Why is a movie about a young boy learning kung fu called The Karate Kid? For most of the film’s young audience, Jaden Smith's break-out movie doesn't explain the confusion. Their parents and older siblings, however, may recall the earlier installments in this series which started with a young Ralph Macchio learning karate from Noriyuki “Pat” Morita, a movie which started as the hero's quest to learn karate to overcome his tormentors and evolved by film's end into a coming-of-age story about the bond between mentor and student. The first Karate Kid struck a chord with audiences, becoming the fifth-highest grossing film of 1984.

After two sequels, which did little to alter the formula established by the original and met with dwindling success, the franchise underwent a revamp in 1994 when Daniel was replaced by a new student. The Next Karate Kid, a 1994 sequel, tried to cash in on that decade’s trend towards butt-kicking hero-ines (Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Xena: Warrior Princess, etc.) by casting Hilary Swank in the title role, but failed to either reproduce the original’s success or revive the franchise.

A full 26 years after the release of the original, the newest version is once again adding a twist motivated by the changing market. Although this re-imagining of the original story changes up many elements, the most significant one is moving the setting to China. The suggestion to transplant the story overseas was actually the decisive factor which emboldened the producers to green-light the newest chapter despite the lukewarm performance of the last edition. Moving the story to an exotic locale isn't just a case of trying to one-up the original, though: as with the decision to cast a girl in the 90's, the focus on China – and the switch from the hero studying karate, which is of Japanese origin, to learning Chinese kung fu -- in the newest Karate Kid is mostly based on money.

Hollywood has a complicated relationship with China. Composing nearly one-fifth of the world's entire population, and with a growing middle class, China is a market too big to ignore. More importantly, it is a market which appears poised to embrace Western cultural products on a massive scale; for example, Chinese ticket sales for Avatar account for the single biggest chunk of the film's take in foreign box offices, no small feat considering the difference in exchange rates. Despite the massive appetite inside the country's borders for Hollywood films, though, the government officially sanctions only a small trickle of foreign-produced movies, allowing no more than twenty onto screens each year. According to a statement from Dan Glickman, CEO of the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA,) “because there are fewer movies available legally, there is more of an appetite for seeing them illegally. You can buy just about every movie in the history of the world in China”. As a result, China is ranked in the top five countries where piracy is a major problem for American producers (so is Canada, incidentally, though for different reasons.)  In some cases the MPAA has filed suit against Chinese sites which stream Hollywood films without permission, yet because most of those films are not legal for distribution in China anyway it's more difficult for the MPAA to claim damages to their profits. The fact that so few foreign films are legal for distribution in China means that unapproved ones exist in a legal grey area. The best the MPAA has achieved so far are promises from the Chinese government to crack down on piracy internally.

As a result, some studios are trying to make inroads into the Chinese movie market by being proactive about securing those few, precious spots allowed for foreign films. Nods to Chinese culture are one strategy to please film committees, but signing on with local companies is a more committed tactic. Co-productions with Chinese studios (such as The Mummy: the Tomb of the Dragon Emperor and The Forbidden Kingdom) are in the fast lane to get onto Chinese screens since they can be vetted by government officers at each stage of production.  The Karate Kid remake is actually the biggest Chinese-American co-production in film history, partnered with a state-owned Chinese studio to make sure of government approval. This latest twist on the franchise may be a shrewd move on the part of the film's distributors to reach a tricky market. If the setting alone isn't enough to convince Chinese audiences, martial arts movie legend Jackie Chan -- a household name in China, even moreso than in the Western world, due to his more than 70 roles in both English and Chinese-language films – seems likely to seal the deal. Some foreign film studios are putting down roots inside China on a permanent basis, no doubt motivated by the possibility of circumventing the cap on foreign films. After an initial success with Mulan and later breaking the record for box office sales in the animated film category for Kung Fu Panda, Disney has set up their own studio in China for a local adaptation of their surprise-hit, High-School Musical. In the case of the latter, Disney is planning to simply take advantage of low production costs in China and probably won't release the final product internationally, clearly betting that there is enough money to be made in the Chinese market alone.

