If anyone still doubts that youth need to learn how to evaluate online information, those doubts should have been dispelled by a recent hoax perpetrated by the group called the Yes Men. This group, which has a history of staging fake press conferences, decided to draw attention to Canada's position at the Copenhagen conference on climate change by creating a number of fake Web sites purporting to be, among others, the Copenhagen summit site, the Wall Street Journal, and Environment Canada's site. While it didn't take long for Environment Canada to make a statement exposing the hoax, by that time many journalists had reported the story as fact and the story had been widely distributed by wire services.



If professional journalists can't recognize a hoax of this kind, is it fair to expect students to be able to judge the material they find online? The fact is that there were a number of steps that reporters could have taken, and tools they could have used, to check the accuracy of this story -- steps and tools that are available to anyone.
 
The first thing that should have raised a red flag was the URLs or Web addresses of the sites. The fake Environment Canada site's URL was www.enviro-canada.ca, compared to the real Web address which is www.ec.gc.ca (all Government of Canada Web sites end in "gc.ca.") While a student might not know this (though one would expect a reporter to), one easily available clue that there was something wrong with the URL was the fact that the actual site's URL was listed at the top of the page, under the Environment Canada logo. As well, all of the links on the page (which the Yes Men copied from the actual site for verisimilitude) lead to pages on the real site. In other words, every URL associated with the site except the site's “main page” have the "gc.ca" suffix.

One of the cleverest aspects of the hoax was that it did not rely just on a single fake site to get its message out. To make the story more convincing, the hoaxers created fake sites for the Copenhagen summit, and the Wall Street Journal that reported their story as fact. This shows the dark side of the notion of "reliable sources": many other journalists who covered the story quite likely gave it credence because they thought it had appeared in the Journal, a newspaper with a nearly impeccable reputation. Indeed, when Environment Canada released a statement condemning the hoax and complaining that many news sources had fallen for it, the example they gave (and linked to) was the fake Wall Street Journal story. The Journal site was a very convincing spoof, but again the URL was a clue to its true nature. Here, though, the Yes Men had been particularly clever: they chose to spoof the Journal's Europe page rather than the main page, most likely thinking readers would be less likely to recognize that their URL (www.europe-wsj.com) was not the correct one (www.europe.wsj.com.)



What else might have given these fake sites away? One useful tool is to conduct a link search. While it's easy enough for a spoof site to copy outgoing links, as the Yes Men did on both the Environment Canada and Wall Street Journal sites, it's harder to reproduce the links that lead to a page from other sites. By using the link: operator in a search engine such as Google, we can see that there are no sites linking into www.europe-wsj.com, while more than 3,000 sites link to www.europe.wsj.com. Another valuable tool is the Alexa Web site, which provides statistics on Web site traffic and allows you to determine how long a Web site has been in existence; for instance, the www.enviro-canada.ca site had no traffic whatsoever before December 7th, while the English home page of the Environment Canada Web site has had consistent traffic going back as far as Alexa reports it (though visits naturally spiked in December.) Similarly, the Twitter account that purported to belong to Minister of the Environment Jim Prentice -- with which he apparently confirmed the press release -- only came into being on December 11th. (Twitter should never be considered a reliable source, of course, given how easy it is to create fake accounts.)

None of these steps or tools of course, is of any value if they're not used. What's most important is to develop a healthy skepticism towards every source you might use. In pre-Internet days it may have been enough to check the credentials of a supposed authority; now, as we've seen, the ease of publishing a convincing fake online means you can't even assume that source is who it claims to be. Instead we have to develop habits of mind that will let us spot indications that something is unreliable. One example on the false Environment Canada site would be the fact that the press release is not available in French (an odd oversight, given the Yes Men's otherwise very thorough approach.) A bigger clue is simply the unlikelihood that the Canadian government would reverse its position to that degree on this issue. Of course, this was what made it such a good story, but that's no excuse for not doing the due diligence of investigating your sources.

With the number of media outlets available to us today, and the ease with which people can create and distribute material on the Internet, it's important that all of us develop critical filters and habits of mind. Even for journalists, who are trained to be skeptical, it's easy to cut corners (for instance, assuming that the various fake sites created by the Yes Men corroborated one another.) The time is past when we could trust a news outlet to judge for us whether something is true or not: for good or ill, we all must now learn and exercise the investigative skills of good journalism ourselves.

If asked to think about community television (or public-access television, as a similar institution is called in the US) most people would probably conjure up the movie Wayne's World or its real-life analogue, The Tom Green Show: TV made by people who would, under normal circumstances, never appear on TV, shot in someone's basement or living room. Or perhaps they'd think of earnest, low-budget shows that showcase community events that wouldn't otherwise be televised, such as ethnic festivals or the Canadian Improv Games.

In fact, though, community television has not been like this for some time. While Canadian cable companies are required by the terms of their licenses to provide one or more community channels, there is little oversight as to who creates the programming, nor is there much restriction on the content so long as it can be considered "local": under CRTC regulations half of the airtime must be made available to independent community producers, but for the last decade there has been no funding available for community groups to produce programming. Cable companies have stepped into the breach with pre-packaged show formats which they can drop into each market for a minimal cost, such as Daytime, which appears in twelve different markets, and First Local, which appears in seventeen markets. Most recently, cable companies have begun questioning whether they will continue to provide community television access at all and a 2007 notice by the CRTC indicated that the Commission considered this a possibility.

