Midterm

Please complete the following questions by midnight on Sunday April 30 and email your answers to adrienne.russell09@gmail.com. If you don’t receive a confirmation email from me by Monday morning around 9am, email it again. Please make the subject of your email “midterm” and paste the answers into the body of the email. Do not send it as an attachment. You may use your books, notes, the Web, or any other source of information you find helpful. Be sure to read over the exam before you start.

Part I: Answer the following questions in a concise paragraph. Each answer is worth 10 points and should be roughly 100-200 words.

1. Please define and give an example of pirate politics. Include in your answer a discussion of how this example challenges widely held ideas about intellectual property.

2. How do The Yes Men act as a counter-hegemonic force? Please give specific examples and make sure to demonstrate an understanding of concepts of hegemony and counter-hegemony.

3. Why is activist media important to the democratic process?

Part II:  Write an essay for each of the following questions that draws from the reading, videos, discussions, and any other material you think will support you answer. Please write as clearly and concisely as possible and be sure to answer all elements of the question. Each answer is worth 35 points and should be 600-800 words each.

4.  Drawing from class reading, describe the typical mainstream media frame of street protests and the larger activist movements that drive them. Please outline a.) some of the prevailing news standards that dictate how events and issues are covered and b.) some media strategies employed by activists to counter the limits of the mainstream frames. Include in your answer historic and contemporary examples of different types of activist media and discuss the various aims of these groups and their media. For this you will have to draw on the Gitlin reading.

5. Please write an essay comparing media strategies of the Civil Rights movement and Black Lives Matters.  Include in your answer details about the practices used by each, referring to those outlined in Beautiful Trouble and, for Black Lives Matter, a new practice that is not outlined in the book. Please be sure to include in your answer references to the ideas of Jeff Chang, the intro to Journalism as Activism and the 2 articles we read on Black Lives Matters.

Reminder! Assignment Due on Tuesday May 2: an outline of your case study, including hypothesis about what you're going to find; sources of info about your subject; list of some of the BT principles you think your subject's experience might demonstrate; and brand-new principle (not yet listed in BT) you think it might demonstrate.

Remix and Pirate Politics - 4/25

What are some of the main ideas in Everything is a Remix?

How do they relate to the selection from Mason's The Pirate's Dilemma?

Pirate Radio

Mason on pirate radio in the UK: https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/pirate-radio

How does pirate radio demonstrate "piracy"? How does it relate to Mason's assessment of "piracy" throughout the chapter (see pages 45-46 for this second part)?

Other forms of "piracy"?

The pirate's dilemma?

Hacktivist Sensibilities

Quote on page 16 in Adrienne's Intro: how does this relate to remix and piracy?

New/innovative use of technology:

Raspberry Pi

Application examples:

Pirate Radio...not just for entertainment:

     Pocket FM
          -When would this be useful?
          -Syria; video clip

Onion Pi

USB Key Sanitizer

Peter Sunde's "Kopimashin": https://torrentfreak.com/pirate-bay-founder-builds-the-ultimate-piracy-machine-151219/

PirateBox

DIY project center: https://piratebox.cc/

Interview on TorrentFreak: https://torrentfreak.com/piratebox-delivers-brand-new-anonymous-sharing-release-140531/

United States Pirate Party

Platform
Values and Name

Recommended Reading

Burkart, Patrick. Pirate Politics: The New Information Policy Contests. Massachusetts: MIT Press, 2014.

Gunkel, David J. Of Remixology: Ethics and Aesthetics After Remix. Massachusetts: MIT Press, 2016.

Johns, Adrian. Piracy: The Intellectual Property Wars From Gutenberg to Gates. Illinois: The University of Chicago Press, 2009.

Lessig, Lawrence. Free Culture: The Nature and Future of Creativity. New York: Penguin Books, 2004.

Mason, Matt. The Pirate’s Dilemma: How Youth Culture is Reinventing Capitalism. New York: Free Press, 2008.

McLeod, Kembrew. Freedom of Expression: Resistance and Repression in the Age of Intellectual Property. Minnesota: University of Minnesota Press, 2007.

Navas, Eduardo. Remix Theory: The Aesthetics of Sampling. Austria: Springer-Verlag/Wien, 2012.

Navas, Eduardo, Owen Gallagher, and xtine burrough. The Routledge Companion to Remix Studies. New York: Routledge, 2015.

United States Pirate Party. No Safe Harbor: Essays About Pirate Politics. 2012.

