability that is important for prolonged action patterns — is independent of language: we can perform this holding operation at the nonverbal level of perception-emotion-action. (pp. 161-63) (more…)

After reading David Silver’s introduction from Critical Cyberculture Studies (2006), I’m left with a few questions (which I think is Dr. Liza Potts’s nefarious plan). Silver makes this statement regarding however it is this scholarly endeavor might be defined:

It can be argued that a commonly shared set of theories and methodologies is a sign of an academic field’s development and sophistication. It can also be argued that such commonly held approaches signal ossification, stagnation, and a lack of imagination. I favor the side of a temporarily canonless field of study (Silver 2004). If and when the canon appears, replete with acceptable theories, methods and method0logies, I surely hope its foundations are pliable enough for whatever meets us in the future.

We have a young field of study, one that, depending on with whom one speaks, stretches back only five, ten, or fifteen years. In other words, what we have is a field of study under construction — with boundaries not yet set, with borders not yet full erected, and with a canon not yet established. As such, we have a field of study ripe for growth and twigging, becoming and re-becoming, imagined and reimagined. Now, before the mold is set, is the time for experimentation. (pp. 5-6, emphasis in original)

As Steve Jones notes, we mix, match, and borrow from all kinds of academic fields/disciplines in order to generate insight into an always-emerging site of study. What does a “canon” look like when it is focused on something that evolves at such a rapid pace? The internet now is, in many ways, not the same internet of even five years ago. Collaborative technologies on the web facilitate spaces of (kinda/sorta) user-centered participation. But not only do the technologies change rapidly, so do the nature of the networks in which users play and work.

For example, fan cultures have emerged from underground networks of hyper-stereotyped “geeks” and “nerds” into the public spotlight. Such mainstreaming has been facilitated by these technologies. And it’s also been facilitated by the marketing forces seeking to take advantage of potential revenue streams. Tweeting and live-blogging from San Diego Comic Con has taken on a life of its own as TV and movie studios use the venue to gauge fans’ reactions to upcoming seasons and films. It’s essentially free publicity, utilizing Web 2.0 infrastructures and fan participation.

Thus, from a socio-cultural perspective, the ever increasing presence of marketing forces in fan experiences alters those experiences. But it’s not always clear how they do so since we’re only beginning to understand how those experiences emerge from the intersection of interior phenomenological factors with external technological and cultural forces.

SIGDOC sent PDF proofs of my conference paper today.  They looked very good.  And USI approved travel funding to cover expenses.  Here is the initial abstract/proposal I submitted.  The paper has morphed a bit, but you get the gist of it.

As computer technology has significantly progressed in recent years — resulting in high resolution graphics, improved sound design, and more sophisticated control interfaces — these experiences become less and less dependent on traditional techniques of representation and communication. Video games can be seen as procedural systems [Bogost 2007, Malaby 2007] designed to create such experiences, ones with which players want to engage. Player experiences are contingent upon the relationships of six configurative elements: rules and fiction that govern the gamespace [Juul 2005]; perception, emotion, cognition, and action experienced cognitively by the player [Grodal 2003]. Developing analytical tools informed by an interdisciplinary framework allows us to not only critically analyze games more clearly for cultural and technological importance, but to also design games to more effectively take advantage of their communicative potential. These tools should account for affective elements of such experiences, or what Eugenie Shinkle [2008] has labeled “proprioception”. The relationships of these elements to one another are contingent upon the player’s embodied affective responses that emanate from the player in non-linear ways. The purpose of this paper is to synthesize several theories of games analysis, rhetoric,
and representation into a reconfigurable and interdisciplinary model that can usefully analyze the player’s proprioceptive experience. I’ll demonstrate the model’s efficacy through the experiences of two very different games: Grand Theft Auto IV [2008] and The Arcade Wire: Airport Security [2006]. Both depend upon affective player responses to create satirical commentary upon cultural and social problems. They engage unit operations [Bogost 2006] that can be termed “player frustration” as an important element of the player experience. Yet, that frustration is generated and deployed in very different ways: how can such a unit operation be utilized more effectively, and when is it subverted by other unit operations? Assessing the relationships of different elements allows us to see how unit operations work in conjunction and work against one another.

Grafting together Juul’s examination of fiction and rules and Torben Grodal’s cognitive model of narrative, I sketch a method with which understand elements of the experience players encounter, as well as what can be represented to and through the player in that event. Discovering similar unit operations at work within GTA IV and Airport Security allows us to contrast these experiences and the messages communicated through them to better understand how to design for affective elements of player experiences.

The final piece focuses solely on Airport Security.  And, I’ve found that Grodal has elaborated further on his model in his new book Embodied Visions (2009).  Unfortunately, I just managed to snag a copy a couple of days ago.  He develops his ideas I based this paper on into a more robust model he’s dubbed the “PECMA flow model”: Perception, Emotion, Cognition, Motor Action.  Grodal primarily focuses on film, but I think his theory has wonderful potential for constructing useful analytics for interrogating gaming experiences.  PECMA, so far as I can tell, adapts nicely to different media because it assesses narrative and representation as an audience’s experience, and not solely a structural consideration embedded within specific media.

Grodal wants to recover the audience’s experiences from both pure biological determinism and extreme post-structural social constructivism.  An audience’s experience is an amalgamation of “innate dispositions [as] flexible frameworks within which…[t]he development of culture has provided new options for satisfying” inherent psycho-social needs (p. 8).

Rather than assuming that the mind is totally socially constructed and hence completely malleable, a more cautious assumption would be a relative malleability: innate dispositions can be activated by exposure, deactivated by lack of exposure, and modified with certain limits. (p. 11)

As someone trained in a postmodern literary environment, turning to biology to partially explain some things long relegated to semiotics and aesthetics can be a disconcerting step.  Everything within the core of my scholarly being reflexively turns to social construction as to account for meaningful experiences.  But PECMA resonates too well with my own experiences in game spaces and participatory cultures, and it seems to resonate very well with emerging ethnographic research on gaming experiences and online gaming communities.