Exegesis so far

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Latest Abstract

The process of “extraordinary rendition”, which is practiced by the CIA, is being sanctioned and accepted by other Western nations around the world, despite the fact that it flies in the face of the Geneva Convention and the Declaration of Human Rights. However, the issue is not widely publicized and many Britons are unaware of the problem. Actors for Human Rights UK aims to tell the stories of men who have been victims of extraordinary rendition, to humanise them in the eyes of the general population, who may not know the human cost of this practice. How can AFHRUK use a viral marketing campaign to further spread its message about the wrongs being done in the name of the War on Terror and, in turn, promote their own programs?

Technology and evolution

Reading Danny Belkin's article about "The Internet Will Speed Up Human Evolution", I was reminded of a fact I read the other day (it might have been in The Good Weekend, the Number Crunch section). 10% of human life that has ever existed, exists now. At this moment in time, our world population makes up 10% of all the human beings who have ever lived. I find that phenomenal.

The reason Belkin's article brought this fact to mind for me was that it is a stark reminder of how quickly technology has changed us as a species just in the last 100 years. Advancements in medicine, education, transport, all of this has allowed us to live longer and procreate more. It's an extraordinary achievement, whether or not you believe it is actually a good thing or not.

At first reading, the suggestion that "The internet will speed up human evolution" seems preposterous. But Belkin's argument is compelling and comes from a theory about the very start of evolution, when single-celled organisms (or orgasms, as poor Liberal backbencher Jason Wood said the other day!) joined together, to create multi-celled organisms. He suggests that the internet is enabling a similar merger to occur, but on a far greater level. The merger of human and computer intelligence, the creation of "a human-computer meta-network". 

Improvements in communication have snowballed and accelerated developments in other scientific and cultural areas, the speed at which new technology is created can be seen as exponential, thus technology can be said to be adding to human's intelligence and therefore helping us to evolve. This much is easy to understand. But Belkin takes it one step further, saying "the merging of humans into an interconnected computer meta-network will eventually create a collective consciousness for all the individual participants."

Although I agree with the basis of his argument, Belkin's meta-network concept is hard for me to fathom. It sounds like an individual would have to sacrifice their own individuality and give themselves over to a new level of consciousness - like a Buddhist meditation but with computers. Perhaps my concerns can be seen as an extension of my concerns about existing technologies, such as Facebook, which, as previously discussed, I am uncomfortable using because I don't want to share that much of myself with this world. It could be suggested, therefore, that Belkin's idea is not ridiculous, because millions of people around the world are already prepared to give up some part of themselves and share it via the net.

Looking into the future, I also can't help but wonder whether some form of technology will beat us in the end. Not in the form of robots taking over the world, as Belkin mentions, but more in the form of some new aggressive mobile phone cancer, or all the radio waves pulsing around in the air shrinking our brains!

On that note, I would like to end on something more cheery. Please enjoy Flight of the Conchords with their Robot song...

Supervisor

I think I now have a supervisor for my project, Rachel Wilson. I met with Rachel yesterday and I think we're both on the same page about how to approach the project and what difficulties we might face. What's more, we've got friends in common! That's always a good sign! I think her background will be very helpful for me and she has already come up with some good ideas about who I can talk to and issues I should consider.

What question is my research project answering?

I hope to answer the question: "How can not-for-profit organisations use new media and the internet to raise the public's awareness about human rights issues?"

I mentioned the draft script, well here it is. Comments welcome.

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The idea behind the script is that it is based on a section from the AFHR show "Rendition", which uses transcripts and real testimony from three guys who experienced the process of extraordinary rendition. I thought it would be best to make the campaign somehow in the style of AFHR, in order to raise awareness not only of the issue, but of how AFHR works as an organisation.

Dangers of Wikipedia

We were speaking in Comm Rev about Wikipedia and Google and the dangers involved in people taking what they're told for gospel without considering how and why the information is chosen. I mentioned a sketch by American satirist Stephen Colbert. See below:

http://spring.newsvine.com/_news/2006/08/01/307864-stephen-colbert-causes-chaos-on-wikipedia-gets-blocked-from-site

Unfortunately, the YouTube clip is being contested by Comedy Central for breach of copyright. Fair enough I suppose (but disappointing for this blog post!)

