Representation Essay Question

It has been said that media representations often reflect the social and political concerns of the age in which they are created. Discuss.

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It is in human nature to stereotype people/places to make it easier to understand why they do certain things. These stereotypes are not always necessarily positive. Negative representations of certain groups of people or places can be used for comic purposes or in sitcoms/soap operas to create a narrative that would interest the audience. The representation of women is an example of a group of people stereotyped negatively for many years.

Before feminism originated in the 1960s, women were represented as being inferior to men in terms of mental ability and the use of practical reasoning. In relationships, it was a common sight when the wife was beaten by their husband for disobeying his orders or disagreeing with his views. This kind of awareness was not properly launched until the mid-1960s. Even though there were pockets of feminism around after the Second World War, originating after female uprising due to their workload during the war, the 60s brought about a new kind of culture where teenagers were to be respected and treated as equals to adults, and pop culture was at its peak. Especially after female contraception was introduced and women were able to have intercourse with whoever they wished, adding on to the Equal Pay Act in 1963, where it became legislation for all women to be paid equally to men when they are working in the same jobs. Because of this, the representation of females in the media changed dramatically from the narrow-minded black-and-white household products advert degrading women's roles in the home, to contemporary social issues that affect everybody and not just aimed at undermining women. Therefore, it is unclear whether, in terms of the representation of women, the advertisements of the time were reflecting social concerns or whether they were only illustrating the situation of the time.

There are many other groups of people who are represented in both negative and positive lights, depending on the situation of the time. For example, my case study research discusses the representation of white British politicians in the Media. It has often been the case that they are seen as lacking awareness of contemporary social issues that affect society. In the current century, it has been the case that the Coalition government formed by the Conservative and Liberal Democrat parties have been criticised immensely for their narrow-mindedness. Nick Clegg, head of the Liberal Democrat party had made a personal pledge to students going into higher education to reduce tuition fees and cut costs that would keep them in a difficult financial situation. However, because of the turn in poitical tides, he immediately changed his policies to conform with the Conservative party, contradicting his promises to the public. This has brought a lot of negative crticism onto himself by the media - who are speaking on behalf of the British public, and looking for somebody to blame for the country's economic decline.

An alternative representation of white British politicians would be that of Margaret Thatcher in the 1970s, when she was seen as a hero after normalising and drastically improving Britain's economy. However, even though this positive representation existed, it soon declined with Thatcher's power and increasing respect from the public. This was a great step for feminism, as she was the first female British Prime Minister, there to govern a patriarchal society that hadn't yet conformed to the idea of equality between men and women. She could, however, be seen as a complex individual. It could be argued that she was not really succeeding in governing the country as a woman, but used strong masculine movements and tone of voice to connect with her people. The positive representation soon changed when she was challened in the well-known interview in May 1982 on BBC One. After her sinking of the Argentinian battle ship "Belgrano", she was criticised and insulted by a a housewife on live television. This created great controversy as it began the trend in public authority. The fact that somebody who had virtually no authority in society whatsoever was able to go onto national television and criticise the Prime Minister of her own country seemed to suggest that their power was declining.

This became a milestone in the journey through insulting comments and satirical television programmes such as "Have I Got News For You" and "Mock The Week", who crticise authority figures on a regular basis, purely because the media has gained this amount of adequate power that it is now able to criticise any public figure without getting into any sort of trouble. Royalty has also been target of negative representation since the end of the 20th Century. 60 years ago, it would have been impossible to insult the royal family in the media as it would possibly have been considered an act of treason, for which one could receive a prison sentence. However, it has become a common aspect to see the royal family being criticised for their narrow-mindedness and lack of public awareness. They were once seen as the perfect family, who society was technically supposed to learn from and look up to. It set an example to the rest of the country on how to live their lives with manners and etiquettes. But since the media has become involved in private aspects of royals' lives, the public seem to witness problems that exist in everyday families, such as domestic arguments and divorce. Because these issues would not have been as obvious 60 years ago as they are now, it is obvious that the representation of royalties does reflect the social and political concerns of its time.

In terms of politics, part of my representation case study focuses on the representation of Tony Blair, who was the British Prime Minister during most of the Noughties. At the start of his government, he was represented as a very intelligent individual who was aware of all political and social issues of the current age. However, by the time documents were leaked about the war in Iraq after it was crticised for being unjust and denied by the Prime Minister, he was virtually weakened and bombarded with insults. The information that was revealed to the public proved that the Prime Minister was acting out of the public's safety and interest when it went to war with Iraq, who contained no weapons of mass-destruction as he had claimed. This, in turn, became another huge turning point in the representation of politicians in the media, as it has set a new level of expectation for consumers of these texts, meaning the public are now more conscious of how they view the actions of those in authority and what effects they would have on the country.

