Image Curation

YouTube: Image Curation Video Link

Discussion:
Together, our group chose our topic and the specific implications we believed this theme to have on society. For our image curation slideshow, we decided to represent the social implications of visual propaganda on society, especially during World War II. To discover such implications, we focused on the tactics propagandists used to effectively portray their intended message to society such as glittering generalities, testimonials, and card stacking. Through these tactics, propagandists ensured their messages were thrust into society, thus causing the affects of the dehumanization of enemies, fear within society, bias concerning the navy or army and desensitization.

Through the creation of our slideshow, we learned that semiotics plays a major role in how we decode messages and symbols portrayed through media, such as propaganda. In addition, we realized that by being aware of the influential tactics media and propaganda use, we are better able to control and think critically of the affects these influential tactics have over us.

We also learned that semiotics play a key role in the affects propaganda has on society. For instance, our group realized that through propaganda, synecdoche was used to represent the entire American army through images of a single glorified soldier in the climax of battle. By doing so, propagandists represented the entire American army by a single part, thus influencing society to believe that all soldiers were envied heroes. Similarly, metonym was often used in propaganda through the image of a dehumanized and cartoonish Adolf Hitler. Through this image, Hitler was used to represent all of America's enemies during World War II. Therefore, a single part was used to represent the whole, thus causing a greater affect on society. Cleanliness was an additional aspect of semiotics used throughout propaganda as it made it appear that the morals and values represented through propaganda were the morals and values shared throughout society. By doing so, society became more likely to accept the propaganda messages, as they believed it was the normal cultural belief. Hegemony was used in similar ways through propaganda as it used the government’s influence over society to broadcast its beliefs. For instance, it was through the demanding and seemingly courageous statements printed among such propaganda that society was lead to believe that enlisting in the army was the courageous and patriotic thing to do. Therefore, the government acted as a sender with the intention of establishing its control over society by sending the message of the beliefs of war. The transmission in such a process would have been propaganda that was then received by society and, depending on the level of decoding the society members used, the destination may have been met. Such decoding was also a major influence on society because this affect was dependent on the ways society members decoded the messages from propaganda. For example, if a society member was to decode propaganda on the level of dominant/ hegemonic, they would be substantially more likely to carry the messages of this propaganda into society, thus increasing its affect. However, if an individual were to decode propaganda on the level of oppositional, they would be more likely to protest this propaganda in society. As a result, the affect of propaganda would be lessened in society.

Overall, it was through the realizations of the relationships media, semiotics, and influential tactics has in society that our group realized how and why we interpret such aspects of media within society. 

Media Invention Time Line

The printing press was, in our opinion, the first great technological advancement for the media industry. Invented by Johannes Gutenberg in 1441, the printing press opened the gates to a flood of media advances. Back in the 1400’s religion and the church was the greatest influence among people, causing everyone to rely heavily upon the word of priests. With this new invention, Gutenberg was able to reproduce a 42-line Bible, which could be easily distributed among people, without and bias from local churches. This opening for religious knowledge can be counted as the downfall of the Catholic Church, but it can also be counted as the rise of spoken and free word. Marshall McLuhan discusses the printing press in his novel The Gutenberg Galaxy: The Making of Typographic Man saying: “ “The invention of typography confirmed and extended the new visual stress of applied knowledge, providing the first uniformly repeatable commodity, the first assembly-line, and the first mass production” (pg. 24). With this new invention, Gutenberg created media that could be spread and developed much farther than the spoken word itself, because printed words have the capability to become universal and long-term.

Similarly, hundreds of year after the invention of the printing press, the world’s next greatest invention surfaced. There has always been speculation about who is the official inventor of the telephone, with some people choosing to believe it was Alexander Graham Bell, while the U.S. Congress just recently announced an Italian inventor named Antonia Meucci was the real inventor. Whoever it may have been does nothing to alter how important the invention itself has become. What the printing press did for expanding the purpose of written words, the telephone did, once more, for speech. With the invention of the telephone, people became able to pass information over long distances that virtually anyone could understand. Important messages no longer needed to be hand delivered, or sent through code. Unfortunately, along with this great invention, troublesome problems occurred. After this invention, information that wasn’t issued for the public could be leaked, or phone lines could be tapped; but this is to be expected.