Potential challenges and problems

There are a number of challenges I can foresee with regards to my campaign for AFHR.

First of all, there's the target audience. Deciding on who the target audience is is bound up also with what we want to get out of the campaign. Do we want to convert people to the AFHR cause? Encourage donations? Or motivate existing supporters? Of course, if a campaign could do all three that would be ideal, but I'm not expecting to create the perfect awareness campaign, so we might have to be more specific! From my readings and research so far, I would expect that our best chance of success will be if we target people who are already sympathetic to the issues that AFHR engages in, but who either don't understand the Extraordinary Rendition issue or who don't know about AFHR's work. The aim of the campaign is therefore to direct people to the website where they can find out more about the issue and organisation (and even donate if they choose!)

It is here that we also start to discover the limitations of a viral campaign. Although cheap and with a potentially large audience, viral campaigns will target a younger market. There is nothing wrong with this per se, and it could be great for AFHR, but it has occurred to me previously that a potential audience for AFHR is the niche market known in political circles as "the doctors wives". This rather patronising term refers to middle aged, middle class women who are conservative politically but who are also kind and concerned with human rights. Their politics generally stems from their wealth and social circles, but they do not condone inhumane behaviour. This is a powerful group because, as the name suggests, they are connected to powerful people (or may be in positions of power themselves) and have previously been the turning point on issues such as the Vietnam War and refugees in Australia. AFHR should definitely consider targeting this group, but I don't think that viral marketing is the way to do it.

However, having said that, if we shoot our viral campaign on broadcast-quality high-definition video (I'll have to do some research into the best camera to use) then we can hope that, if the viral campaign achieves some success, we can then venture out into television. TV would be the best way to reach the middle aged women group, along with features in magazines and radio.

The other issue with viral marketing is that you have to give a reason for the receiver to pass it on. This will partly be helped by targeting already sympathetic viewers, who are more likely to want to share our campaign with their friends as a way of expressing their own views. However, if the 90 second ad engages people well enough, even those who were previously unsympathetic could be encouraged to pass it on. Engagement often comes down to an issue of emotion. Most virals are funny for this reason, engaging people's sense of humour. It would be a huge challenge to create a funny campaign around state-sanctioned torture, but I won't rule out the possibility just yet! We are more likely to engage with people with either shock value or a very moving piece.

These are the main challenges at the moment, in terms of creating the concept for our campaign. There will also be technical decisions to make (as touched upon above)... but those can wait for another month or so!

Long break

There has been quite a delay since my last post, but I have a good excuse, I was in the UK. Sure, they have computers and internet over there, so I could have still contributed to my blog, but I was super busy on a whirlwind tour, which was partly about my Hons research project.

I met up with Christine of the newly-named Actors for Human Rights. We discussed what issue she would like to focus on in a campaign and she resolutely said extraordinary rendition. Extraordinary rendition is the name given to the kidnapping of suspected terrorists by the CIA around the world, who are then held in secret prisons and are not allowed to contact their families, their embassies or legal representation. According to many accounts, they are also tortured. The practice gets a mention in Wikipedia and there is a fact sheet about it on the American Civil Liberties Union website. There was also a film about this released last year (starring Reese Witherspoon and Jake Gyllenhaal).

AFHR has a script about rendition which uses the testimony of three guys who each experienced rendition and were then released. They all claim torture and that the governments of their respective countries didn't help (one is British, one Canadian and one German). This will be used as the basis of our viral campaign.

We also talked about what we want the campaign to achieve. Essentially it will be about raising awareness of the issue as well as the profile of AFHR. We want to direct people to the website, where they will then be offered ideas about what they can do, which organisations are working in this area, booking a show by AFHR and how they can find out more information. Our target audience will probably already be left-leaning and sympathetic to human rights issues, but maybe they are unaware of the extent of the rendition problem and/or have never heard of Actors for Human Rights. Directing people to the website will also provide a way for us to track the success of our campaign to some extent, by keeping an eye on website hits etc.

More to come.

Why am I bothering?

