Mutt Media | Daily Bone 8.22.09 Interesting article on the "Debate" over Media Studies Programs. Did you know there was one?

Article Reprint discusses Media Studies in Education

The following is an article I came across that I found of interest.

This article discusses an ongoing debate as to the validity of Media Studies in University environments. As someone who is currently immersed in a course of Media Studies at the New School (NYC), I can assure you that my classes are not only engaging, but deal in the most current, relevant and revolutionary of subject matter and instruction. My curriculum is focused on balancing the history and evolution of Media and it’s various theorists and theories as well as a great infusion of the most cutting edge advances in the industries that have grown from those.

Of course, teaching institutions vary greatly but my program has been around a long while and the courses are taught by learned professionals in their fields.

Enjoy and as always, your comments are welcome! Thanks to Social Media Mind on Twitter for leading me to this….

In defence of media studies

How do we judge if a subject is easy or difficult? Condemnation of media studies reflects a fundamental confusion about its aims

David Buckingham
Saturday August 22 2009
guardian.co.uk

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2009/aug/22/media-studies

It’s unfortunate for teachers and students that the exam results always come out in the midsummer silly season. It seems to guarantee a flurry of tiresome political rhetoric, in which their hard work, and the realities of contemporary education, are entirely ignored.

This summer’s great education debate has seen frequent mention of media studies ? a subject that is now a byword for dumbing down. Media studies, we are told, is one of those soft options now being offered to the deluded students of our state schools; while the privately educated elite are being stretched by real, hard subjects like physics and maths. Admissions tutors at a few elite universities apparently look down on such soft options. And shadow education secretary Michael Gove has even proposed that schools be allocated more points in the league tables for hard subjects than easy ones.

If anything is a symptom of dumbing down, it is the willingness of politicians and pundits to pronounce on things they know nothing about. But why would they bother to find out? It is so much more convenient for them to represent media studies as just a matter of ignorant chavs sitting around watching telly.

Much of the discussion of media studies reflects a fundamental confusion about its aims. On the one hand, it is chided for being not vocational enough: after all, media studies GCSE isn’t going to get you a job in the BBC. Yet on the other, it is condemned for not being academic enough: it is, quite hilariously, a Mickey Mouse subject.

But how might these arguments apply to other subjects? Do we judge the value of English degrees on whether they equip students to become professional literary critics? In fact, the employment rate of media studies graduates is higher than in most other humanities and social science subjects; and most of them are getting jobs in media-related professions, however precarious they may be.

The charge of being insufficiently academic is one that media studies students ? who routinely struggle with the complexities of social and cultural theory ? would find quite ridiculous. The academic study of the media dates back more than 80 years, and there is a vast body of scholarship on the sociological, psychological, cultural and economic dimensions of the media.

Indeed, there are many academics researching and teaching about the media at Oxford and Cambridge, and at most leading “old” universities. Meanwhile, competition for places on media studies degrees is intense, with required grades often much higher than for other subjects.

How do we judge whether a subject is easy or difficult? Is art difficult? For some it is as easy as breathing, but for others it is something they will always struggle to master. For some, maths must seem like a soft option, while for others it will forever remain a closed book.

The suspicion of media studies is very similar to that which greeted sociology in the 1960s, or English literature in the 1920s. Then, the suggestion that young people might study books in their native language rather than just in ancient Greek and Latin was little short of scandalous.

Now, the idea that young people might study the media of modern communication seems equally scandalous. Newspapers have been around for more than 250 years, the cinema for more than 100 and television for more than 60. Perish the thought that schools should recognise, and interrogate, their existence.

This suspicion is fuelled by some who work in the media, but who seem to regard what they do as somehow unworthy of serious critical attention. Or perhaps they find such attention threatening?

By all means let’s have a serious debate about how we teach media studies, and what it can achieve. But that debate needs to be based on more than ignorance and narrow-minded prejudices about modern culture.

guardian.co.uk Copyright (c) Guardian News and Media Limited. 2009
Registered in England and Wales No. 908396
Registered office: Number 1 Scott Place, Manchester M3 3GG

Mutt Media | The Daily Bone 7.23.09 Facebook usernames can now be changed!

