FEBRUARY 2012: PARTICIPATION M M Now online in the MediaMagazine MediaMagClips Gallery edia agazine Menglish and media centre issue 39 | februaryM 2012

Professor Sonia Livingstone, Head of Media and Commnications, LSE, on:

• Children, young people and the internet • The work of an audience researcher • Social networking Social Networks • Regulation or legislation? Arab Spring • The role of Ofcom • Future of Media 2.0 We Media and Democracy? on Making a TV Ad Hashtag TV Changing Audiences

Vic Goddard, Head Teacher, Passmores Academy, on:

• The making of Educating Essex • Editorial control centremedia and english • Trust and risk • Impact on students • The press response

• Media Studies, and more... 2012 february | issue39 |

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MediaMagazine is published by Are you a participator? Do you see yourself as a member of an the English and Media Centre, a audience, a producer, a user, a content-creator – or all four? non-profit making organisation. The Centre publishes a wide range Many of the articles in this issue raise questions about the role of classroom materials and runs and value of audience participation in today’s media landscape, courses for teachers. If you’re and about the technological, social and political implications studying English at A Level, look out of participatory media. It’s argued by many commentators that for emagazine, also published by the Centre. with Web 2.0, the boundaries between audiences and producers have diminished, that one-way messages from giant institutions are increasingly The English and Media Centre becoming shared interactive ‘conversations’ with their users, and that the active 18 Compton Terrace N1 2UN engagement of audiences in generating news, debate and creative content is, in Telephone: 020 7359 8080 and of itself, a force for democracy. Some argue that the term ‘audiences’ should Fax: 020 7354 0133 be replaced by ‘participants’. This is one of the key debates you’ll encounter in your Email for subscription enquiries: Media course, so in this issue we’ve tried to untangle the myths and grand claims of [email protected] digital evangelists from the messy reality of everyday life. Managing Editor: Michael Simons David Buckingham asks some hard questions about exactly who is doing the

Editor: Jenny Grahame participating, what, how and why, and where it’s likely to take us, while Nick Lacey wonders whether the balance of power between producers and audiences has really Editorial assistant/admin: shifted as much as we think. Jonathan Nunns explores the role of social networks in Rebecca Scambler the Arab Spring uprisings of last year, while student Harry Cunningham describes Design: Sparkloop citizen journalism closer to home. Meanwhile, Steph Hendry looks at the changing Print: S&G Group roles of audiences/participants in mainstream entertainment shows, and we Cover: Phones 4u ‘Scary Girl’ courtesy consider the blossoming relationship between Twitter and TV, and the strange role of Garth Jennings and Hammer & Tongs of the audience in Crimewatch. Elsewhere, Stephen Connolly takes us behind the scenes of Educating Essex to ISSN: 1478-8616 find out how and why the staff and students of Passmores Academy participated in what could have been a TOWIE-type reality show but turned out to be highly- praised TV and Twitter hit. MediaMag’s exclusive interview with Headteacher Vic Goddard about making the series is online now for web-subscribers. And if you missed our Student Conference last year, you can catch up with our brilliant keynote speaker Garth Jennings, who describes exactly how he participated in directing the haunting Phones 4u commercial, complete with storyboards. Time to go and prepare for MediaMag’s 40th issue and tenth birthday – we’re celebrating with our first peep at the entries for our Production Competition. Watch out for This magazine is not to the next edition – on Play! be photocopied. Why not subscribe to our web package which includes a downloadable and printable PDF of the current issue or Remember, MediaMag has its own Facebook page at http://www.Facebook.com/mediamag.emc encourage your students to take out their own £12 subscription?

2 MediaMagazine | February 2012 | english and media centre MM contents

Front Page News Test screenings – Open cinema – film 04 News, views, reviews, previews. 25 exhibition, participation 53 without borders There’s been much discussion about In the age of media – six and intervention Test the interactive and participatory questions about media screenings: are they a necessary 06 opportunities in today’s media evil or an insult to the creativity of and participation David landscape – but what happens filmmakers? Commercial necessity Buckingham, Professor of to those without a roof over or sell out? Creative compromise Media and Communications their heads, much less access to or unreasonable interference? at Loughborough University, digital technologies? Vanessa Pete Turner weighs the arguments considers some of the Raison reports on a radical social for and against this controversial revolutionary claims made for enterprise project that allows form of audience research. participatory media and 2.0, the homeless and vulnerable to and makes a case for cautious How I make things Garth participate in cinema culture. optimism rather than whole- Jennings on making a TV hearted celebration. 30 Citizens’ eye – a case commercial. 55 study in participation Harry Participation debates – Cunningham, student volunteer 12 the media and democracy with Leicester community news It’s one of the biggest media agency Citizens’ Eye, describes the debates around at the moment: relationship between the local has Web 2.0 and the explosion press and community reporters, in social networking really and shows how participation in opened up new opportunities for From props to products local news can give individuals Steph Hendry explores the democracy? Morag Davis offers a 36 and communities a voice. beginners’ guide to some of the changing nature of audience ideas you may need to grapple participation in mainstream with. entertainment programming. Social networking and Hashtag TV What’s the citizen journalism – 40 relationship between watching 14 TV and Twitter, and what can participating in The Arab it tell us about the changing Spring Massive claims have nature of TV viewing and been made for the role of citizen audience participation? Ian Bland Web 2.0 – participation journalism in spreading word of investigates. or hegemony? Nick Lacey the uprisings now known as the 58 explores whether web 2.0 has Arab Spring. But how crucial was Crimewatch – we need really democratised our access social networking as a catalyst – 43 your help Sara Mills reflects on to the media, and switched and have we really witnessed the one of our longest-running and the power from producers to first Facebook revolution? most apparently participatory TV audiences, or whether it has shows, and considers its appeals simply become absorbed into the to audiences, the nature of its values of ‘old media’. interactivity, and some of its less welcome outcomes. Life in a Day – creation 63 through participation Ninja Fight Academy A feature length documentary Cartoon by Goom. Keeping it real – 46 film crafted from 4,500 hours of YouTube users’ footage of their Educating Essex and the Reporting from the 20 lives. Sounds dull as a day in the graveyard shift Babita rebirth of ‘fly-on-the-wall’ 48 life of a dishwasher. Can Life in a Sharma, presenter of the What happens when a school Day cut through countless hours overnight shift on BBC World decides to let TV cameras in of forgettable, self-indulgent and the BBC News Channel each and film the life of its staff and crap to create 95 minutes of Sunday to Tuesday, describes the students? History tells us that the unforgettable documentary film? moment the Twittersphere put results are frequently mixed, for her in touch with the biggest both the viewers and the school news story for years: the death of itself (‘Head on the Block’ anyone? Google it and see what I mean....). Osama bin Laden. Steve Connolly investigates. The real world There have 50 been only a handful of feature films made about participatory TV, but as James Rose suggests they offer interesting insights into the reality TV phenomenon, its interactive elements and the role of participants and audiences.

english and media centre | February 2012 | MediaMagazine 3 MM Front Page News New media new art forms: David Hockney goes digital Here’s an inspirational story for MediaMag, Picasso and van Gogh would have loved using particularly for those studying Art and Design the iPad – but that it may have lasting impact alongside their Film and Media: the convergence on the ways artwork work is distributed and of fine art and technology in David Hockney’s consumed. Lots of debate about this: stunning exhibition at the Royal Academy. www.guardian.co.uk/artanddesign/2012/ Hockney has been using his iPhone for jan/17/art-hockney drawing and painting since 2008, when he famously began to send his friends ‘fresh flowers’ http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/ daily via phone-drawings, and has built up a technology-11666162 massive archive of still-lives and rural landscapes http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/art/art- using an App called Brushes, drawing with the features/8066839/David-Hockneys-iPad-art. side of his thumb, and distributing them widely html to be circulated at will – a huge challenge to the conventional practice of signed and exclusive There’s a whole collection of user-generated originals required by the art market. Hockney iPaintings, App art, or whatever else, on Flickr at particularly exploits the illuminated nature of http://www.flickr.com/groups/brushes/pool/ the screen, which adds a luminous transparent A Bigger Picture runs until 9th April at the quality to his work. Royal Academy, London. More recently he graduated to the iPad (for which he now has special pockets built into his jackets) which he describes as ‘like an endless piece of paper’, using it to capture the various stages of his drawings at the tap of a finger. His current RA exhibition includes a wide range of his iPad work, and a series of new films using 18 video cameras and displayed on multiple screens. So has digital technology changed the process of visual representation forever? Is this a new art form? Hockney believes the media of drawing

“Untitled, 29 June 2009”. iPhone drawing by David Hockney David by iPhone drawing 29 June 2009”. “Untitled, and painting have not really changed, and claims

Coming soon… Journalist Idol?

Coming later synergetic wheeze which should make a good publications feels perfect for ITV2 ... The right this year to ITV2: a TV case study in cross-platform promotion. candidate will have to demonstrate tenacity, new reality show The candidates will spend the twelve initiative and creativity in abundance and which will follow weeks working with some of the UK’s leading watching them go through their paces should six young budding magazines and cover glamorous news stories make for entertaining television. journalists as they compete for a 12-month and events. At the end of the process, the ITV2 has tackled the world of journalism contract at Bauer Media, one of Europe’s winner will receive the year-long contract before, with 2007 12-part series Deadline, largest magazine publishers. at one of Bauer’s magazines, which includes in which ten celebrities produced a weekly The 7 x 60 series (7 episodes, 60 minutes FHM, Kerrang! and Empire. glossy magazine. each) titled The Exclusives will be produced Angela Jain, the show’s commissioner Produced by Tiger by Bauer Media and TwoFour. Executive and ITV’s director of digital channels and Aspect, it averaged producers are Dan Adamson and Andrew acquisitions, says: 204,300 (1.5%) MacKenzie, who worked on TwoFour’s Working in the media is an opportunity that viewers. Will The Educating Essex. Bauer will lead the promotion many young people would love to pursue and Exclusives fare and casting for the series via their many radio a peek at what it takes to get that chance better? Watch this stations, websites and magazines – a canny on some of the country’s most respected space …

4 MediaMagazine | February 2012 | english and media centre MM The Nation’s favourites? Film releases It’s that time of year for lists, awards, number of hits? etc) makes comparison and nominations – will Uggie the dog get virtually impossible. And given the Here are a few of the films you can expect to see Oscar-ed for his stellar performance in funding sources and vested interests of in your local cinema this Spring term. The Artist? Will Scorsese and Woody Allen researchers, every Top Ten list or annual February slug it out for best Director? By the time ‘Best of’ should be taken with a very large 17th: Ghost Rider: Spirit of Vengeance you read this, all will have been revealed. pinch of salt, and thoroughly questioned. Nicholas Cage stars in this action/fantasy/thriller But it’s also the time of year for reflection, MediaMag googled a series of 2011 Top in which a secret agent hiding out in Eastern retrospectives, and lists. What were our Ten lists to explore the range of data, and Europe is called upon to stop the devil, who is most popular media from 2011? has put together a random selection. In trying to take human form. The answer is: it’s almost impossible to each case, think about the provenance March tell. Despite the gigantic sums poured into of the data – who generated it, in whose 2nd: Wanderlust industrial research and analysis, the range interests, and what if anything does it Rattled by sudden unemployment, a Manhattan of different criteria (sales? critical acclaim? really tell us? couple explore different living options and ultimately decide to experiment with living on a rural commune where free love rules. Jennifer Top UK television ads Favourite TV moments Aniston and Paul Rudd star in this romantic comedy. according to Nielsen according to Freeview (all adults) Gone 1. Aldi: ‘I buy this tea for my husband’ 1. Royal Wedding: Will and Kate’s balcony kiss A thriller starring Amanda Seyfried. When her 2. CompareTheMarket: ‘Congratulations, Sarah 2. I’m a Celeb: Fatima Whitbread cockroach sister disappears, Jill is convinced the serial killer Roberts’ scene who kidnapped her two years ago has returned, 3. Volkswagen: ‘Little boy dressed as Darth 3. Royal Wedding: Pippa Middleton emerges as and she sets out to face her abductor once Vader’ a bridesmaid again. 4. John Lewis: ‘Gifts you can’t wait to give’ 4. Strictly Come Dancing: Russell Grant fired 5. Walkers Crisps: ‘4 comedians, 4 new flavours’ out of a cannon Project X 6. Foster’s: ‘Warren’s girlfriend gets a new 5. Newsnight: Steve Coogan’s argument with From the directors of Old School and The haircut’ Paul McMullan Hangover comes this story of three high school 7. Skittles: ‘Everything Tim touches turns to 6. Big Brother: Jedward get electrocuted seniors who throw a birthday party to make a Skittles’ 7. EastEnders: Baby swap storyline name for themselves. Things soon spiral out of 8. Boots: ‘Christmas Mission Impossible’ 8. Spooks: Ruth is killed in final ever episode control as news of the party spreads. 9. Dreamies: ‘ bursting through walls’ 9. : Jason Gardiner argument 10. PG Tips: ‘Put the kettle on’ with Denise Welch’s husband 9th: John Carter 10. TOWIE: Lauren pushes Mark into the Transplanted to Mars, a Civil War vet discovers a swimming pool lush planet inhabited by 12-foot tall barbarians. UK’s Top 10 Apps Finding himself a prisoner of these creatures, he Numbers downloaded according to escapes, only to encounter a princess who is in Mashable.com Top 7 UK Biggest Box desperate need of a saviour. 1. Angry Birds Office Successes Salmon Fishing in the Yemen 2. Facebook courtesy of Box Office Mojo (www. Romantic comedy starring Ewan McGregor and 3. Skype boxofficemojo.com) Emily Blunt. A fisheries expert is approached 4. Angry Birds Rio 1. Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part by a consultant to help realise a sheik’s vision 5. Google Maps Two (Warner Bros.) $117,228,296 of bringing the sport of fly-fishing to the desert 6. iBooks 2. The King’s Speech (Momentum) $74,877,867 and embarks on an upstream journey of faith 7. Angry Birds Seasons 3. Movie (Ent. Films) and fish to prove the impossible possible. 8. Fruit Ninja $71,189,362 9. Talking Tom 16th: 21 Jump Street 4. Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides 10. Twitter A pair of underachieving cops are sent back to 3D (Disney) $54,187,325 a local high school to blend in and bring down 5. Part II (Warner Bros.) a synthetic drug ring. Starring Jonah Hill of Top 10 games $53,496,869 Superbad fame. ‘The ones that re-defined virtual 6. The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn Part 1 (E1) gaming’ according to International $47,806,144 Mirror Mirror: The Untold Story of Snow White Business Times (www.ibt.co.uk) 7. Transformers 3 (PPI) $45,470,012 Julia Roberts stars as the evil queen in this 1. The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim retelling of the classic fairy tale which follows 2. Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 an exiled princess as she rebels to win back her 3. Deus X 3: Human Revolution birthright and leader of the kingdom. 4. Gears of War 3 5. Uncharted 3: Drake’s Deception 23rd: The Hunger Games 6. Rage Set in a future where the Capitol selects a boy 7. FIFA 12 and girl from the twelve districts to fight to 8. Batman: Arkham City the death on live television, Katniss Everdeen 9. Total War: Shogun 2 volunteers to take her younger sister’s place for 10. Battlefield 3 the latest match. Starring Jennifer Lawrence.