While community television has become more like commercial TV, much of the content that was once carried by community channels has moved online: would-be Tom Greens or Wayne Campbells are much more likely to find an outlet, and an audience, on YouTube. The Internet has become home for some community programming as well, but at least in the short run its potential there is limited because by definition community channels are meant to serve audiences not well-served by commercial television, such as recent immigrants and small communities, and these audiences often do not have high speed Internet access or are simply not online.

Fuel has been thrown onto this fire by a recent report from the Standing Committee on Canadian Heritage entitled Issues and Challenges Related to Local Television, which recommends that cable companies' contributions to the Local Programming Improvement Fund be increased from one to two-and-a-half percent of their distribution revenues and that community production groups be given access to a portion of that money (it currently goes to commercial stations in small markets.) This might have the effect of moving production funding from the cable companies to community groups, giving them the money to produce programming which the community channels would then broadcast. Of course, you need more than money to produce programming: volunteers need to be trained, and equipment needs to be available. A group called the Canadian Association of Community Television Users and Stations has suggested that a portion of this funding be used to create community media centres that would provide training and facilities to a variety of groups, following the model of the W2 Community Media Arts centre in Vancouver.

The CRTC's community television policy is currently under review, with hearings scheduled for April of 2010, and whether the CRTC will either increase the cable companies' contributions or dedicate a portion of that fund to community media centres very much remains to be seen. Some recent CRTC decisions have been to the detriment of community TV: for example, until this year cable systems with fewer than 6,000 subscribers were exempted from having to provide community television channels, but in August that number was raised to 20,000, meaning that many small communities that previously had community television may lose it (one example is the channel "La Television des Iles" in the Iles de la Madeleine, which was an independent community channel receiving funding from Eastlink cable.) The Notice of Consultation which the CRTC used to announce the coming hearings raised a number of other possible changes as well, including allowing advertising on community TV.

Meanwhile, community television has been drawn into the fight between cable companies and broadcasters over what the networks call "fee for carriage" and the cable companies call a "TV tax." This is a fee that the cable companies would pay broadcasters in order to carry their programming; the cable companies estimate this would add between five and ten dollars to the average monthly cable bill. As the cable companies have tried to cast this in terms of an added cost to the consumer, broadcasters have claimed that they need the money to preserve local programming in small markets -- arguing, implicitly or explicitly, that the community channels funded by the cable companies are not fulfilling that role.

The CRTC has rejected fee-for-carriage twice before, and further hearings on the issue are currently underway. With all of the attention being paid to new media, it's easy to forget that for many people -- and particularly people in small or underserved communities -- "old" media such as television remain the most important way of keeping informed. When you consider things like the increasing concentration of media ownership and the disappearance of local news and programming on commercial channels, it's may be that community television needs to return to its roots -- and to the hands of the community.

 

After the controversy surrounding last year's proposed copyright bill C-61, which eventually died on the order table when Parliament was prorogued, the Federal government has decided to hold consultations across Canada before introducing a new version of the bill. While only time will tell how responsive the government will be to the public's submissions, the series of town halls and round tables is definitely a good start in making the process transparent and taking the views of a wide variety of Canadians into account. Below is an expanded version of MNet's submission to the Round Table held in Gatineau, Quebec on July 29th 2009.

The history of the Internet -- and the history of technology in general -- could be described as one big demonstration of the doctrine of unintended consequences: a system designed to help researchers collaborate, and developed to protect military communications in the event of a nuclear war, wound up being used primarily for shopping, socializing and entertainment. The same is true of many of the products and services on the Internet as well. In its early years it was mostly seen as a one-to-many broadcast medium, like TV or radio, but over time it's the more interactive elements that have proven to be most popular, with users producing at least as much online content as professionals.

One such development that may be in its infancy is the relationship between news  gathering and the Internet. So far that relationship has been a largely one-sided one: professional news organizations gather their news the old-fashioned way and then post it to the Internet, where it attracts readers and advertising dollars. Increasingly, though, the Internet is also being used to gather news.  One online service being used for both roles is one that's frequently dismissed as the most trivial, Twitter.

Twitter, as most people likely know by now, is what's known as a "microblogging" service: users post short (140 characters or less) messages called "tweets" which are delivered instantly to anyone who subscribes to, or "follows," their feed. For many critics that character limit exemplifies the pointlessness of Twitter, and it's true that many tweets are trivial, while many more serve as promotional materials, providing links to blog posts or photos. It's also true that, for all its Web 2.0 credentials, Twitter is closer to the broadcast model than many other Internet services, with ten per cent of Twitterers accounting for ninety per cent of tweets. As a result, many have dismissed Twitter as a tool for narcissists or celebrity-stalkers.

The one feature those critics miss -- the thing that has made Twitter so important in both making and gathering the news -- is that it is searchable. Though you only get a feed of messages from people whom you follow, you can also search every public tweet for key words or phrases. To make this easier, tweets on a particular topic are often prefixed with what's called a "hashtag," a word prefixed with the number sign as a sort of label (so a message about Twitter itself would bear the hashtag "#Twitter"). Finally, the Twitter home page shows a constantly updated list of the most discussed phrases, words or hashtags. Because Twitter is updated in real time, it can be used to gather eyewitness accounts, opinions and even photos more quickly than any news outlet could manage.

