Link: Book Reveals Youth's Views of Politicians

Being involved or informed with politics is incredibly powerful, even if government is a depressing topic for many. Socially, few more powerful demographics exist than young people, save for corporations and their lobbyists. But to go with the reality that shook the 2008 and 2012 presidential elections, the youth demographic is typified as disenchanted and apathetic to politics, which is just as often stereotyped as an old man's game.

A book published by Professor John Street, Dr Sanna Inthorn and Dr Martin Scott, seeks to dispel ideas that young voters have no sense of care about politics.

Personally, I wish that it didn't top off at nearly 100 dollars on Amazon, but then how would they make money off college kids who need it for their courses?

Of note to me personally, the book does this by examining research about popular culture and media icons, and how young voters (aged 17-18 years old) in the UK see politics through the lens of that popular culture. By examining what young people thought about celebrity icons and if they could be 'trusted,' and then comparing those findings to what they thought about political figures, researchers like Professor Street could analyze how to appeal to younger demographics and even what might be wrong with current approaches at presentation in modern politics.

The linked article provides some interesting summary of the team's findings and some of their interview statements,

Politicians need to come across as people who care about and understand an issue, and young people like to know if someone's personal experience has informed their political views. Politicians willing to reveal a little bit about themselves, who explain why something matters to them, might not gain 'legend' status like certain musicians or celebrities, but might improve their chances of being trusted and listened to.

As a  young person myself, I wholly agree with this statement. A flaw of delineating on party issues, to me and to a lot of my peers is that understanding an issue is not a political statement to me, it is a pre-requisite for participating in a discussion at all. Much of the current political race is denial of facts and of realities that I and my peers face daily, in the most advantageous way as to appeal to party and corporate benefactors.

Many people my age can see right through politicians. You can pretend to us all you want about how much you care, but if the answer to the question, 'why are you here,' is 'because it's advantageous to me' or 'My peers think I will win the election for them and give power in the government back to their party' then we don't want that. It's an unsaid but obvious, painful throbbing reality that Street and his researchers seem to have stumbled upon: on average, younger voters want to see a personal connection to the issue.

And nothing is a more personal connection than the media we love, and the experiences we go through every single day:

"The links between popular culture and politics are dismissed when it is thought that popular culture diminishes politics, for example when politicians appear on television shows like I'm a celebrity get me out of here. The assumption is that what they are doing is a desperate attempt to appear 'relevant' or to revive a flagging career. "But there are times when these links are taken with the utmost seriousness. During the Arab Spring of 2011, much was made of the role played by music and musicians inspiring the rebellion in Tunisia or the crowds gathered in Tahrir Square in Cairo."

The media we love and the celebrities we watch and the shows we take seriously and the books we read as if they're our personal canon, matter. They are portraits of what we look for when we want something to enjoy and admire.

There's that old adage, 'be the change you wish to see.'

Well, we have hours and hours of media that's exactly what we wish to see. Why don't politicians look for something to be, there?

I absolutely promise that if you are a politician and you can pull off the presence of Optimus Prime, the wholesomeness of Superman, the kindness and duty of Steve Rogers, the responsibility and class of Captain Jean-Luc Picard, you're going to be all set.

And maybe the good looks of Tom Hiddleston, I think that would land you the tumblr vote.

And if you're not a white guy, which would be great, we need to use this fact that pop culture is relevant to make it absolutely necessary  to add more idols of color, female idols, that can have an impact in politics and beyond.

If pop culture is well-known to manifest in politics, then it becomes an imperative that pop culture be representative, else all we're going to do is promote inequality in politics.

More about → Link: Book Reveals Youth's Views of Politicians

LINK: Showcase creativity, not racism, this halloween

You really shouldn't have to ask why you can't dress like a 'Gypsy,' an 'Indian' or 'a Mexican in a sombrero,' a 'tribal person,' a 'tiki person,' or wear blackface when Halloween comes around.

But here's a reminder if you do have to, or if you want to know why.

The fact that we can thoughtlessly steal and regurgitate the images of cultures and peoples until they are a generic, meaningless mush is one of our media's least beautiful legacies: cultural appropriation. The Mass Media summarizes it thus,

Look at the models wearing those costumes. They all feature people who look pretty Anglo. They are literally playing dress-up, using another culture as a costume.

“We’re paying respect to other cultures,” some may argue. No, you’re not. If you genuinely wanted to show respect to another culture, you’d do it on a day that isn’t reserved for shenanigans and soliciting treats from strangers.

