<![CDATA[Thomas Conner - COMM10blogFa14]]>Mon, 11 May 2026 23:55:27 -0700Weebly<![CDATA[Current events, media, and music]]>Mon, 15 Dec 2014 01:15:24 GMThttps://www.thomasconner.info/comm10blogfa14/current-events-media-and-musicPer our final class, I promised I'd post the Ferguson-etc.-related discussion materials here ...

The two explainers I sent out provide good basic background on the situation in Ferguson, Mo., and the case of Eric Garner in New York.

Here are the New York Times videos reporting from Ferguson after Michael Brown's shooting. As you watch, experience the videos as objects of communication — pay attention to the information being reported, of course, but also what information is highlighted, what is left out, what frames are being selected (both literal, in terms of camera positioning, and theoretical, in terms of Gitlin and Schudson), the music being used, etc.
Participation! Consider: No reporter is seen or speaks in the above video. Does that mean it is unbiased? What factors does Schudson outline that contribute to bias, and where might they be present here?

Participation! Toward the beginning, the man with the sign reading "Propaganda: It Won’t Be Televised — Pay Attention" — he looks at the reporter filming him and adds, "I know you seen it, tell the truth, tell the truth!" What truth, and why does he believe it is not getting out by other means? Relate his expression about propaganda to the readings that addressed earlier propaganda fears.
Participation!
— Pay attention to the discussion here about the original choice of Michael Brown photo used and picked up by the news media. What frames are at work there, and how? How does this relate to Schudson's explanation of selection?
— Think about the reporter's final comments. What photos of you or other information about you is out there on social media that could be similarly misconstrued?

Of course, I have to end things with some pop music ...
Consider these two songs. The first is related to the protest sign above and deals with a similar message. The second relates a story remarkably similar to that which caused the death of Eric Garner. In other words, these issues are not exactly new in America.
1. "The Revolution Will Not Be Televised" by Gil Scott-Heron, 1970

2. "Graffiti Limbo" by Michelle Shocked, 1988
(unavailable for embedding, click link)
]]><![CDATA[The end: final progress grades]]>Mon, 15 Dec 2014 00:24:19 GMThttps://www.thomasconner.info/comm10blogfa14/the-end-final-progress-gradesDespite the electronic management of the course thus far — with assignments delivered and returned via email — university policy forbids me from returning papers containing final course progress grades (project, participation, journals), unless students sign and return a form called a Buckley waiver. (I can only deliver progress grades, not final course grades.)

If you want your part 3 (revised or not) containing these final progress grades returned via email (to your ucsd.edu account only), please fill out and submit the form below.

Deadline: 6 p.m. Wednesday, Dec. 17

    Buckley waiver

    Student Consent for Release of Student Information

    I hereby authorize the UCSD Communication Department to return my graded final examination/research paper by placing the examination/research paper in a location accessible to all students in the course. I understand that the return of my examination/research paper as described above may result in the disclosure of personally identifiable information as defined in UCSD PPM 160‐2, and I hereby consent to the disclosure of such information.

    Quarter: Fall
    Course: Intro to Communication
    Date: Dec. 17, 2014
    Instructor: Thomas Conner / Brian Goldfarb
]]><![CDATA[Part 3 examples and docs]]>Mon, 01 Dec 2014 00:43:16 GMThttps://www.thomasconner.info/comm10blogfa14/model-project-paper-part-3Three documents below, available to download, should give you some guidance for the third part of the class project:

1. Continuing with the previous student's example paper, the model part 3 is posted here. This copy is annotated — I've highlighted some of the main parts your paper must include, which we'll elaborate on in section:
    — Statement of your research questions
    — Explanation of why these questions are important, and who else has
        been asking them (and how)
    — What data will answer your questions
    — How you intend to obtain that data
assignment_part_3-anno.pdf
File Size: 154 kb
File Type: pdf
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2. Given that I recently wrote a research proposal myself, I'm posting it here, too. Note the way this is formatted, with labels for each paragraph ("research question," "hypothesis," "related work," etc.); I am perfectly fine with you utilizing this format, if it makes it easier to get your head around the components of a research proposal. (You would not need to include "theoretical contributions" or "risks," unless you had them ready in mind.)
abstract2.conner.thebe.pdf
File Size: 118 kb
File Type: pdf
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3. Lastly, here is the short list of research methods compiled by Prof. Goldfarb:
researchmethodsoverview.pdf
File Size: 168 kb
File Type: pdf
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I also recommend these books, excellent guides to conceiving of and conducting communication research:

— Rubin, R.B., Rubin, A.M., Haridakis, P.M., & Piele, L.J. (2010). Communication Research: Strategies and Sources. Boston: Wadsworth
— Babbie, E. (2007). The Practice of Social Research. Boston: Wadsworth

Geisel has several copies of the Babbie and a couple copies of the Rubin, all available..
]]><![CDATA[Adorno & Horkheimer, we hardly knew ye]]>Sun, 30 Nov 2014 22:21:22 GMThttps://www.thomasconner.info/comm10blogfa14/adorno-horkheimer-we-hardly-knew-yeCheck out this short video posted just days before our discussion of Adorno & Horkheimer and their hand-wringing about pop music. The video presents information A&H would be down with, claiming that pop music is endlessly repetitive. The kicker, though, is that this mind-numbing repetition is not the direct work of our capitalist overlords — it's our own fault. Well, our own choice.

Participation! Consider the consumer choice discussed in this video's claims. How free are we to choose? How has Internet data illuminated this? And what would Adorko & Jerkheimer say about this: are our choices really our own?
]]><![CDATA[One story, two tales]]>Wed, 19 Nov 2014 19:30:48 GMThttps://www.thomasconner.info/comm10blogfa14/one-story-two-talesFollowing up on our last section in-class activity, posted below is a document containing the text of both the Wall Street Journal story and the New York Times story about the bank hacking. This is an excellent example of framing — neither story lies, but each definitely shows a particular bias and tells a different story for a different readership.

Participation! In the comments here, add your deductions from in-class discussion groups about what makes these stories different and — specifically — how (show the evidence!).
jp_morgan_comparison.pdf
File Size: 93 kb
File Type: pdf
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]]><![CDATA['your consumer is your marketer']]>Sun, 09 Nov 2014 23:54:42 GMThttps://www.thomasconner.info/comm10blogfa14/your-consumer-is-your-marketerThe PBS series "Frontline" produced a typically insightful program about many of the issues we read about last week. It's called "Generation Like" — yes, that's meant to be you — and it explores the various dimensions of participatory culture, from how it affects celebrity to how media consumption itself changes.

Watch the full episode here.

Here are a few snippets ...
Participation! Comment about your own experiences as a participatory fan of something. Relate this awareness to the for-profit goals discussed in this video and in the Sterne reading.
]]><![CDATA[model project paper: part 2]]>Sun, 09 Nov 2014 21:46:45 GMThttps://www.thomasconner.info/comm10blogfa14/model-project-paper-part-2Below you may download part 2 of a former student's project paper.

Again, this is a paper that scored well — though it has significant room for improvement, too. We'll discuss the edited version of this later in class.

Use this paper as a good example of using the denotative and connotative description from part 1 as examples for an analysis of the communication at work in your object. Note how the student incorporated readings from the syllabus and others.
assignment_part_2.pdf
File Size: 6628 kb
File Type: pdf
Download File
]]><![CDATA[rock vs. commerce, mach II]]>Sun, 09 Nov 2014 21:40:02 GMThttps://www.thomasconner.info/comm10blogfa14/rock-vs-commerce-mach-iiCheck out the first 2:30 of this interview with Dave Stewart — one half of the Eurhythmics in the ’80s (whose biggest hit, the lyrics and the video, could be read as a commentary on this very dualism) and a prominent songwriter since — and his discussion of the line between art and commerce ...
Participation! Stewart here discusses art and commerce as a linear progression — creativity begins as art and then later is transformed into commerce by certain needs. Do you agree with this model? What are some examples of different ways of conceptualizing this binary and its development? Can you think of objects/experiences that began as commerce and later became art?
]]><![CDATA[rock vs. commerce]]>Mon, 03 Nov 2014 01:00:13 GMThttps://www.thomasconner.info/comm10blogfa14/rock-vs-commerceThe art vs. commerce binary discussed in the Gray chapter is a cultural dilemma almost as old as cave paintings. In my professional work as a pop music critic, I wrestled daily with walking the tightrope between addressing and critiquing the artistic elements in a recording or concert experience, and advising the consumer on whether the product or experience was worth shelling out money for.