The use of Twitter for newsgathering first became widely known during the 2008 Mumbai terrorist attacks, when the general chaos of the situation, as well as the limited ability of Western media outlets to cover the attacks first-hand, made it the most reliable source of information about what was going on. Twitter then went on to beat The New York Times on its own turf when a user tweeting from his iPhone broke the story of US Airways flight 1549's crash landing in the Hudson River.

Where Twitter has really come into its own, though, is the protests following the Iranian election. What makes Twitter so important in this situation is the unusual combination of a literate, educated, Internet-connected urban population and a regime that is willing and able to censor its media. Even before the election Iranians turned to the Internet for opportunities to speak out without censorship (Iran has the third-largest number of bloggers of any nation). But the disputed results of the vote, and the rallies that followed, have caused a flood of tweets. Because tweets can be read from a variety of platforms -- the Web site itself, applications that provide a direct Twitter feed, and even cell phones -- it's particularly resistant to censorship, making it an ideal tool for organizing and disseminating information when other media are blocked or state-controlled. As of this writing, "#iranianelection" is the number one topic on Twitter, with more than a thousand tweets being posted every ten minutes.

Watching the feed of all tweets with the #iranianelection tag is an interesting, nearly addictive experience. There's definitely a sense that this is a watershed moment, not only in the history of Iran but in the history of journalism; as one poster put it, "There's a revolution going down. I'll never be able to take the news seriously again, not after seeing what Twitter can do."

It's unclear, though, how much of what's on Twitter is actually news, particularly now that the story has become so widely known. Unlike during the Mumbai attacks, when most of the tweets were coming from the event itself, at this point Iranian Twitterers are probably a minority compared to people from North America and Europe. Many of those are commenting on the events rather than participating, or are piggybacking on the topic to push their own political ideas ("This is what happens when the people are disarmed") or conspiracy theories ("If Israel is ever going to attack and destroy the nuclear facilities, wouldn't now be the premier time due to #iranelection?"). The sheer number of tweets has also left some readers feeling overwhelmed; as one put it, "The tweets in #iranelection are so voluminous, how can you read each one in order to decide which you can trust, which you can't?"

Indeed, credibility is a major issue when using Twitter as a news source: as well as random pranksters (one tried to highjack the discussion to spread a rumour that Apple CEO Steve Jobs had died), there is a suggestion that the Iranian government has begun to use Twitter to spread disinformation instead: one repeated tweet is "DO NOT RT [re-tweet] anything U read from 'NEW' tweeters, gvmt spreading misinfo." Beyond that possibility is the issue that there is virtually no way to confirm anything reported by Twitter: the message "RT Army moving into Tehran against protesters!" appeared dozens if not hundreds of times, often prefaced by the word "confirmed," but there was no way of knowing if it is true. Some users claiming to be Iranian have posted photos, but in this age of Photoshop they add little credibility. To make matters even more confusing, reported efforts by the Iranian government to block access to Twitter have led to calls for all Twitterers to change their time zone settings to Tehran in a sort of "I am Spartacus" manoeuvre, meaning that it's now harder than ever to know where someone is actually posting from.

In this one event, Twitter has shown its strengths, weaknesses and potential as a tool for journalism. Despite the concerns, it's almost certain that the Twitter feed will be a major source of information for almost any event of importance in the future. But at the same time it cannot be taken with any more confidence than an overheard conversation. Perhaps in the future news providers will designate "Twitter reporters" whose job it is to monitor trending topics, search the feed for the information that is most probably relevant and reliable, and co-ordinate with their offline colleagues to confirm what's being reported. In the meantime it falls to news consumers to develop new critical thinking tools for sifting out the truth.

Questions for discussion

• Do you think that Twitter will be an important tool for journalists in the future? Why or why not?
• What might be some ways that you could verify information you learned on Twitter?
• Twitter is unusual among social-networking programs because it is more popular with adults than with teens. Why do you think this is? Do you think it is likely to change? Why or why not?
  

The last year has been an unusually busy one for watchers of gender representation in the news media, with not one but two high-profile women involved in the U.S. presidential race. The way in which these two politicians were covered provides a view of how gender in politics is portrayed in the media, and how this can help to explain just how unusual those two women are.

Let's begin with a composite of media portrayals of the typical politician. Whether a portrayal is positive or negative, some characteristics occur in nearly all such portrayals: politicians are driven, confident, well-organized, committed to their cause (or else corrupt and beholden to special interests -- but in that case still determined to achieve their purpose), and above all willing and able to achieve their goals through conflict. When these characteristics are embodied in a positive portrayal, the result is a character like The West Wing's President Bartlett: loyal to his principles, tough, clever and ruthless enough to get things done.

Now let's turn to a composite of the female characters found in media, particularly the media most consumed by young girls. How many female characters on Nickelodeon or Family Channel have two or more of these characteristics? If a character has any of the traits on that list, can they show them openly, or must they (like Hannah Montana) hide them from their peers? Are they the characters whom the viewer is meant to hate, like the inappropriately-confident Sharpay of High School Musical? In order to find sympathetic characters with any of these traits you need to go to animation, and even then to shows for the very young (Dora the Explorer) or for adults (The Simpsons).