Of course, Chinese audiences don't uncritically embrace every American production which features some aspect of Chinese culture. Despite financial success, both The Mummy: The Tomb of the Dragon Emperor and Kung Fu Panda hit some speed-bumps due to perceived cultural insensitivity. In the case of the former, some movie-goers were outraged that the villain of the movie was loosely based on a venerated Chinese emperor who (spoiler alert) is dispatched by the film's square-jawed Western hero. As for Kung Fu Panda, its release was unfortunately timed around the Sichuan earthquake. As the panda is the symbol for that province, some critics felt it was in bad taste to show a comedy with a panda as the main character and suggested a boycott. While The Karate Kid remake has already raked in more than half of the original's total gross in North America in its opening weekend alone, the release in China is scheduled for a little later. This version has apparently had a few edits, but it remains to be seen how well audiences will tolerate the story of an American boy learning kung fu and (spoiler alert) besting his Chinese tormentors at one of China's oldest sports. Nevertheless, if it is a success it would be a massive step forward in the globalization of American-produced films. China is attractive not only because of its huge consumer base, but also because it is one of only a few markets which Hollywood films haven't broken into yet. A combination of policies which block entry for foreign films and a thriving black market has so far made the middle kingdom a tough nut for Hollywood to crack. Even India, which has its own well-oiled, homegrown movie-making machine, has started warming up to some American-backed productions and turning out impressive profits. There, too, the key has been adapting and being sensitive to the local market rather than repackaging and dubbing old content, but striking the right balance is still a work in progress.

For Teachers:

• Ask students to debate the character of Hollywood blockbuster movies. Are they distinctly American or are they stripped of national character to appeal to as many countries as possible?
• Canada and America are lumped together into one 'North America' category when tallying box office grosses. What does this say about the market for films in Canada?
• Ask students to make a list of different films they like and know well and order them according to how easily each one could be exported to a completely foreign country where the language, customs, or history are totally different. Discuss what the audience is expected to already know before they enter the theatre. This is the same task faced by many Hollywood executives everyday.
• The topic of this blogpost can be used as a supplement with Media Awareness Network's lesson The Blockbuster Movie

How serious an issue is screen time? A study by the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health found that roughly ten percent of Ontario youth spend at least seven hours per day in front of a computer, TV or game console. According to a 2006 World Health Organization study cited here, Canadian youth engaged in an average of six hours of screen time per day (this rose to seven and a half hours per day on weekends; summer, of course, is essentially a two-month weekend.)

The media activity that probably raises parents’ concern the most is video games. The good news is that your child may be better off playing video games than watching TV: unlike TV viewing, for instance, playing video games is not associated with high blood pressure. As well, a recent study has shown that youth who play certain types of video games – in particular, sports-themed games – are likely to play physical sports as well. Some video game systems, most notably the Nintendo Wii, add a physical dimension to the gameplay itself by requiring the player to move her feet or swing a controller. (Most of Nintendo’s competitors are bringing similar systems to the market.)

That being said, most of the games popular among older children and teens are on systems with standard hands-only controllers (or on computers, such as World of Warcraft,) and there’s no question that long stretches of sedentary game playing are unhealthy. In fact, the negative effects go beyond the game replacing more active pursuits: research has shown that long stretches of being sedentary can cause a variety of health problems even when offset with exercise.

More worrying than the physical effects of excessive game playing are the psychological effects. There has been a lot of talk in the last few years about Internet and video game addiction, but it’s not yet clear if overuse of either genuinely has the characteristics of an addiction. What is clear is that heavy media use can have a variety of negative effects, both on a person’s physical and mental health. Moreover, it may be harder during the summer to notice or recognize the signs of problem media use because of the absence of a normal routine. Generally, video game playing (or Internet use, or nearly any other activity) can be considered problematic when it starts interfering with someone’s normal life, but in summer it can be difficult to define what normal life is – just as someone might spend every waking hour of July and August practicing jump shots or skateboard tricks without it being considered a warning sign, so too might it not be that unusual for someone to devote all their time to mastering a video game or “levelling up” their character in an RPG. Some signs of problem use, though, are still meaningful. For instance, is your child becoming isolated from friends? Are his sleep habits or general health being affected? Does he become depressed and argumentative when unable to play the game? Keep in mind that games, like other hobbies, are supposed to be fun; if a game seems to be making your child unhappy (aside from the occasional frustration over a lost duel or blocked progress) there may well be something wrong.