FWIW, in the academic side of my work, I've addressed this binary in two different journal articles ...
1. Conner, T. (2002). "Dear Reader: A Pop Critic Responds to the Day’s Mail." ARTicles, No. 7, pp. 138-149.

This is a qualitative essay from my point of view as a music critic for a daily newspaper, reacting to a theme common to letters written to arts critics in which the reader (a) complains that the reviews are "too biased" and (b) denigrates the critic's particular subjective perspective and suggests a more objective stance instead. My answers: (a) duh, and (b) impossible.

An excerpt: "I encourage you to examine how your reaction to music is inextricable from your personal experience. How else could you respond to art but through the filter of your own conditioning? Yet here you are demanding that I operate differently, that a 'real critic' should write for an 'audience instead of yourself and your pathetic little Generation X clan.' C’mon, now—you know this is impossible. You couldn’t write like that. If you had this job, if your editors were wringing their hands over their struggle to attract 18- to 30-year-old readers and casting furtive glances your way, do you think you’d be able to tailor your responses to music for a specific audience, one younger than yourself, one composed not only of the Generation X you hold in such low esteem but of the giddy and even more fickle Generation Y? You couldn’t do it, and, like me, you wouldn’t. Sure, you write of the experience in language that anyone could understand, but you would not have the experience on behalf of some- one else. If you tried, you’d learn as quickly as I did that readers, when it comes to the particular act of criticism, are irrelevant.

"I know, I know—what a haughty, preposterous statement. The nerve! Sorry, buddy: I’m not writing for you. You have nothing to do with me and the music. You and all the other 149,000 daily subscribers of the Tulsa World couldn’t be farther from my mind as I’m listening to a record and working out my response to it. It’s my response, after all. I was hired to offer my unique perspective. I’m lucky to have this opportunity, of course—to get paid to continue my personal quest for good music, meaningful music. But I assure you, I have no altruistic drive, no missionary zeal to spread the word and uncover the truth for you, the deserving reader. You complain that I write my reviews—my “biased” reviews—for my own gratification, and here I agree with you wholeheartedly.

"What is it you have in mind—objective criticism? You want me to try and experience music the way you do? All of you, all the readers? That’s absurd.
Even if that were possible, it would defeat the entire point of criticism. Indeed,
my goal is to transcend the experience of the music and find some underlying absolutes, some universal truths, that I can connect with aspects of my life, and to use these new connections in the future to make sense of the world around me. This transcendence, though, can only occur if the quest for these bedrock truths is passionate, driven, and my own. Otherwise, I’m just a hack doing your dirty work. If you gain perspective for yourself after reading my own experience, I’m thrilled. In that sense, my own criticism has enabled your understanding just as the music itself might have. Perhaps the critical faculty— a purely subjective expression—is indeed as worthy as the music itself."


2. Jones, S. & Conner, T. (in press). "Art to Commerce: The Trajectory of Popular Music Criticism." IASPM@Journal (International Association for the Study of Popular Music), 4 (2).

This paper had its genesis in an observation from my experience as a working critic as well as from reading the work of my peers. I suspected that, over the decades of pop music and its corresponding body of criticism, critics had progressed from criticism that dealt more directly with the artistic experience of music and toward criticism that examined music more as a commercial product.

We secured access to an archive of rock music criticism and ran searches of keywords — a list we generated, including artistic terms and commercial terms — to assemble a qualitative analysis of the trajectory.