The problem is not only with the portrayal of women but also that of politics. Stereotyping politics as an essentially masculine endeavour creates an "echo chamber" that more-or-less guarantees that it will be practiced in a stereotypically masculine way. The U.S. Founding Fathers saw politics ideally as a part-time profession, so that one would both serve the public and be a part of it, but today politics is seen as a commitment that makes it nearly impossible to have a family life. Despite the aspects of democracy that make consensus-building necessary for success -- whether it's our multi-party Parliament or the U.S. government's checks and balances -- the narrative of politics is almost always one of conflict and conquest. In short, the media's picture of politics is no more accurate than its portrayal of girls and women.

The treatment of Hillary Clinton and Sarah Palin in the recent U.S. presidential election is instructive. While each certainly received some legitimate criticism, many of the attacks on them had to do with gender: that they were insufficiently feminine as women, overly feminine as politicians, or both at once. Hillary Clinton received criticism for being too "cold" and "staged" -- long analyses were written of her forced-sounding laugh, for instance -- while at the same time having her candidacy trivialized by discussions of her wardrobe and fashion sense. Sarah Palin, meanwhile, was mocked for her past as a beauty pageant contestant (a memorable Saturday Night Live sketch suggested her contribution to the Republican campaign consisted of "fancy pageant walking") and simultaneously attacked for her perceived shortcomings as a mother (her daughter's unwed pregnancy, for instance.) Female politicians, in short, face a two-edged sword in the media, portrayed either as too feminine or not feminine enough.

There may be hope, however. As rough a ride as they received, Palin and particularly Clinton have made strides in forcing the media to take female politicians seriously, if in no other way simply by being serious candidates. In the less politicized role of Secretary of State, Clinton may -- like House majority leader Nancy Pelosi -- provide a model of a female politician whose two identities contain no apparent contradiction. Meanwhile, the media picture of politics itself may be changing, not due to a female politician but a male one: with his preference for consensus over conflict, his "team of rivals" leadership style, his emotional openness (as evidenced by his first, more personal memoir) and his active involvement in his family, Barack Obama may redefine our idea of just what a politician is.

Questions for classroom discussion

The activity below is taken from the MNet resource The Girl in the Mirror. Click here to view the entire lesson. An interactive version of this activity is also available here.

Portrait of a politician

Based on a class discussion of the nature of politics and political action, ask students who would be able to succeed at politics as you have defined it. What characteristics would s/he have? What strengths or qualities would s/he need to succeed? Write the heading “Portrait of a politician” over the third column on the board and list the students’ suggestions below it.  (Likely suggestions: a successful politician must be confident, forceful, willing to fight for what s/he believes in, good at tactics and strategy, persuasive, charismatic, well-organized, ruthless, a leader, inspiring, committed.)

Stereotypes in media products  

Ask students if they know what the word stereotype means. With the class’s participation, explain that it means an idea of what a person is like based on what group s/he belongs to, rather than his/her individual qualities. To make sure students get the idea, ask if they know of any stereotyped ideas adults have of young people.

Ask students where stereotypes come from, and make sure that in the following discussion the media are listed as a source. Ask students what media products girls and young women consume. The list will likely include the following:
 
• Disney products
• Family Channel, Nickelodeon and other tween-oriented shows
• Tween and teen movies
• Teen magazines
• “Grown-up” TV (make sure to get details on different kinds of shows – sitcoms, dramas, reality, etc)
• Music (again, get details – what genres, sources)

Divide the class into five groups (or more if the class suggested other media products you think are worth considering). Have each group consider one of the media products and develop a list of what stereotypes of girls and women that medium or media product communicates. (Provide the group doing teen magazines with the examples you brought to class.) Make sure students understand that they are not listing which qualities they believe girls and women possess, but which qualities these media products suggest they do.

Once the groups have made their lists, write the heading “Female stereotype” on the fourth quarter of the board and collect the groups’ findings under it. Ask students: how many stereotyped qualities came from more than one source? Do some sources give substantially different pictures of what girls and women are like, or do the different media generally agree?

Comparing stereotypes

Have the class look over column three (“Portrait of a politician”) and column four (“Female stereotype”). Are there any qualities or characteristics that are found in both columns? (Probably not.) Are there any qualities or characteristics found in one column that are the opposite of those found in the other? (Examples: ruthless/caring; well-organized/ditzy; willing to fight/wants to please.)

Based on this comparison, ask the class: if you believed in the picture of girls we get from the media, would you think girls would make good politicians? Ask the girls: if you believed in this stereotype, would you think you might make a good politician? Would you think you could get involved in political action?

With the tremendous success and spread of social networking sites like Facebook and MySpace, along with home-broadcasting sites such as YouTube and Flickr, many people have become concerned about what effect they will have on our attitudes towards privacy. Now a new question has arisen: whether Facebook postings violate the Youth Criminal Justice Act if they identify suspects or victims covered under the act.

The first of two trials for the accused murderers of Stefanie Rengel, who was killed in January of 2008, is about to conclude. Unusually, although both she and those arrested for her murder were under eighteen, her identity has been released to the media. Normally, if a suspect is under eighteen the Youth Criminal Justice Act prohibits the publication of any information that might reveal their identity, including the identity of the victim:

110. (1) Subject to this section, no person shall publish the name of a young person, or any other information related to a young person, if it would identify the young person as a young person dealt with under this Act.

