Be The Change Media Activism 101
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Be The Change Media Activism 101
What We’ll Look At. • Some common critiques • Concepts of media
ownership • Some case studies • Bias in Media • Creating alternatives
Activities
• Look at what’s wrong with the mainstream media. • Identify alternative and mainstream media sources. • Look at how your issues are being framed. • Check in about how happy you are with how they
frame your issues. • Work to identify groups that work on your issues? • How are these groups portrayed in different sources • Formulating a communication and action.
Practical Lowdowns
• The good and bad of press releases
• Campaign strategy • Formulating a
communications strategy
What do you guys feel is wrong with the media?
Activity 1
My Gut Feeling • Represent powerful
interests • Lack of minority voices • Business rather than
bastions of truth • Advertisers dictate
content • In bed with government • Infotainment & celebrity
crap
In your groups pick one Irish media outlet each and find out as much as
you can about its ownership structure in five
minutes?
Activity 2
Media In Ireland
• Denis O’Brien bond villain number 1.
• INM titles account for over 40% of all national newspaper sales and just three groups own 23 of our 37 radio stations
• In radio Denis O’Brien’s Communicorp, Thomas Crosbie Holdings (TCH)/Landmark and UTV Media – own seventeen stations between them.
• Anne Harris, editor of the Sunday Independent, has claimed that 17 journalists have received legal letters from Denis O’Brien in the last ten years.
Liberal Media Myth • The notion of the
Fourth Estate we grow up with
• Brave investigative journalists holding government to account.
• Standing outside power and being principled.
Mass Media Critiques
• Noam Chomksy, popular American academic who put forward what has been called the “propaganda model” in opposition to the liberal media myth.
• He put forward a break down of several factors shaping our media & how it relays news.
Institutional Structures
Being Concise. • The fast paced nature of
our media doesn’t allow for depth.
• This means complicated and non-mainstream ideas don’t get a chance to get a full hearing.
• Establishment wisdom passed down all our lives wins out.
Working in your groups, try jot down what an
alternative media might look like in your eyes?
Activity 3
What is alt media? • Alternative
media are media which offer a different and contrary narrative to the mainstream media.
• Often they have a wholly divergent funding and ownership model in contrast to the hierarchical and corporate model of the mainstream press
Example 1: rabble • 10,000 copies per issue • Print feeds online • Funded through Workers Beer
Scheme & reader donations • Will only survive as long as its
readers support it (Eg the Fundit.ie campaign).
• Relies on its readers to distribute it.
• Recognises its bias and does not claim impartiality.
• Huge interactions and online backing despite no staff or real money.
• Here’s Harry Brown explaining why it’s a project worth engaging with...
Example 1: rabble
Example 2: Dole TV • Set up by a group of
unemployed people to look at life on the dole during recession.
• Broadcast on Dublin Community TV and making use of collectively ran resources and cheap DSLR kits and youtube.
• Produced a variety of content varying from media aware caricatures, piss takes of corporate advertising to arty critiques of how working class people are portrayed on TV.
Example 3: Indymedia • Founded among the Seattle
protests against the WTO in 1999.
• Took advantage of ability to host websites cheaply, emerging digital film making techniques.
• Activist journalism and a collective editorial process.
• Anticipated Web 2.0 and social media in how people were able to upload and add their own stories as well as engage in discussion on the website.
• Broke huge stories in Ireland including Shannon Warport with 300,000 people a month at its height.
In your groups try and identify sources of mainstream and
alternative media in Ireland?
Activity 4
The Sequencing of Stories
Scottish #IndyRef
Scots #IndyRef • Scottish independence: Crowd protests against 'BBC
bias’ • A large crowd gathered outside BBC Scotland's Glasgow
HQ to protest about coverage of the referendum. • Police said up to 1,000 people took part although other
observers suggested a much higher figure for the crowd.
Academic Study • Professor John Robertson, media politics
professor at University of West Scotland and author of a study that claimed the BBC was biased towards a no vote.
• He was reported by BBC figures to senior staff in the university.
• He'd found a greater number of no statements. Interviewers would be more aggressive to yes campaigners.
• Newsnet Scotland reported 10,000 hits on the day - yet absent in mainstream media.
• Points towards the collusion of broadsheet, radio and TV journalists
Case Study 2
Ireland’s Housing Bubble
Common Sense • RTE aired two series during
2006 and 2007 called I’m An Adult Get Me Out of Here where a slick estate agent turned presenter shamed young people onto the property trap.
• Very little discussion of alternatives like continental renting solutions, co-operative living etc
• Examples like House Hunters sponsored by banks
Feeding Frenzy • As late as 23rd of May 2007
the Irish Independent in a large feature article headlined Earn Baby, Earn Irish advised if "if you're looking to accumulate, its time to speculate."
• Brendan O’Connor’s famous line about the “smart ballsy guys...”
Alternative Voices • In Ireland, economist David McWilliams
(centre) warned unambiguously about the unsustainability of the boom as early as January 1998, when he wrote that ‘fundamentals count for nothing if your house is built on a bubble’
Why so blind? • Julien Mercille breaks down four
factors for all this
• News organisations have multiple links with the political and corporate establishment thus sharing similar ideas and ideologies
• Real estate agents are huge advertisers so they feel pressure from them.
• They rely on experts from elite institutions
Implied Rules Of The Game • Julien Mercille appeared before the
banking committee and discussed some of these points.
• News organisations have multiple links with the political and corporate establishment thus sharing similar ideas and ideologies
• Real estate agents are huge advertisers so they feel pressure from them.
• This isn’t about direct conspiracy it’s about competing world visions and alignments of interest.
Away we go again. • Dublin is experiencing a
property boom while other parts of the country remain stagnant.
• News organisations are again repeating the mantras of getting on the ladder with little critique.
Back To Square One.
Porn Again
Looking at your own campaigns and issues, take some time to
look at how the media reports on them. Can you identify any
trends or concerns?
Activity 5
Are you happy with how the media here frames your issues?
Activity 6
Social Media Bite Back.
Hashtag hi-jacking.
Hashtag hi-jacking.
Ignore the mainstream media, try and identify
social media accounts that bite back on your issues?
Activity 7
What hashtags should your campaign groups start
being aware of in order to start shaping a counter
narrative?
Activity 8
Being Media Ready • Have your campaign narrative
nailed via a press release. • Journalists are lazy they want
you to write the story for them including the headline, quotes and photographs.
• Reinforce all that information via a good social media presence & website.
• There is no excuse for bad design – find someone and don’t slack.
• Professionalism counts as it shows you are taking yourself seriously.
• Are you cross platform compliant? Phones etc.
A good event notice.
A poor press release.
A Good Press Release
A Meh Press Release.
Can you identify groups that work on your issues here already that you
can ally with? In terms of their online presence and media profile,
give constructuve criticism?
Activity 9
Give feedback. • How easy was it to find information? • Was their website attractive? • What was their social media presence like? • Is it easy to get in touch with them? • Were there readily available photos and pieces of
media to use in your work? • Do they look like they are an active campaign with
support? • Do they get much press coverage? • What would you do differently? What’s working
and what’s not?
Think of a brilliant campaign
Strike Magazine
Uplift Bed Pledge
Work Must Pay
Now in your groups, work together to scheme up some campaigns that
will win some attention to your issues.
Activity 10
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