Front Page News researched and written Jenny Grahame. Film news by Zelda McKay.

english and media centre | February 2012 | MediaMagazine 5 MM

2.0 In the Age of Media 2.0 2.0 2.0 Six Questions about Media and Participation

David Buckingham, Professor of Media and Communications at Loughborough University, considers some of the revolutionary claims made for participatory media and 2.0, and makes a case for cautious optimism rather than whole-hearted celebration. 2.0 2.0

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In the last ten years, we have moved into a new age of participatory media. The advent of online social media – often referred to as ‘Web 2.0’ – has brought about a much broader media revolution – a move to ‘Media 2.0’. The world of Big Media – in which the media were owned and controlled by large commercial corporations – is no more. In the age of Media 2.0, ordinary people are no longer mere consumers of media, but also producers. Vertical, top-down communication has given way to horizontal, networked communication. Thus, blogs and online forums provide opportunities for ordinary people to have their view, which reflects a broader desire for a fairer, any different from ‘Web 1.0’ that preceded it. Tim say, and to speak back to those in power; wikis more democratic, more creative society. Yet it’s Berners-Lee, widely identified as the inventor of enable us to collaborate and share knowledge in a view that – as students of media – we need to the World Wide Web, has argued that the basic ways that challenge elites and experts; on social question. We need to look more closely at what technological infrastructure and many of the networking sites, we can represent ourselves is really happening in the world of ‘Media forms of Web 2.0 have been around since the and connect with other people in new ways; 2.0’ – at who’s involved, what they are doing, beginning of the internet. while online sharing sites like YouTube allow and where the power lies. In this article, I want There’s a long history of utopian fantasies people to distribute their own media content to propose six questions that should help us to about new media and technology. The kinds of to global audiences. All these services appear get a more critical view of these participatory claims that are being made about the liberating to be free and open – they don’t require lots of possibilities. possibilities of social media echo those that were money to use, they don’t depend on getting past made in earlier times about the impact of cable editors or gatekeepers, and they can be accessed 1. What’s new? TV, portable video, radio and even the printing at any time, by anyone, anywhere. And these The term ‘Web 2.0’ seems to have been coined press. All these things were apparently going to things are leading in turn to fundamental shifts by the digital marketing entrepreneur Tim bring ‘power to the people’ – to undermine the in the operations of ‘old’ media like television, O’Reilly back in 2001. In some ways, it was an power of political elites and big corporations, newspapers and even books: there is much talk attempt to re-brand the internet business after create new forms of collaboration, and allow of ‘user-generated content’, ‘citizen journalism’ the bursting of the so-called ‘dot.com bubble’ ordinary people to express themselves and have and the empowerment of consumers. – the collapse of many internet companies that their voices heard. Yet in each case, the ultimate This, at least, is the story that’s often told took place around the millennium. Many people effects of these new technologies were much less about new media. It’s an attractively optimistic have questioned whether ‘Web 2.0’ is actually revolutionary and much more complicated.

english and media centre | February 2012 | MediaMagazine 7 MM In terms of media theory, there’s a danger of a kind of technological determinism here – the idea that technology will bring about revolutionary social change, in and of itself. Yet technologies do not come from nowhere: they are created in response to wider social, economic and cultural developments. And their impact is always dependent on how they are used, by whom, and for what purposes. 2. Who’s participating? The history of technology shows that innovations are adopted in uneven and often unequal ways. In the case of Web 2.0, statistics on patterns of use are not wholly reliable. Some – such as those produced by the Pew Foundation in the United States – produce very high estimates of the numbers of young people who ‘share content’ online. Others – such as those from the market research agency Hitwise – suggest that the number of active participants is very low: less than 0.5% of YouTube users, for example, actually upload material, and very little of that material is originally produced, rather than pirated clips from commercial media. Research also suggests that there are some striking social inequalities in participation. While there are some gender differences – young women are leading the way in areas like blogging, while young men tend to dominate video-sharing – the most remarkable differences are in terms of social class. At least in the US, it is young people from high-income families who are most likely to be posting or sharing online. While people in disadvantaged communities do increasingly have computers at home, they are less likely to have the multimedia capabilities and bandwidth that are needed for more sophisticated content creation and sharing. ‘Digital divides’ are still apparent here, therefore – and they largely coincide with other differences. Young people from wealthy, middle- class families are also more likely to have books at home, to use the educational dimensions of the internet and to participate in creative or arts-related activities offline. To a large extent, the most active participants in the creative world of Media 2.0 are the ‘usual suspects’ – people who are already privileged in other areas of their lives. Before we assume that these opportunities are largely confined to young people, we also need social networking profile, and filming, editing or holidays on the beach. This material is rarely to look at the age profile of online participation. and posting a video, for example – although edited or shared, and is kept as a record that While younger people initially drove the uptake in surveys all these things tend to be seen as people imagine will be watched at some time in of social networking sites, for example, older evidence of high levels of participation. In fact, the future, even if it rarely is. This is not to say that people are now the fastest-growing group only a very small proportion of users are it is trivial or worthless: on the contrary, home of subscribers. The same is true of mobile generating original content: most are simply video (like the family photo album) can play a communications; while the micro-blogging ‘consuming’ it as they always have done. very important role in terms of memory and service Twitter is largely dominated by middle- Enthusiasts for participatory media tend to family relationships. However, people rarely see it aged people. Young people are sometimes the celebrate the more artistic or innovative ‘cool as having anything to do with what they watch in ‘early adopters’, but the idea that they are a stuff’ that can be found online – fan-produced the mainstream media – let alone as a challenge uniquely ‘digital generation’ – and that there is a mashups, videos about political activism, or to the power of Big Media. kind of technological generation gap – is rapidly experimental digital poetry. They tend to ignore becoming outdated. the relatively banal domestic practices of the 4. Who’s making money? Here’s one celebratory view of the democratic 3. What are they doing? majority of people – such as the funny videos of pets and children and domestic accidents that possibilities of Media 2.0: In these discussions, it’s often assumed that tend to achieve the highest hit rates on sites like Technology is shifting power away from the participation is necessarily a Good Thing in itself. YouTube. editors, the publishers, the establishment, But there is a real problem in defining what Our research on amateur video-making found the media élite… now it’s the people who counts as participation, or as ‘creating content’. that it continues to be dominated by home are taking control. There’s a big difference between posting an movies of family life, children’s birthday parties This quote comes not from a radical media occasional comment on an online forum or a

8 MediaMagazine | February 2012 | english and media centre MM 2.0 2.0

2.02.0 2.0

english and media centre | February 2012 | MediaMagazine 9 MM activist but from a 2006 interview with the notorious media magnate Rupert Murdoch; and it should alert us to the fact that there are large commercial interests at stake in these developments. The two richest and most profitable global media corporations are now Google and Facebook. Both are increasingly diversifying from their initial business – as a search engine and a social networking site – into a whole range of other media and branded products and services. Indeed, the apparent explosion of democratic participation in the media could also be seen as a matter of the growing concentration of power in the hands of a small number of global companies. Of course, this is a very uncertain business. For example, YouTube (now owned by Google) took five years from its launch before it finally came into profit, despite being the second most frequently visited site online. Many well-known services – not least Twitter and Facebook – have struggled to find ways of ‘monetising’ what they do. Others, such as Murdoch’s own MySpace, have undergone a rapid rise and fall. Even so, it’s clear that the internet is an exceptionally efficient medium for niche marketing and for targeting individual consumers. As we surf around, detailed information about our preferences and buying habits is being gathered, often without us knowing it (by means of ‘cookies’ that are planted on the hard drive of our computers). This information is used to ensure that advertising and marketing are targeted only at those people who are most likely to be interested in it; and through a practice known as ‘data mining’, the data can be aggregated and then sold on to other companies. 5. Who’s doing the work? Much of this marketing is itself ‘user- generated’ and ‘interactive’. This is most obvious in the case of viral marketing, where consumers are effectively recruited to distribute commercial messages on behalf of companies. Other companies (such as the mobile phone provider Orange) have picked up on the idea of ‘user-generated content’ by running competitions for consumers to create videos to promote their products. This results in what the media critic Soren Peterson has called ‘loser-generated content’. A great deal of unpaid labour goes into the production of blogs, for example, while most of the income remains with the big corporations. In the case of social networking, participants often spend enormous amounts of time working on their profiles and building networks which they are unable to take with them if they want to migrate to another site. What they produce effectively becomes proprietary information, owned by the company: Mark Zuckerberg owns the copyright of all the content posted on Facebook, and can do what he likes with it. This is also an issue with fan websites, which have been very much celebrated by enthusiasts for Media 2.0. Some argue that fan websites are about consumers taking back control of the media, making their own meanings from

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2.0 2.0

existing media texts, and leading towards a more democratic media environment. There have been some instances where copyright owners – like J.K. Rowling and Warner Brothers, who own the Harry Potter franchise – have taken legal action against fans who have used and reworked their materials in making fan fiction, video mashups, and so on. Yet one could argue that, in the end, these fans are just promoting the brand – they may be using Harry Potter to express their 2.0 own ideas, but they are doing so in a way that contributes to the success and the continuing profitability of the big companies. They may be active participants, but they are also the ultimate consumers. 6. Will Media 2.0 save democracy? So there is a debate to be had about the wider social and political implications of Media 2.0. While some of these developments may have 2.0 been exaggerated, and some may be much less exciting and innovative than people have claimed, it’s clear that we are in a period of significant change. But does this amount to a democratic revolution in communications? Is it really liberating or empowering ordinary people to take control of the media? I think there are good reasons to doubt this. 2.0 Despite the claims of some of the enthusiasts, digital media are not likely to result in a society of creative media producers, any more than the printing press resulted in a society of published authors. Just like ‘old’ media, these new media are driven by commercial imperatives – and that means that some people are bound to benefit from these developments much more than others. While there is certainly a democratic 2.0 promise here, the realisation of that promise will require more than technology alone.

David Buckingham is Professor of Media and Communications at Loughborough University.

english and media centre | February 2012 | MediaMagazine 11 MM

Participation Debates

Democracy. It’s a word we’ve heard a lot of to change the world; but it’s an example of The media and during the last year or so – the General Election media democracy at work. Simon Cowell clearly democracy was an exercise in it; many citizens of Arab states understood the importance of media democracy such as Syria and Libya have been demanding when he said: It’s one of the biggest media debates it; and as a Media Studies student you will have The great thing is when you start seeing heard your teacher use it. it in places like China and Afghanistan. It’s around at the moment: has Web democracy. We’ve kind of given democracy 2.0 and the explosion in social So, what is ‘democracy’? back to the world. Simply, democracy is a form of government But it wasn’t always like this. In the pre-digital networking really opened up new in which all eligible people have an equal era, there were very few ways in which audiences opportunities for democracy? Morag say in decision-making. It is the system of could make their voices heard. Want to complain government used in most countries in the about a TV programme? Send a letter to Points Davis offers a beginners’ guide to world except one-party states such as China; of View and it might be read out on air. Want to some of the ideas you may need to dictatorships such as (until recently) Libya; and comment on local politics? Phone your local non-symbolic monarchies such as Saudi Arabia. radio station and hope you are given a few grapple with. You’re probably wondering how this political seconds of airtime. term relates to the media, and to your studies Now, the digital revolution and Web 2.0 as a Media student. Well, we can apply this idea have given users (i.e. us – because we are no of ‘one person one vote’ to the modern media longer just audiences) the opportunity to landscape. Take The X Factor as an example: in communicate ideas globally through the use of the 2010 series, 15,488,019 million votes were social networking. Back to Mr. Cowell: his dream cast by viewers to decide the outcome of the of democratising the world with bland light programme. This may seem a trivial example entertainment received a crushing blow when, – Matt Cardle (or even Little Mix) is unlikely in Series Six, winner Joe McElderry was held off the crucial Christmas No.1 spot in the British charts by what The Sun called a ‘wacky Facebook campaign’ by ‘foul-mouthed rockers’ Rage Against The Machine. Half a million Facebook users joined an anti-X Factor campaign to

12 MediaMagazine | February 2012 | english and media centre MM protest at the state of the modern music industry, long before the traditional media institutions by buying Killing in the Name – a song about picked up the story. Why is this democratic? Further Reading: rebellion and non-conformity that features the Instead of waiting for the story to be edited and http://books.google.com/books/about/ line ‘F*** you, I won’t do what you tell me’. mediated by news organisations with their own Digital_media_and_democracy.html?id=4bv- On a more political level, some commentators ideological motives, we had access to a huge eeLkG6YC have claimed that the uprisings in Egypt and range of points of view, direct and unmediated. Libya couldn’t have happened without the use Blogging is another way that the media are https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the- of Twitter and Facebook, with young people becoming more democratic. Whether you are world-factbook/fields/2128.html using social media to bypass the old regimes blogging about politics or your favourite band, http://www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/ and organise demonstrations. In fact, it was your blog has (in theory, at least) as much access lostinshowbiz/2010/nov/11/x-factor-simon- probably the mobile phone and its evolution to global audiences as Rupert Murdoch’s News cowell-philip-green into a convergent device that enabled these Corporation. In July 2011 the most popular uprisings – protestors could communicate on the blog was not FailBlog or PerezHilton but The http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/ move and keep one step ahead of the authorities. Huffington Post, a well-respected political blog showbiz/bizarre/2779109/Rage-Against-The- However, in the countries now experiencing with 54 million monthly readers. Machine-beat-Joe-McElderry-in-race-for- this ‘Arab Spring’, access to mobile technology Some of the most significant events of the Christmas-number-one.html and the internet is still limited to a relatively last ten years have been communicated by http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/books/ small elite, so perhaps we have not yet seen true ordinary people who just happened to be in the ways-with-words/8629294/Ways-With-Words- democracy through the media. right place at the right time: the iconic video role-of-Twitter-and-Facebook-in-Arab-Spring- If information is power, then the internet has footage of the attack on the Twin Towers on 11th uprising-overstated-says-Hisham-Matar.html empowered its users by giving them unparalleled September 2001; the first hand reports from the instant and almost unmediated access to Iran uprising – increasingly we are reporting and http://utalkmarketing.com/pages/Article.aspx unfolding news stories from a variety of sources, recording the news. ?ArticleID=14439&title=Social_media_claims_ bypassing the hegemonic institutions that So is traditional journalism dead? Is citizen victory_reporting_Michael_Jackson_death_ control the dominant media discourses in society. journalism the future? Perhaps not, but what first Take the death of Michael Jackson. If you spend citizen journalism can do is provide eyewitness http://www.ebizmba.com/articles/blogs as much time online as I do, then you probably accounts and subjective angles on stories Gurevitch, Michael, Bennett, Tony, Curran, found out about Jackson’s death through the to complement the work of professional news James & Woollacott, Janet (Ed.) (1982): Culture, internet. Reports first appeared on Twitter and organisations. Society and the Media (Part 1, ‘Class, Ideology Facebook, then on the TMZ entertainment blog, Are we moving towards a Liberal Pluralist and the Media’) society where competing voices are all heard and audiences have as much influence as media institutions? Perhaps this is too idealistic a dream; but we do seem to have entered a new age when audiences are producers and the traditional power structures are being forced to listen.

Morag Davis is a Lecturer in Film and Media at Nelson and Colne College.

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14 MediaMagazine | February 2012 | english and media centre MM Social Networking and Citizen Journalism

Participating in The Arab Spring

Massive claims have been made for the role of citizen journalism in spreading word of the uprisings now known as the Arab Spring. But how crucial was social networking as a catalyst – and have we really witnessed the first Facebook revolution?

2011 was a year of massive changes and huge news stories, from The News of the World phone hacking scandal to the Japanese earthquake and tsunami. One of the biggest stories in a year of big stories has become known as the Arab So what has all this to do with social Spring. This was a series of revolutions, which networking, and what is citizen journalism? began in January 2011 and went on to rock the Social networking is a modern phenomenon Arab world. They started in Tunisia in January whereby millions of people keep up with friends, and moved rapidly on to include Egypt, Libya arrange their lives and publicise their news and Syria. Major demonstrations and unrest also online. Facebook and Twitter are clearly the occurred in Jordan, Bahrain, The Yemen and two premium brands at the moment. However, Morocco. Not all of the uprisings turned out the let’s look at them later and turn first to citizen same way; in Tunisia and Egypt, long-standing journalism. dictators were rapidly overthrown and in the case of Egypt’s President Hosni Mubarak brought ‘YouTube: Broadcast Yourself’ to trial. In Libya, a civil war broke out in February, As a branding strap-line, this could hardly be and NATO and the UK became militarily involved more appropriate to this topic. to prevent a massacre of the Libyan people by Citizen journalism has grown up with the the forces of the Libyan dictator Colonel Gaddafi. arrival of cheap camera phones and YouTube. Subsequently, Gaddafi was himself overthrown In the past, the news was reported exclusively and killed in October 2011. In Syria, the uprising by professional news crews on the scene of an has been repressed with extreme brutality by unfolding news event. When journalists were the government of Bashir Assad. Currently, the absent, or were prevented from getting to where outcome of that struggle remains unclear. events were taking place, there could be no direct

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the footage has been faked, or is not actually of the event it is claimed to be about. A recent instance concerned footage sent to a British broadcaster, which claimed to show massacres in the recent civil war in the Ivory Coast. It did show a massacre – but in a different African country at a different time. Fortunately for the broadcaster, they realised this and did not show it. Broadcasters have to be very careful not to be manipulated into misrepresenting events when they are not actually there to check the facts for themselves. The problem in verifying footage posted on YouTube is a major difficulty with citizen journalism. However the advantages are enormous; it means that ordinary people in war zones or natural disasters can get their story out to the wider world and help to bring pressure to stop brutal repression or to obtain disaster relief and food aid. It should be remembered that many poorer nations do not enjoy anything like the coverage. All that has now changed. Camera level of internet access enjoyed in Europe and phones mean that coverage can be recorded by the U.S., so YouTube and its like will not always ordinary members of the public and uploaded be the answer. But as long as a cameraphone to the internet in minutes. This is probably not and internet link can be found somewhere in the particularly important when the news event is area, then people can be empowered and their a movie premiere or celebrity meltdown as the stories can be told. Much of the footage of recent news teams and paparazzi will be there anyway. natural disasters such as the Japanese tsunami But where it does matter, especially in the case was shot and uploaded by locals and tourists. of the Arab Spring uprisings, is in places that The coverage was all the more immediate and journalists can’t get to. impactful for this, hastening the demands for Syria, for instance, banned foreign journalists international assistance. from operating in the country. This meant there teams in place, or where journalists have been One of the earliest instances of this kind of could be no direct coverage of events. In the denied access. This means that news reporting non-professional journalism was footage shot past this meant that dictatorships could set has become much more immediate. However, it in the London tube tunnels by survivors of the about murdering their own people and crushing does pose its own set of problems. 7/7 bombing attacks, footage that could have dissent, knowing that the world could not see; been gained no other way. and with no evidence or independent witnesses, Journalistic integrity Citizen journalism clearly won’t solve Respected news organisations like the BBC and it was unlikely that dictators or their thugs would everything and has its own problems. However CNN have to uphold a reputation for truthfulness ever be held to account for their crimes. a technology which brings the reality of and honesty. The people uploading to the net When protestors were shot dead by the dictatorship or disaster to the world’s attention are often anonymous members of the public Egyptian police in early 2011, evidence was can be no bad thing, particularly since this can who have no need to attempt to be balanced or immediately flashed onto YouTube. Such give a voice to ordinary people trapped in the impartial. You will have noticed that recent news coverage has dramatically changed the way news middle of tragic events. It is not a replacement reports often include health warnings saying is gathered. News organisations now routinely for professional journalism but an addition to it; ‘this footage has not been verified’. This is the scour online clips sites for footage of events and as many now acknowledge, it has changed news organisation trying to cover itself in case which happened too fast for them to have their the game forever.