Remember several weeks ago when I blogged about the addition of a new feature on Facebook and urged you all to claim your unique user name?

There were screams of caution during this process as Facebook warned you to choose your name wisely and carefully, as you would be stuck with it forever.

Well, forever is sooner than we all thought. You are now able to change your facebook username if you did not choose wisely and carefully. This is great news if you selected that you find unbearable and cannot live with. The not-so-great news is that there is, as time goes on, less and less of a selection to choose from.

Tip: Pick a name that you don’t have to spell out for everyone, that is easy to remember and that reflects you or your business in some way and above all, will stand the test of time.

Caution: Facebook now claims that you will only be able to change your name once. I wouldn’t bet on that seeing as they reversed this policy so quickly after the launch of this new program, but in the interest of full disclosure, I thought I should mention it.

MySpace, in case you use it, also has this feature. It really does make it easy to have people who are looking find you.

So go forth and claim your (new) URL Just login to your account. Go to settings, then your account and click on change next to where it says “User Name”

You can find us at

facebook.com/muttmedia

myspace.com/muttmediany

Mutt Media | Daily Bone 7.13.09 Google & Apple: Share-Share. Is that fair?

So, forgive me if I bore you with some of last weeks’ news, but I’ve been on holiday and not in touch. There are some things in the news that I would’ve blogged about in Real Time but sometimes vacation trumps work, and that’s a good thing, right?

So, first off, our friends at Google, in the midst of executing their plan for world domination and data-collection, have announced they will be releasing their own Operating System called Chrome. At first blush, I am excited about this, for a couple of reasons.

Google does seem to get it right. Their services are useful and free – two features I always find pleasing. I like anything that works and doesn’t stress me out, as I am a simple girl. Their analytics and other applications function well and play nice with my MacBook. Life is good. Yay Apple & Google.

My husband is engaged in a brutal war at the moment with his new laptop that is running Windows Vista, an operating system that doesn’t play well with others. He needs to run a certain software for his business and Vista just won’t cooperate. Updates, tech support, patches and lots of nonsensical work-arounds have kept my husband up at night and his staff has logged hours trying to trouble shoot for him to no avail. He’s had to wipe out the hard drive and reinstall programs, download updates that in the end, set his efforts back and just yesterday, his laptop shot off a really low blow: just crapped out. During one of the mind-bending downloads and installs, during step 3 of 3, the screen goes dark but for 3 lines that read, “Running Step 3 of 3. 0% complete. Do not shut down your computer.” And so he waited and waited. Still 0% complete 45 minutes later but the graphics are moving like something is happening. But nothing does.

I used to work off of a Windows PC. You don’t realize how much of a nightmare it is until you switch to a Mac. I swear ONCE YOU GO MAC YOU NEVER GO BACK. (Knock on wood) My Mac & I do not have to battle resistant, mutating viruses, updates go off without a hitch and all of my programs load like butter. Going on 2 years together and so far, it’s a match made in compuer heaven.

So, my point? Let’s take a look behind the scenes to see why my Mac (Apple) and Google apps work so well together. The common denominator here could be that they share a CEO named Eric Schmidt and another Board Member name Arthur D. Levinson, the CEO of Genentech.

Is this a conflict? Does this fly in the face of anti-trust laws, which are in place to safeguard against possible collusion between companies (and world domination).

An article in the Global edition of the New York Times from last Friday by Brad Stone speculates that the “Chrome Operating System is likely to create more questions for regulators”. Yep, this alliance is already on the radar of the Federal Trade Commission with the investigation going on for the last several months.

Under section 8 of the Clayton Anti-Trust Act specific limits are placed on the sharing of information between companies by common board members.

In the case of Schmidt and Levinson, both claim to recuse themselves during portions of the Board Meetings when the discussions turn to tricky topics.

Where is the overlap? Well, Apple makes the IPhone and Google has the Android Software (see YouTube video for info on Android and the “G Phone” below), Apple has ITunes and then there’s YouTube, Apple has the Safari Browser and now here’s Google with Chrome.

