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"