english and media centre | February 2012 | MediaMagazine 17 MM so ingrained and so overwhelming that people million users by the time the revolution started, will risk their lives to obtain change. This is what spreading the word about government brutality happened in the Arab Spring. The social networks and the need for change. ‘There were many became a tool for the publicising of ordinary catalysts for the uprising’ said Ahmed Zidan, an peoples’ hatred of their government and desire online political activist. ‘The first was the brutal for change. It should be remembered that the murder of Khalid Said’. internet, along with the old media, has also Social networks are clearly capable of far more been a major way in which people can be shown than simply keeping us in touch with friends alternatives to their current unhappy state; and and family, or organising a night out. However that, in itself, can fuel the desire for change. that is not say that they can solve everything. Information, as they say, is power. No revolution against oppression could be The social networks did more than simply conducted entirely via the internet. At some give people an outlet for their discontent. They stage, oppressed people would have to be willing became platforms for potential rebels to make to take the big risk of going onto the streets to contact with each other and to organise protest. take on a brutal government. And as can be seen One of the strengths of this approach to the from recent events, the outcomes cannot be uprisings was that demonstrations could be predicted. organised with very short notice, giving the In Tunisia and Egypt, repressive regimes were authorities very little time to respond before rapidly brought down; but in Libya, a bloody people were out on the streets. It also could eight-month civil war only ended with the equally easily provide a focal point for the dissatisfaction brutal death of Colonel Gaddafi. In Syria and of ordinary people. The Facebook page We are Bharain, systematic repression seems to have What does social networking all Khalid Said played a major role in the uprising contained dissent, at least for the moment. These have to do with revolution? in Egypt. movements also need charismatic leaders who Many have looked at the impact of social can inspire people face to face, not just on the media on the events of the Arab Spring. What the We are all Khalid Said internet. The creator of Facebook himself, Mark events all have in common is that the countries In June 2010, Khalid Said, an Egyptian Zuckerberg, has played down the impact his were all repressively run by long-standing businessman and anti-corruption campaigner site has had in the events of the Arab Spring. For dictators. One of the key tools for a dictator, was pulled from an internet café by the Egyptian such seismic events to take place, the will has to other than the willingness to use extreme police and beaten to death. In the past his death be there, which means a level of desperation and violence, is the need to keep information away might have gone unnoticed by all but his family determination has been reached, making people from the population they want to control. It and friends. The Egyptian police had a long willing to take direct action. Social networks have was not for nothing that the Nazis of Hitler’s history of such brutality. However this time it acted as tools, enabling something for which Germany burned books. For similar reasons it is was different. Within days an anonymous activist there was already the desire. no coincidence that the Egyptian government had created a Facebook page where images of The Italian theorist Gramsci wrote in the tried to shut down internet access during the Said’s battered and bloody body in the morgue 1930s of the need for people to withdraw their uprising. could be seen, contrasting with YouTube videos consent to be dominated before a revolution Clearly a revolution will not start just because of him as a happy and smiling young man. The can begin. He argued that the formation of that people can communicate. You need to have a effect was electric. The site had nearly half a critical mass was essential to the creation of longstanding list of problems and grievances,

18 MediaMagazine | February 2012 | english and media centre MM Follow It Up : Terror Strikes Norway In Deadly Attacks On Island And Oslo 23/07/11 The Guardian: Defiant from The Dock, Norway’s Mass Killer Boasts More Will Die 26/07/11 The Guardian: Norway Gunman Claims A London Connection And Links To The EDL http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/jul/24/ norway-gunman-london-connection-edl 02/08/11 The Independent: Egypt Erupts 23/01/11 Bafta: The Arab Spring-a Broadcasting Revolution http://www.bafta.org/whats-on/the-arab- spring-a-broadcasting-revolution,1779,BA.html 04/08/11 The Financial Times: Facebook’s Arab Spring Role ‘Overplayed’ says Zuckerberg http://blogs.ft.com/fttechhub/2011/05/ facebook-eg8/#axzz1cpPR3dMC 04/08/11 The New York Times: Movement Began With Outrage And A Facebook Page That Gave It An Outlet http://www.nytimes. com/2011/02/06/world/middleeast/06face. html?pagewanted=all 04/08/11 The New York Times: How Obama Tapped Into Social Networks Power http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/10/ business/media/10carr.html 02/08/11 Stratofor.com: Social Media As A Tool For Protest http://www.stratfor.com/weekly/20110202- social-media-tool-protest 02/08/11 a desire for change so powerful, that it could overturn an entrenched and longstanding Time Magazine: Obama And Twitter: White dictatorship. House Social Networking The use of social networks for political http://www.time.com/time/politics/ purposes is nothing new. Barack Obama, in article/0,8599,1896482,00.html 02/08/11 his bid for the U.S. Presidency in 2008, was one of the first major political leaders to use social networking to organise his supporters, raise money and galvanise his voters. The question of morality Something else should be considered when So has this been a Facebook/ thinking about the impact of social networks on Twitter/YouTube revolution? intense political situations. Like all technologies, These technologies, which have enabled the they have no built-in morality. They are just as spread of ideas and given a voice to ordinary effective in conveying negative ideologies that people, have, for good or ill, clearly made can lead to murder and violence as they are in a significant difference to recent events. conveying information that leads to beneficial Information is gathered and spread far faster change such as a move from dictatorship to than would otherwise have been possible and democracy. totalitarian regimes have found it harder to hide It has often been suggested that terrorists, their crimes. However, they are technologies that such as those behind the 7/7 bombings, have can as easily be used negatively as positively. Social been radicalised in their views via the internet. Like anything else, they provide an expression Recently, Anders Breivik, the Norwegian far of human wants and desires. They are tools. right, mass murderer, had an extensive online Perhaps Mark Zuckerberg was correct not to presence via Facebook. He posted a 1500-page overplay their importance. manifesto of his views and claimed to have many hundreds of other far right and Neo Nazi Jonathan Nunns is Head of Media Studies at Collyer’s activists as Facebook friends and supporters. College, and moderates for the WJEC. Networking andenglish and media centre | February 2012Citizen | MediaMagazine 19 Journalism MM

20 MediaMagazine | February 2012 | english and media centre MM Keeping it Real

Educating Essex and the Rebirth of ‘Fly-on- the-Wall’

What happens when a school decides to let TV cameras in and film the life of its staff and students? History tells us that the results are frequently mixed, for both the viewers and the school itself (‘Head on the Block’ anyone? Google it and see what you think). Steve Connolly investigates.

Vic Goddard, the Head of Passmores Academy in Harlow, Essex, must have thought long and hard about exposing his school to the harsh glare of publicity that a documentary camera crew would bring with it when it walked through his doors. But that is what they did, and the resulting programme, Educating Essex (EE), appears to have been

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22 MediaMagazine | February 2012 | english and media centre MM extremely popular, thought provoking and proper old-fashioned documentary making. engaging. But the deliberate ploy of connecting the From a critical point of view too, EE has a lot programme with the Essex theme shows us that to tell us about the way that modern television TV is like any other business, in that it needs to gets made, and the way that audiences still get people through the door in order to sell its have the power to influence programme products. makers and texts. As Media students, we often In this case, the Essex connection is like a need to try to analyse the way that programmes great big sign on the outside of the shop saying get made in order to understand why the ‘Something like TOWIE inside!!!’. This sign gets audience ends up watching what it watches. In a big crowd of people in to the shop (in this case, the case of EE, what we have are some excellent Channel 4) and those people then spend their examples of ‘audience power’ at work, with money (or viewing figures – about 2.5 million on audiences not only influencing what gets made, a good day) on the programme, even though it is but also the way it gets made and distributed. not entirely what they bargained for. The interest of audiences in all things Essex (Es)sex Sells is important here because EE demonstrates It may seem irrelevant to a ‘fly on the wall’ Channel 4 responding to audience demand, documentary (a term that will be explored suggesting that if enough viewers show interest further later on) about a school, but there is in a topic programme makers will follow. a significant connection between EE and the ‘constructed reality’ car crash that is The Only Reality vs. Real Life – EE as Way is Essex. While the pre-rehearsed and spray- documentary tanned socialites of TOWIE might seem a long While we might be tempted to see EE as way from the well-disciplined world of Mr Drew just another ‘reality TV show’ (possibly because and his colleagues, in the mind of the viewing of connections to that other TV phenomenon public, the programme has created a national emanating from North of the Thames Estuary) obsession with the county. we should really be wary of lumping it in with Tony Parsons, a veteran journalist, anything that carries that label. broadcaster, author and professional Essex boy, It is clearly not, for example the same kind who started his career with the NME has claimed of show as The X Factor or Big Brother. In fact, that Essex fascinates people because it is the EE’s embedded camera format and ‘voice-of- god’ narration actually harks back more to a documentary style that was first seen nearly 40 years ago. Known as ‘fly-on-the-wall’, these early TV documentaries themselves drew substantially from the cinematic documentaries of the 1960s, where there was a desire to let the camera run and see what happened. There would be no presenter, and comment or narration would be minimal, in order that the viewer got a more accurate sense of what was real, without over- relying on an ‘expert’ or ‘talking head’. Considering EE as a ‘fly-on-the-wall’ place where working-class Londoners go as soon documentary raises questions about the nature as they make money, and what draws viewers of both reality as it is portrayed on screen and to TOWIE is a mixture of snobbery (these are the term realism – something that as a Media working-class people with money, something student you should be thinking about all the which discomforts many middle-class people) time. When we talk about a film or TV programme and envy (at the brilliantly blatant way that being ‘realistic’, we are often thinking about the individuals featured in TOWIE are upwardly any number of different qualities which are mobile). dependent on what that film or TV programme is. Parsons cuts a controversial figure with these So, for example, we might say that the TV news views; but what is not in doubt is that TOWIE has is ‘realistic’, but when we use the same word to been a huge success for ITV, and particularly for describe a scene in our favourite horror film, we ITV2, which has become the home of a good deal are clearly talking about something different. of the network’s reality output. With this in mind then, it seems that Channel How realistic is Educating 4 saw an opportunity to exploit a representation of Essex that stemmed from the boys and girls Essex? Well, the cameras were embedded in the from Brentwood and Chigwell over on their school for a seven-week period between the rival channel. The series had originally been start of November and the end of December called ‘The School’; the title, apparently worth 2010. This means that each of the 65 Channel 500,000 viewers, was changed by C4 shortly 4 cameras probably captured, at a conservative before broadcasting. Indeed, the clever use of estimate, around 150 hours of film each – 9,750 several stereotypes associated with the county hours in total. in the trailers for EE suggested initially that it What the audience saw was seven x 1-hour might simply be TOWIE translated to a school programmes, which captured the highlights of environment – just re-watch the ‘What is Pi?’ this footage. The first question we should ask trailer to investigate this further. then, is about the way that the choices made However, what actually followed was a much about selecting those seven hours might affect more realistic text, and in many ways, a piece of

english and media centre | February 2012 | MediaMagazine 23 MM The comments made about the show following on reviews also give some sense of the way that the viewing public has reacted to the representation of life at Passmores. The vast amount of comment seems actually to be quite positive. There are, as one would expect, a number of ‘Education is going to hell in a handcart’ type comments, but perhaps unexpectedly, these are as numerous on the Guardian website as they are on the Daily Mail’s (to take two examples). Individuals involved in EE have suggested that there will not be another series, but media speculation has pointed out that Channel 4 are unlikely to pass up the opportunity to go after a similar level of ratings. This should demonstrate to us that, from a critical point of view, EE presents Media students with an unusual paradox; on the one hand it borrows from an old-fashioned TV genre to remind us of an old- fashioned truth – that any TV programme is only as good as its last set of ratings. Yet, in many ways, it is indicative of the newest kinds of media text, in that it allows its audiences to shape and interact with it to create new meanings and texts.

Steve Connolly is Assistant Headteacher at Addington High School, Croydon.

References the realism of the programme. ask themselves what influence the subject of the http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/ It would be logical to assume that the most documentary might have had over the finished uk-england-15579721 realistic representation of life at Passmores programme, because that raises questions about http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/education/930108. school could be gained by simply watching all the realistic qualities of the text. stm 150 hours of footage from each camera. But, of course, this would neither be practical nor Audience Power – Extending www.barb.co.uk engaging for the audience. What the audience Series, Social Networks and http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/ gets is the edited highlights, which are in one Beyond uk-england-15579721 sense a constructed version of events – not as EE was originally promoted as a four-part constructed as the pre-rehearsed conversations series, but was extended to seven parts, mid- http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/columnists/ of TOWIE – but nevertheless a version that run. This was undoubtedly because Channel 4 parsons/2010/10/23/three-sneers-for-essex-i- chooses to follow some students and not others. saw its rising viewing figures – topping out at 2.5 m-proud-to-be-its-son-115875-22652765/ While the audience does seem to be getting staff million – as being an indicator that the show was Kilborn, Richard and Izod, John (1997): An and students captured as they are, we should a hit. Introduction to Television Documentary remember that the editor, director and other Just to put that in perspective, Channel http://www.barb.co.uk/ people involved in the making of EE do want 4’s mainstay soap opera Hollyoaks, currently to tell particular stories. These are real stories but struggles to hit 1 million viewers on a weekly they have particular narratives that they feel the basis. In the week beginning the 30th October, EE audience will find compelling. was only beaten to the Number 1 slot on Channel Exclusive to MM! It is also interesting to speculate about what 4’s BARB ratings by Grand Designs. This is in, and See our exclusive video interview with kind of editorial input the school had in the of itself, an example of audience power, where Headteacher Vic Goddard, where he offers making of the programme. We might wonder if the number of people watching has gone up and the inside story on the production process, the at any point, Vic Goddard, or his staff, exercised influenced a change in the broadcaster’s plans for school’s response to the series and the impact any kind of veto of what went out on air. Stephen the show. of social media and the press. Online now for Drew, the marvellously persistent Deputy Head at However, this is only one way that the web subscribers in the MediaMagClips gallery. Passmores, has said publicly that he is very happy audience can ‘participate’ in the programme. about the way that the school and staff have Consider for a moment the way that the staff been portrayed. and students of the show might allow viewers Personally, I suspect that this is entirely to have a relationship with the school beyond truthful, because from a teacher’s perspective, the 1-hour weekly documentary. Vic Goddard, the programme does highlight the kind of issues as headteacher, has his own blog on the Harlow that arise in many state schools, and shows the Star local news website, and Stephen Drew found fact that the relationships that exist between himself ‘trending’ as one of the hot topics on staff and students in those schools are largely Twitter during October. These social media allow positive. Nevertheless, when considering fly-on- the audience to interact (at a quite basic level, the-wall documentaries, or indeed any other kind admittedly) with the show, creating both a sense of documentaries, media students should always of identity with it, and ownership of it.

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Test Screenings

Exhibition, Participation and Intervention

Test screenings: are they a necessary evil or an insult to the creativity of filmmakers? Commercial necessity or sell out? Creative compromise or unreasonable interference? Pete Turner weighs the arguments for and against this controversial form of audience research.

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26 MediaMagazine | February 2012 | english and media centre MM Test Screenings are the most common form is clear from this that directors are replaceable of audience research used by Hollywood and the and the audience response is far more film industry as a whole. important than the director’s vision. Long in advance of the release of a film, a On the other hand, it can sometimes be the small audience will be invited to a secret preview. director who wants test screenings and invites Effects may not be completed, the soundtrack feedback from potential audiences. Billy Wilder may be temporary and the film will sometimes screened an early cut of his (now) classic Sunset have barely left the edit suite before it is screened Boulevard (1950) for an audience, and was told to a few film fans to gain feedback from the by a woman in attendance that ‘I never saw audience. A questionnaire is generally handed such a pile of shit in all my life’ (Hennigan, 2003). out after the film and the audience asked to After attending this test screening, he chopped complete it. Questions could be on anything from the opening and closing scenes as a result of the opening of the film, to individual characters, the audience’s responses, and the film is now to the soundtrack, or even to the ending of considered a classic. the film. The audience will be responsible for Test screenings can be responsible for a huge giving the filmmakers feedback on what does range of changes made to a film, from a complete and doesn’t work; and the responses could lead re-shooting of the ending all the way down to a to drastic changes in the film or its marketing simple change of title. For example the title of the strategy before it is finally released. Attendees are Bond film Licence to Kill (1989) required to sign a non-disclosure form so they was initially… Licence Revoked, but this was cannot leak details of the film on their blogs or to changed after test screenings revealed that the press. US crowds associated the term with driving With test screenings becoming increasingly Radford, 2008 common, the question is; should the artist or the As a result, promotional material such as teaser audience get the final cut? posters had to be shelved due to the name Early cinema change. Silent film star Harold Lloyd and producer More seriously, though, many films have had Hal Roach are considered to be the pioneers drastic changes made to them at huge costs. of obtaining feedback from audiences at test Little Shop of Horrors (1986) was test-screened screenings. Way back in the silent cinema days of in front of an audience of families, and as a result 1921, the pair would take early cuts of films to a had a completely new ending created. When theatre to gauge audience response. If gags were the protagonists died and giant plants began failing to get laughs, trims and cuts were made destroying Manhattan, director Frank Oz said: to the film before the proper release. In the case the audience was totally silent. They were of one of their films, A Sailor-Made Man (1921) waiting for something to happen and when it the initial cut screened for audiences tested so didn’t, they were very angry at us positively that the star and producer decided http://mondomusicals.blogspot.com/2008/02/little- not to cut anything from the film. This meant shop-of-horrors-stage-to-screen.html that instead of being released as a ‘2-reel short’, This meant a ‘$5 million sequence was now as it was conceived, it became a feature length relegated to the cutting room floor, and another film (only the second ever made by a silent film ending was needed’. But the question is: was comedian). Notice that in these early days the Little Shop of Horrors even intended for a family director Fred C. Newmeyer does not seem to be audience? involved in the test screening process. In the early days of the Hollywood studio system, directors Spoiler alert: Se7en (and stars) were contracted to work on films the This idea of test screening for the target studio wanted them to work on; they had very audience comes up again and again. 1995), David Fincher’s bleak serial killer masterpiece, ends with the hero’s wife’s severed head delivered to the hero in a box. The film shows the graphic, gory aftermath of several severely sickening slayings, and was tested in front of an audience who had been told they would be seeing the new Brad Pitt/Morgan Freeman movie. At the time Freeman was best known for being in Driving Miss Daisy and Pitt for Legends of the Fall. As a result one older woman who walked out halfway through the movie said, ‘Whoever made this piece of filth should be shot’... directly to David Fincher (http://www. everything2.org/index.pl?node_id=1316247). little power, and almost certainly no say over the Fortunately both Pitt and Fincher fought final cut of the films. for the depressing ending, and the studio In the case of the Laurel and Hardy flick, kept it intact, resulting in the film becoming a Should Sailors Marry? (1925), the ‘director/writer classic of the crime genre. But why was the film Jess Robbins washed his hands of the picture’ being tested in front of an audience of people (Sinnott, 2005) after test screenings produced expecting Driving Miss Daisy and Legends of negative responses. Producer Hal Roach (again!) the Fall? got James Parrot in to re-shoot some scenes after Bleak, uncertain or open endings are often the director left – and the film was salvaged. It

