NPR’s On The Media has an interesting take on the last week’s shootings at Virginia Tech.
The programme interviewed Thomas de Zengotita, author of Mediated: How the Media Shapes Your World and the Way You Live in it on how students related to their experiences.
The main point was to examine to what extent the students played the role expected by the media. Even the shooter played his role as disturbed loner in the “press kit” he sent to NBC. In the words of Zengotita:
It’s a fusion of reality and representation. I call it the “story event.” The story shapes the event. The event shapes the story. It unfolds in real time, just the way the kids who were trapped in their various classes were reporting on their cell phones simultaneously as the events unfolded, and hearing themselves on their own laptops reporting through MSNBC on themselves.
This is a novel interpretation of the idea of citizen media and user-generated content. The reported on adapt to the role they are expected to play by the reporters. But now the reported on are also reporting on themselves, often in real-time. The public ends up playing a central role in a media event, both as a participant and an observer.
As Zengotitia says, “This is a fused world of representation and the real that we’re all living in.” What does this mean for the veracity of news, of the quotes from witnesses to a news event? Are they playing a role for the media derived from their experience of the films and TV?
What I am also interested in is how experiencing an event through a media lens, through a cellphone or digital camera, alters our perception and experience of an event. This is a rich area for research. If you know of someone working in this area, please leave a comment.
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