This article from the New York Times details the recent turbulence experienced by Uber, mostly a result of its aggressive leader who is said to foster a toxic work environment. The article opens and closes with the recent meeting between Travis Kalanick (the Uber CEO) and Tim Cook (the CEO of Apple) concerning Kalanick’s breaking of Apple App Store rules (you can read the article to learn more about this). I bring this to the attention of the blog because I think it’s a fascinating example of how technology gives consumers access to information they never would’ve had before, and how that can be exceedingly detrimental to a brand. Kalanick has experienced multiple scandals, including an embarrassing scene of him screaming at an Uber driver, which was recorded and posted to the internet. This is an example of how the age of technology has created a forum for everyday people to expose an organization or its leaders for its poor corporate culture. Through activist media then, vigilant citizens can draw attention to problematic people or cultures and inform other civilians who can then make informed consumer choices. This essentially cuts out the middle man, in this case mass corporate media entities. Additionally, because companies could be caught at any moment by vigilant civilian journalists, they are forced to keep their promises more closely than if they were only being held accountable by mass media.

According to Roberts...

What is tribal epistemology?

What opportunity does Trump offer?

Why has America sorted itself into bubbles?

What's the solution?

Beyoncé

Formation video

Super Bowl  (from 1:35)

The Day Beyonce Turned Black

Sec 1: Ivanka Trump in the White House

FOX NEWS: http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2017/03/20/first-daughter-ivanka-trump-gets-west-wing-office.html

An article from Fox News, a notoriously conservative new source, released an article titled, "First daughter Ivanka Trump gets West Wing office" on March 20th, 2017. The article opens with a picture of Ivanka smiling and greeting patrons before going to an event. Having a photo of Ivanka interacting with everyday people further emphasizes her friendly and ‘person for the people’ kind of image. The article is particularly defensive on the controversy surrounding Ivanka’s position in the White House considering all of the people quoted here come from a conservative background as you’ll soon see below where the article's sources are listed. Unlike the article by the Chicago Tribune where both sides are mentioned, but I must note that the Tribune article is also biased in its own ways.
The framing of this article that served to protect the ethics of the decision of putting Ivanka in the White House is also seen through the articles language and discussion of her cutting off major ties with her clothing brand, as well as listing off all of the reasons why Trumps decision to put his daughter in the White House was both legal and ethical. To continue putting Ivanka in a good light, the article ends with her new book being promoted titled, "Women Who Work," which perpetuates that she wants to inspire young women, which could be seen as a way to deflect her father’s controversies surrounding women and women’s rights during his campaign.
This article's sources were: "a senior White House official," "Jamie Gorelick, an attorney and ethics adviser for Ivanka Trump," "a person with knowledge of Ivanka Trump's thinking, who requested anonymity to discuss private conversations," "the Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel," "Richard Painter, a University of Minnesota law professor who served as President George W. Bush's chief White House lawyer on ethics," "Attorney Andrew Herman, who has advised lawmakers on ethics issues," and "Fox News' John Roberts and the Associated Press" also contributed to the information and quotes shown in this article.

CHICAGO TRIBUNE: http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/opinion/commentary/ct-ivanka-trump-white-house-job-20170323-story.html

This article is a commentary titled, “Commentary: Ivanka Trump's White House job is unethical and dangerous”. So right off the bat, the reader knows that since this is a commentary the writers will be bringing up facts that may align more with their views. The article’s first photo is of Ivanka and her husband, who is also a senior advisor to Donald Trump (paid position), listening in on “a news conference with President Donald Trump and German Chancellor Angela Merkel in the East Room of the White House in Washington.” Having a photo like this shows and proves that family members of Trump are already deeply ingrained in the White House staff. Which, depending on the reader, may anger them, thus, pushing the in some ways, biased framing of this article.
The article provides similar defenses of President Trumps decision to put Ivanka and her husband in the White House as the previous article did. However, as you can probably tell from the title the article also gives many facts and historical accounts of previous Presidents not being able to appoint family members due to ethical issues. For example “listen during a news conference with President Donald Trump and German Chancellor Angela Merkel in the East Room of the White House in Washington.”
As for sources, the article had some of the same people from the previous article quoted but used historical facts and present day laws to dispute the reasons the previous article gave that said Ivanka and her husband being in the White House is legal and ethical. Wordplay and language also played a big part in framing this article, for example: “violated these standards,” questionable, conflict, and the powerful quote, “inherently compromising loyalty of family relationships and the necessity of genuine expertise in senior government roles are why federal law prohibits nepotism — and why that law explicitly applies to the president,” all plant seeds of doubt in the readers head about the ethicality of this whole situation.

commodifying dissent and other things

Pepsi released this ad starring Kendall Jenner set to the Skip Marley (grandson of Bob) song Lions.