In conclusion, it is certainly the case that media representations often reflect the social and political concerns of the age in which they are created. As seen in many examples, the media illustrate public opinion regarding contemporary social issues, and their views on the political situation of the time, therefore giving the public what they want. This Pluralist view seems to be in the public interest as they are consuming information that reflects their opinions, giving the media their complete trust when it comes to these issues.

Internet vs Washing Machine

Did the washing machine change the world more than the internet?

Agree

- The washing machine has become a necessity
- Washing your clothes manually is harder labour than replacing the internet (reading books)
- Could be argued internet is breaking/dumbing down society
- When using a washing machine, you can ignore it while it works and socialise
- Creation of internet has made crimes easier
- Internet introduced moral panics
- Brought attention to issue of patriarchal society
- Introduced feminism
- Made job easier for women, as men learn to wash clothes
- Neutral with all customers - does not pick and choose

Disagree

- It is easier to communicate across the world
- More convenient than using telephones
- Has created virtual lifestyle
- Enhanced imagination and creativity
- More complicatedly created than washing machine
- Requires less power
- Introduced citizen journalism
- Gives a voice to everyone
- Removes authority
- Allows access to content that would otherwise not be available
- Gives sense of closeness and international connectivity

The Guardian article - "Ha-Joon Chang: The net isn't as important as we think"

The economist and author says the washing machine changed the world more than the internet, a tool we overestimate while ignoring its downsides.

Ha-Joon Chang says the washing machine revolutionised society in more profound ways that the internet

Ha-Joon Chang, born in South Korea in 1963, is an economist based at Cambridge University specialising in development. Known for his heterodox views, he is the author of several books, including Kicking Away the Ladder (2002) and Bad Samaritans: The Myth of Free Trade and the Secret History of Capitalism (2008). In his new book, 23 Things They Don't Tell You About Capitalism (Allen Lane, Chang debunks many cherished myths about the free market. In one chapter, he says: "The washing machine changed the world more than the internet."

Is it really true that the washing machine has changed the world more than the internet?

When we assess the impact of technological changes, we tend to downplay things that happened a while ago. Of course, the internet is great – I can now google and find the exact location of this restaurant on the edge of Liverpool or whatever. But when you look at the impact of this on the economy, it's mainly in the area of leisure.

The internet may have significantly changed the working patterns of people like you and me, but we are in a tiny minority. For most people, its effect is more about keeping in touch with friends and looking up things here and there. Economists have found very little evidence that since the internet revolution productivity has grown.

And the washing machine was more transformative?

By liberating women from household work and helping to abolish professions such as domestic service, the washing machine and other household goods completely revolutionised the structure of society. As women have become active in the labour market they have acquired a different status at home – they can credibly threaten their partners that if they don't treat them well they will leave them and make an independent living. And this had huge economic consequences. Rather than spend their time washing clothes, women could go out and do more productive things. Basically, it has doubled the workforce.

The washing machine is just one element here. Other factors have contributed to the liberation of women – feminism, the pill and so on.

Yes, but feminism couldn't have been implemented unless there was this technological basis for a society where women went out and worked. Of course it's not just the washing machine, it's piped water, electricity, irons and so on.

Do we tend to overestimate the importance of communications revolutions?

Not always. The invention of the printing press was one of the most important events in human history. But we overestimate the internet and ignore its downsides. There's now so much information out there that you don't actually have time to digest it.

In another chapter of the book, I talk about the American economist Herbert Simon, who argued that our problem now is that we have limited decision-making capability rather than too little information. If you try to find something on the internet, it's a deluge. And in terms of productivity, the internet has its drawbacks – for example, it makes it a lot easier to bunk off work.

But what about the sheer speed at which it allows us to do things?

That is exaggerated too. Before the invention of the telegraph in the late 19th century, it took two to three weeks to carry a message across the Atlantic. The telegraph reduced it to 20 or 30 minutes – an increase of 2,000-3,000 times. The internet has reduced the time of sending, say, three or four pages of text from the 30 seconds you needed with a fax machine down to maybe two seconds – a reduction by a factor of 15. Unless I'm trading commodity futures, I can't think of anything where it's really so important that we send it in two seconds rather than a few minutes.

