What’s The Fuss About Facebook, Inc.? Part I – The WSJ

Editor’s Note: Facebook and its various properties (Instagram, WhatsApp) have been in the news a lot lately, and not in a good way.  Congress has been holding social media hearings where Facebook is the #1 bad guy, the Washington Post  has had a host of stories, and the Wall Street Journal  has a whole section devoted to covering the social media giant. I’m hoping to do several posts discussing these issues. Here’s the first one looking at the Wall Street Journal’s coverage. Will update as new articles get published.
Oct. 27, 2021


The Wall Street Journal so far has 14 articles in its The Facebook Files series. Yes, you will likely need a subscription for access. Not a problem. The WSJ offers attractive rates for both faculty and students. I’ve annotated a few of these articles.

A slide show about Instagram produced internally at FB found:

“Thirty-two percent of teen girls said that when they felt bad about their bodies, Instagram made them feel worse,” the researchers said in a March 2020 slide presentation posted to Facebook’s internal message board, reviewed by The Wall Street Journal. “Comparisons on Instagram can change how young women view and describe themselves.”

Instagram brings in more than $100 billion a year in revenue and depends on young people engaging with them.

Publicly, IG plays down the risks it presents to teens and preteens, even while internal documents highlight problems.

Their research over several years found:

    • They came to the conclusion that some of the problems were specific to Instagram, and not social media more broadly. That is especially true concerning so-called social comparison, which is when people assess their own value in relation to the attractiveness, wealth and success of others.
    • The tendency to share only the best moments, a pressure to look perfect and an addictive product can send teens spiraling toward eating disorders, an unhealthy sense of their own bodies and depression, March 2020 internal research states.

FB bought IG in 2012 for $1 billion when it only had 13 employees.

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Questions Worth Asking (Maybe)

What do My Little Pony, Transformers, Battleship and G.I. Joe all have in common?
They are all toys from Hasbro that all became major media entertainment properties under the leadership of CEO Brian Goldner, who died Tuesday of cancer. Goldner had been with the toy giant in one position or another since 2000. Hasbro’s products include Monopoly, My Little Pony, Transformers, the board game Battleship and the early action figure G.I. Joe. Back in 2012, Goldner told the NY Times that turning toys into entertainment franchises was a “core-brand strategy. Our four movies made $3 billion at the box office, but we made $1.6 billion in sales of merchandise because we own the I.P. [intellectual property] and all the merchandising rights.”


CNN’s Brian Stelter asks: Why isn’t there a New York Times of the right?
On his media news show Sunday evening, CNN media news reporter Brian Stelter raised an interesting question:

“Why aren’t there massive American newsrooms dedicated to journalism from a conservative point of view, a reality-based conservative point of view? Why isn’t there a New York Times of the right?”

An excellent answer to this question comes from the Washington Post’s media critic Erik Wemple who says, “The ‘New York Times of the right’ is … The New York Times.”

Wemple points out how Fox News host Tucker Carlson continually trashes the NY Times on his show and then goes on to frequently reference stories in a positive light from the Times. And as is his usual practice, Wemple provides specific dates and stories. (Examples are from Aug. 134, Aug. 21, Sept. 17, Sept. 20, Sept. 28, and Oct. 4.  All of these praised stories from the Times.) Wemple then goes on to give a long list of other NY Times stories referenced as positive examples by Fox News hosts.

So, Fox News likes to have it both ways – trashing the New York Times and other “mainstream” news outlets while simultaneously depending on these news outlets for important reporting.


And finally – Where have you been, Distracted Boyfriend?

 

 

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Everything is a Remix – Apocalypse Pooh

Back in 1987, comedian and filmmaker Todd Graham had a thought. What if he combined sequences from Francis Ford Coppola’s classic reboot of “Heart of Darkness”  Apocalypse Now with segments of the Disney version of Winnie the Pooh and the Honey Tree? The short film uses footage from Apocalypse combined with dialog from Winnie the Pooh along with visuals from Winnie the Pooh and sound from Apocalypse.  To top things off, he did this originally with VHS copies of the two films.