Bernice King among many others took to social media to critique the ad. 

A Wired story describes how it united the internet:

"Within 48 hours the video got nearly 1.6 million views on YouTube (five times as many downvotes as upvotes), and Twitter and Facebook lit up with people pointing out just how gauche the whole thing was. Activist DeRay Mckesson called it 'trash,' adding 'If I had carried Pepsi I guess I never would’ve gotten arrested. Who knew?'"

And here is a funny scene-by-scene breakdown that ran in the Independent. 

What is the the problem with this ad and the commodification of dissent more generally? 

What might this case say about power dynamics in today's media environment? 

Here is an example of the feminism for all of the current era: 

We should all be feminists | Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie 

North Carolina's Economy and LGBT Rights

I choose to read articles published by The Denver Post and Fox News about the “bathroom bill”, or HB2,  that has been in placed in North Carolina, which required people to use the bathroom that aligned with their gender of birth. The Denver Post presented more specific information about the ways the bill has been negatively impacting the economy. They provided specific stats and listed examples of the organizations and events that have withdrawn due to the bill, thus showing the impact in depth. They shape this emphasis by quoting those organizations. The focus is represented in the picture at the top depicting bathroom sign that has half of each gender and words, “we don’t care.” The article doesn’t discuss whether this bill is right or wrong, or present either side's’ argument, rather, it portrays the overall impact relevant to everyone in the state. Thus it addresses that this is everyone's issue, not just smaller segments of the population. In comparison Fox News focuses on how the newly proposed bill is the best bet, but in relation to a conservative side. This is displayed in a video above the article which states, “but it’s not over yet, republican legislators…” It acknowledges that the previous bill had a negative impact on the economy, although, this was not discussed much and the minimal stats used function poorly to inform readers of the depth of impact. Therefore, the article framed it in terms of their own political concerns, rather than focusing on the impact of the situation on the state’s economy.  Furthermore, the article provides quotes from the opposing sides of support stating how they feel. This presents the issue to be of one of opinion or belief, and portray the impact to solely be emotional, instead of presenting either sides facts and reasonings that would frame the larger impact this bill has. These quotes are used to draw the readers attention away from the economic impact in order to benefit the conservative side, as these facts strengthen the opposing side.   

Tactics: Civil Rights Movement vs BLM

Civil rights movement was famous for non-violent direction action. Here is Reverend Dr CT Vivian on non-violence as was one of their central tactics.

Based on the reading and discussion of Black Lives Matters, what are some of the central tactics in the movement? Which are included in the book Beautiful Trouble? Which could be added to the book? 

Turn to the template on page 92 of Beautiful Trouble, and, breaking into smaller groups, brainstorm and share ideas for new tactic entries that could be added to the Beautiful Trouble toolbox.

Gizmodo recently ran a story concerning Senior Advisor the President Jared Kushner and a previously published, and later retracted, article from Reuters claiming Kushner was in Iraq over the weekend along with chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Joseph F. Dunford. This story was also published by several other news outlets including the New York Times, CNN, and Fox News. This original story sparked some controversy as Kushner has no diplomatic experience and it was unconventional that he should be visiting an important US ally before Secretary of State Rex Tillerson. What is significant about this story is that Reuters later withdrew their article, writing that the story was simply incorrect. This is significant because several other news outlets had published the same story with confirmation from anonymous White House officials. This caused a lot confusion and allegations of “fake news”.

I am publishing this article to the blog because I think that it highlights the recent issues that the media is facing in gaining and maintaining public trust. For me, this prompts an interesting discussion on why the identifier of “fake news” gets attached to a story, why it had recently become so prevalent, and what the media can do in the face of such intense distrust. I think it is noteworthy to point out that many of the tactics we read about in “Beautiful Trouble” rely on gaining favorable public opinion and media attention. By labeling certain outlets as purveyors of fake news, it diminishes any activist message that makes its way into that particular publication. Tactics like Creative Disruption and the Banner Hang rely on the media picking up activist’s messages and writing about their cause. If the reputation of the media outlet is tarnished with fake news allegations, it limits the amount of people that message is reaching and maybe even negatively affects the activists and their cause.