111. (1) Subject to this section, no person shall publish the name of a child or young person, or any other information related to a child or a young person, if it would identify the child or young person as having been a victim of, or as having appeared as a witness in connection with, an offence committed or alleged to have been committed by a young person.

Section 111 does allow the publication of the victim’s name if his or her parents allow it, which Stefanie’s have done. The two accused killers have been referred to in the press only by their initials, as is common practice if the accused is under eighteen. In this case it is little more than a formality, though, because both Stefanie’s name and that of her suspected killers were published more than a year ago – on Facebook.

Against the law?

Opinions differ on whether postings to these Facebook groups – whose audience can vary based on the privacy settings chosen by the group’s creator – would count as publication under the law. It’s an issue nobody seems to be in a hurry to decide: Peel Constable Wayne Patterson, questioned by the Toronto Star, described it as “a good question,” adding “I guess it all boils down to whether Facebook is eventually determined by somebody that it is a publication.” Meanwhile Alain Charette, a spokesperson for the Department of Justice, told the same publication that the YCJA does apply to Facebook, and that “If it’s about a violation, it’s in police hands. If police get knowledge of that, it’s for them to take it from there.”

In fact, this is not the first time the question has been raised of whether online postings count as publications: the Usenet group alt.fan.karla-homolka was blocked by numerous Canadian universities during the Paul Bernardo and Karla Homolka trials in 1993, due to fears that the universities might be violating a gag order against publication of the details of the crimes by allowing access to the group, which carried postings including just such details. No definitive ruling was ever made however, leaving it unclear whether the universities’ fears were well-founded.

A growing problem

The Internet of 1993 reached few enough people that we could afford to leave the question for another day. With sites like Facebook growing at a rate of 250,000 new users a day, though, it has become clear that controlling information – even in cases like the YCJA, where it is done for arguably the best of intentions – has become much more difficult than it once was. The courts are still deciding just how much privacy can be expected on social networking sites; a Toronto judge recently ruled that even posts whose distribution is limited to Friends only must be disclosed if they are relevant to the case. (This ruling actually came from a civil trial, in which postings on the plaintiff’s Facebook page were introduced to counter his claims of having been seriously injured in an accident, but the precedent would apply to criminal cases as well.)

Complicating matters still further is the fact that many of these sites’ users are, themselves, young people: as Martha McKinnon, executive director of Justice for Children and Youth, told the CBC, most Facebook users do not know enough about the law to know that they are breaking it: "Neither the federal nor provincial government have invested any resources into educating the public about why we have these confidence provisions [in the Youth Criminal Justice Act.]"

Facebook itself has taken no official stand on the issue: speaking with relation to a similar case, spokesperson Simon Axten said that existing tools on the site, which allow people to report offensive content or groups, are sufficient. Those complaints, however, are handled by Facebook administrators and are judged on the basis of whether or not the site’s terms of use have been violated; these administrators are unlike to have much knowledge of Canadian law and the YCJA in particular (it is legal to publish the names of accused youths in the US).

So are those Facebook users who posted the identities of the accused breaking the law? To date no charges have been laid, and after a year it seems unlikely that they will be. At the moment we seem to be in an odd situation where respected, responsible news outlets such as the Globe and Mail and Toronto Star have to abide by the law, but Internet postings do not. As seems more and more often to be the case, technology is at least one step ahead of the law.

For Classroom Discussion

• Why does the YCJA protect the identities of young offenders?

• How might it serve the interests of:
   o Young accused
   o Young victims
   o Family of victims or accused
   o Society at large

• Do you agree with these reasons?

• Why might people have chosen to reveal the identities of the victim and the accused on Facebook? Do you agree with those possible reasons?

• What powers should government have to control the publication of information online?    

• Should those powers be greater within the justice system? Why or why not?

• Given that Facebook is an American company, should material it carries be subject to Canadian law? Why or why not?

• Should people be charged for posting information about young offenders or young victims on sites like Facebook? Why or why not?

Classroom Activities

• Have students research (or provide them with background on) the reasoning behind the creation of the Youth Criminal Justice Act, particularly its provisions for identity protection.

• Conduct a debate or town hall meeting on the conflict between the interests of the state and the community in keeping some information private and the right of individuals to publish or read whatever news they wish. (In the town hall meeting version, each side might have several members, representing the different interested parties: the courts, lawyers and youth advocates on the one side, for instance, and broadcasters, civil liberties advocates and Internet companies on the other. Some groups, such as friends of the accused or victim, might well have representatives on each side.)

MNet Resources

Lessons

Perceptions of Youth and Crime (Grades 7-12)

What Students Need to Know about Freedom of Information and Protection of Privacy (Grades 5-10)

Free Speech Versus the Internet (Grades 10-12)

 

As media outlets continue to close and advertising budgets shrink, the once-mighty Super Bowl is receiving much less buzz than usual. A number of major advertisers, such as Federal Express and troubled automaker General Motors, have decided not to run Super Bowl ads at all this year. Another January event, though, is attracting a surprising amount of media attention: the U.S. presidential inauguration.