Even if your child is a social butterfly who’s hardly ever home, though, doesn’t mean that media use isn’t a problem. That’s because for most teens and tweens there is no separation between their online and offline social lives, with physical attendance at dates, parties and get-togethers flowing seamlessly into the online discussion and dissection of them. Checking status updates, tweaking profiles and commenting on photos can be as obsessive as video game playing, with the added problem that it often goes on around the clock. Rather than being isolated from their friends, in this case youth feel like “microcelebrities”  – with everyone in their circle messaging and commenting on everyone else, they may be reluctant to ever turn off the computer or phone.

In either case, parents can use the same strategies to help their kids moderate their media use in summer (and year-round.) The most important of these is simply to set household rules regarding screen time and media use. While parents (and youth) may be sceptical, there is strong evidence that the existence of rules on media use has a positive effect on behaviour. A recent study showed that having consistent rules makes kids less prone to excessive screen time, a finding which echoes MNet’s research showing the positive effects of household rules on online behaviour. You can also set rules by controlling the physical environment in your home: keeping TVs and Internet-capable computers in public spaces and, if necessary, imposing a “cell phone curfew” after which phones and Web-capable devices need to be handed over to you. More broadly, it’s important to talk to your kids about your expectations and concerns relating to their media use, and to listen to them when they talk about their media experiences. Finally, it’s important to model good media use as well – if your iPhone is on the dining room table every night, the message that sends is going to be louder than anything you can say.

The government’s consultation process has been ongoing since May, but this paper has been in the works here for over a year. Why? Because although there’s been a lot of high-level government-led discussion on what Canada should do to remain competitive in a digital world, little has been said up to now about the skills needed by ordinary Canadians – of all ages – to prepare them for working, learning and living in this promising and challenging digital world. Media Awareness Network, along with stakeholders from both the formal and informal education sectors, technology industries, cultural communities and libraries, believes that a much broader approach is needed to cultivate a digitally literate population which in turn will fuel the digital economy.

Luckily for Canada, we have the advantage of being able to build on the considerable research and precedent that has already been established in government initiatives for the digital economy in countries like the UK (Digital Britain), New Zealand (Digital Strategy 2.0), Australia (Future Directions) and the United States (National Broadband Plan: Connecting America). Each has positioned digital literacy as a crucial component for participation, inclusion and innovation in a knowledge economy; each recognizes the acquisition of digital literacy as an “essential life skill” which represents a process of life-long learning that incorporates K-12 and post-secondary education, vocational training, and public awareness.

In its discussion paper, MNet connects Canada’s declining performance in the digital economy with a failure to develop a national strategy that balances investments in technology and infrastructure with investments in skills and knowledge. Infrastructure is not enough: Canadians need to know how to use ICTs to improve the quality of their lives, increase productivity throughout the private and public sectors, develop innovative products and services, and create new media and digital content: but they cannot do this alone. In its submission, MNet argues that maximizing the potential of a digital Canada demands a comprehensive national plan to ensure citizens have the resources to learn how to access, use, understand and create with digital technology. A national “digital literacy strategy” should not only include job training and skills development, but also support throughout K-12 and post-secondary educational systems and public awareness, so citizens can continue to acquire digital literacy skills throughout their life-spans.

It’s clear that being literate in a digital world entails much more than technological proficiency. No single document can encapsulate the many different aspects of information, ICT, media, and critical literacies that being digitally literate entails – not to mention the wide variety of ethical, social, and reflective practices that are embedded in work, learning, leisure, and daily life. But such a document can certainly establish guidelines and foundational standards that can then be built upon move users beyond participation in the digital economy towards the more transformative areas of innovation, constructive social action, and critical and creative thinking. 

The ultimate goal of this submission is to act as a catalyst for the creation of a national strategy for digital literacy that builds on the knowledge, expertise and perspectives of key stakeholders in order to accurately reflect and meet the needs of Canadians. To this end, the discussion paper makes the following recommendations:

1. Immediately create a digital literacy taskforce comprising key stakeholders at all levels of government (both federal and provincial), as well as those representing business and communities across Canada, to develop a cross-jurisdictional blueprint for a National Digital Literacy Strategy.