In the end, the FTC will decide whether these relationships are problematic. It all comes down to what percentage of the overall business is affected.

I don’t care. I just love my MacBook and my Google. Can’t we all just get along? (hello Microsoft!)

Then maybe my poor husband will get some sleep.

Mutt Media | The Daily Bone 6.29.09 Some interesting data (or so we think!!)

Mutt Media brings you some research….

disclaimer…these figures are taken from a 3rd party site (alexa.com).

I’ve compiled some data I thought was interesting. Here you’ll find the top 10 social networking sites (according to Alexa.com) as of mid-month. As you would expect, Facebook, MySpace & Twitter round out the top 3 but there are some others on this list you may have never given a glance or heard of.

Please bear in mind that these are domestic figures so they do not account for overseas data, which is also available. If you haven’t heard of some of these, go check them out and let me know what you think.

Mutt Media | The Daily Bone 6.17.09 Facebook says "Claim your Username!"

Happy Hump Day – It’s Wednesday

On June 13th, Facebook launched it’s newest toy – the opportunity for users to claim their own recognizable domain name. So now, instead of the generic url address of http://www.facebook.com/home.php, which leaves you virtually unidentifiable, you can – in the spirit of the Gold Rush 100+ years ago – claim your unique identity and easy to convey domain name (i.e., http://www.facebook.com/topeyelidsurgeon). Ok…that was a plug for one of my favorite clients

Anyway, registration began at midnight on 6/13 and according to Bloomberg News about 1 million people staked their claim within the first hour alone.

It’s really easy. Since prior to 6/13 when you logged onto your account you probably have seen a message alerting you to this new feature. It’s easy to get if you haven’t done this already. Just visit http://facebook.com/username and follow your nose.

If you have a Page on Facebook with less than 1000 fans, this feature will not be available to you just yet; you’ll have to wait until June 28th when this limitation will be lifted.

To get all of the answers to your questions, just click on this link. Mutt Media will take you there!

Oh, and it would be nice to become a fan while your out there looking around if you haven’t already. We’ve got a link to make this really easy. Just look to your right under the “Blogroll” header…and click away!

Mutt Media’s Extra Bone 6.16.09 Twitter going dark today at 11AM for One Hour!

Follow us on Twitter @muttmediany

Twitter users will be without their favorite platform today for a bit as Twitter is going dark for an hour at 11AM (NY Time) for some scheduled maintenance. Click here to get more info.

Mutt Media | the Daily Bone 6.12.09 "Tagged" – You're It! How was it for you?

One Phish, Two Phish, Red Phish, Blue Phish – just say no!!! Mutt Media’s cautionary TAG tale…

Have you been tagged yet? Well I have and I must say, I did not find the experience enjoyable. It actually happened to me a few times this week alone.

It began with a simple enough email from a familar name that I haven’t heard from in awhile, so I opened it. Basically, the contents of this email were that “Jane Doe” has tagged me in their personal photos and wouldn’t I love to “click here” to see them? Let me save you the trouble if you should happen to receive an email such as this.

I clicked. I was then propelled into an environment where they asked me to sign up, join etc. in order to see these precious photos. By now, my antenaae was up but I decided to play along and join. Big mistake. The program began asking for access to my address book in order to find my friends and invite them to join too, which, as I suspected – was done to my friend Jane too.

Tagged claims to have over 70 million users but I question how many of those have actually opted-in knowing what they were getting into. This week I have been doing extensive research for an article I’m writing on Social Networking and the traffic these sites attract. I’ve read the data and I do believe people have stumbled into this trap and been added to their 70+million statistics, which just serves to help legitimize this practice of phishing.

Ok…I know you are going to ask, so I’ll save you the trouble of emailing me about this. According to Wikipedia, here’s their definition of phishing. And don’t worry – it’s happened to us all!