For many years the inauguration, while always a hot ticket for the political set, did not earn much in the way of TV ratings -- certainly not in comparison to the Super Bowl. This year, though, the event will be covered by many different outlets, including some surprising ones. CNN and Facebook will combine to Webcast the inauguration, allowing Internet surfers to watch the event at work; the two companies will link their sites so that comments made on CNN.com will instantly appear as Facebook status updates. Meanwhile, MTV will be according as much time to the inauguration as it usually does to its award shows, and BET -- not generally a source of political news -- has a full week of coverage planned. Even the national comic book of record, The Amazing Spider-Man, will feature coverage of the inauguration in its January issue, including the attempt of the villainous Chameleon to foil the event by impersonating the President-elect. (Though Presidents have made any number of comic-book cameos over the years, this is one of the few lead appearances, echoing a 1962 issue of Superman in which the Man of Steel reveals his secret identity to John F. Kennedy.)

As remarkable as all this may seem, the fact is that inaugurations were once one of the most important media events; indeed, if their history is traced far enough back they may well be the first media event. As late as 1960 the entire population of the United States was expected to watch or read about the inauguration; to this day, a myth persists that Kennedy ended the fashion for hats by going bare-headed at his inauguration. The truth is just the opposite: Kennedy actually wore a top hat, an item already long out of fashion but part of the traditional "show" (Nixon was the last to wear one.) The scholar of myth Joseph Campbell pointed out that the consciously out-of-date clothing once worn by Presidents served to highlight the special and even ritual quality of the event; Kennedy took this one step further by wearing not just the traditional top hat but the taller stovepipe hat, forever associated with Abraham Lincoln, in an attempt to link himself with that President who had been inaugurated a hundred year earlier.

The inauguration is itself heir to a much older tradition, the coronation. Contrary to popular belief, in most monarchical countries the coronation is not when the new monarch takes office but instead is strictly ceremonial, a recognition of the new ruler rather than the beginning of his reign. The coronation is a media event because its purpose is to send a message through symbolism; exactly what message that is varies over time and place. In ancient civilizations it typically involved showing divine sanction of the ruler, or in cases such as Ancient Egypt showing that the ruler was himself divine. Most often, what the coronation signifies is a legitimacy and continuity of rule: for instance, the outgoing President and President-Elect traditionally ride together to the inauguration.

A textbook example of the inauguration as media event is the coronations of the monarchs of the United Kingdom. These changed dramatically in the middle of the Nineteenth Century due to two factors: first, the rise of the mass media as cheap newspapers became commonplace, and second the class upheavals that seized England and Europe in the first half of the century, culminating in the revolts of 1848. Together these changed the ceremony from one to which only a small number of notables were invited to an event intended to be consumed, if not directly witnessed, by the entire nation.

Breathless accounts were published in the newspapers of the day, and a host of "ancient" traditions were revived or simply invented, swelling a fairly no-nonsense affair to an event of Oscar-like proportions. The quite conscious intent was to create a spectacle that would inspire affection for the monarchy, while at the same time underlying the continuity of rule it represented. The effort was a success, both for the monarch and the ritual, and the coronation became such a beloved tradition that when Elizabeth II's was televised it received the largest-ever audience to that date, and is credited with sparking British television sales.

The question, then, is not necessarily why this inauguration is a media event but why more recent ones have not been. A number of factors were likely at work: the increasing suspicion of the establishment through the 1960s (Nixon's inaugural of 1973 was accompanied by a "counter-inauguration" in protest); a lessening of interest in tradition in favour of the new during the same period; disillusionment and disenchantment with the political process, following the assassination of Kennedy and the troubled presidencies of Johnson and Nixon (particularly their involvement in the Vietnam War); a fashion for the casual over the formal, culminating in Carter's abandonment of the traditional morning-dress attire at his inaugural in 1978; and of course the loss of respect for the office of the President, due largely to Nixon's near-impeachment and resignation.

Why, then, has the inauguration once again become a major media event, after a lapse of nearly fifty years? The obvious answer is that Obama is not just another President; as the first African-American President his election and inauguration are genuinely historic. There are other reasons, though, why he is such an attractive figure to media. One is that he is the first new-media President: text messages and social networking were key to his fund-raising, and to the phenomenal loyalty he inspired in his organizers. (Many have written about the thrill of getting a text message from "Barack," though they knew it was hardly a personal message.)

Reagan personified the President as a construction of the traditional media – a single message, honed and polished to appeal to the most people, and broadcast as widely as possible – while Obama has some of the quality of interactive media. Like Facebook or Wikipedia, Obama's image is something of a collaborative effort. His most iconic poster, whose only text read Change, allowed viewers to fill in the details about just what kind of change he was promising, and in general people have been more than willing to project on him whatever qualities they most want to see. Many online voices, for instance, have been more excited about his being "the first geek President" than the first African-American President, seizing on his affection for his Blackberry to show that he is a member of that group. The reclaimed term "geek" is used affectionately to describe Obama, as opposed to Stephen Harper who is described with the still-pejorative "nerd" due to his fondness for "Star Trek" and tendency to appear in embarrassing cowboy costumes. It was an offhand comment by Obama saying that he had read Spider-Man as a child that led to him being declared "Fanboy-in-Chief" and making his comic-book appearance. In the end, it may be less Obama's specific identity than his universality that makes him the first Presidential celebrity of the Internet age.

UPDATE:Visit http://www.metafilter.com/78406/Presidential-Inauguration-Videos for links to videos of past inaugurations. (Note: some videos may not have been uploaded by the copyright holders.)

Questions for discussion

1. Read one of the following articles and analyze either the U.S. presidential inauguration or the coronation ceremony of monarchs of the United Kingdom as a media event. What elements are included, and what do they signify or communicate? What messages does the event send and how?