2. Support the implementation of a national study of students and teachers, to determine, from each of their perspectives, the digital skills that are needed by Canadian children and youth.

3. Within one year host a Digital Literacy Stakeholder Conference that brings together a broader group of stakeholders from all four spheres of implementation to develop and launch a coordinated national strategy focused on strengthening digital literacy in Canada as a fundamental cornerstone of the digital economy strategy and to highlight government digital literacy initiatives.

Canada has clearly recognized the importance of ICTs – as is evident by the significant investments in broadband and wireless network infrastructure that has been made over the past decade. But building networks is not enough. In order to adapt to the challenge of balancing our old economic and educational systems with the new networked, mediated ways of doing business and educating our citizens, the issue for Canadians is no longer if we use digital technology but how well we use it.

We hope that by making the case for digital literacy as part of the government’s consultation process, we can work together to ensure that all Canadians can thrive in a digital Canada and a digital world.

To download the full version of Digital Literacy in Canada: From Inclusion to Transformation, visit http://www.media-awareness.ca/english/corporate/media_kit/reports-publications.cfm.

 

Which of these girls looks older? 

 

 How about these two?

 

What about these two? 

 

 

These photos are actually the same two girls, albeit styled to give very distinct impressions. The top row shows Niatia Kirkland (AKA Lil Mama) on the left and Robyn Fenty (AKA Rihanna) on the right. With both dressed in a partially pulled-down hoodie, neither looks much older than the other.

The middle row photos are both of Lil Mama and the bottom row are both of Rihanna. In the middle row, we see Lil Mama in two very different guises. On the left her clothes and pose play up an urban, youthful image: her body is turned away from us but her eyes defiantly stare directly at the viewer, she wears unsubtle, chunky gold jewelry, affects a “don’t care” hairstyle by putting up her hair in a messy ponytail with a sweatband, and shows off a b-girl look with her DIY shoulderless sweater. This photo delivers a very different message from the one on the right, where her apparel and body language have been crafted to emphasise maturity. In this shot Lil Mama’s shoulders are square with our gaze but her eyes are looking elsewhere, projecting a disinterested, adult confidence. She thrusts one hip out, drawing attention to her silhouette which was previously hidden under her baggy “b-girl” outfit. She’s traded her flashy bling for an understated but much more opulent diamond choker and bracelet -- providing in the two shots both youthful and adult variations on the theme of conspicuous consumption. Lastly, her hairstyle is cut short and noticeably coiffed compared to the more youthful pose. With just a change of wardrobe and attitude she appears to gain ten years.

In the last pair of photos, Rihanna undergoes the same treatments to come off as a girl and a woman. In this case the major cues are facial expressions, additionally enhanced by attire. On the left, she inclines her head just a tiny bit, beckoning the viewer closer. Her eyes are narrowed a little to make her gaze smolder, accented by the heavy use of black eye-liner. To appeal to our sense of touch, she curls her fingers gingerly around a turtleneck sweater, simultaneously brushing her cheek with her fingers and her chin with the collar. Her lips are held in a purposefully ambiguous not-smile, not-frown, which invites the viewer to project their own reading onto the expression. To top it off, she wears her hair very short to emphasize the delicate, almond shape of her face. Compare this to the more girlish portrait at right, where she sports a sunny smile and looks square into the camera with eyes wide open. She’s still styled to be pretty here, but in a much less seductive way. This shot is more similar to a yearbook portrait than a professional photo shoot.

Although images are not a language per se, they do follow rules to reliably produce a particular impression. When considering the role of each sign in an image, there are no hard and fast rules that specific signs always mean the same thing. The French scholar Roland Barthes famously described the flexible nature of connotations of signs in images, with changes in meaning dependant on their position in relation to all the other signs in an image. In the examples above, Lil Mama deploys a bit of androgyny with her b-girl clothes to look more tomboyish and emphasize her youthfulness, while Rihanna’s androgynous hairstyle is an integral part of her grown-up look. The connotations of androgyny change depending on the other signs that go with it in these images, to the point where androgyny is actually being used to play up femininity.