According to The Age, all this going to classes and doing work is a waste of time...!
http://www.theage.com.au/news/web/pumping-out-diplomas/2008/04/24/1208743225063.html

Progress being made

I have been relieved to discover in the past few weeks that I'm enjoying researching my Hons project topic! That may sound strange, but I can sometimes get excited about the idea as a whole but get bored with the details of how to achieve it. Thankfully, it seems that won't be the case this year. Although it's only April. Still months to go...

The concept for my public awareness campaign will come together more clearly in the next month, after I have visited Christine in London and (hopefully) received Ethics approval.

In terms of the exegesis, my plan is to structure it in three parts: the theory/research on social marketing and how it works, an analysis of three different Australian public awareness campaigns and the impact that they've had on society, and an explanation of my process and the problems I had to overcome in order to make the campaign for AFR UK.

Ironically, AFR in Australia officially wound up on the weekend. I have been involved with the organisation for 7 years (since its inception) and I think we have achieved some amazing results (no more Pacific Solution, for example!) However, the organisation was starting to feel tired and less relevant than it had be when it started, so we agreed it was best to let it go. The website will remain (www.actorsforrefugees.org.au) because it offers a number of useful resources, but we will no longer take bookings and perform shows as a group. Sad, but also a relief in many ways.

Faces of Facebook

I really like this bog post from Tessa about how online spaces can mean your public and private worlds collide.

Check it out: 

http://tessatessa.wordpress.com/2008/04/13/why-im-opening-up-the-space-and-not-censoring-the-face/

I agree with Tessa that we all have different sides of our personality that we show to different people at different times: "I would argue that we all have multiple personalities, or perhaps more accurately one mulifaceited personality. Different social situations act as forums to express different elements of our personalities. I am a different person around my friends to what I am when I visit my grandparents or when I am at work. I use different language, discuss different topics and wear different clothes. I think what social media is doing is making it possible for these different personalities to cross over."

I like the idea that social media allows a person's various personalities to interact and cross over, although at the same time this is part of the reason why I think I have never wanted to join Facebook or MySpace! I'm a very private person, even this blogging that we have had to do for uni has been a struggle for me in some respects, and I have always been cautious about sharing all my personalities with the world. The idea of old school "friends" (who are not friends at all, and never really were) getting in contact with me now and finding out what I'm doing irks me. If someone is a genuine friend then we would have kept in touch, or they will find a way to track me down without Facebook. I consider myself to be such a different person than I was at high school (although that's probably not true!) that I don't like the idea of my present and my past colliding.

I was surprised to read in Tessa's post that she had a potential employer check her Facebook profile. I would find that invasive but, then again, as Tessa points out, if you want to share all your personalities with the world then you should be proud and comfortable to do so.

Perhaps one day I'll lose out on employment because I don't have a Facebook/MySpace site!

I still feel uncomfortable with the amount of information people put about themselves on the internet. It's like Big Brother is always watching and I feel I get chastised sometimes for not joining in, as though it's some kind of political rebellion I'm engaging in.

I should start a Facebook group, for people who have no intention of ever joining Facebook!

ABC - The Average, Boring Channel?

In The Australian today, ABC Director Mark Scott (who recently announced that the ABC's TV department will soon suffer major job losses) says he believes the ABC is an "incubator of Australian art and culture":

http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,23551193-7582,00.html

I beg to differ.

I am flabbergasted by how little drama the ABC invests in these days. I know they are short on money, but in 2007 they commissioned just over 20 hours of new Australian drama. 20 HOURS! That's not even one day's worth, back-to-back!

What's more, the drama they do commission is very rarely innovative or pushes the boundaries, the way the ABC could and should. The advantage the ABC is supposed to have over the commercial networks is that they don't have to worry about ratings or other commercial concerns but, as part of the corporatisation of everything these days, ABC management is more worried about ratings than quality or innovation.

Take East of Everything. I must confess to having only watched one episode, the first, but it gave me no inclination to return. It was almost exactly the same as SeaChange... but without the humour or the charm! So what's the point? The ABC are stuck in a constant rut trying to repeat their previous successes, not acknowledging that their highest-rating shows SeaChange, The Chaser, Pride & Prejudice, Choir of Hard Knocks) came out of the blue, and were different and new when they attracted those audiences.

Other examples of how the ABC is failing to encourage new talent and produce interesting drama shows is a story I heard about a friend who put his (really great) drama series into the ABC and was told his scripts were fantastic, "This is the kind of drama we should be making..." but they won't. Because it didn't match their target audience (ie: old people).

