As I was reading Morley, one of his points struck me: "being
physically distanced from the ceremonial forms and isolated from each other,
television audiences do not form 'masses' or 'crowds' except in an abstract,
statistical sense in the question they pose is that of whether we can still
speak of a public event, when it is celebrated at home - and whether we can
speak of a collective celebration when the collectivity is scattered" (13). Morley speaks of television no longer "representing" an event as much as it constructs or performs the event for the viewer. This becomes even more notable in the age of social/physical isolation. I wonder how people's experiences watching the news, engaging with it on all forms of media platforms, how this comment relates to it. Has the media been "not so much reporting on the event but actively involved in 'performing' it" therefore "not simply transmitting such an event (or commenting on it) but is bringing it into existence?" (13)
The same point from Morley struck out to me as well, and it really re-emphasizes a stance that I think many a media scholar likes to contemplate, and that's whether media constructs a truth as much as (or even more than) it represents one. With our focus on the globe this week, it's hard to consider that question without also thinking about the authenticity of representing cultural difference. The Curtain piece really reminded me of an age in which selling formats to multiple different countries can seem like a form of media imperialism. Whether it be The Voice UK or The Voice China, the same format constructs a globalized media culture that at once erases cultural difference and embraces local specificity. Although formats might not be as hot as they used to be, with something like a pandemic, news coverage from different nations is likely to resemble each other more than ever. If that's the case, then is this pandemic helping us enter a more cosmopolitan era? And can that era be based only on format and structure, but maybe not a true erasure of difference? Otherwise put, can we call nations being similar in their hate towards each other a globalized trend of hate that is based on anything but actual unification? While we all might be dealing with culturally specific ways of coping with this pandemic, the stark similarities in national media might also suggest that we are constructing fairly similar experiences, regardless of what outlets we are consuming.
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