People who make their living producing images, such as photographers, stylists, publicists, directors and pop idols, learn how to use those signs to convey the impression they want to make. Although teen girls who are trying to send a signal to their circle of friends and pop music producers who are trying to send a signal to an audience of millions are working on different scales, the principle is very much the same. Depending on your audience, you need to tailor the signals you send out very carefully. Even your age can have a certain amount of wiggle room when dressed in the right signs.

No one walks around with their age stamped clearly on their body, but it is usually possible to guess how old someone is by paying attention to the signs they use. In the still photographs above, the producer of each image is making a statement about whether the person you are looking at is a ‘girl’ or a ‘woman’ by using clothes, jewelry, facial expression and body language.  For the sake of a fairer comparison, what if we look at a music video for each artist that has been released in the same year? Both videos were chart toppers, both were included in Rolling Stone’s top 100 songs of 2007, and both were nominated for awards (“Lip Gloss” won MTV’s monster single of the year, while “Umbrella” won the Grammy for best rap/sung collaboration) so their level of impact is comparable. More importantly, since they both appeared in the same year, differences in the signals they send aren’t due to differences in changing tastes and fashion. As far as what was ‘in’ at the time, both record companies had access to the same palate to dress up the star of each video. Despite that, the end results are purposefully pretty distinct.

Lip Gloss http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-eqMeapv2J8 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CvBfHwUxHIk

Umbrella http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CvBfHwUxHIk

 

 

Although Rihanna only looks older relative to Lil Mama, she is definitely more precocious and seductive in this video. The amount of skin she shows off is only a small part of that image; to maximize the effect, every other aspect has to follow in lockstep with that idea. The dance routine Rihanna performs in the middle with her umbrella is a good example. The ginger, dainty steps and slow dips and rises are more in the spirit of burlesque than R n’ B. Similarly, the monochrome palate of the entire video draws attention away from colour to allow the audience to linger more on the tactile, textural aspect of the footage. The glossy pleather, rainslicked surfaces, and even close-ups on Rihanna’s skin painted silver are all meant to appeal to the sense of touch and fit a more sexed up image.

Contrast that impression to the one Lil Mama chooses for the Lip Gloss video. The exposition with her own mother at the opening sets her up as a high-school student and daughter, but this is just the tip of the iceberg. The clothes she wears are not particularly feminine (jeans, sweat socks, sweaters) and not at all ‘mature’; they emphasize an unpretentious, youthful look. This extends to the rest of the video, whose entire palate brims with electric, primary colours. There is no subtlety of flavour, just the visual equivalent of eating a fistful of candy. Certain stock characters which appear in the background like the nerd and the principal are played up to a cartoonish effect; a parody of high-school life but which emphasize the kid setting and tone nonetheless.

Interestingly enough, when these videos were made, Rihanna was only a year older than Lil Mama, yet because each video tugs the performer so hard in one direction, the margin appears much wider. Lil Mama’s youthfulness is keyed up while Rihanna’s precociousness is amplified. That difference between ‘girl’ and ‘woman’ is only one tip of a multi-pronged image the producers have crafted to attract their target audiences. What kind of audience do you think the producers for each performer want to reach via these images? The album titles work as a pretty concise statement.

Whether a performer projects a younger or older persona is not necessarily fixed, of course. Former Disney princess Miley Cyrus recently transition from a squeaky clean pop starlet image to a much more precocious, mature persona. The Atlantic commented on how Cyrus, made famous by her kid-friendly alter-ego Hannah-Montana, is ferociously breaking from her former image to establish herself as a less tame, more adult artist. To that end the producers of her “Can’t Be Tamed” video have carefully borrowed from and alluded to the styles and sounds of previous starlets who have made the transition, notably Christina Aguilera and Britney Spears. As mentioned in an earlier MNet post, musical taste is deeply enmeshed with identity, particularly for young people. From a marketing perspective, this observation echoes the fact that consumers establish brand loyalties very early in life, making the youth audience a valuable target group for developing lifelong customers. The transformation from teen starlet to grown-up sex-bomb is driven by economics: performers need to enlarge their audience to reach adults and maintain the loyalty of the original, maturing fan base. Whereas in decades past Cyrus fans might have outgrown the starlet and graduated to a more adult performer (perhaps one supported by the same record label,) the reigning logic now is to maximize consumer loyalty to the star-as-brand and “adultify” her to keep up with the evolving taste of her original fans. This process has very little to do with the starlet’s actual age, but rather through carefully selected and manufactured signs which connote the change.