Perhaps Australia should reintroduce the TV license fee, as they have in the UK. The BBC is constantly innovative and takes risks on new writers/directors with interesting projects. They can afford to, however, as the TV license fees (which go straight into the BBC's pocket) mean that one network's drama budget is larger than all drama production in Australia combined (all the TV networks at the Film Finance Corporation).

Rather than just whinge about it, I plan on moving overseas! Along with many of my peers.

It's official, I'm a nerd!

I have become the stereotypical "mature age" student... I've finished my Comm Revs essay early! Wow. I would never have done that in my undergrad degree. Actually, I think I did once, and the essay got lost when I submitted it and I almost failed! So perhaps I should hold off submitting the essay too early!

Big business bytes

It's amazing that, although online media specifically, and the internet generally, has the potential to be such a democratising force, it is still big business that runs the show.

Reading this article in today's Age, 

www.theage.com.au/news/biztech/murdoch-could-join-microsoft-bid-for-yahoo/2008/04/11/1207856776806.html, I couldn't help but be struck by the massive amount of money that gets thrown around as part of these high-end corporate takeovers. These are two of the world's biggest companies who are trying to control another huge company, Yahoo, which holds the key to information about consumers (through their internet searches and email) and controls much of cyberspace. The internet offers opportunities for anyone who has access to a computer and a modem to contribute their thoughts and views, and yet it still gets taken over by the big boys every time.

I'm reminded of Orwell's 1984. The way everyone was constantly surveyed. We have to deal with consistent surveillance when we are outside our homes, on most streets and in most shops nowadays, and although we don't have video camera surveillance necessarily in our homes these days (like the Telescreens in 1984) we do inadvertently tell Big Brother what we are doing and what we are thinking about by using the internet. Google, Yahoo and Microsoft are watching us! Scary stuff.

Online Gaming

Reading the article by Jakobsson and Taylor in the Transient Spaces reading, I was struck by a few things. Firstly, how similar the game they described (EverQuest) is to World of Warcraft (is it, in fact, an older version of the same game? I've never heard of EQ) and also how different their experience of online gaming was to the experience that is usually described in the media.

I have played some WOW. Over the summer holidays my boyfriend signed me up. I would only login once a week/fortnight but it can be a fun time-waster if that's what I need. Too busy nowadays to be looking for time-wasters!

Although I can see how people find the game addictive, I find that I get bored quite easily now, as compared to when I first started. The addictive quality comes mostly from the endless nature of the game: you are constantly offered new quests, and numerous quests at the same time, so you never "finish" or "win". But this starts to get frustrating, you can feel that you're going around in circles.

What starts to suck players in further, I think, is the formation of online relationships/bonds with other players, as described in the Jakobsson/Taylor article. Guilds and less official groups are formed, loyalties are created and regular meeting dates might be established, which gives the players an emotional connection to the game and therefore adds to their experience. I have probably never committed enough time to form these bonds. Except for my "RL" bond with my boyfriend!

MMORPGs are often given flack in the media, however, for alienating people and further disconnecting our society, which is already splintered by communication forms that don't encourage face-to-face interaction. However, I don't think that most people would ever want to replace online friendships with live ones, unless they are already prone to loneliness or are in some other way antisocial and struggle to communicate one-on-one. So it could be seen as offering an opportunity and hope to people who otherwise wouldn't form relationships or communicate with humans.

Your thoughts? Are we further alienating people by giving them the opportunity to not mix in society?

While you think, have a look at the trailer for "Make Love Not Warcraft", a Southpark episode from Series 10. Highly recommended you watch the ep!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C_VwonZxuFM

Bad habits

I know, I know... I've been a bad blogger. I haven't posted for almost a week. I've failed in my duties. I won't go into too much detail, but this week has been crazy busy. It has involved: extra work (at the ADF), a major relationship decision, stress and worry about a major film project, hurried organisation for a brief overseas jaunt happening next month, the discovery of more uni work that I wasn't aware of, and attempts to see all my friends who are performing in the comedy festival! So I hope you'll forgive me.

