Twitter!?

There is much talk about Twitter these days.  We hear of Congressman twittering from their sessions and speeches. We have heard of stars of the entertainment industry logging on to their twitters five or six times  a day and even the news anchormen/women twittering as they bring us news on television. We hear this amidst news of collapse of newspapers. The New York Times shares are plummeting; the Rocky Mountain News is ending its print operations and the Philadelphia Inquirer and the Daily News are merging operations where the latter becomes merely an edition of the former.

These are changing times in the media.

“Let’s Stop the Twitter Madness,” by Lee Woodruff in The Daily Beast.

“Anchors Oblige Public’s Craving for Tweets,” by Howard Kurtz in the Washington Post.

“What Are You Doing? Media Twitterers Can’t Stop Typing,” by Alessandra Stanley in The New York Times.

The Body as Billboard: Your Ad Here

Here is a fascinating story about the ever-increasing appetite of consumer culture to invent new realm of commodities.

The Strange Art of Fashion Photography!

For those of you interested in fashion, photography, and fashion photography, see this slide show at Slate online:

Blog away!

Here is an exciting post from The Atlantic on blogging: This is how it begins….

DO ANY OF THESE SYMPTOMS FIT YOU?

• Blogaholism. Do you plot out your day so that it will generate as many blog postings as possible?

• Twitteritis. Did you Twitter this morning as you made your morning coffee? And then later as you trimmed your toenails?

• Reviewing Addiction. Do you spend every lunch hour pumping up your ranking as an Amazon reader-reviewer?

• RSS Dependency. Did you simplify your life by subscribing to RSS feeds only to discover yourself spending more time than ever commenting at blogs?

• Status Update Disorder. Have you made plans to self-publish a collection of your Facebook Status Updates?

The End of the Times?

Almost formal eulogies for the “mainstream” or “big” media have started coming in. Kathleen Parker started the year in Washington Post announcing how “mainstream media are on life support.” Now, there is piece by Michael Hirschorn in The Atlantic that pretty much announces/predicts the demise of The New York Times. What times we live in!

Much has to be said about blogging, twittering and other newer forms but the end of the life we have grown accostomed to!! Are we really there yet? What kind of world would it be when you have nothing to investigate and nothing to reflect on? Where will be the necessity of verification of “truth?”

In any case, both pieces make compelling reads.

Marc C. Taylor on word and image

On Eurozine, there is an intriguing and engaging interview with Marc C. Taylor on community, commonality, word and image. Taylor, a philosopher who co-wrote a very provocative and prescient book with Esa Saarinen called, Imagologies: Media Philosophy (Routledge, 1994). Taylor discusses the role of political and cultural journals in “shaping media environment.” Read the interview in an increasingly useful and web zine. Here is a quote from the interview:

“What I want to stress is that language in today’s world is not primarily verbal but is, more importantly, visual. The problem is that we are visually illiterate – and nowhere is this more evident than in the university. In the “real” world, image trumps word every time; in the academic world, word represses image all the time. If communication is going to become effective on a global scale, we must liberate the image from the tyranny of the word. This does not mean giving up reading and writing as they have been known in the past. But it is no longer enough. The multilingualism of young people today is multimedia. If we do not learn to communicate in this language, we will have nothing to say.”

Visual, Media Cultures, and the world!

Welcome ! This is a blog from Communications Program at Arcadia University.  It is meant to provide us with space to think and discuss issues, questions and news about visual and media culture. Join in with your comments and contributions.  Make your comments brief but succinct and thoughtful.

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