Does it matter that we overestimate the internet's importance?

On one level, no. If I think the Sun goes round the Earth, it's not going to affect how I do my grocery shopping or teach economics. But where it does matter is that a lot of people have come to accept a policy action or business decision on the grounds that this is something driven by technological changes rather than by active human decisions. So anyone who is against total globalisation is a modern luddite.

This idea that the internet is driving globalisation has enabled business leaders and politicians to get away with decisions made for their own self-interest, because people have been too ready to accept that things have to be like this.

Do we fundamentally misunderstand the nature of capitalism, as the title of your book implies?

Let me start by saying that I am an advocate of capitalism. To paraphrase Winston Churchill, I think it's the worst economic system except for all the others. So I'm not an anti-captialist, or anarchist. I want capitalism to work. But the version of capitalism that we have practised in the past two or three decades is a very extreme free-market version which, contrary to the claims of many economists, is not the only or best way to run things. There are many different ways and in the book I show that countries that have run capitalism differently – even if they practise free-market capitalism today – have done much better.

Electronics Weekly Article - Net Neutrality

Sir Tim Berners-Lee to help defend net neutrality in UK

Ian Grant, Computer Weekly

Monday 21 March 2011 09:49

Web inventor Sir Tim Berners-Lee is to work with the Broadband Stakeholders Group to ensure the UK works towards a more open Internet.

The move follows a roundtable meeting on net neutrality of business, industry and government agencies chaired by communications minister Ed Vaizey.

Vaizey welcomed Berners-Lee's involvement, saying the development of the Internet should be based on access to legal content, non-discrimination against content providers, and clear traffic management policies.

Berners-Lee said, "While transparency about traffic management policy is a good thing, best practices should also include the neutrality of the net.

"The web has grown so fast precisely because we have had two independent markets, one for connectivity, and the other for content and applications."

The meeting discussed issues around managing traffic on the web and protecting the open Internet, as well as creating an industry-wide agreement for self-regulation.

Berners-Lee agreed to help the group to include the rights of consumers and business to connect to whomever they want on the Internet without discrimination, in its new transparency document.

Vaizey described the meeting as "useful and productive". He said, "Handling heavier [Internet] traffic will become an increasingly significant issue so it was important to discuss how to ensure the Internet remains an open, innovative and competitive place."

Broadband Stakeholders Group CEO Antony Walker said the challenge was to agree on how to safeguard the benefits of the open Internet and ensure ongoing investment and innovation. "It is important that this is based on what is happening in the UK rather than what is happening elsewhere in the world," he said.

Open Rights Group executive director Jim Killock said BT's involvement with the new YouView and BT Vision content distribution services could harm net neutrality.

"We are talking about ISPs competing with the Internet for content delivery," he said. "People could then shift from buying services from the Internet to buying bundled services from ISPs. This would reduce competition and take investment away from Internet companies. That would be bad for everyone," he said.

At the meeting were Amazon, BBC, Broadband Stakeholder Group, BSkyB, BT, CBI, Channel 4, Channel 5, Consumer Focus, Ebay, Everything Everywhere, Facebook, Federation of Communications Services, Google, ISPA, ITV, Mobile Broadband Group, Nominet, Ofcom, Open Rights Group, Skype, Talk Talk, Tax Payers Alliance, Three, Virgin Media, Vodafone, W3C, WE7, Which? and Yahoo.

Ian Grant, Computer Weekly

Daily Mail Article - Net Neutrality

U.S. media watchdog passes net neutrality law that paves way for 'two-speed' internet for mobiles

By Niall Firth
Last updated at 9:01 AM on 23rd December 2010

Accessing the internet on mobile phones will not be subject to the same net neutrality laws

New rules designed to keep the internet free have come under fire for allowing a 'two-speed' internet that will let firms charge for accessing services on mobile phones.

The new guidelines, narrowly passed by the Federal Communications Commission last night, are designed to stop phone and cable companies from blocking services that travel over their networks.

But critics say the rules leave open the possibility of broadband providers creating internet fast lanes for services like video – something critics say is one step towards a ‘two-tier’ internet.

Crucially, mobile phone carriers have been exempted from the rules and will now be free to charge users extra to watch online video services

At a time when more and more people go online using smart phones and other mobile devices instead of computers, the rules leave mobile phone companies with tremendous control over tomorrow's internet.

And critics say the rules do not do enough to break the existing hold that wireless carriers have over the online applications that subscribers can access through their systems.

