Lecture 15: I and We:

1. Lecture 15:I and We: Professor Victoria Meng How do digital media situate us in space and time?

2. Lecture Purpose • Course review and conclusion • How emerging digital media are shaping and being shaped by us as individuals and societies.

3. Review: McLuhan • Media extend human abilities • Media change the scale and scope of human interactions

4. Reading: Flew • Media extend human abilities • Media change the scale and scope of human interactions • Digital media have changed • 1. what we can do and • 2. how we can interact with other people.

5. Digital Media, Identity and Community • DM makes it possible to access more information about ourselves and other people than ever before. • DM also makes it possible to simulate and falsify information about ourselves and other people than ever before. (Baudrillard!)

6. Reading: Flew • Consider Post Secret as a Virtual Community using Flew’s ideas. • On one hand, it exposes secrets. It unites people who want to tell and learn secrets. • On the other hand, it hides the senders’ identities and motivations.

7. Digital Media, Identity and Community • Consider the ways that you have used DM in the last 5 years. How has it made you: • Better connected? • More isolated? • More exposed? • More unlike your “physical” self?

8. Reading: Flew Key Point: Our digital “selves” and experiences are continuous with our physical identities in “real life.” The conditions in one affect the conditions in the other. (Cross-reference concepts by Murray, Sobchack, and Friedberg)

9. Screening: Ararat How can we relate the Key Point to representations of media in Ararat? 1. There is no single ultimate authority on what is true or authentic. There are multiple points of view. (More Friedberg)

10. Screening: Ararat How can we relate the Key Point to representations of media in Ararat? 2. What we believe is true or right depends on our relationships with our communities (consider the conflict between the Armenian and Turkish characters).

11. Screening: Ararat How can we relate the Key Point to representations of media in Ararat? 3. Different media (traditional film, DM, painting, etc.) have different strengths and limitations in representing experiences and expressing ideas (Unit II).

12. Reading: Kivikuru • Let’s now relate Flew’s ideas about Virtual Communities, Ararat, and Kivikuru’s article on DM and crisis by asking this question: How does news turn into history? • Why was the Armenian genocide under-reported? (Remember to avoid technological determinism; it’s not just about technology, there are other factors.)

13. Reading: Kivikuru • Let’s now relate Flew’s ideas about Virtual Communities, Ararat, and Kivikuru’s article on DM and crisis by asking this question: How does news turn into history? • What happened during the aftermath of the Tsunami in 2004? How did new kinds of news change our sense of time, space, and who/what is important? (Remediation, hypermediation)

14. Reading: Kivikuru • Let’s now relate Flew’s ideas about Virtual Communities, Ararat, and Kivikuru’s article on DM and crisis by asking this question: How does news turn into history? • Refer to Flew’s figures on world access to the Internet. What kinds of news are we not getting now? Where are our blind spots?

15. Course Conclusion Key Question 1: How does the emergence of DM challenge our old blind spots and create new ones? (Ihde, media is not neutral; McClean; Lax)

16. Course Conclusion Key Question 2: How does the emergence of DM change the way we think of who we are and what we want? (Turing, Rokeby, Lury)

17. Course Conclusion Key Question 3: How does the emergence of DM change the way we behave in our societies? (Gurak, Jenkins, Miller, Kutritz)

18. End of Lecture 15 Thank you for making this a great class.