Is this the Matrix?: Reality in the era of bots

/////////////////////NPR's Tom Ashbrook hosts a show called On Point, which covers a multitude of topics ranging from schooling to online dating to genetics to The Beatles' Sergeant Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band. Available as a podcast, On Point featured a story on August 9th about bots, which I listened to in curiosity and dismay, and not as …

Speech, whistleblowing/leaking, and silence: languaging as a political force

Today's news in many ways is not remarkable, in the sense that we've been submerged in a swampy mess of falsehoods and fictions that choke off our view of the world around us (see my recent post about Baudrillard's Simulacra and Simulation, which asserts that our definition of reality is served up to us, hot and …

“GOP Gov. Snyder’s office says Detroit school kids have no right to literacy”: an opportunity to develop media literacy

The post title comes from an article a friend of mine posted on my Facebook feed, alarmed and asking what I thought of this situation. Photograph by Herbert Russell Below is my response... It's a very interesting proposition. Checked out the story on the CBS website and this is what was included: "The lawsuit says …

Sign of the times?

Another picture from the environs of New York…I took this one on the subway, as you can see from the orange seats and metallic wall and handrails. The New York Post splashed quippy signs like this all over the train I was on, though this one in particular caught my eye: Known for telling stories …

Country of origin, country of destination

I didn't post yesterday, though I’m not going to count it as a missed day for my writing commitment (365 days starting October 1, 2014); I still wrote for my finals, as I have two papers left to go. Almost there… Media literacy is an interesting topic that I’ve written about before and would love to …

Dehumanization through torture: victim, interrogator, nation…and reader

Dehumanization is a topic on many journalists’, pundits’, academics’, and bloggers’ lips of late. It’s applicable, unfortunately, to a wide variety of current situations – the discussion about the treatment of Black men by police forces across the United States, the swath cut across western Africa by the Ebola epidemic, even the overuse of standardized …

Media and versions of stories: “good guy vs. black guy”

Before you read this, ask yourself: What would each of the two people mentioned in the title of this post look like. It’s meant to be tricky because the second of the two terms, “Asian,” is considered a fairly standard term for a person with lineage from Asia (actually, Asian-American might be a better way …

Mixed messages and media literacy

On my trip home from New York, I read some, napped some, looked out the window some. Actually, before I got on the bus, this billboard on the west side of Manhattan caught my eye: Turns out this is advertising for RT.com, a Russian-language news media source. The billboard is bold and controversial, and I …