Tag Archives: media

“Remediation” Book Chapter Published in The Routledge Encyclopedia of Citizen Media (2021)

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A chapter I wrote on “Remediation” has been published in The Routledge Encyclopedia of Citizen Media (Routledge, 2021), edited by Mona Baker, Bolette B. Blaagaard, Henry Jones, and Luis Pérez-González. 

https://www.routledge.com/The-Routledge-Encyclopedia-of-Citizen-Media/Baker-Blaagaard-Jones-Perez-Gonzalez/p/book/9781138665569

Remediation by Owen Gallagher in The Routledge Encyclopedia of Citizen Media

Remediation by Owen Gallagher in The Routledge Encyclopedia of Citizen Media (2021)

Abstract

Remediation broadly refers to the representation of one medium within another medium, often, in practice, leading to the incorporation of the ‘old’ into the ‘new’. This process can occur in a number of different ways, from the faithful adaptation or translation of a text into another media form, to the improvement, refashioning, absorption or repurposing of content into a more advanced technological state. This can have the effect of causing the medium of consumption to become either more transparent or more opaque, highlighting its relative immediacy or hypermediacy, respectively.

The theory of remediation is important within the sphere of citizen media because non-affiliated citizens are increasingly expressing themselves publicly using remediated content such as remixes, memes, mashups and bricolage. The figure of the independent remixer or meme-artist has become representative of a cultural desire to ‘talk back’ to the media, to politicians and big business, to highlight injustices, expose irresponsible behaviour and engage in various forms of socio-political action, potentially inspiring real change.

This entry considers the role of remediation in citizen media, focusing on a number of relevant examples and case studies from the past decade where newer forms of remix have been used to engage in political discourse or support social action. For example, critical remix video has emerged as an extremely potent form of citizen media production through its remediation of existing source material in order to critically engage with ideological biases and highlight perceived wrongs. The Cambridge Dictionary offers an alternative definition of remediation as “the process of improving or correcting a situation”, which, as this entry shows, is precisely what citizen-engaged remix aims to do.

References

Bolter, Jay David and Richard Grusin (2000) Remediation: Understanding new media, Cambridge: MIT Press.

Deuze, Mark (2006) ‘Participation, Remediation, Bricolage: Considering principal components of a digital culture’, The Information Society 22(2): 63-75.

Jenkins, Henry (2006) Convergence Culture: Where Old and New Media Collide, New York:  NYU Press.

Jenkins, Henry et al. (2017) ‘Participatory Politics’, in Eduardo Navas, Owen Gallagher and xtine burrough (eds) Keywords in Remix Studies, New York: Routledge, pp.230-245.

Gallagher, Owen (2018) Reclaiming Critical Remix Video: The Role of Sampling in Transformative Works. New York: Routledge, pp. 131-204.

McLuhan, Marshall (1994) Understanding Media: The extensions of man, Cambridge: MIT Press.

Navas, Eduardo, Owen Gallagher and xtine burrough (2015) ‘Section IV: Politics’, in Eduardo Navas, Owen Gallagher and xtine burrough (eds) The Routledge Companion to Remix Studies, New York: Routledge, pp.321-408.

Middle East Media

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Taking some inspiration from Philip Seib’s the Al Jazeera Effect, the proposal is to examine the media in the Middle East through the lens of the Bahrain protests of February / March 2011. Within Bahrain, the local national media presented a biased one-sided version of events, portraying the protestors as terrorists and the royal family as the saviours. Pure propaganda spin. The neighbouring Qatar based Al Jazeera however presented a much more objective perspective of the forceful excessive crackdown on peaceful protestors by an oppressive regime, that is until their own government sent in military forces to assist in the crackdown. Then everything went very quiet in relation to Bahrain on AL Jazeera. Old vs new approaches to journalism. Then you have social media. Facebook, Twitter and YouTube as well as personal blogs were largely used as tools in the organization of the initial protests. Then you have the fascinating angle of other outside interests in Bahrain, namely Iran and Saudi Arabia, both of which reported or failed to report on the events as they unfolded, with particular biases. Saudi don’t want protests of their own, so they suppressed the news. Iran however seek to claim Bahrain or align themselves with the protestors. Then you have an even more interesting spin through the American and British media who also have high stakes in the country through the U.S. Fifth Fleet based there and the fact that Bahrain was under British rule until as late as the 1970s. Other counties around the world also reported in different ways the events occurring here. Freedom of speech / expression is being trampled on here.

Tactical Media

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Tactical Media is a term popularized by Geert Lovink and David Garcia in the mid 1990s. It refers to media art activism that makes use of popular media forms and distribution platforms to convey messages of critique or intervention in a wide range of social issues, political issues, any kind of perceived injustices or unethical, unacceptable behavior. Originally termed ‘Tactical Television’, it was an attempt to categorise the use of new media technologies as a means of protest and intervention – alternative media practices such as pirate TV stations, pirate radio, underground newsletters, flyers, video cassette recordings etc. You would need to consider Tactical Media in relation to the entire history of media, media theory, culture (media and cultural studies) to gain a full and complete understanding of what we’re talking about here. The term Tactical Media became a necessary label, as a dramatic increase in the production of this kind of work became apparent as the 1990s unfolded. Following the fall of the Berlin Wall, there was a dramatic drop in the cost of media production technologies. Why? Video cameras, microphones, recording equipment, TVs, monitors, editing software, computers – the digitization of media made if at once more affordable and more accessible to a greater number of people than ever before, as well as more malleable.
Where does the ‘Tactical’ come into it? An academic angle in terms of tactics and strategies, military discourse – Clauswitz – it was felt that Tactical Media works were short-term, short form, reactionary, almost like Guerilla warfare – observe an attack, react by attacking with stealth and then disappear into the night without a trace. Many Tactical Media interventions took this form – from Electronic Civil Disobedience, where thousands of users would access a website simultaneously in order to overload its servers, to the kind of temporary deceptions instigated by the likes of the Yes Men – fake websites, fake lectures, speeches, interviews, videos, etc. all designed in the semiotic language of popular mainstream media, to make them appear indistinguishable from so-called ‘real’media. This is a key point. What can we truly believe? How much of what the media says is actually ‘true’? In most cases, Tactical Media seeks to expose hidden truths – to unravel complex lies woven by politicians, corporations and mainstream media, advertising and authoritative journalism. Tactical Media evolved with the technology and eventually became a parody of itself, hijacked by art galleries, sponsored by multinational corporations – a cynical attempt to appear edgy and to appeal to the emerging market demographic of rebellious prosumers / produsers.