Our media is dominated by white, male, heterosexual voices. This is undeniable. But it can also lead people to internalizing that white, male, heterosexual narrative as part of their mythology without even noticing. White people don't have to think about how their culture is pictured as a savage or as minstrels. Male people don't have to think about how degrading it is to be presented nothing but revealing, straight-male-gaze inducing clothing as costume options. Straight people don't have to think about how queerness is dismissed as either clownish or threatening.

But we should think about this, because do we really want our mythology to be looked back on like this? 

More about → LINK: Showcase creativity, not racism, this halloween

Feeding the Trolls: Social Media in Politics

Anyone who has ever had access to comment boxes, discussion threads, or any kind of unmoderated forum knows what trolls are. Well, maybe not everybody; the definition's been a bit muddied, but the original one is still good: someone who posts inflammatory or obviously attention-seeking opinions with the intention to incite an angered response or backlash.

A troll draws near! (But ignore it, it's probably a cry for attention)

The point being, the poster is not sincere. A troll is not a troll when they sincerely spit a bad or stupid idea and then try to defend it with 'just trolling,' that's just an ordinary bigot that also happens to be a coward.

However, in a landscape of political conflict, trolling seems to have a new stage: a paid stage. In India, there are individuals recruited to endorse a political party on social networks by attacking opposing party speech:

Arjun, who joined Twitter in 2010, started actively tweeting in June 2011 - primarily sharing his views music, sports, recent events, life and politics. His tryst with political trolls started the day he tweeted some information about the Gujarat CM Narendra Modi.

As Arjun started taking these trolls head on, he realized that his follower count was increasing dramatically. It didn't take long for some prominent political leaders to start 'following' him and engaging in chats with him. After his tweets got featured on a television debate, he was approached by the 'recruiters'. 

Their proposition was very simple. He was asked to write blogs promoting the party's agenda and policies. In return, he was promised up to Rs 10,000 or more per blog depending on the word limit. While journalists are often termed as 'paid media', concept of 'paid trolls' is still considered to be an urban myth.

It's no secret that in the USA, social media was a huge point of force in the 2012 presidential election, and yet its power is still dismissed with the fact that some people tweet pictures of their lunch. How long until the trolls are actually fed - and clothed - by real money for their efforts?

More about → Feeding the Trolls: Social Media in Politics

Link: While Superheroes Conquer Media, Comic Books Battle Stigma

This article by Melissa Rayworth of the Arkon Beacon Journal reports well on a very strange phenomenon: the mass-media bullies that once and still bully comics for being either too childish or too adult, too intellectual/nerdy or too uncultured, are cashing in on comic book idols. Meanwhile, comics themselves don't enjoy as much cultural uplift as the over $150 million gross of Marvel's The Avengers would suggest.

They've certainly cleaned up some, but it took way too long for Ant Man and Wasp to get a movie.

Rayworth quotes con-goers on their thoughts:

“If you tell somebody you read Captain America now, they know who you’re talking about,” said Sims, who blogs at websites including ComicsAlliance.com. “The characters’ being visible lessens the kind of stigma of reading comics, because people know those characters and have affection for them.”

But only to a point. Amanda Osman-Balzell is a married opera singer raising a toddler daughter while attending graduate school. When new friends visit her Tempe, Ariz., home, they raise eyebrows at her stash of comic books. 

“They see that we have comic books,” she said, “and they look at us like, ‘Really? You guys look so normal.’ ” 

She explains that many of today’s comic books boast intricate artwork and story lines far more complex and thought-provoking than their big-screen counterparts. But friends roll their eyes when she describes comics as “literature.”

There's no denying that comics have had a spotted past when it comes to integrity in storytelling. Any comic book fan can bemoan the ridiculousness of the Silver Age, and the un-needed darkening of beloved icons in recent decades.

And whatever this is. (Tarot/3 Kittens #74)

But is this really any worse or different than other forms of media? Surely written media has endured The Eye of Argon. Radio shows once were obligated to include advertisements in their actual fiction content (resulting in many a baffling radio drama about dish soap, for example). And is it any worse than television, with Toddlers and Tiaras?

Comics as a medium are older than television. And yet, television is now an ubiquitous part of our media culture. What's held comics back? Is it really the superheroes, when they score millions at the box office?

Or is it us?

More about → Link: While Superheroes Conquer Media, Comic Books Battle Stigma

Are Banned Books and Bad Science Connected?

According to Kevin C. Pyle  author of upcoming book Bad For You, an exploration of the 'war on fun', and Scott Cunningham: Yes. And they answer it with a comic.

The 'he' being Fredric Wertham, and the answer being 'no.'

In the wake of Banned Books Week, it's easy to ride the outrage at a seemingly over-protective and offensive decision to limit access to media. The inherent wrongness in shushing up Harry Potter and locking away Catcher in the Rye seems like a no-brainer.

