Media Mindfulness

George Lakoff who introduced to the general population the idea of “framing”- using language to frame how we think of issues- writes on how Bush’s latest rhetoric might be imploding:
Staying the Course Right Over a Cliff:
The Bush administration has finally been caught in its own language trap.
“That is not a stay-the-course policy,” Tony Snow, […]

You may recall that I said the Dove “real beauty” campaign was a clever viral media project. Well, look no further than the latest news from AdAge.
Advertising Age - Better ROI From YouTube Video Than Super Bowl Spot:
Traffic spike
With not a penny of paid media and in less than a month, “Dove Evolution,” a 75-second […]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iYhCn0jf46U

You have to hand it to the commodities system for being so effective at absorbing dissent. But also credit the media literacy movement for making the misrepresentation of beauty in commercial media a contentious issue. For over a year now Dove has been running its “Real Beauty” campaign, the above video being its latest salvo. […]

This news item (via BoingBoing) came at a fortuitous moment because just yesterday as I was walking past the Morgan Library in NYC I realized that fonts and architecture serve the same purpose. This “book building” created by the Turkmen government is a symbolic convergence of the two. What prompted this thought was the design […]

Good discussion about the ecology of New Urbanism:
AlterNet: EnviroHealth: Cities of the Future Won’t Look Like Ours:
Yet another vision of the future is supplied by the New Urbanists, who have campaigned for a return to the body of principle and methodology drawn from successful historic practice rather than science fiction, politics, or metaphysics. That is, […]

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If you read 1984, you may recall that one of the features of the Big Brother-led government is that they would change alliances or history on a dime, denying completely contradictory information to the contrary. It would simple be erased and sent to the “memory hole.” One of the most important propaganda techniques is the […]

Be forewarned, a movie about magic employs the principle technique of enchantment: misdirection. Thus any film claiming to be about magic has as its subtext the fact of the film itself, which is a carefully constructed illusion, just as any Hollywood motion picture about spectacle is ultimately self-referential (such as Gladiator being a veiled commentary […]

Interesting essay on the future of our information world. Here are some highlights:
TidBITS: Peering into the Future of the Infosphere:
Using these concepts, my basic claim can now be formulated thus: digital information and communication technologies are radically reshaping the very nature of the infosphere, and therein lies the source of some of the most profound […]

These days Martin Luther King Jr. has been so drained of meaning that he is cynically appropriated by parties as diverse as the Republicans and Chevy (some of you may have seen the recent John Mellencamp Chevy ad (click here to view) that argues through its strategic deployment of symbols that Chevy and American dissent […]

AdAge has this great chart on media ownership. Check out and download the corporate family tree here. You can also read the article here. The most obvious news is the increasing migration of $$$ to the Internet. Traditional media companies- newspapers and broadcast TV- are not looking so good these days.

Sphere: Related Content

Here’s an image from the New York Post editorial: “A Dark Globalism.” It was the featured image in the print version. You have to click through the embedded slide show to get to the picture. It reminds me of the wicked kid trope in recent horror films, as if Muslim children are inherently evil. This […]

As media critics we tend to constantly point the finger at how bad everything is, so it’s nice to be able to also encourage good behavior. In this case, it’s NBC News, which has started a new series, “What Works.” It’s designed to exemplify and showcase programs, projects and people who are making positive changes. […]

United Press International - Consumer Health - Media-savvy teens less likely to smoke:
PITTSBURGH, Oct. 9 (UPI) — Teens who are savvier about the motives and methods of advertisers may be less inclined to smoke cigarettes, finds a U.S. study.
Researchers at the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine say thousands of adolescents each day are lured […]

I had a chance to see Center for Digital Democracy’s Jeff Chester at the ACME Summit and I think he is way ahead of the curve in understanding what is really happening with the convergence between new digital media technology and mega-media corporations. His talk was chilling and got me to reconsider my participation […]

Jose Ignacio Lopez Vigil and the Radio Venceremos crew (nice hair!)
More from the ACME summit. It was fun to reconnect with Jonathan and Susan from Reclaim the Media, folks I met several years ago in New Mexico at the first ACME conference. They are radio and indy media activists who told me of a really […]

Last weekend I was at the ACME media activist conference giving a workshop on eco-media and had a chance to hang out with Mitch Altman, creator of the most awesome stocking stuffer, TV-B-Gone. This week he was also on WBAI’s “Off the Hook” (a hacktivist radio program) talking about his innovative product. Essentially, Mitch is […]

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