Inauguration Day Events
http://inaugural.senate.gov/history/daysevents/index.cfm

50 Facts about the Queen's Coronation
http://www.royal.gov.uk/output/page4455.asp

2. Canada's nearest equivalent to an inaugural ceremony is the Speech from the Throne, which has few of the characteristics of a media event. Why do you think so little ceremony and ritual is involved in our tradition, compared to the United States or the United Kingdom?

3. Why do you think people still believe the myth that Kennedy ended the fashion for men's hats by going bare-headed at his inauguration? How does it relate to the idea of the President as a media figure?

4. Consider the use of the terms geek and nerd. What distinction is made between them? Why is the first now used in a positive way and the second still negative?

With all the recent attention focused on stories of teenagers charged with distributing child pornography for taking sexually suggestive pictures of themselves, jobs lost due to Facebook and MySpace entries, and libel suits over blog posts, people are justifiably concerned about the permanence of material posted to the Internet. Many a teacher or parent has had to carefully explain to children or teens that whatever they post online might be seen by people other than the intended audience, and might be out there for a very long time.

A few people, though, are more concerned about the impermanence of the Internet – a medium where almost anything can be copied, deleted, altered or edited almost invisibly.

When you read the newspaper you can expect each article to be the same in the afternoon as it was in the morning, but on the Web no such guarantee is available. This is a particular issue in cases where a Web site tries to fill the same role as a newspaper – or, most notably, an encyclopedia. Wikipedia, which in a brief time has become one of the Web's most widely used services, is perhaps the quintessential "Web 2.0" enterprise: it's an encyclopedia intended to be written and edited by its readers. At the beginning this was more of a conceit than a reality – much of its early content was transcribed from early-20th Century encyclopedias that had fallen into the public domain – but for some time now Wikipedia has had an active and sometimes noisy community of authors and editors. It is largely in this community that the debate over the mutability of Web content has been going on.

Speaking broadly, the Wikipedia community can be broken into two camps on this issue: inclusionists and deletionists. Inclusionists believe that everything that has ever been added to Wikipedia, so long as it is not factually incorrect, should be left there; they point to the site's virtual nature, which allows it to have an unlimited number of "pages," as trumping the usual limitation on what can be included in an encyclopedia. Deletionists, on the other hand, feel that in order to be taken seriously, Wikipedia needs to be kept at least somewhat orderly and relevant, and favour the removal of articles and information they consider to be "trivial." Any Wikipedia user can propose deletion for any article; a debate page is then created where the proposed deletion can be discussed, and after a short time an administrator – administrators are volunteers nominated by other users, not employees – surveys the discussion and makes the final decision.

The inclusionists' battle is a losing one: no matter how many pages they manage to save, others will be deleted. Some have resigned themselves to this fact, but some – unwilling to let even a single article fade into oblivion – have organized a rival venture: Deletionpedia. Unlike Wikipedia, Deletionpedia is not edited by its users; instead it is maintained by a computer program that surveys Wikipedia for imminent deletions and then copies and stores the doomed pages. Unlike Wikipedia, Deletionpedia revels in the trivial: at the time of writing the featured articles on its home page included an early draft of the most recent Indiana Jones movie; a bicycle club in Chennai, India; and "a young bugbear in a Dungeons and Dragons campaign played by the Northland Preparatory Academy Games Club."

Because Wikipedia can be edited by users, there are often more subtle issues than whether a whole page should be deleted or not. Wikipedia pages are constantly mutating: some changes, such as the mistaken statement that Pop-Tarts have been discontinued in Australia, are subtle; others, such as when the entire Pop-Tarts page was replaced with the words NIPPLES AND BROCCOLI!!!!!, are not. Automated editors take care of most of the latter cases, but the subtler ones require human editors.

A recent example of a subtle edit is the case of Jim Prentice, former minister of Industry. Shortly before the controversial bill C-61 (Act to Amend the Copyright Act) was to be tabled, in June of 2008, blogger and law professor Michael Geist discovered a number of edits had been made to Prentice's Wikipedia entry. The changes included removing some language critical of Prentice as well as adding positive material such as stating that he had been "dubbed the unofficial deputy prime minister."

None of this is too different from the usual activity on a Wikipedia entry, and compared to what happens on a Star Trek page it could be considered quite mild. What made it unusual was where the changes came from. In 2007 Virgil Griffith, a graduate student at the California Institute of Technology, created a program called Wikiscanner which tracks Wikipedia edits and shows from which IP address they were made. A wikiscan of the Prentice changes showed that they had been made from computers at the Ministry of Industry. (Whether they were done under Prentice's orders or by over-eager subordinates has never been established.) This fact drew some unwelcome media attention to Prentice at a time when C-61 was already under fire from some quarters, making it feasible that the controversy played some role in Prentice's move to a new ministry in the recent cabinet shuffle.

What's more significant than the attempts to burnish Prentice's online image is the degree to which Prentice and his staff were revealed to be ignorant of the nature of Wikipedia and the Web in general. Beyond their being unaware of Wikiscanner, or the large and active Wikipedia community which polices changes, it seems hard to believe that they thought changing his entry would influence anyone's opinion. Wikipedia editors, and Web users in general, are accustomed to watching for "sock puppets" (dummy accounts used to make it look like others agree with you). The staff at Industry Canada, though, seems to have thought that Wikipedia was actually an encyclopedia – that people would believe whatever they wrote there, because it was in print. Given the recent importance of new media in U.S. politics, the fact that Industry Canada seems to be locked in the pre-Internet age may be the most disturbing thing to come out of this whole story.

