Hive,+Sarah

Culture Jam : Prime Minster Stephen Harper and the Seal Pups.

Background information:

In Canada, each year, a few thousand Canadian fishermen take part in the harp seal slaughter. They bludgeon two-week to two-month old seal pups, then hook, drag and skin them while many of these pups are still alive and conscious. About 95% of the seals killed in the hunts are under three months of age. This adds up to about 1/3 of the total pups born per year!

In 2008, seal hunters on longliners on the Front (the second phase of the seal hunt, off the coasts of Newfoundland and Labrador) killed their quota of seal pups in just two days. The atmosphere surrounding these hunts discourages adherence to rules and regulations (such as checking for blinking eyes before skinning the seal pups). Onlookers who have observed the seal hunts have documented hundreds of violations of these regulations. However, the Canadian Department of Fisheries and Oceans which regulates the seal hunts has rarely levied any charges against perpetrators.

Whats the purpose of these hunts? A few words come to mind when attempting to explain seal hunts: vanity, greed, political scapegoats, pride and stubbornness and bloodlust. Seal hunting is NOT profitable!

These beautiful and gentle creatures have the unfortunate status of suffering the largest slaughter of any marine mammal on the planet. In 2008, when seal hunters were lucky to break even, a few thousand still went out to kill seals. Seal hunters have even been quoted as saying that they kill the seal pups because it's their tradition and and that nobody has the right to tell them to stop. Some seal hunters have even been reported as saying that they enjoy hunting seals; that it's actually fun!

..And what's the Canadian Prime Minister's take on all of this?

Prime Minister Stephen Harper states that Canada intends to fight the ban that the World Trade Organization has placed on seal products. He states that the Canadian seal hunt is sustainable, humane and well regulated and well monitored. He also states that the industry has "tight standards" one of the tightest in the world.

I don't know who Harper thinks he's fooling, because more and more people are becoming educated on the disgusting massacre in infant seals. Over 350, 000 seal pups are viciously bludgeoned to death every year!

For my project I was thinking of creating a poster of Prime Minster Harper hugging baby seals and wearing an "I love baby seals" t-shirt. I want to play up on the sarcasm.. that Harper actually thinks this kind of act is humane.

In the first picture, I replaced an image of Harper holding a kitten with a baby seal swaddled in a blanket. Harper is smiling nicely at the camera wearing a button stating that he loves baby seals. In the second picture, Harper is standing at a podium giving a speech. I added a baby seal into his arms and a speech bubble by his mouth stating that he loves baby seals.

These posters can be printed out for rallies and given out to people who go out to listen to his speeches. They could be also made into larger posters and placed in buildings, or converted into magazine advertisements. These images can also be put up online, where it can reach millions of people around the world. Now everyone can know that Prime Minister Harper is a baby killer.

Links:

http://www.ottawacitizen.com/business/Seal+hunt+drag+trade+talks/1609376/story.html http://harpervalley.wordpress.com/tag/stephen-harper/ http://antisealingcoalition.ca/blog/?tag=seal-hunt http://www.harpseals.org/about_the_hunt/index.html





Lab 9: Wikipedia is an effective search engine site. It is also very well organized with its presentation of information. At the top of the page there is a short blurb about the searched topic, followed by a hyperlinked table of contents, and then more extensive information. The site is updated when a user decided to add information to a specific topic. The information in the site is created by the public, so there is a high degree of trust when searching information on this site, as information could be biased, or incorrect. However, the information usually contains citations, and when it doesn’t a note is posted at the top of the page saying that citations are missing. There are links related to the topic searched at the bottom of the page so if a user wishes to read up more information he/she may do so relatively easily. Facebook is a highly effective search engine when it comes to searching contacts. If a user us seeking a contact already in his/her list, all he has to do is begin typing in the contact’s name in the search bar, (which is located at the top right hand corner of every page) a list is generated, and refined as the user inputs the letters of the name or email address of the contact he is searching. Also, if a user is searching for a new contact, a list is generated on a new page and ordered by most relevant finds. Facebook is a site that is updated by the minute. A live news feeds allows contacts to see the updates of their friends or friends of friends. The links to other sites would be relevant maybe only to the people who post them and some of their friends. While other’s may find them interesting, as a Facebook user, you would be generating information about yourself, therefore posting links that interest you and are relevant to your life. Facebook has extra features, some of which include live chat and games. These features tend to have glitches from time to time, where sometimes, for example, in the chat, messages can’t be sent. There is some degree of uncertainty when it comes to safety of this site—a user can control his/her own privacy settings but the true extend of one’s privacy is unsure. The information gathered on this site would be completed based on trust, as each user would have to trust that the information other users are uploading about themselves is true.

Lab 8: Sarah and Olivia

Who are the sources? The Toronto star. Written by Kevin McGran. Source of topic CBC.