The version below is a 2012 remastered version done with digital video.  One of the best examples ever of remixing.

NOTE: The language is NSFW.

And for the record, here’s the VHS version:

 

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Everyone’s Gone to the Movies – Let’s talk movies in class

NOTE: This is a collection of videos I’m going to be using in class this week to go with my discussion of the movies in Global Media Literacy.


You all no doubt think you are of the “cat video” generation. You think your generation invented the short video of cute cats doing cute things. But you are wrong!

Thomas Edison’s studios shot the first cat video back in 1894! I present to you… Boxing Cats!


The Bechdel Test

Applying the Bechdel Test to the 2012 Oscars


Muybridge animations:


Edison Kinetoscopes

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=570r67gGhfs


Lumiere Brother’s Babies Quarrel


Porter’s The Great Train Robbery
(with piano and violin accompaniment)

https://youtu.be/Z7pXJIUm7_g


Making the Jump to Sound (Scene from Singin’ In The Rain)


Gone With The Wind – Staircase scene


Trailer for Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow (2004)


Everything is a Remix Remastered Movie Section

Bollywood Movies – Mohabbatein

https://youtu.be/g8mPXxjI50w

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Everything is a (musical) remix

Updated 2/28/24

Kirby Ferguson did a remarkable series of videos about ten years ago under the title “Everything is a Remix.” He’s now in the process of remaking (remixing!) the series for a new decade. Below is the first segment, covering music, from his remix-remix, along with several other videos I use to to discuss the concept of remixing and music. (Note: Click on the image to view on YouTube.)

Remastered Original Version

2021 Revised Version

Everything is a remix


One of the examples of remixing in this film is from artist Gregg Gillis who records under than name Girl Talk. And his album “All Day” was the basis for a great little dance film called Girl Walk // All Day.

(NOTE: Lots of NSFW lyrics in the following material. Be advised.)

Girl Walk// All Day


You can download Girl Talk’s entire album “All Day” here.

Visual presentation of playlist in All Day:

(NOTE: Lots of NSFW lyrics in the following material. Be advised.)

Girl Talk - All Day


And remixing/mash-ups are not limited to hip hop – country music has long recycled… well… just about everything. Here’s a blend of six country songs by Sir Mashalot:

Sir Mashalot country mashup


Sometimes cover songs can radically transform the original into something entirely new. Consider Robyn’s dance hit Call Your Girlfriend.

Robyn's Call Your GirlfriendAnd then take a look at how folk singer Lucy Wainwright Roche reimagined it:

 


Lucy Wainwright Roche


And finally… About 15 years ago, singer/songwriter Jonathan Coulton recorded a brilliant acoustic version of Sir Mix A Lot’s “Baby Got Back,” turning the rap into a sweet ballad. Take a listen:

Lots of fun, and a very distinctive cover.  No way you would hear this and not know that this it the Jonathan Coulton cover. (Kinda like the Gary Jules cover of the Tears for Fears song  “Mad Love.”)

So now the folks on the Fox show Glee have performed the Coulton version of “Baby Got Back,” but they have made no reference to it being based on Coulton’s cover, nor did they contact Coulton about it.

Now it’s great that Glee is picking up on something so cool.  But it would be much cooler if they would have made mention of the independent musician who created this version of the song.  Of course, companies like News Corp. (that owns Fox Broadcasting that airs Glee) always wants proper credit and compensation for their creative content….

For the record – here’s Sir Mix-A-Lot’s hip hop original:

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Return of “Missing White Woman Syndrome”

Editor’s Note: Please note that nothing in this commentary is intended to minimize the violence perpetrated against Gabby Petito. But there are significant news coverage issues brought up by this case that I think need to be discussed.

Ms. Petito had come to some level of prominence as a “van life” Instagrammer –  attractive young people who post photos of themselves traveling around the country and documenting their travels through social media such as Instagram and YouTube. The following video (assuming it stays up) gives Petito’s and her boyfriend Brian Laundrie’s image of themselves on the road.