In a timely fashion after the invention of the telephone, television was invented. Television is another sort of media that has evolved over the decades. Originating back in the early 1900’s, inventors experimented with different types of electromagnetic wave functions and receptors that eventually created the television we know and use so commonly today. What these inventors had no idea about was the brilliance or the phenomena that the television would become. Since it’s inception in the 1900’s, TV has become one of the world’s greatest media outsources. Used by almost everyone across almost every country in the world, TV has become an even larger producer of news and information than even the telephone. But like every source of new media, the television was double sided. Theorists like Neil Postman and Marshall McLuhan understood both sides of the television machine. Postman even went as far as writing a novel titled “Amusing Ourselves to Death” which analyzed television effect of culture and society. As far as technological advancements go, television is the same as the rest of them: brilliant but harmful.

It seems that the idea on most inventors minds after the creation of the printing press, television and telephone, was what could we bring to the world next? The answer apparently, was film. Over the years, both roll and digital film have changed drastically. Starting with film created by George Eastman, the founder of Kodak, film has grown into a massive multi media development. Even now, the idea of roll film has been pushed aside to further develop what is referred to as “digital” or “electronic film”. The shape, size and power of them have all been changed throughout time. Having started with flimsy plastic, it’s almost a miracle that now we can find a video camera inside an IPod and inside cell phones, and the most unexpected things. Film has changed the world that we all live in and society itself. It helps us shape our beliefs and views on the world because we have been able to document time as it goes on, in actual pictures. People use film to entertain, to tell stories and to express their feelings, much like they had previously been using print and speech to do.

Finally, another pivotal invention has been gaining speed for the past couple of decades. Having almost perfect each of the previously stated inventions, researchers and developers created something called the World Wide Web, or more lovingly titled: the Internet. The Internet has had an extremely huge impact on society in the last decade or so. The Internet is just another source of media, which we use to extend our bodies. With the Internet, we as a society, are able to bring the office with us on the go, stay connected via social networking sites, can view videos on video sharing sites and do so much more. The Internet has led society in a new direction of technology and media that is being embraced and used all over the world. Besides the printing press, which is the number one greatest invention of all time in our opinion, the Internet has definitely trumped all others in the fact that it is able to deliver print, voice and graphic media to the entire world.

So, as the world turns and technology changes there is no doubt in our mind that new inventions will come about to rock the media world, but as of right now, these five are the most important.

Social Media Bookmarking

Using social media is, in essence, an extension of our own bodies. We use it as another way to communicate and express our feelings. Social media is a new way for people to paint the perfect portrait, and through this portrait people can portray their most idealistic selves. In our group, each person has a different opinion on these tools, as does the rest of the world. Some people could see using twitter as excessive, and annoying. We already have so many electronic ways of communicating, that it seems ridiculous to add another to those that we already use. Others see social media as a great way to communicate and express themselves with many other people, both within their own communities and abroad, in other countries. These new sources of media are a way to keep everyone updated on the lives of others, and their own.

For our blogging project we used the twitter account titled “Unfuckwithables” and Delicious account “Isitwithable”. These two social media websites are just two new electronic ways that people can express and share ideas and bits of discussions that relate to our studies. Twitter allows us to follow people that we are studying in class, such as Chuck Klosterman, and get snapshots of breaking news stories, like those in the Globe and Mail, or Toronto Star. By using these sources of media, we can gain greater insight into these people, and view information pertaining to our studies faster. Most of us in the group are new to using Twitter and Delicious, and this is the first time we have experimented with it. They are both interesting tools, and could turn out to be useful to us in the future when we properly understand and are able to utilize the media that they produce.

Although Twitter could turn into a useful website, it rarely seems to be. Most things that people post on Twitter are far from intelligent and very unimportant, which also seems to be the norm with Delicious. After only having used the two websites for a short period of time, it seems a user will have to sort through endless videos about mediocre jokes before they stumble upon an article, video or tutorial that has actual substance. Twitter and Delicious, among others, are just more media that people indulge in, another craze that will soon be replaced with an even more ridiculous social entrapment. It seems like a cool idea in the sense that someone can be personally updated by celebrities, and others they idolize. This is because this type of media makes the setting more intimate, almost as if you’re connected to that personally specifically. Except, this type of blogging is also negative for society. People have been becoming quite full of themselves, since they realized the world is so interested in what 140 characters they will tell them about. What is really important is that aspect of keeping in tough with one another, because it’s a great feeling to communicate with actual human beings rather than through an electronic mircoblog. People should be talking rather than tweeting.

Check out our Twitter and Delicious accounts:

Unfuckwithables' Twitter Account

Unfuckwithables' Delicious Account