The regulations ban wireless carriers from blocking access to any websites or competing services such as internet-calling applications on mobile devices.

But wireless companies get more leeway to manage data traffic because wireless systems have less network bandwidth and can easily become overwhelmed with traffic more easily than fixed broadband.

Technology website Engadget has suggested that lobbying behind the scenes by Google has helped influence the decision not to enforce net neutrality on wireless providers. Google's Android mobile operating system has seen it go head to head with the iPhone in the U.S.

The rules also will not apply to phone makers, so Apple could still dictate which applications to accept or reject for the iPhone. Apple could choose to block Skype, for instance, even if AT&T, which provides wireless service for the iPhone in the U.S., cannot.

Internet service providers will not be allowed to block U.S. users from accessing web services like Skype, pictured, but the new rules do allow firms to charge for high-bandwidth services

The rules require broadband providers to let subscribers access all legal online content, applications and services over their wired networks.

But they do give providers flexibility to manage data on their systems to deal with network congestion and unwanted traffic, including spam, as long as they publicly disclose how they manage the network.

Critics say the new rules on so-called ‘net neutrality’ are a compromise that has handed far too much power to the big companies who control how normal customers access the internet.

The FCC has come under attack for interfering in regulation of the internet and for essentially bowing to pressure from the very big firms it is meant to protect consumers from.

By giving big media firms the power to decide how to manage their bandwidth is a slippery slope towards charging for premium content and web censorship, critics fear.

The vote, which was passed 3-2, quickly came under attack from the commission's two Republicans, who voted against it, who said the rules would discourage investments in broadband.

FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski pushed hard for the net neutrality compromise

The rules, known as ‘net neutrality,’ have been at the centre of a dispute for at least five years. The issue hit many internet users in 2007, when U.S. cable giant Comcast slowed traffic from an internet file-sharing service called BitTorrent.

Comcast argued that the service, which was used to trade movies and other big files over the internet, was clogging its network.

The new FCC rules are intended to prevent that type of behaviour.

The new rules have the backing of the White House and capped a year of efforts by FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski to find a compromise.

‘Today, for the first time, we are adopting rules to preserve basic internet values,’ Genachowski said. ‘For the first time, we'll have enforceable rules of the road to preserve internet freedom and openness.’

Critics fear the rules do not do enough to ensure that broadband providers cannot favour their own traffic or the traffic of business partners that can pay extra.

Many are also uncomfortable at the prospect of the federal authorities stepping in to dictate what can or cannot be passed to consumers, in direct opposition to the concept of a ‘free and open internet’.

Big websites such as Google could pay to have their content download more quickly than smaller sites - leading to what critics term a two-tiered internet.

Andrew Jay Schwartzman, policy director for the nonprofit Media Access Project, said: 'There is a reason that so many giant phone and cable companies are happy, and we are not. These rules are riddled with loopholes.

'They foreshadow years of uncertainty and regulatory confusion, which those carriers will use to their advantage.'

The new rules probably will not mean big changes for internet users, at least at first. In the wake of the Comcast row, all of the major broadband providers have already pledged not to discriminate against internet traffic on their wired networks.

Republicans said they worry the rules will discourage phone and cable companies from upgrading their networks because it will be more difficult for them to earn a healthy return on their investments.

Robert McDowell, one of the FCC's two Republicans, predicted that the watchdog will face court challenges to its regulatory authority as well.

In April, a federal appeals court ruled that the agency had exceeded its existing authority in sanctioning Comcast for discriminating against online file-sharing traffic on its network.

Guardian Article - Net Neutrality

Berners-Lee warns ISPs on net neutrality
Inventor of world wide web says plans for 'two-speed' internet go against its principles

Article history

The inventor of the world wide web, Sir Tim Berners-Lee, has warned internet service providers (ISPs) that plans for a "two-speed" internet go against the principles that have let the net grow so rapidly in the past two decades.

"Best practices should also include the neutrality of the net," Berners-Lee told a round table in Westminster on Wednesday morning, convened by the communications minister Ed Vaizey. Content companies, represented by Facebook, Skype, the BBC and Yahoo, squared up to ISPs, with input from consumer representatives including the Open Rights Group, the Consumers' Association and the communications regulator Ofcom.

Jim Killock of the Open Rights Group, who was representing consumer interests at the meeting, said afterwards that he was concerned about the direction the debate was going: "The potential for something going terribly wrong is absolutely there. The regulator and government do not wish to intervene, for good reason; but industry is not putting forward anything that looks like meaningful self-regulation."