Deconstructing this sort of image after the fact is a fun exercise, but trying your own hand at production is even more interesting. Once you’ve been faced with the same kind of decisions producers make, you can appreciate just how carefully crafted images are. With so much money at stake, producers have very little room for error, so each and every detail counts. The US-based Media Education Lab has designed just such an activity for youth to create a virtual starlet and manage all the little aspects of her look, message, and music. From the splash screen, click the music studio button and then pop music producer. The same site also offers a variety of other games addressing commercial media aimed at girl consumers.

http://www.mypopstudio.com/

For Teachers:

• Pop Star Producer gives students a great deal of freedom to combine different lyrics, clothes, and effects. Have students compare and contrast how the exact same sign (a hairstyle, a line of lyrics, etc) in two starlets can be used as part of different overall impressions. How does the connotation of that one sign change when presented alongside several others?

• After students have created their starlets, extend the exercise by having them explain which audience each starlet is meant to reach, referring both to individual signs and the combined, overall impression.

• An increasingly popular strategy for producers of culture is to make their products more resilient by having more than one fan base built-in. For a real challenge, assign students to create a starlet in Pop Star Producer who can simultaneously reach two different audiences (such as children and adults, or hip hop fans and techno fans). Get students to explain how their starlet strikes a balance between attracting two audiences without alienating either one.

It's an open secret, of course, that reality shows such as Survivor and The Hills are at least semi-scripted, though it's unclear in each case whether the participants are actually working from written scripts or scenarios or the producers are turning reality footage into something more narrative in the editing suite.  Similarly, quite a few scripted shows such as The Office and Parks and Recreation use the conceit of being fictional reality shows, with cut-away interviews with the main characters and occasional nods to the ever-present camera. (Though just as in genuine reality shows, on the whole the characters behave as though the cameras are not there.) My Life as Liz, though, is a more complicated case. It presents itself as a genuine reality show -- no writers are listed in the credits, and the performers are not listed as actors -- but many aspects of the show suggest that it is, if not scripted, at least carefully staged.

The show blurs the distinction between reality and fiction from its opening disclaimer, as spoken by Liz: "The people, places and stories you are about to see are all real . . . at least the way I see it." That leaves a lot of wiggle room for the show to play around with reality, but from that point on the show plays itself entirely straight: aside from sequences where Liz addresses the audience directly, scenes are shot with all of the conventions of scripted drama. To begin with, an improbable number of cameras capture each scene in two-shots, close-ups and long shots, and are on hand even when characters receive middle-of-the-night phone calls. (Executive producer Marshall Eisen has said “We had a lot of cameras in a lot of those places.”) Moreover, the show's storylines often follow plots that were already old chestnuts in the days of The Brady Bunch:  Liz receives an anonymous invitation to the Valentine`s Day dance, but this turns out to be a trick by her nemesis Cori; when Cori and her clique enter the talent show with a crowd-pleasing dance number, Liz shows them up by singing an alt-rock ballad and is cheered by a legion of fellow-nerds; and in the show`s two overarching stories Liz pursues a moody loner while her chubby best friend pines after her, and she slowly becomes friends with a member of Cori`s clique who is shown to have hidden depths. It might be a fun party game to try to pick out the various ingredients that went into this stew, from Beverly Hills 90210 to Revenge of the Nerds to Heathers, but it does not inspire confidence in the show`s veracity.

What may be most interesting about the show, though, is how viewers have responded to it. In fact, it provides us with a perfect view of how young people use critical thinking skills to authenticate information "in the wild." The show clearly raised flags in quite a few young viewers, with topics such as “Is My Life as Liz Scripted?” appearing on forums such as Uaddit and Yahoo! Answers, receiving a wide range of responses. More interesting than the positions commenters took is how they arrived at them. One skeptic pointed out that while many scenes would require several cameras to capture the footage seen, the cameras somehow never film each other; another noted that passers-by never react to seeing the camera crew; a third that cameras improbably capture a scene in the girls' bathroom where Cori is overheard confessing to playing her trick on Liz. One alert commenter even points out a continuity error in which the colour of Liz's fingernails changes between two scenes ostensibly shot on the same day. As much as this is a testament to young people's critical thinking skills, it also illustrates the lengths people will go to in order to keep believing something they want to believe: many commenters on these same forums insist that the show is “mostly true” (with only the most obviously staged scenes being fake), “semi-scripted,” or “a mix of scripted and real.” 