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28 MediaMagazine | February 2012 | english and media centre MM Spielberg even suggested a change to the Having attended a test screening in October ending which was later used for the cinema for Ben Drew’s (rap/soul artist Plan B) directorial release. Then the footage from audience test debut Ill Manors (2012), I can say that test screenings was used in the trailer to show how screenings have the potential to be a useful tool. people were reacting to the film. No doubt you In this case, the filmmakers are being required will have heard it became a huge success! to get the film down to a shorter length and Some directors (including Spielberg) hate the therefore need to trim it by around forty minutes process. Some are more open to it. Frank Oz says (but who makes these demands and why?). the audience is a very dynamic part of a Looking at the questionnaire, I started to wonder movie. You don’t make a movie for yourself; about the range of responses its production you make it for the audience company Revolver Entertainment would be http://mondomusicals.blogspot.com/2008/02/little- getting from the assembled audience. As a Media shop-of-horrors-stage-to-screen.html teacher I like to think I know a fair bit about film; narrative, scriptwriting, production etc. I tried to Some argue that screenings give executives make my responses reflect this. But I’m not sure and directors ‘an inside look at what audiences that I’m even the target audience for this film, so really want and helps ensure a bigger box office are my responses valid? And I found it very hard return’ (http://www.everything2.org/index. to fill out the form thoughtfully and carefully. I pl?node_id=1316247). wonder if others had more or less trouble. But many more are concerned with the So, is it fair that audiences and profit-hungry increasing amount this audience research executives should get the final say after technique is used. Some are fearful that test filmmakers shed blood, sweat and tears creating screenings are damaging as they can lead to the films? Just remember if you get into a test piracy and leaks. In fact the ‘thriving website screening, the power to change the movies could Ain’t It Cool News receives and airs verdicts be in your hands. from people who have been to test screenings’ Never underestimate the power of crowds (Radford, 2008). This could be seen as harmful to when it comes to the movies. In the final a film but it could also generate buzz. reckoning, it’s not the producers, the The right demographic moneymen, or the stars who call the shots: Some critics are concerned about the [it’s] the reactions of audiences. demographic that is targeted by the major Radford, 2008 studios. ’Typical’ American moviegoers get to tell Pete Turner is undertaking a PhD at Oxford Brookes the Hollywood bigs how to improve their University and writes a film blog at http://ilovethatfilm. products before they’re released. Test- blogspot.com/ audience members are often white males, 16 to 32 years old, who are recruited in L.A. suburbs, usually from colleges and shopping References the casualties of test screenings. Blade Runner malls. (1982), Fatal Attraction (1987) and Australia Vaughn, 1991 Hennigan (2003): http://www.bbc.co.uk/ (2008) all had different endings to those originally films/2003/03/11/the_making_of_sunset_ scribbled by the writers and shot by the directors. boulevard_article.shtml Monahan (2008) argues the studio executives Masters (2009): http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/ require directors to shoot new endings so that entertainment/8362302.stm filmgoers will be left with a collective smile on their faces and Monahan (2008): http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/ therefore, so the logic goes, render the film culture/markmonahan/5689987/Australia_ more lucrative. why_the_happy_ending/ Mainstream audiences are expected to want Radford (2008): http://www.guardian.co.uk/ resolution, happy endings and all their film/2008/aug/21/1 questions answered by the end of the film. If the film does not conform, it will make less money for Sinnott (2005): http://www.dvdtalk.com/ the studios that financed it in the hope of making reviews/17517/oliver-hardy-collection/ a huge profit. Vaughn (1991): http://www.ew.com/ew/ article/0,,316385,00.html Paranormal Activity As this demographic is considered to be the But perhaps this is too cynical. Some films have biggest cinema-going audience, studios pay http://mondomusicals.blogspot.com/2008/02/ benefited greatly from test screenings, including more attention to what young white males little-shop-of-horrors-stage-to-screen.html the first instalment in what has now become have to say. Therefore films aimed at different http://www.everything2.org/index.pl?node_ a major franchise: Paranormal Activity (2007). ethnicities, gender and age groups may be id=1316247 Originally made for £9000, the director expected affected by the desire to appeal to the widest it to go straight to DVD. Then Dreamworks, audience with the most disposable income. the major Hollywood studio owned by Steven Monahan puts his criticisms most bluntly: Spielberg, got word of it and wanted to see the First, test-audiences are essentially film in order to see if it could be remade with a filmmaking-by-committee, and as everyone bigger budget for a bigger audience. After the knows, no committee has ever made screening anything entirely worthwhile in the history the Dreamworks executives… immediately of creation. Second, when you really think decided let’s forget about a remake, let’s about it, it’s the bleakest endings that stick release the original movie most powerfully in the mind. Masters, 2009 Monahan, 2008

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How I Make Things Garth Jennings on making a TV commercial

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Garth Jennings, a massive hit at our MediaMag Student Conference last November, is best known for being half of Hammer and Tongs, the production company responsible for scores of music videos, including REM, Blur, , , Pulp and more, and the films and The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. He’s also directed a whole heap of TV adverts, featuring such creatures as the PG Tips monkey and the Honey Monster, and campaigns for McDonald’s and Goodfellas. Here he tells the story of his recent Phones 4u commercial.

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We open on a woman doing a spot of last minute Christmas shopping. It’s late at night and the streets are deserted. Everything is covered in snow. As she hurries back to her car, she spots a ghostly little girl staring at her. The girl is wearing a Victorian nightie and cradling something in her arms. She quietly sings a nursery rhyme under her breath. Everywhere the woman walks the little girl follows her, staring from afar. The woman finally gets back to her car, which is parked in a multi-storey car park. She desperately tries to find her keys. But to her horror, the little girl is staring at her from across the car park. The girl then slowly drifts towards the woman and shows her what she is cradling in her arms. It’s the Nokia X302. The woman takes a sharp intake of breath. The little girl says: Duh. You should’ve got the Nokia ______My name is Garth Jennings and I’m a film I often get asked how I work, so I’m going to from only £****. It’s the perfect gift, silly. director. I also direct music videos and TV use a recent commercial I directed as an example Cut to pack shot, logo, and end line: commercials. of my process. Missing our deals this Christmas will haunt I love filmmaking. Whether it’s a feature film, a you. music video or a commercial – I just love telling Phones 4u – Scary Girl Cut back to the little girl. She looks at the a story with pictures and sounds. If there is a I directed this commercial in October 2011, camera and eerily does the Phones 4u hand better job, I have yet to find it. It’s hard work and and here’s how it went from an idea to being gesture. at times it keeps me awake with worry – but what broadcast on TV. To start with, an advertising agency is asked could be more fun than building spaceships, The Phones 4u guys really like this script these to come up with a TV ad that will promote a working with great actors, mice, puppets, genius guys came up, with so the next step is to find product. In this case, Phones 4u ask the agency cameramen, special effects and music composers someone to make it. To do this, the creative team Adam & Eve to provide this service and a creative – and that’s just the beginning! Being a director at the advertising agency look through showreels team come up with the idea of ‘MISSING OUR exposes me to so many fascinating aspects of – compilations of work by different directors. DEALS WILL HAUNT YOU’. filmmaking that I cannot imagine ever tiring of it They normally pick about three or four directors The client thinks this is a great idea so the (except for location scouting, which often means they think might be good for the job. I am one of two creative dudes (Aiden, an English guy and taking long bus rides to somewhere very boring the chosen few. They send me the script – I like it Laurence, a French dude) write a script for a indeed!). – so we speak on the phone. It went a bit like this: 30-second ad. Here’s exactly what they wrote…

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Me: Hey, this idea is great! commercial in what’s called a ‘treatment’. In car parks. The one we like the look of the most is Them: Oh thanks. my treatment I describe everything I will do to underneath Covent Garden Flower Market. So off Me: I had some thoughts though – like make this commercial – from the way it is lit with we all go! Cameraman, gaffer (he is in charge we could set the whole thing in an fluorescent tube lighting to using anamorphic of all the lights) the rigger (he is in charge of underground car park because filming lenses (they are movie lenses and they make the the special equipment that moves the camera outside with fake snow is tricky and light bend in a cool way). around) the art director (he makes sure it looks expensive. So the lady just comes out of So the agency repeats this process with the good and builds/provides any props we need), an elevator and into the car park. Those other directors, and then choose the director who me, Nick the producer and his dog Mack. (Mack places are very scary, especially when no they think has the best approach. In this case it comes everywhere with Nick. He’s a very cool one else is around. Also I think the little was me! dog.) girl should just sort of be omnipresent so My producer Nick is in charge of making all There we are in the car park – taking photos the lady is getting more and more freaked of this happen. He’s a genius at putting things and discussing how we would film it. We decide out until – BAM! The girl is right there together. First of all he calls a casting director we will need to build a fake elevator door at one pressed up against the window! and gives a description of the kind of people we end of the car park. The art department team Them: That’s a good idea. So you suggest we lose need for filming. Here’s what we asked for with measure the area we plan to build it in and go the bit with her floating towards the car? regards the scary girl. away to start constructing it. Me: Yes, because it won’t make the audience She must be short, slim/bony, fairly pale Meanwhile, a car has been hired for the hero jump – it will just sort of look weird. Much skin, dark haired girl in the tradition of in the commercial. It has doors we can pull off so better to go for a big surprise if we only these characters. A good reference for this we can get the camera inside. The wardrobe has have 30 seconds. style is the ghost story The Others. I’m not been selected and we are ready to test out the sure of age as height (she should be a lot make-up. The conversation carries on, with us all shorter than our female hero) and ability is The make-up and wardrobe test goes well. discussing the look of the film and the editing more important but certainly being young We find just the right level of white for her face, style. We seem to be on the same page, so I is better. She will be made up to look as pale oil to make her hair look wet and together with write up all my ideas of how I would make their as someone who has been frozen over night, the creative team from the agency decide upon possibly even soaking wet (or wet effect) and a dress. made to lie with her face squashed against a While Nick is booking everything we need for windscreen so she must be happy to go along the shoot – from a catering truck and chefs to with this. cook breakfast, lunch and tea for the 30 people Ten days later we have an audition and see 30 needed to work on the shoot to ordering the film girls for this one part. We picked the girl we liked for the camera – I get to work on storyboarding the best and her measurements were taken by the sequence. Harriet the costume designer. I love storyboards. Up until now I have had the Next stop – scary car park. Our location whole sequence in my head, but this process puts manager has looked through his archives and it on the page so everyone can see how it’s going found photos of lots of different underground to work.

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see exactly what is being filmed and can ask me any questions they like. We give them lots of tea, biscuits and magazines to keep them occupied. Being on a set when you don’t have much to do can get a bit boring. Not for me though – it’s great fun and you are always up against the clock. It takes nine goes to get the timing of the 2-shot right. This is where the little girl is first revealed. (SBDA) It takes 13 attempts to get the shot of the door closing just right (CS14). Why? Because that shot will only be 1.5 seconds long and I need just the right things to happen in that short space of time. The camera must move quickly from one side to the other, the actor must tuck in her seat belt and turn her head in just the right way. She must also have the right expression on her face and sometimes her hair keeps falling in front of her eyes, which hides her face. It sounds Now everything is ready. We have everything normal; but it can sometimes take much longer annoying but when you get it right it’s like – planned out. It’s going to take one day to film to prepare for. (If you need to build special props BINGO! – We got it! the commercial. We will start at 7am so that we for example. I once had to build a talking moose- have time to get the makeup ready and we aim head, and that took about 6 weeks.) The edit to finish at 7pm. 7am: the crew and the actors arrive. The shoot went really well and editing takes Armed with all of this information we have 7.30am: everyone eats some breakfast. place the next day with my friend Dom. Dom is one last meeting with the advertising agency 8am: we set up the lights and camera. the best editor in the world and also shares my and their client. This is just to check everyone is 9am: we start shooting. love of black coffee and cakes. We spend a day clear on what we are going to do. If there are any It’s great fun. Our actors are really good and putting the footage together and then show the questions, now is the time to ask. Quite a lot tea the camera crew make everything look perfect. agency. They love it but suggest a few tweaks. and biscuits gets eaten in this meeting. Our fake elevator doors look good too – opened These are little changes to the edit and we all up by our friend Neil pulling on a bit of rope just like it. The shoot out of shot. Neil also chucks buckets of water It’s time to shoot! It’s taken about three over the floor to make it look creepier. Post-production weeks from the time we had the first call with The client and the advertising agency watch The agency shows it to their client. The client the agency to the day we are shooting. This is everything I am doing on a monitor. They can loves it! So we finish it off. The film is put through

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a special process called grading (you can alter The joy of filmmaking All of this is possible because I work with the colours and contrast etc. to make the images For films the process is MUCH longer. amazing and talented people. Most of them are look as good as possible) then my friend Joby Scripts can take years to get right. Filming is my friends too. This is because we share a passion (the best music composer in the world) writes much longer (I spent 17 weeks directing The for filmmaking and cannot imagine a better way some scary music, the sound guy puts on the Hitchhiker’s Guide To The Galaxy) and the post- to spend our time on earth. sound effects, a voiceover lady records the voice production (editing, music, special effects etc.) If you think of something better, do let me of the little girl and the effects guys put on the can take months too. know! end graphics ‘MISSING OUR DEALS WILL HAUNT But I love it all. No matter how tricky things In the meantime, I hope this snapshot of a film YOU.’ get, I’m always pulled along by how great I production has been useful to you and wish you It’s done! We all like it and a few weeks later it imagine the final film to be. I knew I wanted all the best with your studies. is broadcast on TV. Some people find it too scary. to see the scary girl at the window and looked Garth Jennings, Hammer & Tongs www.tongsville.com Some people think it’s great. Either way, it seems forward to seeing it in a similar way to the end to do the trick. And I like it! of Son of Rambow (especially when Lee Carter’s It’s all over in a matter of weeks but a lot of big brother appears – I had that in my head for 3 hard work went into those 30 seconds of film. years!) or seeing the milk carton walk around in a More than I can list here – but hopefully you get video I made years ago for Blur. Everything I have an idea of what goes into making a typical TV ever directed always starts as something in my commercial. head I would love to see for real.

english and media centre | February 2012 | MediaMagazine 35 MM From Props to Products

The Changing Nature of Audience Participation in Mainstream Entertainment Programming

Have you ever been a member of a Media audiences of the past are often 1967-1975). As with many quiz and game shows characterised as being passive recipients of of the time, members of the public took part as studio audience, for the recording of a the information and entertainment that was competitors. The true stars of these shows were, radio sketch show, a TV sitcom, Strictly handed down by media institutions. In our however, the presenters. Bob Monkhouse was modern media world, audiences are thought the first presenter of The Golden Shot and was or Buzzcocks? Once upon a time, you to be much more active and media institutions massively popular with contemporary audiences. might have thought that would be actively encourage audience participation. To The original host of BBC’s long-running Saturday the closest you’d get to involvement; some this is an indication of a new, democratised tea-time audience participation show, The state where the power traditionally held by Generation Game (BBC: 1971-2007) was Bruce but in fact audience participation has media institutions is being shared with audiences Forsyth (1971-1977 and 1990-1994), who long been a feature of ‘old media’ who are able to participate in the construction is astonishingly still a household name, as he and development of media texts. currently presents Strictly Come Dancing (BBC: entertainment programming. Steph This view, however, can hide the fact that 2004 onwards). Hendry considers the role of the audience participation is not a new idea. From Both Monkhouse and Forsyth had a the earliest days of television broadcasting (and background in Variety theatre and light audience in TV past and present. even earlier), audience participation has been entertainment. Both were comedians, and a crucial element of mainstream entertainment Forsyth was well known as a song and dance programming. Yet even though it is not a new man whilst Monkhouse had had some success phenomenon, it is clear that the role of the as a film actor. They both had a range of talents; audience and the way they participate has but what made them popular in their primetime changed over the years. shows was their ability to put members of the public at ease and, when necessary, encourage The Audience as ‘Props’ entertaining performances from them. However, Traditional forms such as quiz shows, vox pops the presenters were undoubtedly the stars of in news broadcasting and documentaries which the shows. Although the participation of the follow the normal lives of regular people have audience members was crucial to the success always required audience participation. of both programmes, they were there largely In the 1960s and 70s one of the most popular to allow the presenters to demonstrate their shows on TV was ITV’s The Golden Shot (ATV: wit and to be the foil for jokes and routines.