ISPs have for years sought to charge the BBC or customers, or both, for the huge amounts of data transferred over their networks by applications such as the iPlayer, whose popularity has exploded in the past few years. ISPs have to pay for carriage of data from BT's core network to customers, but offer unmetered services on broadband – meaning that when people's demand for data grows, ISPs can be out of pocket.

But the BBC and other content providers such as YouTube have resisted calls that they should pay, on the basis that they are providing a service that allows the ISPs to find customers. In response, ISPs both in the US and Europe have mooted the idea of "two-tier" connections where some services are slower than others. Skype complained at the meeting that its service is effectively blocked on all of the mobile services in the UK except 3, meaning that carriers are violating the principle of net neutrality because they fear it will affect their call revenues.

Berners-Lee told the meeting that "every customer should be able to access every service, and every service should be able to access every customer ... The web has grown so fast precisely because we have had two independent markets, one for connectivity, and the other for content and applications."

Vaizey said the meeting had been "useful and productive" and that "it was important to discuss how to ensure the internet remains an open, innovative and competitive place."

"Net neutrality" – in which services are treated exactly equally as they pass over the net, no matter what their source or destination – has become an increasingly vexed topic as demands on ISPs and mobile carriers have begun to outstrip capacity.

ISPs have thus suggested that they should be allowed to manipulate the transfer of data, but that they would be transparent about how and what they were doing.

On Monday the Broadband Stakeholder Group launched a new traffic management transparency code, which has since been signed by the largest fixed-line and mobile carriers, including BSkyB, BT, Everything Everywhere (formerly Orange and T-Mobile), TalkTalk, 3, Virgin Media and Vodafone. Together they represent more than 90% of all fixed-line broadband and mobile customers in the UK.

It pledges that "information will be provided in a common format to explain what traffic management techniques are used, when and with what impact for each broadband service currently marketed by the code's signatories."

But Rob Reid, senior policy adviser at the Consumers' Association, who was among the attendees at the meeting, said that there was concern that transparency was only one half of the required commitment – because users might be tied into contracts lasting 18 months or more, meaning that if they disliked a change to the traffic management policy it would be expensive to switch to a different provider who offered one they preferred.

Antony Walker, the chief executive of the Broadband Stakeholder Group, told the Guardian: "The issue of [customer] switching is critical. It's the other side of the coin to transparency. Ofcom is working on guidance on this and it is an issue that was highlighted. Everybody agrees that it is important."

Adding faster systems would only work as a short-term measure to relieve congestion on networks, said Walker: "it's like adding more lanes to the M25 – it just attracts more cars. Having faster networks will mean that people will want more services using more data."

But Killock said that not enough was being done yet: "In contrast with the US, where rules are being put in place through the Federal Communications Commission, or Norway where ISPs have agreed a meaningful code, our ISPs are not offering us what we and the UK economy needs. If that continues to be the case, then Ed Vaizey will find himself with the task of breaking the log jam."

Youtube Presentation

Mutualisation of news

• Citizen journalism - seen as equals now as creating own news footage.
• "There was a very clear wall, dividing readers and writers" - Alan Rusbridger comments on what it was like before the invention of User Generated Content.
• Comment is Free - now has 1000 think pieces a month - page traffic in May 2009 rose to 9.3 million.
• Rusbridger argues that citizen journalism is still to restricted to codes and conventions of newspaper writing.
• He thinks websites like Twitter and social networking sites will allow more freedom for journalists to develop direct relationships with its readers.
• This is an advantage of social networking, and the importance of its existence for not only consumers, but producers as well.
• June 2009 - The Guardian technology pod on Twitter - 682,000 followers
• This shows the enormous impact cross-platform journalism is having on society. The fact that the public is able to visit their favourite social networking sites and still be able to find out the latest news.
• According to Rusbridger, all information coming from the public should be treated as primary sources and examined. This suggests there is still a considerable difficulty in trusting certain sources on the Internet and seems to indicate a disadvantage with User Generated Content.
• An advantage of UGC would be the reporting of the death of Ian Tomlinson, where footage was shown from the scene of the crime that was taped with a bystander's mobile phone.
• Similar to the Rodney King case in 1998, the public outcry emphasised the unreliability of traditional news broadcasting methods, who were unable to capture this footage. Some argue that the journalists at the scene deliberately did not capture the footage in anticipation that they would be humiliating the British justice system for its incompetence.