Despite this, MTV is sticking to its position that My Life as Liz is not scripted -- though they refrain from calling  it a documentary:  Dave Sirulnick, MTV's executive vice president of multiplatform, news and documentaries, said "We don't look at it as just a reality show -- that doesn't capture it. We weren't going to call it a sitcom, because it's not." On the whole, though, it seems as though many viewers recognize that the show's nature is at least problematic, so does how it is labelled really matter? The issue is that by creating the impression that the show may be real, the producers are making it difficult to assess it as a media product.

Consider three basic principles of media literacy: that media are constructions, that media have commercial implications, and that values and ideological messages underpin all media. Anyone who's ever taught media education knows how hard it is to get students to understand the first of these -- it's not uncommon for students to express surprise that scripted shows have writers, never mind reality shows. How much more difficult, then, to convince them that something that pretends to be real is a carefully planned, edited and marketed product? And yet doing so is key to recognizing the commercial and ideological dimensions of the show. For instance, whenever Liz is listening to music -- whether it's while driving or lying on the bed, depressed over the latest turn her life has taken -- the name of the song and artist appear at the bottom of the screen, making it possible for Liz's fans to go straight to iTunes and buy the song in question. This is, essentially, advertising -- no doubt the songs have been carefully selected to appeal to the show's audience, and quite likely fees were paid to have them included -- but how can viewers respond critically to advertising if they don't know that's what it is?

As noted above, even the more skeptical viewers believe that the show is at least somewhat real. (A popular theory is that the performers are re-enacting Liz's actual high school experiences.) This shows how the pseudo-documentary format makes it more difficult for viewers to decode the implied ideological messages of the show: if viewers take this to be a representation of Liz’s real life, will they be disappointed that their own lives are, by comparison, so free of drama, or don't unfold in neat storylines with clearly recognizable heroes and villains? (Of course, that is how most teens see their own lives -- but surely a genuine documentary provides a more accurate view of life, rather than reflecting our own views.)

Perhaps we can do a bit of judo on My Life is Liz, and turn its problems into strengths: it provides us with a wonderful teaching opportunity in which we can ask students to debate the evidence surrounding its status as documentary or fiction and discuss the implications of their findings. In fact, it's hard to imagine a better text to use to introduce students to many of the principles and skills associated with media literacy. What a pity that, under Canadian copyright law, teachers aren't allowed to show it -- or even excerpts of it -- in class. The show is at least available from the MTV site, so if it isn't blocked at your school -- and until and unless the new Copyright Act closes that loophole -- you can  stream it from there.

  

The near-universality of public parks and playgrounds in our physical spaces makes it all the more striking that the online world contains almost no spaces that are genuinely public. Instead, it is made up almost entirely of spaces that are either overtly or covertly commercial. The latter of these we might term “pseudo-public” spaces, where there is a disconnect between users' perceptions of them as public and their actual private nature.

Before continuing, it would be good to make a clear definition of what is meant by the term public space. To begin with, we might say that a public space is a public service: it does not have to justify its existence by any means other than providing citizens with a place to be. Its status as a public service means that its continued existence is guaranteed: if you move into a neighbourhood with parks and playgrounds, you can expect that they will not be paved over. (The notion of a public service blurs somewhat when we look at services that are considered essential but may be provided by private entities, such as power or telephone service; in these cases, while the government is not providing the service, it does guarantee through regulation that the service will not be discontinued.) Another essential element of public spaces is that they are by default accessible to all: their use is a right that can only be taken away due to misbehaviour, not a privilege that must be bought or earned, and using them involves no special contractual obligations. This also means that people using public spaces do not have to give up any of their other rights, most notably freedom of expression. Finally, it is worth pointing out that public spaces are, by definition, public and not private, and therefore normally free of advertising or other commercial content.