36 MediaMagazine | February 2012 | english and media centre MM diversion and were put on TV doing their ‘party pieces’ or demonstrating some quirky aspect to their personalities. The presenters of That’s Life could be quite patronising at times when dealing with the public and, as in the game shows of the time, a clear line was drawn between the amateur audience members and the professional presenters and hosts. shows often provide a global insight into funny Whether ‘props’ or ‘curiosities’, the audience pets and YouTube provides a worldwide library members in this show were there simply to be of videos of people falling over. As the number looked at. of available videos is increasing all the time, presumably these shows have enough material The Audience as ‘Content’ to continue broadcasting for many years. More A popular prime time Saturday night show in importantly they will appeal to producers as they the 1980s was Game for a Laugh (LWT: 1981- are exceptionally cheap to produce. 1985) which played extravagant practical jokes on members of the general public. The format of The Audience as ‘Subjects’ this show was based on a U.S. programme called Another popular format in the 1990s was a Candid Camera (which itself was a television development of the documentary format into development from the 1940s radio show Candid the ‘fly on the wall’ series, sometimes called Audience members could participate and take Microphone). ‘docusoap’ due to the integration of soap opera- part in quizzes and games – some even won The joke was watching ordinary people react like narrative conventions within observational prizes; but largely they were there as props for to extreme situations they found themselves ‘documentary’ programmes. Many of these shows the host to work with. in, whilst being secretly filmed. Jeremy Beadle focussed on work environments; amongst the was one of the presenters and he went on to most successful examples of this format are The Audience as ‘Curiosities’ host other massively popular programmes that Driving School (1997) and Airport (1996-2008). Another phenomenally successful programme relied on audience participation, Beadle’s About Both featured break-out characters: Maureen of the 1970s based around audience participation (LWT: 1986-1996) and You’ve Been Framed (ITV: Rees (Driving School), a seemingly hopeless was That’s Life (BBC 1973-1994) presented 1990-1997). Beadle’s About was another hidden- learner driver whose incompetence made great by Esther Rantzen. The programme was a camera/practical joke programme, whilst You’ve TV, and Jeremy Spake from Airport. Jeremy magazine-style blend of songs and humour; but Been Framed was based around home videos was a slightly camp character whose matter-of- its main purpose was to investigate consumer that had been submitted by audience members fact approach to some of the bizarre characters or health and safety issues. The humorous – perhaps an early ‘old media’ precursor of and situations he encountered as part of his job side of the show created ‘celebrities’ of its YouTube. endeared him to the viewers. Jeremy went on to own – most famously a talking dog who could In all these programmes the participating present other light entertainment programmes (apparently) say ‘sausages’ and ‘Esther’ (perhaps audience members provided the content of the and Maureen released a cover of Madness’s pre-empting some of the more successful show. The videos in You’ve Been Framed often ‘Driving in my Car’, and was part of a road safety YouTube memes of recent years...) and an elderly showed people falling over, or pets and children campaign. From audience members participating lady named Annie who was a regular contributor doing odd, funny and cute things. This format is in a TV programme, Maureen and Jeremy went to the programme via a street-based vox pop. still highly successful; YouTube is now another on to become celebrities themselves; they are She would offer an enthusiastic response to source for videos of this type, and the internet early examples of what may now be a common whatever questions the reporters asked her. site has been used to provide content for many expectation. It is now a convention of reality Here the public were presented as a humorous TV clip shows (e.g. Robert’s Web C4: 2010). These television that some participants will find the

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format provides them with the platform to move other companies involved in the infrastructure participation’ programmes. Contestants who were from being an audience member to being a used to allow the participation. In its most successful in the auditions (like The X Factor) were celebrity. successful years Big Brother was sponsored by taken to boot camp (like The X Factor) and each O2, Talk Talk, Carphone Warehouse and Virgin week they have to complete a specific task (like The Audience as ‘Stars’ Mobile. No coincidence that the sponsors were The Apprentice) which usually culminates in having Contemporary Reality TV can be seen as the telecommunications companies who would benefit a photograph taken (like Next Top Model) which genre that heralded in a new era of audience from the volume of phone calls and texts used is then judged by the expert panel before one participation. Big Brother began on Channel 4 in during the voting process. contestant is rejected and sent home (like Next 2000. Not only did the programme ‘star’ audience Top Model). Signed by Katie Price makes it clear members, but audience members were invited The Audience as ‘Product’ the contestants are ‘managed’ in a way that will along once a week to take part in the Friday night A more recent development in the way audience deliberately create conflict. For example, when eviction programme; and the audience also had participation is being used by media producers is placing contestants in teams, past conflicts and some control over the way the programme would in the way participants are being turned into a problems are openly discussed on camera; and develop through its run by phoning in to evict one product that the institution can sell in some way. contestants who recently had a stand-up row were of the contestants (or housemates). Big Brother In Sky Living’s Signed by Katie Price (2011) the paired up to see ‘how well they can work together’. also drew in the participation of another audience audience participate as contestants. ‘Real’ people The show is at least very open about the fact that as the conflicts and relationships, the scandals and auditioned for the opportunity to go through a the participants can expect to be rewarded if they the tantrums became an integral part of summer process where the winner would be signed to Katie show themselves to be marketable. tabloid reporting. August has traditionally been Price’s management company. The winner would known as the ‘silly season’ in news reporting as hard be promoted as a ‘media brand’ and used to sell news stories tend to be less numerous than soft calendars, perfumes etc. Like The X Factor, Signed news or human-interest stories at that time of year. by Katie Price is using the television format to hold Big Brother was a godsend to tabloid newspapers an extended audition. The X Factor winners record as it provided a steady stream of soft news stories, a Christmas single and are offered a recording to which tabloid audiences responded well. Big contract; but instead of the record company A&R Brother is a good example of a modern media text scouts having to go out to find new talent, hopefuls that creates a complex set of power relationships audition and the audience provide valuable between text, audiences and producers. market intelligence each week when they vote for Audience participation also became a way to their favourite contestants. maximise the profits made by the programme, Signed by Katie Price uses a range of not only for the producing institution but also for conventions that have been used by other ‘audience

38 MediaMagazine | February 2012 | english and media centre MM The audience as amateur Audience Participation: Big Brother – Who holds the power? soap-stars Powerful Powerless Another way that the audience has become Institution – Can control who appears by holding Cannot completely control the way a product is when programmes use audience the producers auditions and helps create specific participants behave or the way they members instead of paying professionals. The casts of the show representations of characters by selective strike up relationships of structured reality programmes such as Made editing in Chelsea (C4), The Only Way is Essex (ITV2) Cannot control the way the and Geordie Shore (MTV) are unpaid amateurs Can construct situations to manipulate who audience vote who allow the production companies to use their is up for eviction ‘real lives’ as starting points to the soap opera- style storytelling. The programmes claim to be Audience Can select who stays or goes by voting Cannot always identify how much retelling the real lives of the participants. They during evictions editing may be manipulating the make it clear, however, that scenes are set up way they perceive characters Can choose not to watch if the programme rather than being simple ‘fly on the wall’ recordings is not entertaining enough of events. Dramatic re-constructions add to the entertainment value of the programmes and the Participants – They can alter their behaviour in an They are unaware how they are participants are somewhere between subjects housemates attempt to make themselves more popular being presented by the institution of observation and actors. They are, though, the or entertaining. Some participants attempt or the tabloid press stars of their respective shows. As with Big Brother, to manipulate other people’s behavior too structured reality programmes provide plenty of They are unaware of how they are human interest stories for tabloid newspapers They can nominate other participants for perceived by the audience and and magazines; and as participants are not paid eviction could be repeating behaviours that by the productions companies, they need to make them unpopular generate tabloid interest to encourage magazines Press They can choose to represent contestants They cannot directly influence the and newspapers to pay them for interviews and as ‘villains’, ‘victims’ ‘heroes’ etc. contestants’ activities in the house stories. The participants can market themselves as a media product but they must find a way to They can use personal stories, photographs appear ‘newsworthy’. Amy Childs has been able etc. to create representations that could to construct a career which involves glamour manipulate the way the audience feels modelling, taking part in Celebrity Big Brother and about certain contestants writing a regular column for New! Magazine; as They may influence the decisions made by such she has now become a media product. the producers who may wish to reinforce Modern audiences clearly like to be active and (or challenge) a tabloid representation of a involved. They participate and push institutions participant to create new methods to allow them to be part of the media texts they watch. The public’s role as participants has changed over the years but institutions will no doubt want to continue to develop this relationship – especially as audience participation has proven to have the potential to turn a decent profit.

Steph Hendry teaches Media in Runshaw College, and is a principal examiner for AQA.

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What’s the relationship between watching TV and Twitter, and what can it tell us about the changing nature of TV viewing and audience participation? Ian Bland investigates.

Variously known as the symbol for pound (as in weight) or denoting a numeral, the humble hashtag has proved to be a very versatile little fellow. In recent years he’s performed an admirable service informing providers of automated telephone services that, yes, I am using a touch-tone keypad. But as those of you who spend any time on Twitter will know, even more recently he’s settled into a new occupation, acting as a neat aid to rapid search that is having a profound impact across many parts of the media, not least television. Not bad for the symbol formerly known as the octothorpe. Before we explore the hashtag’s growing importance to TV, a quick sprint through the history of Twitter is probably in order. Often referred to as a micro-blogging site, Twitter

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matter if they’re not a friend in the pre-Web 2.0 sense of the word? Social networks also ensure that, if you want to be in the thick of it, when that hashtag is boiling over with new tweets, you have to be watching live. And live is the holy grail of watercooler TV. The advent of timeshifting – starting in the 80’s with the humble VCR and now proliferating with a myriad of viewing options – dissipated the impact of live TV. Of course ultimately TV executives are just happy if we’re watching at all – as long as we’re doing it through legitimate was founded in 2006, and has grown into one of when the show was being aired on TV at the channels rather than streaming Glee seconds the internet’s most phenomenal success stories. time. And that’s where the future of TV – or to be after it’s aired in America, or downloading the For the uninitiated, the service allows users to more precise, the present – comes into very sharp torrent of the latest HBO extravaganza in the gap post 140-character updates directly to their own focus. before it makes the crossing to Sky Atlantic. But followers, while the updates of those you elect they’re happiest if we’re watching it live. to follow appear in your own timeline. With its Fragmentation and platform- For one thing, they like the viewing figures, emphasis on brevity, it’s a social networking shifting and they like what they mean to them. Viewing service perfectly suited to the prevalence of Television has never been more fragmented. figures are a measure of success, but more smartphones, many of which come preloaded There are more channels than ever before, and than that, they are a bargaining chip. They with a Twitter App. there’s more ways than ever to access them. are the way in which TV companies can bundle Who to follow? Your friends obviously. But after These days, we’re not just time-shifting, we’re together demographic parcels that they can that, there’s whole constellations of stars, merrily platform shifting. Missed Misfits? Don’t fret. sell to advertisers. Put simply, if we’re watching tweeting their way through the day, redrawing Watch on it 4OD. Buy yourself a series pass on live, we’re more likely to see the adverts. And the map of the relationship between celebrity iTunes and plonk your iPad on your lap. Or watch as the engine that drives so much media, it’s and fan – or follower to use Twitter’s own it on your phone as the bus rumbles through advertising that really counts. parlance – and leaving anxious PR executives the rush-hour traffic and you make your way to wondering exactly where they fit into the picture. college. Delivering the hungry eyes to But that’s another article, for another day. So, With the audience scattering across so many advertisers where does the hashtag come into all this? platforms, TV’s cultural function as provider Like virtually all media industries, TV has Well, affixing a hashtag to the front of any of shared experiences is put ever more at risk. been caught up in what has been described word in a tweet magically transforms it into a Those so-called ‘watercooler moments’ that are as a perfect storm that has seen advertising search term. Hover the cursor over, give it a click so beloved of TV executives become scarcer revenues plummet. From one direction, a and you’re immediately transported to the most and scarcer. And that’s where Twitter comes in. recession that has seen consumers tighten their recent tweets featuring the same term. Some What if the watercooler was the laptop nestling belts, consequently leaving many companies tags open up a never-ending torrent of tweets. awkwardly on your knee, or the phone sitting a with reduced marketing budgets. From another For example try searching #nowplaying to little more comfortably by your side? Welcome to direction, changing viewing habits. With so many discover exactly what song thousands of people Hashtag TV. viewing options available, how do you predict are currently listening to. Others offer up more with accuracy that you can deliver to advertisers a more limited return. Fan of ace 80’s TV series Watercooler moments 2.0? the same number of hungry eyes that you did in Press Gang? Try a hashtag search and see how TV loves a good watercooler moment. As a the past? many others have recently mentioned it. I just media student, you’ll be familiar with the concept Then there’s the Google factor. If you’re an did. Answer: 1. A 17-year-old Doctor Who fan of uses and gratifications. You know that advertiser why chance that your message will (Press Gang was an early work of latterday Who audiences crave social interaction, and that TV is get through when you could take it straight to scriptwriter/executive producer Steven Moffat). a supreme provider of it. Alan Sugar leaving the Google and reach people as they are already Try sticking a hash next to Moffat’s current entrails of another hapless would-be Apprentice reaching – through the power of search – for scripting gig though, and it’s a whole different dripping all over the boardroom carpet. Another you? Google’s profits soar, and the rest of the story, particularly if you just happened to do it jawdropping (for the right reasons or the wrong media ponders what can be done to retaliate. ones) X Factor auditionee. The latest improbable Gathering your audience – or that young, plot-twist on Waterloo Road. hip, often urban portion of it that make such Twitter – and other social networks like a desirable demographic – round a hashtag, Facebook – give you a chance to gather round also helps cultivate that other great desirable and, via the exchange of banter and barbs with amongst media-producers: interactivity. friends, fulfil that particular gratification. Of course you may never have, or never will, meet Interactivity – the ‘third way’? these friends – ‘friends’ being just one more word Tony Blair liked to talk about the third way of that’s having its definition rewritten according to conducting politics. In Media Studies we’ve had the rules of social networking. But if what they’re two overarching ways of looking at audience: saying makes you laugh or think, does it really

english and media centre | February 2012 | MediaMagazine 41 MM Understanding audience is a challenge faced on a daily basis by everyone involved in the media, from those at the top looking to create the next big thing and sell it to advertisers, to you, pondering just why audiences respond differently to the same media text. Twitter lifts the lid on the collective-consciousness of swathes of audience members, giving real-life, real-time responses to what they are watching, and as such is an invaluable resource for those within the industry and those of us studying it. What’s more, it can be great fun, a brilliant reminder of the vibrancy and wit coursing through the audience at any given moment. You could argue that giving people the chance to chide or cheer the contestants on Britain’s Got Talent, isn’t quite in the same league as organising the overthrow of the government as socially valuable uses of Twitter go, but passive and active. To these, we can definitely to tweet their first impressions. They weren’t it’s a service nonetheless. From now on, you add a third: the interactive. Invitations to ‘get good. need never watch anything alone. If you want interactive’ surround us in the media. From The rush to pronounce, often in hyperbolic, company, you’re only ever a hashtag away. blogs to YouTube, user-generated content hums borderline hysterical terms, is one of the side- through the internet. Then just look and listen effects of empowering the audience with the Ian Bland teaches Media at Holy Cross School, and is an to how many shows are urging you to text or means to provide such instant feedback. You examiner for WJEC. tweet, to log on to their website or like them on can only imagine the blood draining from the Facebook. face of whoever was charged with the task of Cultivating an audience that is interactive keeping a close on the hashtag #10oclockshow means building a sense of community and during those shaky first minutes of transmission. fostering the brand loyalty that all media It wasn’t a total death-knell but the show’s institutions crave. If you interact with a show, confidence took an early hammering, and it could then you invest far more emotionally than if you be argued that this more immediate, accessible- are just lolling on the sofa. Interactivity can take to-all form of screen-testing can be of immense many forms, finding a wider audience for the value to producers. wondrously witty barbs about The Apprentice than whoever happens to be sharing the living room with you, being just one. Just check the trending topics chart on the Twitter homepage and how they respond directly to what’s on TV to observe the symbiotic link between Twitter and the box. Initially rather ad hoc and impromptu, many shows are now actively encouraging their audience to congregate around their hashtag. Have I Got News For You helpfully abbreviates to #HIGNFY, leaving you as many of your 140 characters as possible in which to prove you can by just as sharp-witted as Paul Merton, Ian Hislop and co. Alternatively, register your delight and dismay at the latest antics of those definitely not- at-all stereotypical ambassadors for their regions in The Only Way is Essex or Geordie Shore when the Lol and OMG-count really does go off the chart. When things go wrong – The 10 O’Clock Show Interactive audiences aren’t always tame though; they have teeth and they are more than willing to use them. Take Channel 4’s foray into topical satire The Ten O’Clock Show. It brought together four talents – Charlie Brooker, Jimmy Carr, Lauren Laverne, and David Mitchell – who must have seemed on paper like a dream-team for those early-adopting types who spend their time on Twitter. After a big promotional push – including the inevitable Twitter-feed to run alongside the already heavily-followed ones of the individual presenters – launch night seemed to find huge numbers of audience members with their fingers poised over laptop and keypad ready

