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 english and media centre • Trust and risk • Impact on students • The press response • Media Studies, and more... | 39 issue | february 2012 MM MM 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 London 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.