4/2017 Digital Media and Social Memory +plus The Meaning of Life: Locarno Film Festival 2017 Media Development is published quarterly by the World Association for Christian Communication 308 Main Street Toronto, Ontario M4C 4X7, Canada. Tel: 416-691-1999 Fax: 416-691-1997 Join the World www.waccglobal.org Association for Christian Communication! Editor: Philip Lee Editorial Consultants WACC is an international organization that pro- Clifford G. Christians (University of Illinois, motes communication as a basic human right, essen- Urbana-Champaign, USA). tial to people’s dignity and community. Rooted in Margaret Gallagher (Communications Consultant, Christian faith, WACC works with all those denied United Kingdom). the right to communicate because of status, identity, Robert A. Hackett (Simon Fraser University, Burnaby, or gender. It advocates full access to information and Canada). communication, and promotes open and diverse me- Cees J. Hamelink (University of Amsterdam, dia. 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Rest of the World 30 USD (Personal) Brad Collicott 100 USD (Corporate) Cover design: Published in Canada Student Rate 10 USD ISSN 0143-5558 2 Media Development 4/2017 VOL LXIV 4/2017 4 Editorial 36 The Meaning of Life: Locarno Film Festival 2017 5 Go-ogle: Gender and memory Robert K. Johnston in the “globital” age Anna Reading 9 Asylum seekers, new media, In the Next Issue and society’s memory Noam Tirosh The 1/2018 issue of Media Develop- ment will include articles in prepara- 13 Video games, transmedia, and tion for the the sixty-second session cultural memory of the Commission on the Status of Colin Harvey Women, taking place 12-23 March 2018. CSW’s priority theme is 17 Digital narratives: me, us, and “Participation in and access of wom- en to the media and information and who else? communications technologies and Karen Worcman their impact on and use as an instru- ment for the advancement and em- 21 Museums that travel powerment of women”. Aleksandra Kubica WACC Members and Subscribers to Media Development are able to down- 25 The political economy of load and print a complete PDF of each historical digital games journal or individual article. Emil Lundedal Hammar 29 It’s Time … a speech that shaped a life and Australia Asha Chand 33 Rights at Risk: Observatory on the Universality of Rights Trends Report 2017 3 Media Development 4/2017 “A shift in power relations is occurring, such EDITORIAL that the powerful archiving force of the insti- tution (museum, government, church, law or Memory is power and power is politics. mass media) and corporations that may seek Traditional newspapers are often con- to preserve knowledge and history on their sidered “journals of record”, because they try to own terms seems to be challenged by the pres- maintain rigorous ethical standards in terms of ent archiving power of increasingly popular veracity, balance, and accountability. Their edi- and easy-to-use digital media.”1 torial independence is a mark of their integrity. Consequently, newspapers have been seen as re- It is important, therefore, to test some of positories of factual narratives on which national the assumptions made about digital media and, in and cultural histories and identities can, in part, particular, to tease out potential implications for be built. the way society sees itself, records itself, and re- At the same time, there are newspapers of members itself. That is the theme of this issue of the tabloid variety, whose ethical principles (if Media Development. any) are subservient to profit and, therefore, to the It is well known that when oral communities need to attract readers and advertisers. They have made the long transition to writing, it impacted become “shows” similar to those popular news how they were organised, how they recollected channels on television that mix news tidbits with the past, and how they viewed the future. They dollops of “entertainment”. Tabloid newspapers, were able to keep tallies and records and lineages, of course, are useful as indicators of the directions which cemented social bonds and commercial popular culture is taking at a given time, but that relationships, establishing what directions they may be their sole worth. might take next. Writing marked a settled com- In the heyday of public service broadcast- munity with a sense of its own place in history and ing, media corporations such as the UK’s BBC, a sense of its own importance. In terms of polit- Germany’s ARD, the Dutch NPO, and the Japan ical and social control, therefore, the need arose Broadcasting Corporation, were neither commer- to monopolise and/or control public “statements” cial nor state-owned. Free from political inter- relating to political and social entities. And, as ference and commercial pressure, they embod- Michal Foucault points out in The Archeology of ied the words of UNESCO, that with “pluralism, Knowledge: programming diversity, editorial independence, “Instead of being something said once and for appropriate funding, accountability and transpar- all – and lost in the past like the results of a ency, public service broadcasting can serve as a battle, a geological catastrophe, or the death of cornerstone of democracy.” a king – the statement, as it emerges in its ma- In this sense, public broadcasters also be- teriality, appears with a status, enters various came repositories of historical facts: what was on record was assumed to be true and reliable − even networks and various fields of use, is subjected though thorny issues of inclusion and exclusion to transferences or modifications, is integrat- were often ignored. From the 1960s onwards, the ed into operations and strategies in which its rise of alternative media gave public representa- identity is maintained or effaced.” tion and voice to some of those omissions. Today, public statements that lay claim to a Today, traditional media and other social particular status or existence, and the public forms institutions are giving ground to digital technol- of communication that maintain them, have been ogies and social media with a consequent revalu- appropriated by digital technologies that seem to ation of how public memory is represented and be shifting the nexus of power from the monopoly conserved. As Joanne Garde-Hansen has noted: of authority (political or social) to that of the so- cial collective or, indeed, of the ordinary person, 4 Media Development 4/2017 either of which can effectively challenge, make counter-claims, and organise in opposition. Go-ogle: Gender Yet, as the draft report of the International Panel on Social Progress “Rethinking Society for and memory in the the 21st Century” warns in its Chapter on “Media and Communications”: “globital” age “As media infrastructures become more per- Anna Reading vasive in everyday life, they increasingly me- diate the human experience of the self, the For millennia humankind has given future other, and the world. As they connect indi- generations access to the past by making viduals and communities, they also structure records of events and genealogies. Now we the universe of information and personalise go-ogle the past through the internet. informational exposure… Since individual au- tonomy is a necessary element of any form of istorically, humankind has mediated mem- social progress, it is essential to consider the Hories of the mundane and the extraordinary, implications of such large-scale media-based inventing mnemonic technologies and practices developments for the ongoing goal of social from rock art to stone circles, from singing songs progress.”2 to telling stories from everyday rituals to special- ist dances. Mnemonic technologies have changed In relation to the politics of memory, medi- from hand written manuscripts to the mass print- ations