theory

To make the project a real culmination of my studies at The New School, I decided to revisit some of my old media theory readings, supplement them with recent articles on new media activism, and pull some quotes out to draw a sort of theoretical framework. Some excerpts:

"The mass media serve as a system for communicating messages and symbols to the general populace. It is their function to amuse, entertain, and inform, and to inculcate individuals with the values, beliefs, and codes of behavior that will integrate them into the institutional structures of the larger society. In a world of concentrated wealth and major conflicts of class interest, to fulfill this role requires systematic propoganda."

— Noam Chomsky, and Edward Herman, "A Propoganda Model"

"Since then, broad-based, populist political spectacles have become the corm, thanks to an evolving sense of the way in which the internet may be deployed in a democratic and emancipatory manner by a growing planetary citizenry that is using the new media to become informed, to inform others, and to construct new social and political relations."

—Richard Kahn and Douglas Kellner, "New Media and Internet Activism: From the 'Battle of Seattle' to Blogging"

What I've Got

After taking a few days to research just how much raw photography and video footage exists of the various New School and NYU occupations and demonstrations, I am nearly overwhelmed with resources. The idea is now to contrast the different forms of media "coverage" of the events: the student-shot footage and photos, the traditional media coverage, the official press statements and the blog commentary.

Link to some of the youtube video:

rethinking the project

Over the past few months, The New School has been embroiled in a campus upheaval. Following the December student occupation at The New School, students from New York University occupied the Kimmel Student Center for a couple days in February 2009. The student groups across the city have been collaborating and organizing, with students from CUNY, The New School, New York University, and (maybe) Columbia creating a coalition of citywide student activists. As more demonstrations are likely to take place over the next month, and the New School students have vowed to "shut down" the university if president Bob Kerrey does not resign before April 1, it would be remiss for my project to not focus on these latest developments in student activism. The renewed focus will now be on student activism in the digital age, and what it means to be an activist in a time when you can live-blog your occupation, shoot video footage and post it on youtube, and publish your own "coverage" via weblogs, something the student activists of the late 1960s could only dream about.