If I remember correctly, this week we are supposed to blog about our seminar paper ideas. The research questions that I'd like to explore are: How does a the same Presidential address get mediated and remediated by different technologies (i.e. what gets accentuated, added, taken away as the text is transformed/transmitted?) In other words, how much does a "message" get altered by different media? What contraints do various iterations of the same text place on readers/viewers--and what are the implications of this in terms of civic literacy?
In some of my other course work I've been studying the rhetorical aspects of "call to arms" speeches by U.S. Presidents, and trying to figure out these speeches persuade. Obviously, to answer my research question, I could study any Presidential address. However, I'd like to stick with one of the ones I've been working on: Bush's 2002 address to the public in which he laid out the "threat from Iraq." I'd like to study 1) various mass mediation of the entire speech (a television broadcast, an audio broadcast, a transcript) and 2) some mass remediations of the speech which excerpt and recontextualize parts of the entire text (evening news stories--30 second soundbites; and perhaps a newspaper article on the Internet).
It occurs to me that all of these are important (re)mediations of the text and all of them change how the text is read and understood. I mentioned in class how the live CNN broadcast of the speech included the words "Showdown in Iraq"on the bottom of the screen--adding something to the text that a radio listener, say, would not have consumed. I'm assuming that most TV news broadcasts which "reported" the speech selected clips that accentuated the threat from Iraq (and deemphasized any doubt about the need to go to war)--but I'm not sure of this and it's one of the things I really want to find out. Interestingly enough, the speech was NOT broadcast live on the major networks because, of course, Fear Factor is much more important than a President making a case for war. Because of this, I think that the news broadcasts which discuss the speech may have been how most--or at least a lot--of the people learned about it. This makes it important for me to discuss these news broadcasts, but this presents some challenges (see below)
I'm already running into a number of problems/challenges that maybe you all could give me some advice on. First, the scope. I'm really interested in getting a number of examples of mass mediation in different media, but I'm not sure how many is enough and where to stop. The speech itself was broadcast on TV, on radio, and probably over the Internet. The speech transcript was also disseminated in newspapers and online. The speech was also remediated on tv evening news broadcasts, on radio news broadcasts, in newspaper articles, online news websites, etc. Part of me wants to look at a large number of these (re)mediations because I think it's interesting just how much the "message" gets replayed for the public and the consequences of this on public understanding. However, I can't possibly study every or even most of the mediations of this speech, so how should I limit myself? I was thinking perhaps of looking at the t.v. broadcast of the speech, a radio broadcast, and an online transcript of the speech on a website, a television t.v. news broadcast. Already this seems like too much and not enough for me to do. Any thoughts?
The second major problem I'm having is getting access to the things I want to study. At the whitehouse.gov website you can download a video, audio, and transcript of the speech. However, the video at the .gov website is not the video that live viewers watched. Those who viewed the speech live saw a news channnel video (including "Showdown in Iraq" or other such nonsense. So, I'd rather study a cable news broadcast. There are clips of a broadcast on youtube, but not the full speech. Does anyone know how, if, one can find the complete broadcast? I've searched and come up empty-handed. In addition, I've come up empty-handed when looking for T.V. news broadcasts that discussed the speech? Again, does anyone know how to get access to such broadcasts?
I think I have an interesting research question, but I'm sort of getting stonewalled as I try to look at versions of the speech to study.
Thanks in advance for any tips/advice you can throw my way,
John
2 comments:
I have never gone on a quest to find what you are looking for, so this may seem really non-helpful or really basic - my disclaimer. Have you tried to contact different news stations? They would have recordings (not sure if you would have access to them or not). I am going to assume that the librarians at Kent are like the ones at Ball State, and if that is true, then I would meet with them and see what services we have access to via the library. You may be able to get your radio transcripts and tv broadcasts through a special database. Hopefully that helps. I am really interested in what you find out. I am always torn between listening to speeches on the radio or via cnn webcast - I never seem to be near a tv during the live broadcasts.