The trip started in June of 2021 and Petito presented a positive view of their trip through her social media. Then, on Aug.12, the couple had an encounter with the Moab, Utah police who reported them as having “some sort of altercation.” On Aug. 30th, CNN reports that Petito’s family had their last communication from Gabby, supposedly from the area of Yosemite National Park.

Throughout September, Petito’s family reached out to Laundrie’s family, trying to figure out where Gabby had gone, but they heard nothing from either Brian or his family. Laundrie reportedly disappeared from his family’s home on September 14. 

A body identified as Petito’s was found in the Bridger-Teton National Forest in Wyoming on Sept. 21, and an autopsy led to her death being classified as a homicide.  Laundrie is being sought as a “person of interest” in the case.


American news media have a long history of paying more attention to crime stories that deal with conventionally attractive, wealthy, white women and girls than to those that deal with women and girls of color or who are in poverty.

Consider the story of Casey Anthony. The attractive, young, white mother was accused of murdering her two-year-old daughter. During her trial in 2011, the news media, especially cable television, was obsessed with the case. When Anthony was found not guilty, Facebook, Twitter, and other social media sites were filled with outraged comments about the verdict. In addition, talk show hosts such as Nancy Grace seemed to be obsessed with the case.

Five years after the court acquitted Anthony, Google News still featured more than 202,000 links to news stories connected to the case. On the other hand, a 2016 Google search for Jhessye Shockley, a five-year-old African American girl from Arizona who disappeared in 2011, only turned up 341 news stories, most connecting to the 2015 conviction of her mother in Jhessye’s death.

Keith Woods, an expert on diversity issues who has worked for both the Poynter Institute (a journalism think tank) and NPR, says stories about minority women tend to receive less attention because reporters are more likely to report about people they see as being like themselves. And since most newsrooms tend to be disproportionately white and middle class, the disappearance of a white woman is seen as a bigger story. This control over which stories are reported means that the public at large is not aware that African American women are disproportionately more likely to disappear than white women.


And so we see the same pattern playing out once again with the the Gabby Petito, with perhaps a few 2020 factors at play.

Ja’han Jones, who blogs for MSNBC, notes that while the “cinematic qualities” of the story and the high level of social media interest in the case accounts for some of the reason the Petito story has been so big, the main explanation is that journalists suffer from “missing white woman syndrome,” a term first used by the late, great news anchor Gwen Ifill during a 2004 journalism conference.

Jones writes that while black children go missing at a higher rate than white children do, their disappearances rarely break into the national news:

Racial disparity in missing persons cases is an absolutely real phenomenon, according to the evidence. A 2015 study found Black children account for roughly 35 percent of missing children’s cases, but they were only mentioned 7 percent of the time in media coverage about missing children.

The tabloid New York Post, in noting on the disparity of coverage ran a list, with photos, of a number of missing people of color who have gotten little of the coverage given to the Petito case.

(While scrolling to find this tweet, I went past at least five tweets from the NY Post on the Petito case.)

And here are the covers of the NY Post from the last two days:

NY Post cover "She touched the world"

NY Post, 9/20/21

NY Post 9/21/21

As I started this saying, nothing I’ve written here is to imply that Gabby Petito’s death is unworthy of coverage. It is absolutely a tragedy with a large human interest component. But just as we remember that Gabby’s life matters, so we must also remember that so do those of women and children of color.

 

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Meet my commentary and blogging students

Looking for some interesting college students from out here on the prairie to hear from? Here’s your chance. Here are the blogs and Twitter feeds for my #JMC406 Commentary and Blogging students:

Alexis Henry

Ashley Hopkins

Jiyoon Kim

Mackenzie Krumland

Grace McDonald

Jake Putnam

Ryan Range

Caitlyn VanDeWalle

 

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Memories for the 9/11 anniversary

Editor’s note: Much of this is drawn from a series of annual posts I have made over the years to commemorate 9/11

It was 20 years ago tomorrow morning that I was teaching my freshman media literacy course at West Virginia University.  I had a class with close to 350 students in it.C-SPAN’s Washington Journal morning show was playing on the big screen as students gathered.  At 8:30 a.m. I shut off C-SPAN and started teaching.  When I got back to my office an hour-and-a-half later, news that our world was changing was in the process of breaking.