If you click on the word “phishing” in the previous paragraph, you can get the full-monty definition, it’s origins etc., but here’s the cliff note version:

“In the field of computer security, phishing is the criminally fraudulent process of attempting to acquire sensitive information such as usernames, passwords and credit card details by masquerading as a trustworthy entity in an electronic communication. Communications purporting to be from popular social web sites, auction sites, online payment processors or IT Administrators are commonly used to lure the unsuspecting public. Phishing is typically carried out by e-mail or instant messaging, and it often directs users to enter details at a fake website whose look and feel are almost identical to the legitimate one. Even when using server authentication, it may require tremendous skill to detect that the website is fake. Phishing is an example of social engineering techniques used to fool users, and exploits the poor usability of current web security technologies.Attempts to deal with the growing number of reported phishing incidents include legislation, user training, public awareness, and technical security measures.”

So there you have it…a cautionary tale on spamming, tagging, phishing etc.

A quick disclaimer…some may actually enjoy this site and what it has to offer. This post is primarily a complaint about their methodology in signing up new members and siphoning off of your address book.

Oh…and a little footnote. Go and do a Google search on the Harvard-educated founders of the company and you’ll find a few skeletons.

I’m in pretty good company on this one. Just yesterday, Time‘s Sean Gregory called Tagged.com “The World’s Most Annoying Website”. I’ve provided the link, as Mr. Gregory, being the news writer, actually contacted the two founders of the company to inquire about their sign-up practices. It’s an interesting article, so check it out. Since I’m not a news journalist, I don’t have that responsibility. I’ll just say no thanks.

Mutt Media | Daily Bone 6.4.09 Shameless Self Promotion will get you famous on the 'net

For starters, Happy Birthday to my father-in-law, Stan……

You may have heard about the news item regarding Mark Malkoff.

He’s the “comedian, writer and filmmaker” from Astoria, Queens who, in the past has gotten press for sleeping at the IKEA in New Jersey for an entire week and chronicled the experience on film (which can now be viewed on his website and on YouTube). Another one of his stunts involved visiting all 171 Starbucks in Manhattan in a 24 hour period and making a purchase in each one (again, captured on video for all to see).

His latest adventure takes him on an airplane for an entire month. In that month he will travel the country, sometimes logging as much as twelve flights per day. Of course this will all be captured on video, tweeted about and so on.

Personally, I don’t get what value any of this has, except to bring Malkoff some noteriety, which is fine. Let’s not forget the point here – exposure for him as well as a few corporate giants who also reap the benefits and the attention. Starbucks, Ikea and now Airtran.

Things like this remind me a bit of reality TV (of which I am not a fan). Caught about 15 minutes of “I’m A Celebrity – Get me out of here!” the other night and let’s just say I don’t get the whole Spencer Pratt / Heidi Montag thing. Nor do I get the John & Kate + 8 thing…..can you say SELF-E-X-P-L-O-I-T-A-T-I-O-N??

If this type of thing interests you and you’d like to follow along, click here to get the play-by-play on Twitter…Malkoff’s got a lot of followers!

This has been your Daily Bone
© 2009 Mutt Media NY LLC All Rights Reserved

Mutt Media | Daily Bone 6.2.09 Ever hear of a "jobvite"?

Read an interesting article in the New York Times on Sunday 5.31.09 called, “Finding New Employees, Via Social Networks”. You can click on the link to read the full article but to sum it up, Julie Weed tells the story of Alan Kennedy, a 54 year old man who found himself unemployed. Kennedy is now working at Hubspot, thanks to some social networking and Facebook.

I’ve spoken here before about how Facebook profiles can be used FOR and work AGAINST you during your job search. Cleaning up your account for your job search is paramount but once that’s done you can begin to take advantage of some third party applications that are designed to assist you in your search using social networking.

Jobvite & Appirio are two companies that an employer may seek out to fill positions. Keep in mind that these cater to the Company, not the individual.

Go check out how they work and how they can affect your job search!

This has been your Daily Bone
© 2009 Mutt Media NY LLC All Rights Reserved

Mutt Media throwin' you a bone….an oldie but a goodie. Enjoy the Alligator King from Sesame Street