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We Need Your Help

Sara Mills reflects on one of our Utopian solutions? longest-running and most apparently Richard Dyer suggested that the media provides us with Utopian Solutions, with what participatory TV shows, and considers we need to fill the gaps in our own lives. If society its appeals to audiences, the nature of generates a problem, like crime and the fear of crime, then the media can sell itself by generating its interactivity, and some of its less a solution to these problems. Dyer’s Utopian welcome outcomes Solutions can be divided into: Transparency; Energy; Intensity; Community and Abundance. The success of the programme is down to the Looking at Crimewatch, we can see that it programme how important we are, how it is responses of viewers. Anyone can pick up the provides all of these to some extent. the audience who can solve the crime, how we phone and speak to officers live in the studio, • Transparency, our need to know what really really are part of the team who can solve the giving potentially crucial information and goes on, ‘behind the scenes’ in places we crime, and so we see ourselves as part of the helping to solve a case. wouldn’t normally have access to, is clearly met community who are fighting against crime. Crimewatch website – About The Show by the promise of the ‘inside story’ on crimes, discussion with the police and victims involved, • Abundance: often applies to watching the lives Crimewatch is perhaps one of the most telling us how crimes were committed and how of the rich. But here we can see the police with interactive TV shows there is. You don’t just get they were solved. an abundance of resources. On Crimewatch, to vote like on The X Factor but to actually speak • Energy is promised by the tireless police at least, the police never close down a file to police officers, to give vital information, and, workers: long after we have gone to bed and because of a shortage of officers, or fail to potentially, help to solve crimes that have so far forgotten about it, they will still be working on respond properly to a crime because they baffled police. the case, never giving up. are too busy elsewhere. The phone is always This is one of the main appeals of the • Intensity is provided by the emotional answered, the leads are always followed up. On programme – the chance to participate in drama of people in the extremes of loss and Crimewatch, at least, our resources for policing solving real life high-profile crimes. The grief, vulnerability and suffering. If our own are abundant and the police themselves are audience are constantly encouraged to call in lives are predictable and dull, the intensity focussed, concerned, caring, and tireless in their with information, however, trivial it seems, as it in this programme draws us in, makes us pursuit of justice. Because of this, Crimewatch could be the missing piece. Kirsty Young gazes feel echoes of these extreme emotions. The can be seen as endorsing the way the police at the audience, and addresses us directly, asking victims are usually represented very positively, work, as supporting the police and providing ‘Do you know this man?’ or ‘Can you tell us who to help us as the audience feel sympathy for a very positive representation of them. did it?’ – thus putting the audience at the heart them. Even if the victim was a drug-addicted However, it can also be seen as deflecting of the show. Throughout the programme, and prostitute when she dies, her story will be told attention away form the social problems that in the live update afterwards, the audience are through the ‘family album’ of photos of her as may cause crime in the first place. The focus is congratulated for their efforts with comments a happy innocent, much-loved child; friends all on catching criminals after the event, rather on how many people have called in, what and relatives will talk about how much they than making the effort to change things so less information has been given, and how it is all miss her. This ‘back-story’ technique helps crime is committed in the first place. In this way, helping the police. the audience to identify with the victim and Crimewatch can be seen as very hegemonic, On Crimewatch the audience can almost so be more likely to call in; it’s also used on helping to maintain a problematic social system become part of the police force, fighting crime programmes like The X Factor to encourage – in other words, ‘papering over the cracks.’ and getting justice for the victims. To watch you to feel closer to the participants and so be We need your help to find the vital clues to Crimewatch is to feel that you can do something more likely to vote. our unsolved cases to help, that you can have some control over Each month we reconstruct some of the UK’s Crimewatch website crime and social problems. It appeals to our need trickiest cases in the hope that someone However, Crimewatch isn’t always successful. for a sense of importance and it tells us that what watching will provide that vital piece of In a cruel irony, one of the presenters of the we do really matters. information that will crack the case. show became one of the cases on the show. In Crimewatch website 1999 Jill Dando, who had been a presenter on • Community: we are told throughout the Crimewatch for four years, was murdered, shot

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themselves. Firstly, this increased fear of crime may cause an increased interest in crime – it seems a relevant and pressing issue to women. dead outside her home. Some speculated that paedophile attacks. It couldn’t have solved these It may also be a way for women to manage this it was revenge killing: because Crimewatch had crimes without the audience. And it wouldn’t get fear, by being able to participate in the process led to the capture of a criminal, that criminal the audience if it wasn’t gripping TV. of enforcing law and order. or their friends killed Dando in revenge. Others However, Crimewatch has been criticised for A second, possibly gender-stereotyped answer suggested that a deranged fan had killed her. legitimising the surveillance culture, where may suggest that women more than men are Although someone was convicted of the crime, we become used to – and even glad of – being concerned with issues of community and safety, the conviction was later quashed and the crime filmed in public places, without our knowledge. so ‘naturally’ enjoy the opportunity to act like remains unsolved to this day. The CCTV section is supported by the website good citizens. Help us solve some of the UK’s biggest cases. which says: A third reason may be in the link between Join the team for dramatic reconstructions, Police often contact us with CCTV footage of Crimewatch and other ‘reality’ TV shows, and CCTV footage and our wanted faces. Your call people they want to trace in connection with gossip/real life magazines. Crimewatch can be could be all it takes to put an offender behind serious crimes…see if you can help. seen as a hybrid genre, mixing elements of bars But does Crimewatch actually add to our fear documentaries (interviews, voiceovers, CCTV Crimewatch website of crime, as well as providing us with the means footage), studio-based magazine shows (the of dealing with it? Research has shown that presenters, the direct address to the audience, Crimewatch over time watching Crimewatch does increase people’s the chat with real police officers in the studio), fear of crime. This, in turn, encourages people to and drama (the reconstructions). Some women Crimewatch has an incredibly successful stay at home after dark, and to be more cautious may watch Crimewatch as an extension of format, with its reconstructions offering in their behaviour. Women often feature as the reading real-life magazines, and of watching a ‘victim’s eye’ view of events, harrowing victims on Crimewatch, and this may add to real-life TV programmes. Again, an interest in interviews with victims or their families, the women’s sense of being at risk. Crimewatch community, in people, in the personal, may be gallery of ‘wanted faces’ and CCTV footage of encourages women to ‘stay safe’, perhaps seen as a ‘women’s interest.’ real crimes happening. suggesting that if you do go out alone in the And it may be to draw in this type of viewer It has been running since 1984, as a regular dark, you are deliberately putting yourself at risk, that Crimewatch sensationalises its issues. On monthly show, presented live from the studio almost as if it may be your own fault if you then the website, for example, we are invited to watch with inserts of pre-recorded segments. Over become a victim of crime. a reconstruction with the lines: the years, it has featured over 4,000 crimes and The mutilation and murder of Heather it is considered to be largely responsible for Crimewatch and gender Barnett by Danilo Restivo in Bournemouth helping to solve over 50 murders, over 50 rapes So why do more women than men watch was one of the most shocking cases ever and sexual assaults, and almost 20 cases of Crimewatch? Several answers suggest featured by Crimewatch. Read more about the case. 44 MediaMagazine | February 2012 | english and media centre MM

most wanted fugitives, with headlines like: ‘Fat Mike evades the long arm of the law’. It sells AMW merchandise like baseball caps, T-shirts, coats and mugs (can you imagine people wanting to buy a Crimewatch baseball cap?) and has even has AMW games to play on the website. Equally successful in catching criminals as the British version, it doesn’t shy away from dramatising and ‘hyping up’ the crimes and criminals. Crimewatch has to tread a fine line between serious informative programming, and Crimewatch and moral panic sensationalist, voyeuristic entertainment. As It could be argued that Crimewatch is adding a BBC show, it sees itself as serious factual The case has been solved, the murderer to the moral panic in society about crime, crime programming. The pre-credit sequence usually caught. There is no reason to keep drawing waves, ‘broken Britain’ ‘the out of control youth introduces a horrific crime. In the September attention to this case, except as a way of drawing of today’ and so on. Watching Crimewatch may 2011 version the show opens over a striking in viewers by promising something sensational, make crime seem more common than it really is, close-up of a map, dramatic music and Kirsty disturbing and voyeuristic. and add to the ‘deviancy amplification spiral’ Young saying: Is Crimewatch playing on our fear of crime to identified by Stanley Cohen which contributes Tonight, the family targeted in an arson get its viewers? The British Crime Survey has to moral panics. Returning to Dyer, the media attack on their home. The devastating fire published figures which suggest that the average is both creating a problem (the fear of crime killed a father and his two children. Only the person in the UK is actually very unlikely to be in ‘Broken Britain’) and giving us a means to mother survived. the victim of any kind of crime. Statistics show address the problem (calling in on Crimewatch Then we cut to an interview with the mother, you will get mugged once every 500 years, get to identify faces or give information). intercut with family photos of the dead husband assaulted once every hundred years, and be But Crimewatch works in a very BBC way. and children. She says, visibly emotional: burgled every forty years. The values of the institution are clear. As a Everything that I loved has gone. However, such generalisations miss the fact public service broadcaster, with a remit to Kirsty asks us: that some people are much more likely to be ‘educate, inform and entertain’, the BBC Can you tell us who did it? victims of crime, and that a victim of one type tries to present Crimewatch as a responsible, This is followed by a credit sequence with of crime is quite likely to be a multiple victim: serious and information-based programme fast-paced music, quick cuts of the police if you live or hang around where people are which respects victims and their families, racing in cars, helicopters, forensic work, fires likely to mug you, you are also going to be in a rather than a sensationalist and entertaining and explosions – all of which could introduce a risk area for assault and burglary. The audience programme. Sensationalism is shown more police-based drama as much as a serious factual demographic tends to a C/D grouping, rather often in the tabloid press, where the personal programme. than the A/B class, suggesting that those from angle is amplified, where the taboo aspects are Just in these opening moments, we see that the C/D group are more likely, perhaps justifiably, exaggerated, and where there is often a focus Crimewatch is hooking us in, with promises of to be worried about crime. Interestingly, on the disturbing violent and sexual aspects of ‘the inside story’ on terrible crimes to be revealed. Crimewatch is very popular viewing in prisons, a crime in a direct appeal to voyeuristic and Cutting back to Kirsty, she comments: and prisoners are quite likely to ring in and give prurient interests. Terrifying. More on that coming later. information. Once a suspect turned himself in And given the success of Crimewatch over the after seeing an artist’s impression of himself on Crime watching US-style last 27 years, I’m sure there will be plenty more the show. The American equivalent, America’s Most terrifying crimes coming later to our front rooms. Simple things you could do to help yourself Wanted, which started in 1988, has a more stay safe and reduce your risk of crime. commercial approach where crimes are openly Sara Mills is currently travelling in New Zealand but also Crimewatch website sensationalised, reflecting the commercial teaches at Helston Community College in Cornwall, and is values of its institution. It has snappy titles for an AQA examiner. its segments, like ‘15 seconds of shame’ which showcases fugitives, and the ‘Dirty Dozen’ of the

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Reporting from the graveyard shift?

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‘Don’t know how you manage presenting against the Syrian government. I assured our Breaking the news the graveyard shifts’ was a view put to me by viewers we would carry the statement live on-air. with Twitter a UK viewer on Twitter. Can’t say I agree with At 3.30am a name started to crop up on the ‘tumbleweed perspective’. Week One in the Twitter. I follow 650 people on the social Babita Sharma, presenter of the role, I was breaking news of the Christchurch networking site, mainly journalists and bloggers. earthquake in New Zealand which claimed the I can’t remember who mentioned it first, but overnight shift on BBC World and the lives of 75 people. Thereafter, quiet nights have by 3.50am there were hundreds of tweets: BBC News Channel each Sunday to been few and far between, with major news Bin Laden dead, Obama to confirm death of events in Libya, Japan, Syria and Ivory Coast Osama bin Laden. The newsroom switched Tuesday, describes the moment the being played out on our watch. gears, the excitement palpable. We all knew, if Twittersphere put her in touch with In April we were gearing up for the Royal true, this would be the most significant news Wedding. Andrew Roy (head of BBC World story for years. the biggest news story for years: the News) asked me to broadcast from Buckingham We were a minute or so behind the American death of Osama bin Laden. Palace the night before the big day. With 3,000 news networks in breaking the fact that ‘US people lining the procession route by midnight, media reports are saying that Osama bin the carnival atmosphere was already underway Laden is dead’. I was getting a bit of stick for it by the time we got on-air on Friday 29th April. on Twitter, but there was no question within the Two days later, it took me hours to get through team that we do otherwise. We waited for official all the post-Royal Wedding analysis in the Sunday confirmation – and wait we did. Frustratingly, the papers. I made a mental note for later – must White House statement was delayed (4 times) do some post-wedding analysis of my own, and and #Osama was now trending. review our broadcasts from the Palace. I don’t remember what was going through With wedding fever behind us, I was back my mind at the time, other than a determination on-air with a different lead story – Libya, which to stay focused and measured in relaying the had seen another 24 hours of violent clashes facts as we knew them. Speculation ended at between the rebels and pro-Gaddafi forces. The 0435bst when Barack Obama delivered the most British boxing legend Henry Cooper had died important statement of his Presidency to date: earlier in the evening (Sunday 1st May), so we Osama bin Laden was dead. Shot during a US were also concentrating on getting reaction to operation and killed on Pakistani soil. his death. I tweeted our planned interview with I left Television Centre a few hours later and Bert Sugar at 1am. The world of Twitter seemed then it dawned on me: it’s not everyday you very quiet. Within hours it was a different story. get to break a story like that. I never did get the At 3am newswires reported: chance to check out our Royal Wedding coverage. President Obama is due to make a statement Maybe I will on the next ‘graveyard shift’. from the White House at 2230EDT. We didn’t know what he was going to say, nor Babita Sharma is a news presenter for BBC World and the why the President was addressing the nation BBC News Channel. She was a speaker at the MediaMag so late on a Sunday evening. Our Foreign Desk Student Conference in November 2011. suggested an announcement on aid to victims of the US tornadoes. I thought it might be on Libya, or perhaps a US decision to impose sanctions

english and media centre | February 2012 | MediaMagazine 49 MM The Real World?

There have been only a handful of Since the relatively recent rise of Reality Television across both Great Britain and the feature films made about participatory United States, it was perhaps inevitable that the TV, but as James Rose suggests they film industries of both countries would begin to assimilate this trend into their film production. offer interesting insights into the Films such as The Truman Show (Peter Weir, 1998) reality TV phenomenon, its interactive and Series 7: The Contenders (Daniel Minahan, elements and the role of participants 2001) as well as My Little Eye (Marc Evans, 2002) have all, in their own way, examined why Reality and audiences. TV shows are popular and have used their premise of general members of the public ‘performing’ before the cameras as a way of passing comment upon contemporary society. More often than not, these observations are critical and cynical of the television production companies that produce the shows, the television channels which choose to broadcast them and the large number of audiences that sanction them (and generate their popularity) by choosing to watch them. The Truman Show It would be difficult to argue a case for suggesting that a substantial genre or sub-genre of Reality Television films exist, as there are very few productions that directly deal with it. Of the few that there are, the most popular is, perhaps, Weir’s The Truman Show. Starring Jim Carrey as the titular hero, the film concerns Truman Burbank, a man who has lived his entire life in a reality television show. Living in a constructed world and surrounded by actors, Truman lives out his daily life oblivious to the fact that his every waking minute is being broadcast to millions of viewers across the globe. As the narrative unfolds, Truman becomes increasingly aware that his life may indeed be a construct, and sets out to find out the truth.

50 MediaMagazine | February 2012 | english and media centre MM Within this journey of self discovery, Weir’s film In Series 7 this is ironically perverted: the becomes a consideration of the power of both unwilling contestants speak of their hopes and the television and the corporations that fund their dreams but they are not of fame or fortune and produce the programmes – the latter quality but simply of survival and the desire to go back made evident in the fact that Truman was chosen to their normal lives. In Series 7, then, the goal is because he was an unwanted pregnancy that was not to prove your worth as a singer or entertainer carried to term and who, upon his birth, was not but as a skilled killer, to become a violent and adopted by surrogate parents but by the television capable murderer who can not only survive but corporation. As Truman begins to question his entertain the viewers at home. life, so too does the film as it examines the power of the media to control lives (quite literally in the The Real World? case of Truman) and the audience’s seemingly Further mimetic links are made between insatiable voyeurism of ‘reality’. the film and broadcast Reality Shows through While much has been written about The the documenting of the contestants’ lives, Truman Show, very little critical engagement has in particular when contestant Anthony (Michel been undertaken with films of a similar premise, Kaycheck) tries to escape the show with his baby most notably Series 7: The Contenders. This is daughter. Seemingly shot from a police helicopter, an interesting occurrence because this film, like the grainy aerial footage shows Anthony’s pick-up The Truman Show, deliberately and blatantly truck driving along the Interstate. The voice-over, offers a critical commentary on Reality Television. dramatic and crackling over the helicopter’s Made three years after The Truman Show, Series microphone, declares Anthony ‘a runner’ and now 7 recounts its narrative as if it were actually on that he has engaged in ‘a hostage situation he is television by presenting three back-to-back in compete violation [of the game rules] and has episodes, complete with the production credits for gotta be stopped.’ each of the shows. This mode of presentation – as As the footage of Anthony’s escape unfolds, a if the viewers were watching the serial at home – family photograph of himself and his daughter not only reinforces the dark satire evident within appear on the screen, adding to both the drama the narrative but also makes clear the notion and the film’s mimetic qualities. Following a clock that the programme and its explicitly violent timer wipe, the show’s ‘special operatives’ shoot- content is being actively ‘broadcast’ to the out the pick-up’s tyres one at a time. Anthony audience and viewed by them. continues, the metal of the wheel rims grating along the tarmac and kicking up showers of Series 7: The Contenders sparks – ‘This guy is a danger to himself as well The basic premise of Series 7 is that five as others… Thank God he’s finally pulling off the people are chosen at random (through a national highway’ says the narrator. The sequence ends lottery of social security numbers) and given a with Anthony’s capture: as he steps out of his handgun. Whether they like it or not, they are now vehicle he clearly holds a knife to his own throat a contestant of The Contenders. They must then yet the narrator, in an effort to increase the drama, hunt and kill the four other new contestants as states he is holding it to his child’s throat. well as the survivor of the previous series. Having This sequence is a perfect (and, at times, survived Series 5 and 6, the current reigning humorous) pastiche of the numerous Reality champion is the heavily pregnant Dawn (Brooke Shows that utilise police footage to construct Smith). If she wins/survives Series 7, she will be set their episodes: Police, Camera, Action! (Optomen free from the game. Following each contestant is a Television), Road Wars and Police Interceptors small flak-jacket-wearing film crew who document (both Raw Cut TV) and Brit Cops (Steadfast their attempts to evade being killed or record Television). In these programmes real-world their actual deaths. Intercut into these violent footage is edited into cinematic action sequences are interviews in which the contestants sequences, a condensed version of cops chasing – confident that they are safe for a while – talk robbers. The images are often grainy (and to camera about their lives, their hopes and their therefore even more ‘real’) with data (such as the dreams. incredibly fast speed at which the police give From this brief narrative overview, the film’s chase) layered over the top, all accompanied by style is clearly one of mimicry, with director the deep and serious voice of the narrator. Each Minahan replicating the imagery, style and sequence ends with the successful on-screen format – the codes and conventions – of capture of the criminals while the narrator contemporary Reality Television within the recounts their prison sentence. fictional construct of the film. This is made clear Anthony’s escape-attempt sequence perfectly in the juxtaposition of the contestants’ on-screen mimes these conventions and it is here, in its near- murders and their confessional interviews; for perfect replication of Reality Television shows, that this clearly replicates Reality Shows (such as Big the strength of Series 7 lies: it looks, sounds and Brother (Endemol), The X Factor and Britain’s Got feels like a Reality Television show. This is perhaps Talent, both Talkback Thames and SYCOtv) where not surprising, as prior to directing the film the contestants elicit an emotional response within Minahan produced news segments for televised the viewer by describing the hardships they have magazine shows, an experience which taught him experienced in order to pursue their dream. Their how to rework real-world footage into dramatic dialogue is about personal sacrifice, of revealing and succinct news footage, selecting the best and a willingness to surrender everything so that they most provocative clips to create trailers or teaser might perform, so that they can become famous, clips for the advertisement breaks. so that they live out the dream of their lives.

