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{ Category Archives } Media and Media Theory

Out of the Bag again and behind the curtain

After last week’s ABC Democratic primary debate, the Bag posted a great series of TV frames as a visual recap to the debate. In my earlier post I wrote;
This is by far the most succinct summary of last night’s debacle of a debate TV show hosted produced by ABC News Disney Entertainment. This captures the [...]

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Barack Mean to Bubba?

Barack Obama may have committed a major political faux pas last week when he spoke out on the attitudes of some prospective working class voters: “It’s not surprising then,” he said, “that they get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren’t like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment [...]

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Gendered politics in the media

Last month I posted this piece exploring photojournalist representations of Hillary Clinton. Historiann recently commented;
“This is an interesting analysis of the photography of the campaign, and I agree that the photo at the top (Clinton apart from the 3 men) is highly revealing of the dynamics of the race a month ago, before Edwards and [...]

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A Post-Broadcast Politics

One of my “hobbies” as it where, is studying and reflecting upon political imagery. This image here reminded me of a photo I saw last June on Michael Shaw’s blog, Bag News Notes.
Shaw has a new piece at American Photo, “Campaign Visuals in the Age of Facebook.” In it, he interviews photographer Stephen [...]

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Hillary Clinton as Political Icon

Bent’s last post, with this image got me thinking a bit more about political iconography and this image from the NY Times “At Debate, Two Rivals Go After Defiant Clinton.”

This image was taken after Saturday’s New Hampshire Democratic debate. If you’ve totally missed the news, Obama won the Iowa caucus and Edwards defeated Clinton for [...]

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How to Caucus in Iowa

Have you ever wondered how the Iowa Caucus works? John Edwards has released this instructional Youtube video for his Iowa Precinct Captains. I especially like the jazzy theme music reminiscent of an early 70’s TV series. The men have even been reminded to pre-record the Orange Bowl before leaving to caucus. Overall, I think this [...]

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The Cyber-Libertarian Candidacy

I spend a disproportionate amount of time examining the Democratic candidates online presence than that of the Republicans. There is some built-in prejudice but mainly that’s because the Left is so much more adapt with the new technologies. Furthermore, highly new media literate people vote democratic by some 2 to 1. This is a rough [...]

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The Motherhood Movement: A New Feminism

I came across this piece in the NY Times by Katharine Seelye, “Women, Politics and the Internet.”
What really caught my attention was the mention of Momocrats, a progressive community blog of online mothers who are pulling their resources to effect political change.
Momocrats was started last month by a group of mothers who are all noted [...]

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The Media is The Message

This is not what McLuhan meant by “the media is the message” but I found these two articles both and interesting and perhaps telling;
John Edwards banks on sincerityBy Walter Shapiro
Despite D.C. cynicism about his motives and his political persona, Edwards woos voters in New Hampshire and Iowa with authenticity.
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Facebook

Michael Hirschorn argues that, “by bringing order to the Web, Facebook could become as important to us as Google”
At the moment, Facebook is the site that, in my experience, comes closest to fulfilling the promise of social media. In so doing, it raises some bigger questions about how we’re going to be using the Web [...]

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