Imagined communities with references to Benedict Anderson

Nationalism definition: 1) Loyalty and devotion to a nation, with primary

emphasis on promoting it's culture.

2) Nationalist movement or government.     

Imagined communities is a phrase that was coined by Benedict Anderson in 2006. When looking at media in relation to imagined communities Anderson focuses on print media, he thought that it's existence enables imagined communities. In the present time imagined communities are symbolically produced through all kinds of media, but at the end of the 18th century print media became popular at the same time as the emergence of nationalism. 

 The logic behind this link is that print media needed to maximize the size of their market to make a profit and so newspapers were everywhere and they interconnected the country. It also became a daily ritual to read newspapers and offered homogeneity to everyone creating a sense of togetherness. 

There are four ways of understanding nationalism: 

• Dissimilisation= Differences between your nation and others, not being them. 
• Assimilation= Constructing similarities within your nation, traditions and culture that you can carry with you. 
• Inward looking= Defining your nation in terms of your own internal and cultural history. 
• Outward looking= Constructing a national image to outside countries. 

Yet nationalism continues to be incredibly difficult to define and practically impossible to analyse.  According to Anderson nationalism is an anomaly in Marxist theory and because of this it has not been confronted but instead dodged at all costs. He goes on to make the point that perhaps if nationalism was put in a category with "kinship" rather than "liberalism" it would be easier to define. 

 "No scientific definition of the nation can be devised

yet the phenomenon has existed and exists"

- Hugh Seton-Watson

This is why Anderson offers the definition of nationalism to be "an imagined political community." Because it is imagined, the bond of brotherhood that is felt within a country filled with people who all feel connected but are in fact strangers is surreal but it is definitely within most of us. It is a strange and unexplained pull and pride that we feel for our own country and members.

"Marxist movements and states have tended to become

national not only in form but in substance"

"nation-ness is the most universally legitimate value in the 

political life of our time"

-Eric Hobsbawm

But as a nation changes surely so do the nations values, both keeping with old and new traditions. Especially considering the way the world is changing, many people even say that the world is shrinking. Cultural changes could happen due to cultural hybridity, which has happened throughout history and is still happening today. One factor that is now happening less and less would be colonial conquesting and of cause globalisation played a massive part in merging cultures. As well as immigration, migration and asylum seekers. 

But as with everything there are negative points to nationalism, it can create a boundary between different countries and cultures and this can cause tension. When people have a very firm idea of what their nation stands for and the way that they want that nation to be perceived it can also lead to tension in that society if their are people that don't fit that stereotype.    

For more on Anderson click here!       

Moral Panics

Definition: moral panic; plural noun: moral panics

an instance of public anxiety or alarm in response to a problem regarded as threatening the moral standards of society. 

Moral panics are not to be confused with risk society disasters. Moral panics often have a target group or a culprit where as risk society disasters don't have a specific enemy, this makes them unstable and more difficult to identify or isolate.

When speaking of moral panic the obvious theory to include is the "Deviancy Amplification Spiral." This is the general process that occurs when an issue or incident insights a moral panic. 

 

The Deviancy Amplification Spiral. 

 The spiral illustrates how moral panics can emerge with very little cause especially once the media have become involved. This can lead to mass hysteria and outrage which causes more fear and often leads to the issues becoming worse not better. In societies in general we tend to hold our values very close and once these become threatened it can cause irrational thinking. 

 Once the Deviancy Amplification Spiral has been completed it can lead to a response from the legal system to appease the public. This could come in the form of extra policing focusing on the illicit problem or judges handing out harsher sentences or even politicians being pressured to pass new laws. All of this does more to convince the public that their fears were justified and the media continue to profit through covering not only the initial problem but any other story which has a tenuous link also.

Studies which can be linked to the spiral include:

 Jock Young http://cmc.sagepub.com/content/7/3/245.short
Stanley Cohen http://www.readcube.com/articles/10.1111%2Fj.1468-2311.1967.tb00231.x

"Media appear to reflect reality but instead construct it"

-Stuart Hall 

An example of a  moral panic which could illustrate Hall's perspective is the London Riots of 2011, which if you were to simply look at the stories printed by the news papers was purely filled with young people. But the London School of Economics conducted a study and interviewed 270 rioters, the age range was from 13-57 and a third of the rioters interviewed said that they had never been criminally convicted or cautioned.

 BBC news footage of the London riots. 

According to Charles Krinsky moral panics are set in motion and carried out in the public sphere, this is seen now even more due to social networking websites, especially Facebook and Twitter which both played a large part in the London riots. Krinsky insists that public figures instill more fear into people rather than calm, an example of this could be news articles which exaggerate the initial problem which then increases anxiety. 

McRobbie and Thornton to theorists who have studied moral panics note how since the seventies both society and the media have become more fragmented and contradictory. No longer are moral panics allowed to gently fade away but now their completely followed by the media from beginning to end. But they also make the point that the media and it's views are not as diverse as society and although opinions are now common in articles they do not tend to show varied range and so induce moral panics and enforce a social view point. 

 

 

Interactivity with reference to Pierre Levy

          Definition: If users receive real-time feedback from a computer so that they can modify                                the use of the machine, the hardware, software, or content, the system                                         is said to be interactive. 

Pierre Levy

        But Pierre Levy instead describes it as a word that has become vague and now has a much wider meaning. But he does imply that interactivity is a significant characteristic distinguishing key digital media from earlier commercial or popular forms.

 Interactivity has brought around the death of mass marketing. Instead of targeting all  audiences advertisements are now directed at a particular audiences and now because

of elements such as social networking people are only shown adverts that relate to 

their interests  or things they have bought previously, this is similar to retail websites and Google. 

Adverts need engagement from viewers and now that more and more people fast

forward through adverts they instead cover the internet on side bars or before 

You tube videos. this means the viewer has to click on a hyperlink or button. The 

content is now physically engaging not just representational.    

"Digital media allow the consumer to become a part 

of the campaign. The most powerful new medium we have

discovered is not digital, but rather the consumers themselves."

- Wiedemann 2006 

Levy made the point that it would be difficult to prove that an information receiver is ever passive. Everyone reacts differently to information, whether it be a conversation on the telephone with some friends or a television programme. By making things more interactive it means that the consumer can have a product more personalised to their tastes. An example of this could be televisions, you can now change the frame of the television, the brightness, whether you want a commentary and you can also set programmes to record or set reminders. 

There are now a lot of two way communications within technology that such as social networking sites, instant messaging, online gaming and of course the telephone. Especially due to the influences of the newer media influences Levy compares interactivity to virtuality. This is quite true in media such as computer games and social networking, in which you can change and develop profiles and almost create another world. 

Interactivity requires engagement from all users and it places the consumer or the user at the centre of commercial communications. It has also helped to improve telepresence, now that real time communications is becoming better and better not only can people instant message and Skype but face timing on smart phones is also becoming more and more accessible. There is also interactivity in online gaming systems in which you can contend with players on the other side of the globe that you don't even know. 

Levy said that there were several criteria to measure a medium or communications systems interactivity: 

• The ability to ability to appropriate and personalize the received message.
• Reciprocity of the message.
• Virtuality- the processing of the message in real time based on model and input data.
• Telepresence.  

                                                For Pierre Levy's blog click here!