9/11 has always been highly personal to me.

One of my (and my Dear Wife’s) student’s father was supposed to be working in the section of the Pentagon that was hit by one of the planes. But since that area was under renovation, his dad ended up safe.

Another one of my students had a mother who was a flight attendant who flew out of the same airport the Twin Tower planes had departed from.  She was desperate for news. Fortunately, her mother was not on one of the attack planes.

One of my friends was the public radio correspondent for the area, and he ended up providing much of NPR’s coverage of the United 93 crash in Shanksville, PA.

And one one of my colleagues, who taught advertising, lost an old friend in the Twin Towers collapse.

Here are a few of my memories related to 9/11.


One of the last plays I saw before live theater shut down for the pandemic was the brilliant and heartbreaking musical Come From Away that tells the story of the town of Gander, Newfoundland, where many of the planes crossing the Atlantic were diverted when United States airspace was shut down on 9/11. I still have to be careful when I listen to the soundtrack from the show.  I don’t think I’ve ever made it through the show without crying. Here are two of my favorite songs from the show in a radio concert performance.

“Welcome to the Rock,” that tells how everything changed for Gander in just a moment.  

“Me and the Sky” is for me the heart of the show where pilot Beverly tells her story of becoming American Airlines first female captain and her horror of airliners being used as weapons.

Update: Beverly Bass, the Real-Life Pilot Portrayed in Come From Away, recalls 9/11 (from 2017)

A performance by many of the original members of the Broadway cast is now airing on Apple TV+.


My next memory is a look at cameos the Twin Towers made in numerous Hollywood films. Those two giant buildings defined the New York skyline from the 1970s until 9/11:

Finally, Paul Simon singing his achingly beautiful American Tune is a good way to remember our beautiful country.

https://www.tumblr.com/ralphehanson/614023662186741760

 

This last memory has nothing to do with the media. It’s a brief story about a ride I took on my motorcycle to the United 93 Memorial on a rainy June day back in 2004. It was written shortly after I had recovered from a fairly serious illness, and I was happy just to be back on the road. I’ve taken to posting every year on 9/11.

Me and my old KLRTook a short ride last Saturday. The distance wasn’t much, under 200 miles, but I went through two centuries of time, ideas, and food. Which felt really good after having been ill for the last month-and-a-half.

Headed out of Morgantown about 7:30 a.m. on I68. Stopped at Penn Alps for breakfast. Nice thing about being on insulin is that I can include a few more carbs in my diet these days. Pancakes, yum! (Penn Alps, if you don’t know, runs a great Pennsylvania Dutch breakfast buffet on weekends that is well worth riding to. Just outside of Grantsville, MD.)

Then off on the real purpose of the trip. Up US 219 toward the Flight 93 Sept. 11 memorial. The ride up north on 219 is beautiful; I’ve ridden it before. I always like when you come around the bend and see the turbines for the wind farm. Some people see them as an eye sore; for me they’re a potential energy solution and a dramatic sight. Chalk one up for industrial can be beautiful.

Continue on up to Berlin, PA, where I take off on PA 160 into Pennsylvania Dutch country. I start seeing hex signs painted on bright red barns, or even hung as a wooden sign. Not quite cool enough to put on my electric vest, but certainly not warm. Then it’s heading back west on a county/state road of indeterminate designation.

Now I’m into even more “old country” country. There’s a horse-and-buggy caution sign. Off to the left there’s a big farmstead with long dark-colored dresses hanging from the line, drying in the air. They may not stay dry, based on what the clouds look like.

The irony of this ride hits pretty hard. I’m on my way to a memorial of the violence and hatred of the first shot of the 21st century world war, and I’m traveling through country that is taking me further and further back into the pacifist world of the 19th century Amish and Mennonites.