As a peace offering, those of you who enjoy a good old Mac vs PC debate will no doubt love this Danny Katz article from The Age today:

http://www.theage.com.au/news/danny-katz/praise-be-to-the-lord-our-jobs/2008/04/09/1207420476347.html

I'll write more on Friday. No more excuses, I promise...

Dark side of online spaces

There is always a lot of media when something goes "wrong" with one of the big online community sites, such as MySpace or Facebook. This article was in The Age yesterday:  http://www.theage.com.au/news/web/craigslist-hoaxers-arrested/2008/04/03/1206851064915.html

There have also been stories about bullying, murder and suicide pacts. The temptation always seems to be to blame the media form itself for provoking or invoking these incidents, but that is an over-simplified and unhelpful assumption to make. 

Online bullying, for example, is a terrible trend that seems to be growing, but bullying has always occurred and I can't see how online/mobile phone bullying could be worse than old forms of bullying. Receiving a threatening note (or "poke"!) via Facebook is no less scary than getting a nasty note left in your locker, which is the traditional form of girl bullying.

The argument is that online bullying follows the kids home, but psychologically, bullying always follows the victim wherever they go, it's part of the psychology of being bullied.

I'd be interested in other points of view on this issue, if you have any insights?

Global Security

From our Comm Revs tute yesterday, one issue that we didn't discuss, in terms of globalisation and how new communication technologies have changed humanity's world view, is the issue of security.

Before the printing press, people would have been only concerned with the security of their family and of their own village, having little access to knowledge or information about villages in other parts of the country. However, with the creation of print and therefore the solidification of the concept of the nation state (according to many of our readings), the public would have become concerned about national security, having a geographical US vs THEM mentality. The next step, with the advent of televisiona and then the internet, has been a focus on global security. This has less to do with geographical borders and more to do with political ideologies and/or culture clashes. It is the logic behind the War on Terror; it is not America's war, it is a global war, or so we are told.

I would argue that even the previous World Wars were halfway between a national security issue and the global focus we have today.

Anyone care to comment?

New media - its implications for old media

Having recently sat through two very different but equally awful (in my view) pieces of theatre (I won't be naming names, but they were major theatre companies!) I started to reflect on what theatre needs to do in order to remain relevant.

The problem that theatre has, as a medium, is that we now have conflicting expectations of what we want from live drama. On the one hand, being as film and television literate as we are, we expect realistic performances and a certain degree of "drama", or conflict/tension in the script. On the other hand, realism in theatre is in many ways a dead medium, because so many other mediums do it better (espeically television). With the advent of online docos and videos, this has shifted even further, as we now have a medium that emphasises the "voyeuristic", thus making the realism seem even more real.

What theatre can offer, as opposed to newer mediums, is a greater suspension of disbelief, as well as an added tension to the audience's experience because they are watching the drama unfold live. Thus, absurdism and surrealism work, arguably, better in a live theatrical space than they do on the cinema screen, where people's expectations for believability are higher. The other genre (for want of a better word) that theatre excels at is the live thriller. Not necessarily in a conventional murder mystery kind of way, but when you see events unfold live on stage, there are great opportunities to build up tension, and the audience starts to emit tension, as well as feeling it, so it loops back on itself and makes for an exciting evening.

One of the best examples of the latter genre of theatre that I've ever seen was Pillowman, by Irish playwright Martin McDonagh, which was presented by the MTC last year. I usually dislike the MTC's work, but this piece was utterly compelling. It combined elements of surrealism and absurdism into a show about murder, torture and childrens' stories. Apparently many of the MTC subscribers (read, the Blue Rinse Set) walked out. That is my definition of great theatre!

Online doco progress

I was very lucky over the weekend, I found 2 great connections for my Transient Spaces online doco. First of all, I remembered that my boyfriend went to school with Julian Hill, who was the head of Melbourne 2030 and now works for the State Government Department of Planning, so I'll be giving him a call to get a government perspective on development in outer Melbourne (especially Melton).

Secondly, I was talking to my lovely friend Liz, who said that her partner is an urban planner who is currently working on a development at Melton!

So I will have the Sudanese family as a case study of Melton residents, alongside the official government view and the opinions of an urban planner who has to deal with the problems of developing housing and retail spaces in the outer suburbs. A nice, balanced approach I think.