Completely Unnecessary

Nothing says ‘fun reading’ like examining media coverage of the 1994 Rwandan genocide.

I started out trying to look at DR Congo. I was going to argue that the media’s sporadic and surface-level coverage added to the perception of endemic crisis in the country. But - and here’s the funny part - no one’s even touched it. Media coverage of the enormous country is so sparse and irrelevant that no one’s even taken a crack at exploring how truly bad it is.

So I moved onto Rwanda, which no one can get enough of and, might I say, during which the media did a particularly bang up job of totally stuffing up a complex and volatile situation.

You’ll be glad to know, however, that I am saving time. I now just I read straight media analyses like Babysitters’ Club books.

For those of you unfamiliar with the escapades of Kristy et al, allow me to recap:

There’s an opening chapter where they lay out the basic plot of the book. Then, a long and involved Chapter Two is devoted to, I believe quite literally, the same detailed explanation of who the Club members are and how the Club works.

The litany is so precise that, years later, I remember that Kirsty is the tomboy who lives with her dad and step-mom; MaryAnne’s mom died and her dad is conservative; Claudia is Japanese-American and wears funky clothes and loves junk food; which is an anathema to Stacey because she has diabetes.

And Dawn moved to California, but they go visit every once in a while.

Media analyses are kind of the same. Intro, figure out what we’re talking about. Quick skim of the Lit Review - ah, we’re talking about ‘framing’ Entman, etc, check. And then it’s just skipping more or less blindly through the Methology and Results to get to the Discussion, where we actually get into whatever they hell it is they’re talking about.

Occasionally, I stop and think about how much pain, effort and chunks of my soul went into that one particularly obnoxious paragraph in my Methodology and I want to cry.

And then I’m glad I’m not the kind of person to make graphs (I skip those, too).

ps - Attentive readers will note that, without students or structured places to be, I’m back on my 6pm-3am writing schedule. No more 7am!

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I don’t really have anything to blog about. I know this will come as a fatal blow to some, but, realistically, you really shouldn’t be hitching your cart to my tiny intellectual pony. It’s for the best.

My thesis is done, which comes as a shock to the both of us. It’s finished two days before the due date, which is new. The fact that I’m not jotting down notes on the way to turning it in is truly a first.

Though I’d really like never to discuss it again, possibly the most interesting thing I found in my sample set is that, aside from advisers, all the people interviewed in regard to Clinton were women.* It’s not necessarily relevant to what I’m about to say, but it’s interesting and, really, what on this blog has ever proved relevant anyway?

Here’s The Age’s assessment of Obama’s potential running mates:

Many people in the party would like to see the two senators on the same ticket. Other names floated as possible running mates for Senator Obama include former Virginia governor Mark Warner, Virginia senator Jim Webb, Ohio Governor Ted Strickland and Senator Joe Biden.

Missing from this list are Janet Napolitano, the Governor of Arizona, and Kathleen Sebelius, Kansas’ bipartisan governor.

Granted Brian Schweitzer, the Montana governor’s whose name has also been floated prominently, is also missing, but… seriously - no one thinks it’s going to be Biden. As much as I love him, Biden offers the prospect of a double-Senator ticket with only the support of a small, blue state in exchange. Smart money’s on the governor of a redish state.

Interesting that Napolitano and Sebelius keep getting left out of the mainstream media’s lists, though they appear everywhere on the lefty blogosphere - and, ostensibly, in the Obama campaign.

Truth be told, I hope not to talk about women, gender, politics and the media for quite some time. If we run into each other at the bar, I know lots about puppies, the Congo and gossip. I have lots and lots of non-political dirt that I’m absolutely bursting to share. Let’s talk about that instead!

* - Notice that awkward, overly long sentence structure? It appears throughout my thesis as well.

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I was beating myself up earlier today because I promised myself that I would stop looking for references for my thesis and, you know, actually read them. And then I added at least six more…

I’m currently cruising at over 60 references, and will probably only need about 30 of them.

So what about this feels good?