From our conclusion: "In an analysis of the shrinking influence of British music magazines, John Harris, a columnist for the U.K.’s Guardian newspaper, quotes rock critic Greil Marcus: 'Mostly, when you read about musicians, what’s being reviewed is their career, not their work: how is this record going to contribute to the building of their audience, or their ability to reclaim an audience that’s been lost?' (Harris, 2009, our emphasis).

"Harris attributes the focus on audience and market to a lack of artistic merit demanding better criticism, writing that, 'in the absence of enough creative substance, you too often end up with writing that reflects the empty stuff of commerce.' He also perceives a surrender by writers to the ease with which new media allows fans to bypass the words of critics and click straight through and actually hear and judge the music for themselves. As he puts it, 'when the main event is only a click away, there isn’t always much point to rhapsodies or forensic critiques.' It is too soon to know whether such a shift is under way in contemporary popular music criticism since the rise of the internet, but it is clear that by examining a large corpus of popular music criticism we can discern trends over time that gives insight into the constituent elements of critic discourse.

"... The direction of business-related keywords appears empirically to back up the claim by Sanjek (1992) that popular music criticism, 'began as little more than a branch of publicity' (1992, p. 13). Indeed, the 1960s reflect few uses of the keywords for which we searched. It would be interesting to examine individual critics’ articles over time, or those of a single publication, for example, and understand the critical tendencies, particularly between the oft-juxtaposed poles of art and commerce, or authenticity and manufacture. Indeed, an analysis such as the one we have performed provides an opportunity for new theories concerning art and commerce. As Stratton (1982, p. 283) noted:
Hits are in the first place popular records, but in the second place they are commercial. The ‘good’ and the ‘commercial’ with all its rational capitalist implications are, therefore, still kept radically separate. Paradoxically it is the radical separation of these two sets of criteria which allows the ‘output’ end of the industry to resolve the problem of the relationship between them so successfully. ‘Art’ and commercialism are articulated as two separate domains by music journalists. Consequently one domain may be discussed with the intrusion of the other. The results is an ideological resolution of a real economic conflict.
"From what we have discerned in the data it does seem that while art and commerce are intertwined in critics’ discourse, which is unsurprising, the ratio between the one and the other changes over time. Future research should further examine the keywords in context, and determine word concordances and valences to obtain a more fine-grained understanding of the interplay between art and commerce in critics’ discourse."
]]><![CDATA['In your native language...']]>Fri, 31 Oct 2014 23:29:41 GMThttps://www.thomasconner.info/comm10blogfa14/in-your-native-languageHere are two videos I intended to show during class this week, but we ran out of time ...

These are segments from a stand-up comedy show by comedian Margaret Cho, discussing race from a similar point of view to the characters you encountered in Amy Tan's The Joy Luck Club. Cho's parents came to America from South Korea, and in these segments you'll hear many of the same issues Tan illustrated, such as assumption based on race and the power dynamics between mothers and their first-generation American-born daughters.
]]><![CDATA[Objects (of analysis) a-plenty]]>Wed, 22 Oct 2014 22:28:50 GMThttps://www.thomasconner.info/comm10blogfa14/objects-of-analysis-a-plentyStill fishing for an object analysis to study in the COMM 10 project?

Check out this page, part of the UCSD library guides! The two columns feature links to available video and image databases, free for the plundering.

Search topics that interest and/or intrigue you, then see if any results meet the criteria for analysis here — or in some other class project.

]]><![CDATA[signs, signs, everywhere a sign]]>Sun, 19 Oct 2014 19:11:49 GMThttps://www.thomasconner.info/comm10blogfa14/signs-signs-everywhere-a-sign
The above song, a one-hit wonder from 1971, is a particularly historically and culturally situated lyrical consideration of signs — in the denotative sense, surely (actual posts and placards containing written messages) but also in various connotative senses.

Semiotics, as outlined in the Danesi reading, can be a lot to get your head around. If you'd like more in-depth background on signs, codes, texts, and more, look to this excellent primer, "Semiotics for Beginners," particularly parts 1, 2, 7, and 9.