With this definition in hand we can see that few of the online spaces perceived by their users as public are anything of the sort. Perhaps the best example would be Facebook, a site which bills itself as a community and is generally treated as such by its users. It's not hard to see why: it is free to use, and like its competitors it very much feels like “my space” -- users can customize their profiles, organize their own groups and communities and select or even create their own apps (third-party programs that do a variety of things such as games, quizzes and so on.) Facebook has become a focus for civic participation, and users frequently behave as though it were itself a democracy (such as when changes to the Terms of Service were protested in 2009.)

Despite its appearance, though, Facebook is in no way a public space. To begin with, it is owned by a corporation, that is not government regulated, and while there is no direct fee for participating, users pay through being exposed to ads (in the same way that we pay for television.) Moreover, its continued existence is not guaranteed: aside from its contracts with advertisers, there is nothing preventing Facebook from going permanently offline tomorrow. Similarly, to participate in Facebook one must agree to its Terms of Service, which involve giving up rights to privacy, intellectual property, and freedom of expression – and which allow Facebook to terminate a user's account at any time for essentially any reason. (Those terms are also subject to being unilaterally changed by Facebook.) Finally, its dependence on advertising for revenue means that when conflicts arise advertisers will always win out

When viewed through this lens, it becomes clear that nearly everything online that looks like a public space, from Facebook to Hotmail to Google to YouTube, does not meet any reasonable definition of the term. (Perhaps the only exceptions are those sites operated by public broadcasters, such as the CBC or PBS, and donation-funded non-profit organizations such as Wikipedia.) Children's online spaces are, if anything, even less public. MNet's 2005 survey Young Canadians In A Wired World found that the vast majority of sites popular among youth were heavily commercialized, and in the years since that survey was released advertisers have become even more skilful at integrating commercial content into kids' online experiences; for instance, the virtual worlds BarbieGirls and Nicktropolis include brand-related references in the pre-programmed phrases available in their “safe chat” mechanisms.

Considering how attached we are to our offline public spaces, how is it that the absence of public space online has received so little attention? One reason is no doubt due to the ad hoc nature of the Internet: there are no zoning restrictions, not city plans, no directly elected authorities to whom we might appeal. As well, the Internet -- at least once it spread beyond the halls of academe -- has always been commercial: unlike the European and American traditions of a village commons or town square, there is no history of genuinely free space on the Internet. Likely the most significant reason, though, is that so much of the Internet seems free. As noted above, there are few online services for which one pays directly anymore; instead, we pay largely without knowing it, with our attention and our personal data as the currency. Facebook, again, is a good example of what we might call a “commercial commons”: though it is a for-profit enterprise it goes to great lengths to seem like a public space. Google, too, feels like a public service, if not a public space, but it too is beholden to a variety of commercial interests; so too are webmail services such as Hotmail and Gmail.

We get the Internet we deserve, of course, and it's reasonable to say that if no genuinely public equivalents to these sites exist it's because we don't really want them to -- after all, we have a choice to agree to their Terms of Service, which define a space that is unambiguously private.  But the fact that these sites create such a successful illusion of being public spaces or services means that people are all that much more likely to be unaware of the implications of their commercial nature. People rightly object if Canada Post changes the services it offers (as when they made the move to “super-boxes” in rural communities), but they may not be aware that Microsoft is under no obligation to continue providing “free” webmail access through Hotmail.

More importantly, we have to face the fact that not everyone who uses these services is an adult. Facebook allows users to agree to its Terms of Service at thirteen -- five years before someone can legally agree to a contract, in most countries -- and that policy is little-enforced:  a quarter of youth under twelve in the UK have social networking profiles. Moreover, many sites aimed explicitly at children, from Neopets to Club Penguin, make similar efforts to create a sense of being public spaces and communities. If Gramercy Park had been the model for our municipal parks -- if we had to pay to let our children use them, whether directly in money, indirectly through advertising or data collection, or a mixture of both -- would we stand for it? Or would we demand that our governments provide true public spaces where all our children could play?

 

Further reading

To explore these issues further, you can take a look at our sister site Be Web Aware for more information on:

Social networking sites

Virtual worlds

Online advertising

For information on how to talk to youth about public space issues, check out the recent book Watch This Space (to which I contributed)