I just started reading this woman’s Masters thesis that I found via Google Scholar, and I totally caught her plagiarizing! Plagiarizing, in fact, one of the other references I read tonight, Devitt (1999)!

It was a hard to locate reference, I know, but she could have at least changed the wording a wee bit more.

Busted!

Luckily, she’s graduated, and I don’t really care that much.

And really, her writing is more shocking than the stealing. If her uni let her pass, a little bit of plagiarism clearly wasn’t going to make the difference.

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Ah, my printer actually printed the pages I needed this morning. I was afraid it was going to run out of ink - per usual - necessitating a run to OfficeWorks at 7:30am.

Instead I get to read the NYT and prepare for class. I’m meeting the whippersnappers I’ll be teaching today.

My printer is on my side. Woe is them!

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I’ve never really felt like a grad student. Until this morning…

I’m finishing up my work in the archives when I get a text from Sara complaining about the myriad of first years with their orientation balloons. I emerge from the basement and look around in horror as the solace of my previous empty library is shattered by the mewling and puking of new students on their library tours. I glance with scorn at the noisy groups taking the exact tour that Sara and I took just one year ago.

I walk over to the loans desk to put a hold on a book I really have no right putting a hold on. There’s a weekly loan copy available, but I mention the word ‘thesis’ and the hold is placed. Sorry, other person probably also working on a thesis. See you in three weeks when you pull the same maneuver.

I leave the library, skirting the throngs of new students and the inevitable Socialist pamphleteers that the students’ presence has engendered. (New students are like standing water, should I be willing to compare MelbUni Socialists to mosquitoes, which I am.)

I ride to John Medley, expertly avoiding people on the too narrow path. Parking my bike, I listen to an enthusiastic American uni guide cheerfully mispronounce the names of her charges. One girl looks in my direction. I’m far overdressed for the weather, wearing both a long-sleeved shirt and a scarf. ‘It’s incredibly cold in the archives,’ I hope my bored glance communicates. ‘I’m willing to suffer the slings and arrows of uni fashionistas like yourself for the importance of my incredibly important research. It’s important.’

Scarf = grad student

I realize finally how I look as I enter the bathroom on the fifth floor. That bored look is really just exhaustion from staying up last night to type notes from a book into my bibliography database.

Exhaustion + Scarf = grad student.

The person I’m looking for isn’t around, so I head back downstairs, cursing my inability to get a mobile signal in John Medley. I have to ask the girl whose name was being mispronounced to move so I can wheel my bike and its tiger-striped handlebars past her. The corking is kind of coming off; I look like I’m living on a ’student’ budget.

Poor + Exhaustion + Scarf = Grad Student

Anyway, after that I wisely head away from campus, avoiding ‘O’ week. The emails and texts I get over the next 30 minutes indicate that pretty much everyone else is doing the same.

We are so cool now that we’ve been here a year. We don’t need orientation, though there are still times when I wind up stuck inexplicably in the Engineering section and not near the ERC as I’d planned. Whatever, my scarf says it’s just because I’m overtired.

ps - Despite what my handlebar corking might imply, I actually have some money coming in with a research job. I spent yesterday and part of today looking through 1949 newspapers during a coal mining strike. I was looking for government-sponsored ads, which were amazing enough, but some of the ads and stories they were running are hilarious.

For instance, did you know that ’scalp starvation’ is the cause of 9 out of 10 cases of baldness? Silvikrin has ‘14 organic elements’ to prevent this totally crap explanation…

Watson and Crick, 1953…

I’ll post some of them when I get a chance.

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From the Age:

Australians are gaining weight even faster than people in the US, a notoriously fat nation.

Why, you vegemite-eating, koala-coddling bastards…

Alright, fair enough. Proceed.

ps - aside from a couple edits - I’m done with school until March! Would it be entirely out of line for me to do a PhD on Transformers? That’s what I’ve been thinking about all day.

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But my vote for creepiest piece of music ever is still the third movement of Bartok’s Music for Strings, Percussion and Celesta. I think they might have used it in The Shining, and if they didn’t, they should have.