Participation! Consider this image below, indicating the appropriate gender of restroom facilities. Does it look more like a man than a woman? Why? What is indexed? What is symbolized?
Picture
]]><![CDATA[Hey, 'Folks'!]]>Sun, 19 Oct 2014 17:34:10 GMThttps://www.thomasconner.info/comm10blogfa14/hey-folksCheck out this interesting article, which nicely follows up our class discussions last week about the evolution of language. "Folks" — a word that somehow transitioned from "us" to "them"!

Participation! Try looking up the word in the OED, via the library database links here, and see what history they show for the word. Use the comments here to post any results/thoughts.

]]><![CDATA[model project paper: part 1]]>Tue, 14 Oct 2014 01:35:29 GMThttps://www.thomasconner.info/comm10blogfa14/model-project-paper-part-1Below you can read/download a model, A-grade paper from a student in the course from a previous term.

Those of you who had questions about the formatting, this should make very clear how to set that up: text for the intro, then a two-column table for the denotative vs. connotative descriptions. (Never made a table or used columns in Word before? It's easy.)

Pay attention to how this student telescoped the denotative elements into connotative possibilities — and remember that Dr. Goldfarb in class said he thought this paper actually could have used more connotations.

Remember: Part 1 of the project is due in the section meeting of week four.
assignment_part_1.pdf
File Size: 6629 kb
File Type: pdf
Download File
]]><![CDATA[gender performativity: radical edward]]>Fri, 10 Oct 2014 22:56:35 GMThttps://www.thomasconner.info/comm10blogfa14/gender-performativity-radical-edwardHere's a supercut of scenes from the popular anime show "Cowboy Bebop" spotlighting the character Edward, or Radical Edward — a childlike young hacker who challenges many self-presentation norms, especially gender ...

And for those who enjoy psychedelic rock ...
Try this oddity from the Dukes of Stratosphear (a side project for the more conventional pop group XTC), called "Have You Seen Jackie?":
The lyrics ...

Have you seen Jackie?
He's a strange, strange, strange little ... girl
Make up on his face and his hair in curls

Have you seen Jackie?
She's a strange, strange, strange little ... boy
Her long black beard is her pride and joy

And all the children follow him around
And all the grownups try to drag her down
So we sing
Hey, leave Jackie alone!
Hey, his pigeons have flown!
Hey, she's never at home at all these days!
Leave Jackie alone!

Have you seen Jackie?
He's an odd, odd, odd little fish
To fly around is his only wish

Have you seen Jackie?
She's a queer, queer, queer little bird
Shy and quiet neither scene nor herd

And all the rats will follow him around
The dogs and cats will chase her from the town
And we sing
Hey, leave Jackie alone!
Hey, his mind is all blown!
Hey, she's not on the phone at all these days!
Leave Jackie alone!

"Jackie couldn't decide if he was a girl or if she was a boy..."

Have you seen Jackie?
]]><![CDATA[there's reading, and there's reading]]>Fri, 10 Oct 2014 03:41:52 GMThttps://www.thomasconner.info/comm10blogfa14/theres-reading-and-theres-readingWe'll talk next week about some strategies for reading effectively — and taking notes about what you read (very important to do!).

For now, check out these excellent tips for "How to Read in College."

Participation! Use the comments here to post helpful examples and tips from your reading process, things you've learned by experience thus far. Feel free to include screenshots of annotated pages, notes, etc.
]]><![CDATA[Communication challenges & changes]]>Fri, 03 Oct 2014 22:14:24 GMThttps://www.thomasconner.info/comm10blogfa14/communication-challenges-changes"The Story of Mike Phillips," an episode of "This American Life":
Feel free to use the comments section here to answer Dr. Goldfarb's questions about how the issues raised in this video reflect on the challenges and changes in recent developments within communication, particularly from the POV of the UCSD's comm dept. (situated practices, social formations, and interpretive strategies) ...
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