Questions for class discussion

• Do you think that the fact that Wikipedia can be edited by its users makes it an unreliable source of information? Why or why not?
• Why is Wikiscanner a useful tool in judging whether material in a Wikipedia entry is reliable? What other tools or techniques could be used to test the reliability of Wikipedia content?
• Do you believe that online information sources such as Wikipedia should be limited to "relevant" topics, like a traditional encyclopedia, or should they include all possible content? Why?

With our own election coming soon, a new crop of Canadian political ads have been launched, and most of them are available online. Efforts to re-brand Stephen Harper have included spots where he, clad in a friendly sweater vest, talks about his love of family; the Liberals, meanwhile, created an uplifting, Reaganesque ad to sell their “Green Shift” policy.

 

• Do you think the New Yorker cover went too far in courting controversy? Why or why not?
• Do you think most people who see the cover will recognize it as satire? Why or why not?
• How do you think that this controversy will affect The New Yorker’s sales? Why?
• Compare the Obama cover to the two other New Yorker covers pictured above. Do you think Obama has been treated any differently from the subjects of the other covers? Why or why not?
• How do you think this controversy will affect the Obama campaign? Why?
•  Why do you think covers involving pregnancy and motherhood are so much more controversial than those that simply involve sex?
•  There are few recent examples of magazine covers that use religion to cause controversy. Why do you think that is?
•  Why do you think race is the most controversial topic of the three? Do you think that would hold true for magazines published in Canada? Why or why not?

• How do you think the spread of digital cameras and camera cell phones might change how the news is made? Will it have different effects on different news media (newspapers, TV, Internet, etc.) or have different effects in different parts of the world? Why?

• Sites like EveryBlock try to let the users filter their own news, deciding what is newsworthy and what is not. Do you think that most people would have a different view of what is newsworthy than the news media does? If all news was user-selected, would it look different from the news today? Why or why not? If so, how would it be different?

• Do you think everyone has a duty to be a journalist? Why or why not?

• Do you think that “citizen journalists” will change journalism? Why or why not? If yes, how will journalism be changed?

• Do you think that journalists should try to be objective, or should they be transparent about their views and agendas? Why? Is it possible to have both objectivity and advocacy in the news? If so, is it desirable?

• Why do you think so many people report that they don’t trust the news media? A Pew Research Center study reported that people who get their news mostly from the Internet are less likely to trust the media; why might this be so? Do you think that an increase in citizen journalism, in any of the forms described above, will make people more or less likely to trust the media? Why or why not?

  

 "The public wants entertainment not information."
– William Randolph Hearst

Today, celebrity culture dominates our daily media and social dialogue. It's a 24-hour business, fed by nightly entertainment news programs, cable channels devoted to celebrity, the bustling newsstand business of magazines and the millions of Web sites that keep vigil ever-hopeful of sellable scandal (Paris Hilton Inc., CBC Web site). 

On Sunday, December 16 at 11pm ET/PT, CBC Newsworld presents Paris Hilton Inc. The documentary explores how the surging popularity of entertainment and gossip Web sites is reshaping the media landscape. Paris Hilton Inc., looks at how celebrity scandals and scoops are moving from the pages of the tabloids to mainstream news.

Paris Hilton, Inc can also be viewed online in its entirety on the CBC Web site.

 Also playing: Gamer Revolution

 

CBC Newsworld is replaying the two part series Gamer Revolution. The series looks at the world of computer gaming. Computer games are a global phenomenon and a $25 billion dollar a year industry. According to the series, over 800 million people worldwide are regular players and “tens of millions of people are now spending more time in the virtual world of online games than they are in the real world”. Part one of the series will air Saturday December 15 at 10 pm ET/PT, part two will air the following Saturday.

 

An excerpt from the film is available on the CBC Web site.

 

If you have comments or feedback on these programs or any of the issues raised. Let us know...

 

 

• Episode 1: A century of spin
  How spin began. The rocky relationship between the press and public relations is now 100 years old.
  
• Episode 2: The spindustrial revolution
  Countless "spindustries" have been spawned by our modern spin culture, including public relations, "earned media" and video news releases.
   
• Episode 3: Calling Dr. Spin
  How far can political spin go? "Just watch me."
   
• Episode 4: The spin doctor is in
  Twenty-four-hour TV news, increased competition in newspapers, the shrinking news cycle… they've all played a part in changing the way Canadian politics is covered. And in most cases, it's the spin doctors who have gained the upper hand.
   
• Episode 5: Spinning war
  Governments have long relied on stagecraft, spin and other tools of public relations to sell war on the home front. And they've also become increasingly sophisticated at using the press to accomplish that objective.
   
• Episode 6: Spinning into the 21st century
  The dawn of the Internet age poses significant new challenges for the press and PR industries. Will they even matter in a world where people can create their own media? What will be the future of spin?

The challenge for teachers, in this new age of participatory news, is to teach students to think critically about the news information they are accessing, in order to determine if it is authoritative and accurate.

To learn more about citizen journalism see: