Costelloe-KuehnMemo15

core categories:

-accounts for a phenomena or pattern of action/language that is relevant and problematic to people in the study -recurs frequently in the data itself -- such that the intellectual project is a matter of taking up theorizations already initiated by our informants; then we return them, a little more robust, a little more broad in their explanatory power, infused with theories we bring from different scholarly traditions -is integrative, providing a theoretical concept densely saturated by empirical detail - yet privileges scope -- accounting for as much variation as possible, compelling a researcher to "code" for its many dimensions, properties, conditions, consequences, and connections to other things -can be related to many other key categories in the research - overall: is intended to draw different things together, while privileging variation -- creating, in process, new idioms with which we can engage the world.

i am interested in articulating both emic and etic enunciations of all of the following categories.

("good") "media"
 * common sense: journalism and entertainment that is produced for and distributed through television, newspapers, magazines, etc. seems to most often refer to the products and producers of journalism.
 * the name for the "object" of study when done by communications scholars. There is significant overlap with STS's object named "ICTs"
 * "media" stands in for "mainstream" or "corporate" media. these modifiers are implied, taken for granted, invisible.
 * another invisible modifier that is usually implied is "mass."
 * in microbiology, media is the plural of medium: nutrient solution for the growth of cells //in vitro.// In this sense, the "media" (journalism, etc.) is a powerful part of the "media" (environment, things consumed) that we all swim in and internalize in various ways (our "habitus," Foucault's "care of the self," subjectivity, etc.)
 * I am interested in the various articulations of what a good media (as individual artifact or overall media ecology) could/should/does look like. see "justice" keyword as well.

"alternative media"
 * represents the alternative to the dominant, mainstream, corporately owned and controlled media.
 * includes "old" (radio, TV) and "new" (internet, generally more interactive)
 * i use it as an umbrella term to include tactical, community and independent media.
 * but also used in very different ways by other people.
 * "Alternative media, including 18 digital and non-traditional media segments, accounted for 16.1 percent of total advertising and marketing spending in 2007, up from only 7.9 percent in 2002, PQ Media said." ("Alternative Media Poised for Strong Growth in '08" --> [|article])
 * In his taxonomy of internet activism, Graham Meikle posits 3 categories: alternative media, open publishing/open technology models, and tactical media. So alternative media is not the "umbrella," Internet activism is. Alternative media is exemplified by Belgrade radio station B92's campaign to thwart Milosevic's censorship.

"tactical media"
 * carries the most "interventionist" and "activist" connotations.
 * i associate tactical media with "culture jamming" and "spectacles"
 * has roots in de Certeau's "the practice of everyday life"
 * the term "tactical" is often opposed and compared to "strategical." tactical has a short-term connotation. it also calls up the "tactics" of social movements which are sometimes called "repertoires of contention."
 * sometimes not exactly "the" media itself, but products that are designed to be "mediagenic" and "infect" the mass media. most social movements lit. on media is about how social movements shape their message to be picked up by the media. there is much less on how movements create their own alternative media.
 * For Meilke, Tactical media is 'less concerned about building better models and more about "mobility and flexibility, about diverse responses to changing contexts" (119)' ([|book review]). **I am certainly interested in "building better models," so maybe tactical media shouldn't be my "object of study..."**
 * **But he also recognizes that** "internet activism [including tactical media] is always inextricably linked to larger projects and social movements that require mobilizing, awareness-raising, and ideological solidarity -- all increasingly dependent on the internet" (review).

"strategical media"
 * this is my made-up category.
 * "strategical" calls up the aspects of tactical that i like (activist, interventionist, spectacular, tactics), but also the more sustained qualities of community and indy media (community-building, development of expertise, longer-term future-oriented orientations, developed knowledge of surrounding discourses and strategies for engaging them, etc.).

"community media"
 * primarily i use community media to refer to the products, practices, and forms of collectivity centered in community media centers (CMCs).
 * name invites the question: Who counts as "community?" is it geographical? interest-based?

"community informatics"
 * compared to community media, tends to be less aesthetically focused and more likely to rely heavily on the internet.

"independent media"
 * although it could be used as broadly as "alternative media," its meaning is "contaminated" by associations with independent media centers (IMCs), a loose network of mostly autonomous.
 * the first IMC emerged from the protests in Seattle in 1999. Now there are hundreds all over the world, but heavily concentrated in the G8, "western" countries.
 * But for Meikle, Indymedia exemplifies //open publishing/open technology models.//

"hegemony"
 * concept largely developed by Gramsci. In a nutshell it is a verb: the struggle for a dominance.
 * i see alt. media practices as generally "anti-hegemonic"
 * but i'm also interested in Day's idea of the "hegemony of hegemony" and "non-hegemonic" strategies
 * media activists talk much about the "monopoly" or "oligopolies" that control "the media." are they talking about hegemony? do they use this word? how does the concept

"justice"
 * what would a "just" media look like to various enunciatory communities?
 * justice often gets caught up with talk of "rights"
 * i am fascinated by the issues discussed in the "chomsky/foucault" debate.