Domestication. Week 2. ARTS1090 Tutorial T13B. z3292121.

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Week 2 Reading:

Silverstone, Roger. “Domesticating Domestication. Reflections on the Life of a Concept.” In Berker, Thomas, et al, eds. Domesticaton of Media and Technology. Berkshire, UK: Open University Press, 2006, 229-248.

“Domesticaton as a process of bringing things home-machines and ideas, values and informaton- which always involvees the crossing of boundaries…between the public and the private, and between proximity and distance, is a process which also involves their constant renegotiation.”

Domestication is a practice of consumption. It is also political. The electric car is constantly in controversy as it threatens theprofitable oil and petroleum industries. Another political example would be the controversy of Google internet censorship in China.

Media technologies have blurred the boundary between private and public by bring the public home (world news broadcasted on a home television) and taking the private into the public (facebook, private mobile phone conversations in public spaces etc.)

Silverstone discusses 4 Phases of Domestication:

1. Commodification is the process through which consumers are prepared for the initial appropriation of a new technology. Marketing,promotions and advertising play an important role in this process.
2. “Conversion involves reconnection…users want the perfect fit: an enhancement of the quality of everyday lives without its destabilization; an extension of personality and power without a disruption of identity; a freeing from the constraints of the community, without a complete dislocation from the moral order of society.” When computers with word processors were introduced to society as a new media technology, it rendered the type writer obsolete.A computer has more to offer in, inter alia, fonts, styles and text size.  Despite this appeal, people had to learn to use the new hardware and software and something as basic as learning to use a mouse was considered as a time consuming frustration.
3. Objectification: “the location of information and communications technologies in the material, social and cultural spaces of the home.” Examples include placement of magazines in waiting rooms.
4. Incorporation: the way that new media technologies participate in everyday life. How does an iPod affect your daily routine?

Domestication is both a success (new media technologies enhance every day life) and a failure (morally and for a lack of responsibility with regards to how media technologies “increasingly construct and command” the world. An example would be legal implications with regards to copyright as new technologies make piracy more efficient at such a speedy rate that the media industry itself is having difficulty adapting both legally and financially).

Student Number: z3292121

ARTS1090 week1

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ARTS 1090. Week 1.  Critical Assesment of:

O’Shaughnessy, Michael, and Jane Stadler. “What do the Media Do to Us? Media and Society” Media and Society:An Introduction, Third Edition. South Melbourne, VIC: Oxford University Press, 2005, 31-58

O’Shaughnessy et al begin with an overview of contemporary society and explain how media works. Media is a representation of reality and interprets reality by “giv[ing] us information and then explanations, ways of understanding the world we live in.” Media consumers must in turn interpret the media’s interpretation and as such the consumer’s final interpretation is quite removed from actuality. Media must be evaluated because it “consistently privileges some issues and identities while devaluing others.”

Media is predominantly owned, controlled and created by a small elite group who inevitably promote their own values, norms and opinions. I add that there is a media trend of consumers becoming creators. This is not new but has evolved. Protest media, for example, can now be mass distributed globally and instantly as opposed to just being a pamphlet handout or wall poster. With technological improvements over the past few years, we have seen the rise of a media where anyone can contribute almost anything (e.g. YouTube and blogs). This phenomenon is making the consumer/creator relationship more horizontal and equal as opposed to the traditional vertical relation between the media creator and subordinate consumer. In addition,media consumers also have a dollar/viewer vote and the media’s profit motive, to some extent, limits the promotion of the elitist status quo.

3 Models:

• “[T]he media reflects the realities, values and norms of a society.”

“The main arguments against this notion …are that the media construct and change events rather than just reflect them.”

• The affects model deals with “how the media construct and shape our actions, our sense of who we are, our daily and annual routines.”
• The effects model deals with how the “media can and do influence us in many ways.” Effects can be physiological and psychological.

There is a resulting debate regarding censorship. Arguments against censorship include:

1.      People have autonomy and have to be accountable for their behavior.

2.      Restrictions to access information is socially and politically repressive.

3.      Fantasy has value and importance. Censorship does not solve underlying problems regarding sex and violence.

I believe that censorship deals with a balance of democratic rights and freedoms. Censorship and thus the limitation of freedom of expression are justified where its purpose and effect is to protect other rights and freedoms e.g. banning child pornography.