english and media centre | February 2012 | MediaMagazine 51 MM The Viewer It is perhaps through the film’s explicit violence that the narrative makes its most articulate observation about Reality Television. The title implies that the programme is hugely popular for it is now in its seventh series, a quality which may well be due to the programme’s willingness to show, without cuts, each of the contestants’ murders. The film dramatically introduces reigning champion Dawn through a brief sequence in which she walks into a convenience store and executes one of the contestants while, later in the film, one of the other contestants, an elderly man named Franklin (Richard Venture), beats the teenage contestant, Lindsay (Merritt Wever), to death. The imagery in this sequence is brutal and dramatic, one in which an old man saves his own life at the expense of the life of a young girl. While the audience may feel sympathy for the girl’s death, they continue to watch and by doing so not only participate in the grotesque voyeurism of murder but also sanction the deaths by adding to the viewing figures. In this respect Series 7 takes the concept of Reality Television to the extreme by suggesting that the display of real danger, violence, and the threat to innocent lives all make for highly entertaining and dramatic shows. The film’s content is an ugly parody of what audiences already watch, and insinuates that they are popular because audiences want to watch real people engaging in acts in which they can either spectacularly succeed or spectacularly fail. The audience desires both the cruel humour of witnessing the failure as much as the elation at witnessing the winner achieve their life’s ambition. The success of Series 7: The Contenders then lies in its assured ability to mimic the conventions of Reality Television and then take it to its most extreme – sanctioned murder for the entertainment of the masses. Such a concept performs multiple critiques. The first of these lies in its characters, in that they all fulfil the roles of the ‘real’ characters that repeatedly appear throughout these shows – the single parent trying to overcome their situation through fame and fortune; the misfit who is trying to prove their worth; the beautiful person who desires only celebrity and the adoration of their fans. In Series 7 these characters appear and are systematically critiqued, humiliated and then murdered. They are transient and expendable, for the programme’s producers know there are many more just like them, all waiting to take their place in the next series. In this narrative trajectory, the film performs a secondary critique of those who choose to watch – and thus participate in – the perpetuation of such programmes: their desire for humiliation/ success escalates to the desire to watch both extreme violence and subsequent murder in order for those two emotions to be achieved. In these two concepts, director Minahan reduces Reality Television to its most fundamental drive – the voyeuristic desire to watch failure, again and again, to celebrate briefly the winner’s success before settling down once again to relive it all by watching the next series.

James Rose is a freelance writer and filmmaker and a regular contributor to MediaMagazine.

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Film without borders

There’s been much discussion about And alongside the material hardship and Christoph Warrack is the founder and Chief dispossession facing the increasing numbers of Executive Officer of Open Cinema. His vision the interactive and participatory homeless people in the UK comes both social is not one of charity or ‘otherness’, but self-help opportunities in today’s media exclusion and cultural isolation. Without access and participation. With his quiff and bright eyes, to TV, internet or cinema, let alone the mobile he’s like a squirrel driven to hoard acorns before landscape – but what happens to technology we all rely on to feed our heads and winter sets in. The day I met him he had a grey those without a roof over their keep us connected to the rest of the world, how splodge on his forehead the size of a thumb heads, much less access to digital can the homeless interact culturally, share their print. He is clearly a man who does not have experiences, and find a voice? Here’s where Open time to look in the mirror. He hops from one technologies? Vanessa Raison reports Cinema comes in. table in the cafe (his last meeting) to mine, and on a radical social enterprise project Open Cinema is a national network of film it takes him forty minutes to work out how I can clubs programmed by and for homeless and be useful to his 2005 social enterprise brainchild that allows the homeless and vulnerable people. Each week participants Open Cinema. vulnerable to participate in cinema watch the best in contemporary cinema and You can see a short film about Open Cinema work with professional filmmakers to create here: http://vimeo.com/12292720 culture. films of their own. Open Cinema began as a network of film clubs Open Cinema is unique in providing run by and for homeless and socially excluded According to Shelter’s current advert, participants the chance to programme films people and then short filmmaking was added one person faces repossession every two they would like to see, meet the professional in partnership with Shooting People (see MM minutes. Crisis invited 2,800 guests for lunch filmmakers that inspire them, and make films 36). Warrack, who worked in film, was struck by last Christmas. The Big Issue celebrates its based on their own ideas and experiences. the contradiction of Soho being a hub for both 20th birthday with more vendors than ever. http://www.opencinema.net/aims film-making and homelessness. He was running

english and media centre | February 2012 | MediaMagazine 53 MM a soup kitchen when one of its regulars asked for some entertainment. There are now ten people working in the Open Cinema office in Hoxton, and film clubs in Newcastle, Exeter, Manchester and London, including four in Hammersmith and three in the West End. The Turnaround Centre in Croydon ran a season called ‘The Kids Aren’t Alright’ which included Fish Tank and Bullet Boy. The latest project, Minerva in Hammersmith, meets on a Wednesday night and is the first women-only club. Their season is ‘Believe it Or Not’ with films ranging from Persepolis through Waltz with Bashir to Walk the Line. The Single Homeless Project in Camden made To Be Frank in 2010. It is a gripping documentary-style ghost story and brilliantly highlights the issue of being invisible in society. It is set at the Camden Open Cinema film club, with interviews with members (Ali Boag, Sybil Adelaja and Mark Cawson) and volunteers (Lesley Pinder

and Holly Goss) intercut with dramatic spooky about the film clubs? Head cocked to one side Warrack asks: re-enactments of a sighting, and accompanied You get a free cup of tea in the interval. Are you very rich? We need £3,500 pounds by a chilling soundtrack. At the Sheffield It’s a night out. to match fund a sponsor. We aren’t yet Documentary Festival it was praised for being ‘A Community. registered as a charity, but are a non- beautiful example of the power of art as a form of It’s a social event. profit company limited by guarantee (the rehabilitation.’ And for many, ‘the reliability’ of having a fixed standard structure for social enterprises) – so Finding Boris, made by the Upper Room event in the week. unfortunately the donation isn’t gift-aidable. Open Cinema in Hammersmith in 2010, is a witty As Warrack says: Christoph paid for the tea and I promised I examination of those on the outside of Boris’s The Open Cinema philosophy is that people would write about Open Cinema, give money and London interviewed in an ad hoc way while the excluded from society need the benefits send him a back copy of The Big Issue. interviewer waits for the real Boris to appear. A of culture as much as information and And then he walked off, bushy tailed and lovely soundtrack and cartoon graphic give this food. Open Cinema takes film to people at bright-eyed, to inspire someone else to popular appeal. the margins, and brings them and their participate in Open Cinema’s activities. We’re No Heroes We’re No Villains was made aspirations to the centre of cultural life. If you want to volunteer to supervise film for World Homeless Day by The Connection Open Cinema equips the film clubs with high clubs, help with filmmaking projects, or even Open Cinema as a global message. Music by Pete definition screening equipment, professional donate, visit the website: www.opencinema.net Diggens includes vulnerable people lip-synching flyers and posters, DVDs and film screening the lyric ‘We’re just people like you and you’; it licences and invitations to professional becomes a celebration of the human experience, filmmakers to introduce screenings or participate Vanessa Raison teaches Media Studies at Camden School and is empowering both for the people who in Q and A’s. These have included Ken Loach for Girls, London. made it and those who watch it. There is some director of Cathy Come Home and Biban Kidron nifty cardboard box animation. of : Edge of Reason fame, Mike There have been over 4000 admissions to the Leigh and Stephen Frears. clubs to date. What do the cinema-goers like

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Reporting by the people – a case study in participation

Elsewhere in this magazine you’ll read about the impact of citizen journalism on the Arab Spring uprisings; but here we look at local citizen reporting much closer to home. Harry Cunningham, student volunteer with Leicester community news agency Citizens’ Eye, describes the relationship between the local press and community reporters, and shows how participation in local news can give individuals and communities the newspaper. But actually it accepts something reporters that run them. very important: that community journalism is WAVE is the young people’s newspaper which, a voice. not a replacement for the mainstream media, but since January 2010, has had its own sixteen-page a unique medium that has just as an important monthly supplement in the Leicester Mercury, Leicester is perhaps at the forefront of a place in society. with content sourced, edited and written new era in social participation. It has its own Citizen journalism does not set out to entirely by reporters under twenty-five. CAPs, community news agency: Citizens’ Eye which ‘pull’ readers in with hyperbolic headlines or or Community actions photographers, often works in conjunction with the local newspaper, exaggerated versions of the truth. It gets to the have their work displayed at local digital media The Leicester Mercury. Far from dismissing heart of what matters to every individual because centre Phoenix Square; whilst there’s also a news community journalism, amid claims that it’s the content is entirely decided by those who take agency specialising in support and networking sending the mainstream media industry into the time to contribute. for ex-offenders, a newsletter for people with decline, The Mercury has embraced the work of And in Leicester this is channelled through hearing disabilities and a sub-committee, local citizen reporters by giving them their own Citizens’ Eye, set up three years ago. Their raising awareness of homelessness. weekly page. This may seem nonsensical, given website has a section for each local area, as well In fact there are nearly twenty news agencies that community journalists work for free and that as links to smaller news agencies that focus on all running under Citizens’ Eye, trying to give the content may overlap with the main body of specific issues important to the community different communities their voice. When the

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running a story, community reporters are free to write about it themselves. Providing the story is in keeping with media law, and is not racist or politically biased, anyone can submit content via the green button on Citizens’ Eye’s website or by email; and the editor, also a volunteer, will edit the story at one of the Mercury’s desks and then up-load it to their system where it will be checked and professionally edited again by the Leicester Mercury team. It is these things that make community journalism so much more than just another form of news. Now that accessible technologies like laptops and ‘flipcams’ can rival the industry standard, instead of competing with community news agencies like Citizens’ Eye, the Leicester Mercury appears to have embraced this new medium with open arms. It certainly seems the way forward. The story of my front page elected mayor, WAVE was the first to cover the story story of the youngest contender who, at just For me the local election coverage in Leicester eighteen, used community media not to sell started around February time. The WAVE is his policies or encourage people to vote for a monthly paper so we had to pre-plan our him, but to explain why he was standing and features considerably ahead of the main Leicester what taking part in the campaign meant to Mercury. him. Below, you can read an account of my own One of our own reporters, Mu-hamid Pathan involvement in this story, which made the front who was involved in the Youth Parliament had page of WAVE. decided to stand as a candidate for the post of Another function of Citizens’ Eye is to applaud first elected Mayor. individuals often forgotten by local papers; Although as I write mainly politics and news, reviewing a local school’s production of Grease my own opinion rarely comes into these things; was the centre of one story, while another but it was hard to imagine how the election was reporter interviewed novelist Jerusha Barnett- going to pan out. Certainly from Mu-hamid’s Cameron about the publication of her first book point of view it was costing him £750 to stand, aged just thirteen. and he needed to receive 5% of the vote to Although some may argue that Twitter and get that money back; so a lot of us did begin blogging sites such as WordPress or Blogger to wonder whether he’d actually stand after English Defence League staged a protest in already allow anyone with a broadband all. Nevertheless he went through with it; and Leicester City centre, CAPs were given press connection to have a say, these voices can often discussions began about whether we could run a badges and allowed behind the lines, while go un-heard amongst the masses of social- front page story on him. reporters took to the streets, getting the stories media content on the internet; and Leicester’s I’d met Mu-hamid a couple of times before, of counter-demonstrators and interviewing Sir community news agency, whilst utilising and but I was concerned about WAVE developing a Peter Soulsby, then Leicester South MP, as he promoting the mediums already available, also political agenda on this issue. Like The Leicester helped clean the streets of EDL pamphlets. allows anyone to have a voice in a professional Mercury, we try to maintain as much neutrality Equally, as candidates across the city begin wide-reaching newspaper. as we can; and we could not justify running a their campaigns to become Leicester’s first If the Leicester Mercury decides against story on one of the Mayoral Candidates simply

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because we happened to like him, or because politician I’ve heard of has done before. he wrote for the WAVE. But my editor Sam So I set to work on putting something Follow it up consulted the Head of News at Mercury and they together. The great thing about working with http://journalismdegree.org persuaded me it was a good idea as long as we someone you know is that you don’t feel you’re Huffington Post took the right angle. At the end of the day he was offending them by asking them the tough a youth candidate, and we are a youth paper; his questions: Mu-hamid understood what I do and Newsvine policies were almost exclusively of interest to our what I needed; and there was no waiting for the Centre for Citizen Media readership. press office to never get back to you! So I set out to meet him at his official campaign The Mercury gave the final story the headline: Citizen Press launch. The Labour party were also announcing ‘This is about giving Young [people] a voice’. OhMyNews (South Korea) their candidate that day; but as I sat down to We were, inevitably, accused of running a story speak with Mu-hamid – who knows a lot about on ‘our [the WAVE’s] man’ by a rather bitter http://www.kcnn.org/ politics for an eighteen year-old – he assured me mayoral candidate when the audiences stood http://www.ojr.org/ there was little point heading across to the city up and applauded Mu-Hamid’s speech at a later council block to hear the result because Sir Peter debate after Sir Peter Soulsby openly announced http://www.citmedialaw.org/ Soulsby was almost certainly going to win. He’d he himself would be voting for Mu-hamid as his http://www.worldvoicereport.com/ been Leader of the old council various times, second choice on the ballot paper. Nevertheless, http://cijo.wikispaces.com/ and at that point he was a very popular MP for I’m confident I managed to highlight an issue that Leicester South. was important for young people, and that this http://www.cctvcambridge.org/node/685/play/ After a brief discussion about the way he story wasn’t just written for the sake of it. http://www.localjournalism.net/ thought the election was likely to go, I began You can see the story as it originally appeared speaking to Mu-hamid about his policies and on the front page of the Leicester WAVE at: how he saw his campaign progressing. What http://edition.pagesuite-professional.co.uk/ he explained to me was certainly intriguing: launch.aspx?referral=other&pnum=&refresh=8 he wasn’t actually interested in winning. Nz1A09o06wS&EID=ddd294fb-926c-491a-b448- Mu-hamid is a clever politician; when he first a32969967e8b&skip=true said this, I thought it was some sort of stunt, (It takes a minute or two to load, so you need if I’m honest, which put us off to a bad start. to be a bit patient!) We couldn’t print an article that read like an To view the work of Citizens’ Eye community advertisement, or have our front page littered reporters visit http://www.citizenseye.org/. To with political jargon. However, as he elaborated I contact John Coster the editor and founder of realised he was speaking with a lot of sincerity. He Citizens’ Eye for advice or tips on how to set up said he wanted to ‘share the political journey’ your own community news agency in your local (OK, that is political jargon!); but what he meant area email: [email protected] was that he wanted to be able to describe the whole process of an election using social Harry Cunningham is currently studying at Wyggeston & media, and he believed WAVE could help with Queen Elizabeth I College in Leicester and also volunteers that. as a community reporter with Citizens’ Eye for the Leicester And we certainly could; Mu-hamid had actually Mercury. half-written my story for me without knowing it. The ‘story’ was that Mu-hamid was using this technology to encourage debate and complete transparency – which is something that no

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WebParticipation or Hegemony?2.0

Nick Lacey explores whether Web 2.0 However others see this democratising We will consider this from two perspectives, function as extremely beneficial: which might be considered to be at extremes of has really democratised our access New lost-cost collaborative infrastructures… a continuum: the political (serious) at one end, to the media, and switched the allow thousands upon thousands of and the trivial at the other. The political aspect individuals and small producers to concentrates upon how far users have been able power from producers to audiences, co-create products, access markets, and to hold the authorities to account; the trivial or whether it has simply become delight customers in ways that only large focuses on the publication of inconsequential absorbed into the values of ‘old corporations could manage in the past. or ephemeral texts, such as the ‘home videos’ Tapscott and Williams 2006: 11 YouTube was originally famous for. media’. This article will consider how far the internet The political: Ian Tomlinson has genuinely created ‘we media’ that offers views Web 2.0 (as defined by Tim O’Reilly in 2005) One of the best examples of the ‘political’ distinctive from the mainstream, or whether, on is essentially a medium that allows audiences impact of amateur video posted on the web was the contrary, it may have a hegemonic function to become producers of media texts. This the death of Ian Tomlinson, who died after being that recoups divergent ideas for the mainstream. requires web-based software, such as blogs, hit by a policeman during the 2009 G20 summit In other words, could it be argued that ‘we media’ which audiences can use to produce, and protests in London. Originally the police issued a merely offers the idea that audiences can share, their own work. It is argued that Web 2.0, statement that: have their say, while, in practice, the ways in often referred to as ‘we media’, democratises described attempts by police medics and which user-generated content is expressed and the media, as anyone with a web connection an ambulance crew to save his life after he understood is barely different from traditional can create and publish texts (‘user-generated collapsed – efforts they said were marred by media? content’); we no longer have to rely upon protesters throwing missiles as first aid was professional organisations (or traditional ‘old’ administered. media) to act as the gatekeepers. Lewis 2009 Some observers believe this has led to However, a New York lawyer sent a video ‘dumbing down’ and ‘the cult of the amateur’ he’d made of the incident to The Guardian. This (see Carr, 2011); ‘dumb’ and ‘amateur’ because showed that the police version of events was not anyone, regardless of ability or expertise, can true. Although the newspaper is an example of create texts. traditional media, the fact that it could put the user-generated video on its website, and make it available on YouTube (http://www.youtube. com/watch?v=HECMVdl-9SQ), emphasises how audiences can more readily challenge the official version of events.

