Ferreira, Eleonora & Joao Making Sense of the Media: A Handbook of Popular Education Techniques, 1997 Monthly Review Press

Robert McChesney Corporate Media and the Threat to Democracy 1999 Open Media Pamphlet series: Seven Stories Press

Herbert Schiller Information Inequality: The Deepening Social Crisis in America 1996 Routledge

Various handouts

1. Media and Social Movements -- Introductions and course overview
[What media do you use? What is the most memorable media you have experienced? Why?
What is your experience, if any, in political movements or issues? What is your expectation of this course? What do you think of media?]

Context of American Mass Media – what they reflect and reinforce

• Privatization, deregulation, commercialization
  
• Common assumptions of commercial media – conservative economic and social values,
• capitalism = democracy, individual effort, US superiority, private ownership, minimal
• regulation, homogeneous population, purpose = $$
  
  

Challenges to these Assumptions reflected in ‘Alternative Media’

• Social movements are beneficial; social conflict is OK
  
• Liberal ideas
  
• Different economic models
  
• Different sets of social/political values
  
• Different sets of audiences
  
  

Why this is even an issue

• True range of political opinion in US
  
• True experiences of social history and progressive movements
  
  

The political and philosophical importance of the First Amendment

2 Understanding the relationship of media to social movements

• How to ‘read’ the media, and how it operates – including regulatory environment
  
• How movements are built (your experience?)
  
• How people process information, even in today’s milieu
  
• Exercise in Reading the Media – headlines and articles (NYTimes, ITT)
  
• Sources, soundbites, images, code words (identifying mainstream’ vs. ‘alternative’ media ) Yellow Journalism, Propaganda, advocacy -- what is the difference?
  
• Entertainment vs. news – can you tell anymore?
  
• Anti-Communism and the Media
  
• Voices with a POV
  
• Objective vs. Subjective Stories
  
• Kathy Bonk’s "Media Road" – how an issue might move through mainstream media
  
  
  

3. Counter Culture Media – Rise of Electronic media in the last _ of the 20th Century, seizing the technology for alternative and ‘fringe’ voices, the role of public participation in setting media policies

• "Public Interest, convenience and Necessity"
  
• Importance of culture
  
• Creation of Public radio/TV
  
• Pacifica Radio (live broadcasts; gaining access to satellites = national reach, etc.)
  
• Growth of Community Radio Movement (Sex and Broadcasting)
  
• Guerilla Television (‘portable’ videotape and what it made possible)
  
• Cable Access (success of public policy lobbying)
  
• ‘Underground newspapers’
  
• Newsreel/new social activist filmmakers (the problems of distribution)
  
• "The Revolution will not be televised"
  
  
  

4. Building Alternative Media Outlets -- How do you do it? Who would want to? What kinds of policies have to be in place? What kind of policies are in place now? What impact does that have on gaining access to non-print media? What does it take to …

• Build a Radio station? Technical, political, cultural, fiscal?
  
• Start a cable access channel?
  
• Build a TV station?
  
• Get a satellite channel/network?
  
• Micro broadcaster?
  
• How do you keep it going and run it? Where does the programming come from?
  
• Where does the $$ come from? Where do the audiences come from?
  
  
  

5. New Media and the Net -- What’s on line, who’s producing it, and what is this doing to organizing for social issues? How is it evolving? What is its impact?

• Everyone a content provider (vs. broadcast)
  
• Organizing Globally
  
• List-serves and discussion groups
  
• WWW, interactive and multi-media
  
• Credibility of Sources – Drudge, Salon, NYT, etc.
  
• Equality of ideologies – all positions equal (Aryan Nations vs. WTO )
  
• Accelerating broadband integration – AOL/Time-Warner
  
• Policy issues
  
• "The Revolution WILL be Televised"
  
  

6. "Minority" Media – What and where is it? What is its having an impact on social movements?

• Black journalism, radio and television
  
• Latino media & Broadcasting, including Radio Bilingue
  
• Native American Journalists, Indian Country Today, and AIROS
  
• Unity Conference
  
• Immigrant Radio, TV periodicals (local and national)
  
• Minority representation in ‘alternative’ media
  
• Religicasters
  
• International sources
  
  
  

7. Media and Yesterday’s Movements -- Was there ‘alternative’ media? How did it reflect the major social issues of the day? How has it had an impact? What were the ‘mainstream’ and conventional positions of the day? What were the politically ‘progressive’ positions, and how were they expressed? How do we see their legacy today? Appropriation of all new media technologies when they have emerged (photography; political cartoons; film; radio; television)

• Civil war – Birth of a Nation, GWTW, Glory (original letters; sculpture on Boston Commons)
  
• Dreyfus Affair (Emile Zola; new medium of poster lithography; letters to the ed)
  
• Russian Revolution (Newsreels, John Reed, Eisenstein/10 Days That Shook the World
  
• Communism and the Cold War – Rosenbergs/Art, Daniel (book and film);
  Army/McCarthy Hearings; Robeson and his music; I Led Three Lives; Manchurian Candidate; Salt of the Earth; The Front; Guilt by Suspicion; Naming Names; Cradle Will Rock etc.
  
• Labor and Union Organizing (Norma Rae; Matewan)
  
• Harvest of Shame
  
• Nuclear Destruction – On the Beach (book & film); Dr. Strangelove; The Day After
  
• Civil Rights Movement – importance of live television (Bull Connor; I Have A Dream; anthem)
  
• Vietnam War – live television; MASH; anthems (Fixin’ to Die Rag; Universal Soldier, Draft Dodger Rag;); Pacifica radio broadcasting from Hanoi; FTA Show; Apocalypse Now (Ride of the Valkyries); Hearts and Minds; Full Metal Jacket; Platoon; MASH
  
  

8. Media and Today’s Movements – where are the movements? What are the issues?
How is media treating them? What is the ‘alternative’ media doing? What are the media struggles?

• Global economy/WTO
  
• Sweatshops
  
• Prison/Industrial Complex/Death Penalty
  
• Civil /Human Rights/Race Issues
  
• Global Conflicts (communism, civil wars, cross border conflicts, etc.)
  
• Environment/Ecology
  
• Nuclear Disarmament
  
• Others? Local, regional, national, international
  
  

Possible field trips
WBAI, MNN
Possible media we will see or hear –
Radio Broadcasts – Pacifica, David Isay; Salt of the Earth/"Harvest of Shame"; The Front/The Cradle Will Rock/Guilt by Suspicion; Dr. Strangelove /The Day After; Mississippi Burning; Silkwood/ Norma Rae/Matewan

Political websites – single and multi-issue
Visual and Audio materials on-line

Hidden Jews of New Mexico, Community Media Services, Community Activities

Paper Cut Designs, Links, Home