A turn or two more, following the map from the National Parks web site, and I’m on a badly scared, narrow road that is no wider and not in as good of shape as the local rail trail. (Reminds me why I like my KLR!)

It’s only here that I see the first sign for the memorial. No one can accuse the locals of playing up the nearby memorial. Perhaps more flags and patriotic lawn ornaments than usual, but no strident statements. And then the memorial is off a half-mile ahead.

The crash site is to the south, surrounded by chain-link fencing. No one but families of the victims are allowed in that area. Off a small parking area is the temporary memorial, in place until the National Park Service can build the permanent site. There’s a 40-foot long chain-link wall where people have posted remembrences, plaques on the ground ranging from hand-painted signs on sandstone, to an elaborately etched sign on granite from a motorcycle group. The granite memorial is surrounded by motorcycle images.

The messages are mostly lonely or affirming. Statements of loss, statements of praise for the heroism of the passengers and crew. But not statements of hatred. It reminds me in many ways of the Storm King Mountain firefighter memorial. Not the formal one in Glenwood Springs, but the individual ones out on the mountain where more than a dozen wildland firefighters died several years ago.

It’s time to head home. When I go to join up with US 30, it’s starting to spit rain, so I pull out the rain gloves, button down the jacket, and prepare for heading home. It rains almost the whole way back PA 281, but I stay mostly dry in my Darien. The only problem is the collar of my too-big jacket won’t close far enough, and water dribbles down inside. It reminds me that riding in the rain, if it isn’t coming down too hard, can be almost pleasant, isolated away inside a nylon and fiberglass cocoon.

I’m home before 1 p.m.. I’ve ridden less than 200 miles. But I’ve ridden through a couple of centuries of people’s thoughts, actions, and food. And I’m finally back on the bike.

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Ten Twitter Accounts Worth Following

One of my first assignments for my commentary and blogging students is to have them put together a post of 10 Twitter feeds worth following. Overall, I want them to be the kind of people who would be of value to their blogs, but one or two could be fun.  Here’s my list for this year. What does yours look like?

  1. Michael Socolow

Michael is a journalism prof for University of Maine and writes commentary for the Washington Post and other outlets. He’s also a friend of the blog.


2. Jeremy Littau

Professor at Lehigh University. Master of long-form twitter. Friend of the blog.


3. Dr. Amber L. Hutchins

Comm professor, public relations, and all-things Disney. Friend of the blog.

4. Asma Khalid

NPR White House correspondent and frequent host of NPR Politics Podcast. Also part of the team of young parents covering politics at NPR.


5. Jay Rosen

NYU journalism prof who is one of the most provocative press critics (in a good way) on Twitter.


6. PopeHat (Ken White)

Sharp-elbowed critique of legal issues in the news. (Watch for the various forms the account’s name will take.)


7. Volokh Conspiracy

Libertarian-leaning legal blog by a group of law professors. Articles linked to can be heavy-going but worth reading.


8. Chris Dunker

Lincoln Journal Star News reporter who does great live tweets of legislative and other government events. Some epic threads.


9. Eric Berger

Up to the minute Twitter on space and space launch news.


10. Dr. Candice D. Roberts

Pop culture and queer studies prof. Friend of the blog.


Plus one bonus link. Associate Deans

Great humor account with way too much truth about middle management in colleges and universities.

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Questions Worth Asking (Maybe)

The one guest host no one on social media seemed to be interested in was show executive producer Mike Richards. But it was Richards who was named as the permanent host, and he managed to last eight days in the job as people remembered his sexist and racist behavior from the past. So Richards has stepped down and management has declared a do-over and gone back to guest hosts. Apparently no one gave this a serious thought.

  • Who can replace long-time Rolling Stones drummer Charlie Watts?

    While I’m certain someone will, no one can really replace the steady and sure-handed beats Watts provided. Mick Jagger and Keith Richards garnered all the attention, but Watts was clearly at the core of the band. Here’s an interesting video of Jumping Jack Flash in concert that keeps Watts front and center, all the way through.

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