Is there a lack of diversity? Yes, the article only talks about the Toronto Maple Leafs (TML) and who’s playing well on their team. The article fails to mention anything about how rival teams are playing in comparison. It merely mentions that the Montreal Canadiens beat them.

From whose point of view is the news reported? Toronto Star writer and thus has bias for TML over Montreal.

Are there double standards? The tone of the article with regards to Kessel is positive in that they kind of ‘praise’ his skills by saying that ‘all signals point to Tuesday when Kessel returns’ as if the team winning depends on one single player. This is clearly unrealistic and is nicely offset by an interview with Ron Wilson, head coach, who states that he has been off the ice for six months, so the likelihood of him getting 6 points his first night back is highly unlikely.

Do stereotypes skew coverage? Not stereotypes necessarily, but inflating ones importance on the team yes. Phil Kessel is a big name in the NHL. He has yet to start with the leafs due to injury, but in the article they build him up to be this big star, which they counteract with Wilson’s comment about how he probably wont live up to everyone’s expectation because of his 6 month absence.

What are the unchallenged assumptions? The article glorifies a handful of players as opposed to the entire team, creating the assumption that the success of the team is dependent on these few players. Which is a little ironic since the article continues to state that the team is doing better as a whole.

Is the language loaded? The language of the article can be considered as loaded because there’s a lot of hype about how skilled some players are and how well they’re performing, which suggests that the TML should be a good team. However, they are clearly not since they haven’t been winning many games. The article talks a lot about how well they’re playing as a team and how the team is beginning to play consistently. The writer is clearly trying to keep the audience backing the TML.

Is there a lack of context? Yes there is a lack of context as the writer chooses to focus the article on snippets of information that he finds interesting. It actually feels like the writer is publishing a personal statement about why he loves the TML and who his favourite players are.

Do the headlines and stories match? In the title it doesn’t mention Phil Kessel at all and yet a third of it was about him. It didn’t really review the game at all it was more a summary of how they changed since the road trip started five games before. As for the information regarding lasts nights game it was a bunch of one-liners with quick information.

Are stories on important issues featured prominently? N/A

Week 3: According to the Merriam-Webster’s Online Dictionary, a genre is defined as “a category of artistic, musical, or literary composition characterized by a particular style, form, or content.” But genres seem to be more of a loosely joined combination of a set of different criteria. “Typically, genres are assumed to [have]…fuzzy boundaries…” (Genres and the Web - is the home page the first digital genre, Andrew Dillon and Barbara Gushrowski) and seem to form out of personal preferences and expectations across a community of users. (Genres and the Web - is the home page the first digital genre, Andrew Dillon and Barbara Gushrowski). It would make sense that genres are created in order to categorize and bring order to different types of media. Humans seem to have an innate need to want to classify everything, and by creating different types of genres, we are given the freedom to do just that. The case study states that “Many familiar document types have evolved over decades or even centuries of use to give rise to the highly conventional forms that are instantly recognized as being of a type or genre. Detective stories, scientific articles, newspapers, catalogs etc. are all forms of document that have identifiable elements, rules of form, and content supporting both production and consumption - the basic determinants of a discourse genre.” (Genres and the Web - is the home page the first digital genre, Andrew Dillon and Barbara Gushrowski). Basically, genres take a considerable amount of time to form and it takes “conformance with genre conventions [to] enhances memorability of discourse [in order to] lead to greater user satisfaction. Because digital media is still fairly new, a proper classification of genre would be difficult to make, and also because digital genre has the ability to evolve in real time as opposed to over centuries.

Dillon, A. and Gushrowski, B. (2000) Genres and the Web - is the home page the first digital genre? Journal of the American Society for Information Science, 51(2), 202-205.

"genre." Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary. 2009. Merriam-Webster Online. 30 September 2009 

Week 4: Do you agree with McLuhan when states comics are an extension of photographic media? Why or why not?

McLuhan states that “"[T]he modern comics strip and comic book," … "provide very little data about any particular moment in time, or aspect in space, of an object. The viewer, or reader, is compelled to participate in completing and interpreting the few hints provided by the bounding lines."” Just like a photograph, the viewer is presented with an image—just an image. No background story, no future story, just that moment captured at a particular moment in time. He further explains this type of media to be classified as “cool” media because they “force us to fill in the blanks”. Photographs present us with an image, and it’s up to the reader to interpret and create what could happen next. In fact, I’d have to disagree with McLuhan and say that comics are more like an extension of film, and are “hot” media, since like film the information; the story and the outcome, are presented in a certain way. It’s done so that the author can set up a scene how he or she intended it to be viewed, and thus get the message across how he or she wanted to. Comics like film, are a passive consumption of information. Unlike a photograph, where the viewer has to input ideas and “fill in the blanks”, comics and film have the information laid out nicely for the viewers to absorb.