Is it, though? What kind of thought (or lack of thought) went into this kind of conclusion? It's easy to dismiss it as merely a regressive political agenda, or the hysteria of an over-protective backlash to popular culture. The states with the most challenged books, Pennsylvania, Illinois, Wisconsin, Texas, and California all struggle with anti-science legislation and the push for creationism in classrooms, and book bannings are part of that anti-intellectual substitute-for-science culture. Texas needs no comment; it's host to the anti-science think tank the Institute for Creation Research,. California has a 'Creation Museum.' Pennsylvania was host to the first direct challenge to a school district that included Intelligent Design as a part of curriculum. Illinois and Wisconsin are battleground states for the issue.

But why might this be true? And what does keeping Fifty Shades of Grey off the shelves have anything to do with it?

The subject of the mini-presentation is comic books specifically, and the 'scientific' conclusion written about by Fredric Wertham’s Anti-comic manuscript Seduction of the Innocent, and its later influence on the formation of the restrictive Comics Code Authority. Pyle and Cunningham explain how Wertham's failure to adhere to the scientific method produced biased results, resulting in real-life media restrictions.

Incidentally, the method that Wertham used, is exactly the same method that some think tanks use when creating material supporting anti-science or otherwise restrictive material: starting with a conclusion, and then looking for evidence to 'support' it.

The same things that threaten science education and critical thinking in the USA are the same things that cause book bannings, 'violent video games' as a talking point, and general devaluing of otherwise very important media. These things are connected, and to let comic books slip by is what lets Intelligent Design stick its un-evolving foot in the door.

More about → Are Banned Books and Bad Science Connected?

Bill Nye the Real Fly Science Guy

I, like many others, have childhood television memories. Not to say I was parked on the couch often; I remember eating dinner (plain spaghetti, with Parmesan cheese) and watching Bill Nye the Science Guy on PBS.

BILL BILL BILL BILL BILL (inertia is a property of matter)

Educational television, I know — but I loved it, and so did thousands of other kids. William Sanford ('Bill') Nye's enthusiasm and excitement for science went hand-in-hand with my love for museums and my then-steadfast resolution to become a paleontologist. That last one didn't really work out in the long-run, but to this day I adore science and I suspect a vast fraction of young adults in STEM fields today have similar feelings.

This is why I was enchanted, and slightly baffled, when I saw Bill on Dancing with the Stars.

Pictured: Bill Nye dances the robot. What a time to be alive.

Bill Nye is not really who many of us think of as a celebrity. He's getting on in age, he's an educator, he ran a public television kids science show, he's a committee member for the Committee for Skeptical Inquiry, and a face of climate-change research efforts. But most of all, he's remembered for his kids' television show.

But he's also done battle with Fox News on the subject of climate change. He's used his star power to address creationism in schools and how anti-science sentiments might harm future generations. 

This is a great redefinition of what a celebrity is, and one I wish would happen more often. Without media that connected him to the public, Bill Nye would not be a celebrity. And he holds great meaning for the consumers he connected to, despite having no trappings of what society commonly considers as star material.

He is a population-picked celebrity. There's no agent doing publicity for him, or selling his image to magazines. He's not releasing singles, taking movie contracts, or advertising himself. And yet, everybody knows who he is, anyway, because we like him and we like to see him. He has meaning to us.

That's the power of media, I think, in its most base form. It doesn't just lift the stars above everybody else, it lifts people who would never have been stars into the sky, based on a television show that is barely considered important to popular culture.

But the consumers consider it important. And that's why Bill Nye isn't just dancing with the stars, he is a star.

More about → Bill Nye the Real Fly Science Guy

Link: Seven Things I Learned from Reading the Hobbit.

It's a geeky forecast, today.

The authors of the minimalist MS-Paint webcomic A Hard Hobbit to Break published a really great essay on the 7 largest themes in J. R. R. Tolkein's The Hobbit and how they can relate to our daily lives.

And it's not a surprise that they do. The Hobbit is high adventure, but it's also a story about a journey. Not a Hero's Journey-- that's about the adolescence and tribulations and personal growth of a hero character.

It's a story about having your life up-heaved to go on a trip that you're not sure will end well.

Plenty of us call ourselves some kind of profession, but don't feel qualified or were forced into it and now we just sort of play along... though with luck few of us are burglars.

Plenty of us have had to muddle through vast conflicts that don't even include us, and yet, we've had to make decisions that influence them.

 And plenty of us have happened across something totally by chance that's changed the entire game: sometimes, for the worse. Though hopefully none of my readers have found the One Ring.

Hopefully.

"G... Google! Blogspot!!

More about → Link: Seven Things I Learned from Reading the Hobbit.