I’ve heard it maybe 200 times, but - let me tell you - at 1:20 in the morning, the bit starting around the 2:00 mark is enough to make a girl look around her lounge room and wish her roommates were still up.

Well, back to writing about 9/11! It’s all fun and games here at the Blue House.

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This is the actual conclusion of a paper I turned in today. I scrapped the Daily Show bit.

Conclusion:

While the state of the election media coverage in 1984 seemed perhaps shaky, by 2004 it appeared to be an all-out brawl. This assessment of the 2004 election finds election reporting not just unimproved, but in crisis. It becomes nearly impossible to decide who is setting the agenda, and sometimes if there even is one. But if there is a lack of control, it does not seem to be indicative of any kind of open, participatory, or deliberative democracy either. As in 1984, it appears that in 2004 the Republicans were able to use incumbency to their advantage and set some of the parameters of the debate. Both Reagan and Bush were able create strong, masculine images, and 2004 saw the active creation of a feminine, flip-flopping Kerry image on the part of the Bush campaign. These images were duly carried in the media at the expense of policy discussion.

The detrimental effects of conflict-based, horserace and process-focused journalism were present in 1984, but shockingly exacerbated twenty years later. Perhaps it says something important when the political spin doctors themselves are mortified by their own processes. One cannot but feel sorry for Eskew when he says, ‘I guess it was entertaining for people at home, but it led to another moment I’m just completely ashamed of’ (quoted in Jamieson, 2006: 160). Unfortunately, this paper’s comparison has shown that when it comes to recent election media coverage, the specifics of Eskew’s complaint are sadly irrelevant. Instead, they stand in for larger ills in American media and political systems that feed off each other in downward spiral, and whose ability to inform the electorate or serve the democracy is doubtful at best.

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Well, not surprising and something I kinda support - in the sense that I think it’s the least bad we’re going to get - but still kind of depressing.

Speaking of depressing, the paper I’ve been whining about is a comparison of election coverage in 1984 and 2004, and I was saying just a bit ago - man, the things you block out.

I’m ending with a discussion of where coverage will go in the future. As many people under 30 now get their news from comedy news shows as from broadcast news (Fox, Koloen, and Sahin, 2007: 215). And there are some studies to suggest that The Daily Show is just as substantive as the network coverage - though I add that’s not exactly a ringing endorsement. Others have noted that… oh fuck it, here’s the last couple sentences of my paper, I’m practically retyping it just giving you the setup:

‘A separate study found hope in the show’s format, which ‘forsakes the “now this” model, often providing single-issue coverage for as long as 8 minutes’ (Baym, 2005: 264). Baym adds:

Mainstream journalism’s reliance on predictable conventions can render it susceptible to manipulation by the professional speech writers and media handlers who seed public information with pre-scripted soundbites and spin. The Daily Show’s refusal to abide by standard practices may offer a measure of resistance to manipulation, a counterbalance to the mutual embrace between press and politics (2005: 265).

That being said, others claim that Stewart’s focus on the absurd aspects of American politics can create what they call ‘The Daily Show Effect’, lessening trust in political and media institutions amongst those already disinclined to participate (Baumgartner and Morris, 2006). Given the mendacity seemingly inherent in today’s election process and the meaninglessness in media’s coverage thereof, it is difficult to argue that trust is necessarily warranted.’

I’m thinking of closing with that. Give my lecturer something to think about whilst she slits her wrists over the state of politics and the media. I know that what I’d be doing… if I wasn’t going flying tomorrow morning. It’s 3am. Aren’t I going to be all bright-eyed and bushy-tailed tomorrow.

Link:
Nomination of Mukasey Sent to Full Senate [NYT]

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There are certain things that a small school like Macalester just can’t provide. For instance, how many times did Mac profs offer to take me flying in tiny planes? A total of zero times.

Thanks to one of my classmate’s feature on flying cars, our prof has offered to let us variously ride shotgun on his flights. Ironically, I’ll be taking time from his paper to go.

Yay!

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