I thought it might be helpful to the class if we discussed how we arrive at research questions. Last semester, I took Research Design, and we learned what most of probably already know somewhat instinctively: a research question can surface when there is a relevant gap in the field, at a point of disagreement with previous scholarship—or, at what I find the most interesting and compelling, i.e., a point of felt difficulty. The latter is where I found my research question. Indeed, most of my questions have begun at this point—a point where something just does not “sit right” with me. (This felt sense differs from my areas of interest---which are rural literacies and women’s rhetoric. I’ve known for some time that I want to work in these areas.) But the point where I gained a felt sense of an area that deserved inquiry was upon hearing someone speak about family farms in a way that indicated that only the male head of house was indeed a “farmer.” The female spouse is generally considered “the farmer’s wife”—even when she contributes to many facets of farm labor.
I began to think of how women contribute—especially in terms of political advocacy for family farms. I realized that one way that many farm women contribute is through their rhetoric—written or spoken. Naturally, I began to explore websites authored or sponsored by women farmers. I came upon the Rural Womyn’s Zone (RWZ) and discovered that, in fact, they have undertaken a project to teach Internet use to women in rural areas. RWZ does this for a variety of reasons that benefit the individual women, but also women as a collective. In this sense, RWZ can be considered a literacy sponsor. My research question, in fact interrogates what is at stake for the RWZ as they sponsor rural women’s computer/Internet literacy. Of course, I am drawing on Deborah Brandt’s work, as articulated in Literacy in American Lives, on literacy sponsors.
Prior to focusing on RWZ, I spent a lot of time investigating the idea of “rural literacy,” which truly might better be considered as “rural literacies.” There has been little work in this area—as literacy has most commonly been associated with urban, not rural spaces. In their text Rural Literacies, Donhower, Hogg, and Schell’s working definition of literacy is as follows: “the skills and practices needed to gain knowledge, evaluate and interpret that knowledge, and apply knowledge to particular goals” (p. 4). They further designate rural literacies as “ the particular kinds of literate skills needed to achieve the goals of sustaining life in rural areas—or to use Brandt’s terms, to pursue the opportunities and create public policies and economic opportunities needed to sustain rural communities” (p.4).
But back to my research question. You will note that what I originally articulated as my research question is, in fact, not the research question I will be working with in this class—but an offshoot of it. The question that I articulated was: How do users of the Rural Womyn’s Zone situate themselves rhetorically within the predominantly patriarchal discourse of American agriculture? My RQ for this class will be How does the RWZ function as a literacy sponsor, and what is at stake for sponsors they function in this way? While I will investigate the first question more closely in a rhetoric class, I think you will all see that both questions themselves have some problems—the most problematic seems to be a commonplace, essentialist assumption of what the term “rural” means. But rural is no simple matter. Currently the Carsey Institute of the University of New Hampshire, “a national center for policy research on youth, working families, and sustainable development in small cities and rural communities identified four different “rural” communities, which they identify as “Amenity,” “Decline,” “Chronic Poverty,” and “those communities that are in decline that are also amenity rich” (UNH Carsey Institute). Likewise, the United States Department of Agriculture’s (USDA) online National Agriculture Library features eight linked chapters seeking to define rural (USDA National Agricultural Library). The chapters investigate frontiers, values, data and maps, as well as rural character. So, in understanding the site, I would have to begin with a working definition of rural as it is used by the site’s sponsors—the women themselves. The women, admittedly, are conflicted about the term. On their page called “What Is Rural,” they offer, along with several links to USDA and other sites, the following quote: “Like such concepts as 'truth,' 'beauty,' or 'justice,' everyone knows the term rural, but no one can define the term very precisely" (Weisheit, Falcone & Wells).
So, I will begin by working at this point….to come up with a more finely honed working definition of rural literacy.
BP
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