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60 MediaMagazine | February 2012 | english and media centre MM much more watchable (over 41m views): http:// www.youtube.com/watch?v=cXXm696UbKY). In their research into YouTube, Jean Burgess and Joshua Green (2009) found that 42% of the sample they analysed comprised of extracts from ‘traditional media’; and most of those had been uploaded by ‘users’. In other words, the clips were uploaded by fans rather than the traditional media companies themselves. It is likely that in the last two years this percentage will have increased, as YouTube has become a medium of ‘catch up’ distribution in the UK, for Channels 4 and 5. In addition, YouTube allows users to create their own ‘channels’. ‘My’ YouTube home page is currently plugging channels by Rhianna, Beyonce and Katy Perry. Clearly these artists are using the site as a promotional vehicle. Burgess and Green conclude that there are two YouTubes; they argue it is ‘a space where these two categories [traditional media and home video] co-exist and collide, but do not really converge’ (41). What appears to be happening is that YouTube is now used more frequently as a commercial network for promotional and catch-up purposes It remains to be seen whether Tomlinson’s However it has also been argued that social that runs alongside, and probably dominates, family will get the justice they deserve. networking sites have facilitated the ‘Arab Spring’ the original, usually trivial, user-generated However it’s virtually certain that in the old, uprisings (the revolutions in Tunisia, Egypt and content. pre-internet days they would have had no Libya and other Arab countries) as they enabled It could be that the televisual form is so strong chance. In April 1979 Blair Peach (see http:// protestors to bypass the centralised state media: that it is overwhelming the new medium; we can en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blair_Peach) was killed The reality is that Twitter is an information- think in similar circumstances, and to this day no one distribution network, not that different of TV content as something like a self- has been charged with his death. Meanwhile from the telephone or email or text identical liquid that shapes itself differently the policeman Simon Harwood, seen on messaging, except that it is real-time and inside different containers, but is always still video attacking Tomlinson, is to be tried for massively distributed — in the sense that television… manslaughter next year; without the ‘Web 2.0’ a message posted by a Tunisian blogger can Carmody 2011 intervention it is unlikely that the case would ever be re-published thousands of times and In other words, even as we become used to have gone to court. transmitted halfway around the world in the watching television programmes on computers, The argument that the internet has a blink of an eye. mobile phones or music players, we still liberating political function arises, in part, Ingram 2011 experience it as television. because authorities cannot control it as it is a As I write, the worldwide protests under the decentralised network: ‘Occupy’ banner (or Twitter hashtag) began with Co-opting the amateur it was widely believed that cyberspace might This co-option of the ‘amateur’ is also evident a suggestion in Adbusters magazine that went challenge the authority of nation-states and in the way meaning is structured by the viral in a few weeks (Kaste, 2011). The ability to move the world to a new, post-territorial era. dominant ideological discourse. For example, go ‘viral’, that is be disseminated by individuals Goldsmith and Wu 2006: 13 although YouTube has allowed ‘ordinary’ people around the world very quickly, is something that to become celebrities, such as ‘Charlie is so cool This was thought to be particularly the case was not possible in pre-internet days. like!!!’ (http://www.youtube.com/user/charlieiss in authoritarian countries – those without a free Politically, then, the internet has given ocoollike?blend=1&ob=4), they do not have the press – because: the people a potentially powerful tool to same status as celebrities created by traditional Technology empowers the people, who, communicate with each other, and so to media. oppressed by years of authoritarian rule, challenge their rulers. However, as governments will inevitably rebel, mobilizing themselves can exert a large degree of control over the through text messages, Facebook, Twitter… internet, ‘We Media’ on its own is not sufficiently Morozov 2011: xiv strong to allow ‘people power’ to succeed. The internet has loosened official control, but not However these utopian and libertarian hopes eradicated it. have not proven to be viable. Goldsmith and Wu (2006) explain how Yahoo was prosecuted The trivial: zoo visits and successfully in a French court for allowing Nazi laughing babies memorabilia to be sold on a site it was hosting. It might be thought that there would be no Although Yahoo is based in America, where need for controls in the production of ‘trivia’. The such behaviour is not illegal, in France it is. The trivial is probably best exemplified by YouTube. case illustrated that the law of the nation state The first ever video posted on site was ‘Me at the remained paramount, even in the ‘boundaryless’ zoo’ (April 23, 2005): http://www.youtube.com/ world of the internet. watch?v=jNQXAC9IVRw) It was typical of the Morozov details how countries like China and original ‘home video’ ethos of the site. Although Iran have successfully controlled the general it has been watched 6,131,062 times as of 13th population’s access to the internet, and so have December 2011, it is entirely trivial; so too is the prevented the free circulation of information. ‘Laughing baby ripping paper’, although this is

english and media centre | February 2012 | MediaMagazine 61 MM Follow it up Burgess, Jean and Green, Joshua (2009): YouTube Catherine Driscoll and Melissa Gregg (2008) ‘Broadcast Yourself: Moral Panic Youth Culture and Interent Studies’ in eds Rodrigues and Smaill Carmody, Tim (2011): ‘Post-PC TV: How and Where We Watch Netflix, Hulu and YouTube’ July 29, available at: http://www.wired.com/ epicenter/2011/07/post-pc-netflix-hulu- youtube/ Carr, Nicholas (2011): The Shallows: How the Internet is Changing the Way We Think, Read and Remember Goldsmith, Jack and Wu, Tim (2006): Who Controls the Internet? Illusions of a Borderless World Ingram, Mathew (2011): ‘Was What Happened in Tunisia a Twitter Revolution?’ January 14, available at: http://gigaom.com/2011/01/14/ was-what-happened-in-tunisia-a-Twitter- revolution/ accessed October 2011 Kaste, Martin (2011): ‘Exploring Occupy Wall Street’s ‘Adbuster’ Origins’, NPR available at: http://www.npr.org/2011/10/20/141526467/ exploring-occupy-wall-streets-adbuster- origins, accessed October 2011 Lewis, Paul (2009): ‘Video reveals G20 police assault on man who died’, the Guardian, 7 April, available at: http://www.guardian.co.uk/ uk/2009/apr/07/video-g20-police-assault, accessed October 2011 Morozov, Evgeny (2011): The Net Delusion How Not to Liberate the World O’Reilly, Tim: ‘What is Web 2.0: Design Patterns and Business Models for the Next Generation of Software’ 30 Sept. available at: http://oreilly. Who’s got the power? com/web2/archive/what-is-web-20.html, Has Web 2.0 switched power from producers accessed October 2011 to the audience? No, but the balance has shifted. eds. Rodrigues, Usha M. and Smaill, Belinda We – the audience – no longer have to rely (2008): Youth, Media and Culture in the Asia upon the token ‘access’ traditional media offered Pacific Region us, such as newspapers’ letter pages or radio phone-ins. Today we can easily produce texts Tapscott, Don and Williams, Anthony D. (2006): Graeme Turner (2004) argues: ourselves, even if we seem to be more interested Wikinomics: How Mass Collaboration Changes Even when ordinary people become Everything celebrities through their own creative in mimicking traditional media by becoming efforts, there is no necessary transfer of YouTube celebrities, or watching music videos Turner, Graeme (2004): Understanding Celebrity media power: they remain within the system and/or television programmes by favourite artists. of celebrity native to, and controlled by, the However it is still early days in the mass media. development of user-generated content. Over Nick Lacey teaches Media Studies at Benton Park School, Burgess and Green 2009: 23 the next few years, net-based audience-produced Leeds and is the author of a number of Media Studies text texts may start having a more distinctive impact books. Hence without the help of traditional media upon the internet. It could be that in time Charlie McDonnell cannot exercise ‘celebrity user-generated content may develop its own power’; he is defined as a celebrity in the terms of codes and conventions different to those of the traditional media only. traditional media. As we have seen, injustices However, before we conclude that television can be challenged more easily; but the problem has simply ‘co-opted’ (that is, assimilated or of political, and legal, controls will be harder to incorporated) YouTube, it has been argued that, surmount. because the internet does offer a diversity of viewpoints, both ‘amateur’ and ‘professional’, it is much more difficult for establishment discourses to structure how meaning is created, and so it is less hegemonic (Driscoll and Gregg, 2008).

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On 6th July 2010, Ridley Scott, director of Creation through Hollywood classics including Alien, Gladiator and Participation Black Hawk Down appeared on YouTube calling for entries to a new film experiment. Appealing A feature length documentary to any YouTube user – consumer or creator, video maker, video blogger, video watcher or aspiring film crafted from 4,500 hours of feature film director – Scott demanded that YouTube users’ footage of their nothing should hold people back. If you have a digital camera, there is nothing to stop you. Pick lives. Sounds dull as a day in the up your camera and film your day. Like an advert life of a dishwasher. Can Life in a for Nike sportswear, Scott insisted ‘Just do it’. See the video here http://www.youtube.com/watch?v Day cut through countless hours of =kGYACultjCY&feature=relmfu forgettable, self-indulgent crap to A few days before, Kevin Macdonald, director of classic documentaries One Day in September create 95 minutes of unforgettable and Touching the Void had outlined the idea documentary film? behind the project. Macdonald would direct the film from the footage shot by anyone on 24th July 2010. All they had to was upload the footage to YouTube. Whatever a person was doing that day – getting married, walking the dog, getting drunk, going to work – could become a part of this unique cinematic experiment. He outlined some elements to

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include; what do you fear, what do you love, to YouTube. So Macdonald and his team spent sing as they work, the men who herd goats, what makes you laugh? Empty your pockets £40,000 on 400 HD cameras and had ‘various aid and the people who dwell in the rainforests on camera to show the contents. No doubt organisations distribute them among people in are testament to the film’s attempt to bring terrified at the prospect of having to edit down remote towns and villages’ (Macdonald, 2011) in representation of all corners of the globe to countless hours of footage, some repetitive around forty different developing countries. the big screen. elements seemed like a small blessing. See the The images and sounds of Angolan women who video here http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C_ 4uii96xqM&feature=relmfu With participants ranging from a little boy who shines shoes for a living in Peru to a smug American Lamborghini owner, Life in a Day crosses the globe and brings viewers a taste of a huge range of cultures, from the super rich to those that have nothing. As a social experiment, not just a feature documentary film, the filmmakers wanted to make this a global project. No doubt to avoid accusations of ethnocentrism and an attempt to eliminate too great a focus on ‘narcissistic, bedroom-bound Western teenagers’ (Macdonald, 2011), the filmmakers wanted to include people from the developing world who don’t traditionally have access to cameras, computers or any means to upload their footage

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The participants world what they love most. The Japanese single demonstrates how this film makes something Among the other participants who made it father who gets his child to say ‘hello’ to the extraordinary out of the ordinary. The sadness into the final cut of the film are a huge number of photo of the absent mother sticks in the memory: of the clip is subtle; the woman in the picture is parents filming their children; following them this is one of the first moments of the film where presumed dead, but this is never stated; and the around houses, waking them, watching them the narrative stays with one set of characters for child’s reaction to the ritual the father and son shave for the first time and generally showing the a few moments before leaving them again. It also perform in front of the picture seems distracted. The child has moved on, while the father perhaps remains tied to the past. The film also takes the audience through the entire day so contributors range from those who are still up past midnight (the drunken couple that open the film) to the people who rise for work, prayer and play at the earliest hours of morning. Again the Western world is juxtaposed with developing countries in these early scenes as viewers see the contrast in lifestyles of the fortunate and less fortunate. Other notable contributors include the sick: a man who has just had a major heart operation thanks the nurses for looking after him and a woman whose family is coping with the aftermath of her cancer. There is a young man who uses parkour to demonstrate how he can

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live off very little (shoplifting, hanging off the morning works to promote a theme of the film. at the Love Parade that show just what a pleasant back of buses and jumping over train station The repetition of certain images; feet touching place the planet can be. barriers); and abattoir workers who show that the floor, flushing toilets not only shows the However the film has been criticised for shying death is a huge part of a day in their life. The similarities in how people live their lives but also away from war, famine, death and disease. Korean cyclist who has been travelling by bike shows that many people chose to film this in the Despite the abattoir workers demonstrating across the globe for nine years is featured more hope that their ordinary actions could become the killing of a cow, the mobile phone footage than once in the film; and politics is briefly part of something extraordinary. Matthew of the chaos and death that ensued at the alluded to with the juxtaposition of an ‘army wife’ Herbert fashions music out of sounds from the Love Parade, the film has an overwhelmingly with an Afghan photographer. clips and this helps to positive, optimistic outlook. American soldiers express the beautiful, messy melee of are glimpsed briefly (laughing and joking) and The thematic structure humanity Afghanistan is seen mostly from the perspective However despite this sounding like a Macdonald, 2011 of a young photographer who sees a bright potentially gimmicky mish-mash of globe future for his country. The use of montage helps to draw out other spanning clips randomly dispersed across a The emptying of people’s pockets is a great themes of the film. Love is a major feature of 90-minute film, the film has a structure of sorts. theme for the editors to contrast the rich with the film, whether it is love of parents for their Macdonald and editor Joe Walker assemble the poor. Some people have nothing; some offspring or love of people for their gods. Much of the clips in thought-provoking thematic have the keys to a Lamborghini. It also shows this is centred on the question Macdonald asked sequences as well as following the progress of some of the more extreme contributors to the contributors to consider; ‘what do you love?’ the day. So the film begins at night with shots film: one boy pulls out a knife, a woman pulls out but so much of the film is taken up by the idea of the full moon and takes us through the day a gun and one man has syringes in his pocket. of love, that the film becomes an occasionally barely stopping to witness early risers, people Where this highlights some of the differences of emotional testament to how much love there is in taking a morning leak, eating their breakfast, the human race, the question of ‘what do you the world. There are images of families, couples, a through to lunch, sunset and finally to night time fear?’ is used both to show our differences but again. Just the simple task of getting up in the man and his refrigerator, even strangers dancing

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full range of human experience across the in their life, this time 12th November 2011. With globe. The participants are an often odd bunch; celebrities from Ewan Macgregor to Stephen inspiring and sickening, filled with love, hate, Fry urging people to get involved, it remains to hurt and happiness. The film structure is cyclical, be seen if new director Morgan Matthews can emphasising that each day is a new start filled succeed in capturing a real, honest look at our with possibilities, a chance to reunite with a nation, and particularly our troubled capital city father or a chance to ask out the girl you love. The as we hurtle towards the impending Olympics in editing is at the heart of the film. There is rhythm the wake of the summer riots. to the footage created by sounds, music and pacing. The composed score by Harry Gregson- Pete Turner is undertaking a PhD at Oxford Brookes Williams lends much of the images emotional University and writes a film blog at http://ilovethatfilm. heft, giving the film an almost melancholic mood blogspot.com/ in the opening and closing scenes. Life in a Day could have just as easily been also more of our similarities. Fears include war, called Participation: The Movie and was a unique References politics, loneliness, loss and death but one man chance for anyone with access to a camera speaks of his fear of homosexuality, emphasising Macdonald (2011): http://www.guardian.co.uk/ (particularly Media students eager to become how fear breeds hatred and separates us from film/2011/jun/07/life-in-a-day-macdonald filmmakers!) to get involved in the production of each other. a feature film/documentary/social experiment. Trailer for Britain in a Day: http://www.youtube. Life in a Day is full of unexpected beauty, The sort-of sequel Britain in a Day was launched com/user/britaininaday optimism and the ordinary becoming in November 2011 and participants from extraordinary. It highlights the similarities in Life in a Day is now available on DVD from anywhere in the were asked to the normal days of so many humans sharing Amazon. play.com and other retailers. join in and upload their clips to YouTube of a day the planet, but also attempts to show the

english and media centre | February 2012 | MediaMagazine 67 FEBRUARY 2012: PARTICIPATION M M Now online in the MediaMagazine MediaMagClips Gallery edia agazine Menglish and media centre issue 39 | februaryM 2012

Professor Sonia Livingstone, Head of Media and Commnications, LSE, on:

• Children, young people and the internet • The work of an audience researcher • Social networking Social Networks • Regulation or legislation? Arab Spring • The role of Ofcom • Future impact of Media 2.0 We Media and Democracy? Garth Jennings on Making a TV Ad Hashtag TV Changing Audiences

Vic Goddard, Head Teacher, Passmores Academy, on:

• The making of Educating Essex • Editorial control centremedia and english • Trust and risk • Impact on students • The press response

• Media Studies, and more... 2012 february | issue39 |

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