Now, that is fun and games–if you ask me–but, even more fun, we’ll be looking at cheating and gaming. What does it mean to cheat in a video game? What are the top reasons and ways that people do it? Why? Indeed, why do so many players enjoy games that offer moral dilemmas and ethical decisions? How do these choices reflect a player’s own values and ethics? Is the gaming industry ethical when it expects 60+ hour work weeks and contributed to what has become known as the ‘EA widow‘?

To investigate these questions and others, we’ll be engaging with recent theory and research, and we’ll be playing Bioware’s Dragon Age:Origins (DAO). I’m of the PAC MAN, Super Mario Bros., and Zelda generation, so this will be a fun and, perhaps, humbling experience. Part of our work will be to interview DAO players, which I’m already seeing is opening me to a new and amazing community of people (thanks Twitter and @codejill).

To get a taste of some of the ethical dilemmas and politics of gaming, check out this post on the game September 12. And, stay tuned for more on cheating, gaming and my adventures with Dragon Age:Origins. I have a feeling I might get hooked.

Yarn Bombing, Knit Graffiti and Underground Brigades: A Study of Craftivism and Mobility

A vibrant, multi-colored piece of knitting snakes around a parking metre in Montreal’s Mile End neighbourhood. A tree in the city’s St. Louis square wears “Stellar Fruits”, the trunk wrapped with a wide fabric cuff, adorned with over-sized textile blueberries, and a set of raspberry-coloured globules that drape over the tree’s broadest branch like ripe, pillowy fruit, plump with juice and ready to be picked.

Stellar Fruits (c) Tricot Pirate

Each piece is tagged with a pink heart pierced by two knitting needles as crossbones, a sign that Tricot Pirate has been here.

“The Knitted Mile”, a textile version of the painted yellow centerline that divides most roadways was stitched together in 2008 from the contributions of ninety knitters from around North America. Embroidered with the slogan “slow labour, good results”, the entire mile-long stretch of bright yellow needlework was laid out on a road to raise awareness of the fast-pace of modern life—an example of collaborative knitting and textile street art.

The Knitted Mile (c) 2008 Robyn Love

In May 2006 in Copenhagen’s main square, a World War II tank was covered from cannon to caterpillar with more than 4,000 pink squares, woven together from the handiwork of hundreds of knitters as a symbolic act of protest against Denmark’s involvement in the Iraq war (along with the United States, the UK, and other European nations).

Pink M.24 Chaffee © 2006 Marianne Jorgenssen

Yarn bombing, knit and crochet graffiti, and collective knit-ins are acts of ‘craftivism’, a termed coined by Betsy Greer in 2003 to signify the merging of crafting and activism. In her words, “craftivism is a way of looking at life where voicing opinions through creativity makes your voice stronger, your compassion deeper and your quest for justice more infinite”. Combining a do-it-yourself ethic, the covert movement of street art, and needlework, craftivists bomb urban spaces and inanimate objects as a means of art and consciousness-raising—sometimes political, sometimes humourous, sometimes dazzling, but always unexpected.

Although not overtly expressed, the practice and discourse of craftivism implies questions of mobility—nomadic knitting while on public transportation, use of mobile technologies to organize and execute yarn-bombing brigades, digital mapping of tagged spaces, the recording and publishing of installed needlework by mobile devices. It follows what Sheller and Urry (2006) have described as “the new mobilities paradigm”, suggesting that increases physical travel, global transportation networks, the simultaneous growth of the internet and mobile telephony, the international flow of consumer goods, and many other examples are putting “issues of ‘mobility’ [at] centre stage” (208). With these developments and a conception of mobility as having important implications for modern life, including social relations, activism, communication, patterns of experience and relations to space and place, this paper seeks to explore the relationship of craftivism and mobility.

Knitted Wall Street Bull

At its most basic, what does it mean to think of craftivism through the purview of mobility? Or, said another way, how might the practice, politics, and culture of craftivism intersect with questions of mobility (and immobility)? How does the craftivist movement spread and multiply? What are its networks and connections? And, how might mobile technologies and media articulate with craftivist practice?

This proposed research connects with my interests in DIY craft, feminism, and the use of the so-called ‘domestic arts’ as means of détournement, social commentary, and critique. I am particularly interested in elaborating mobility as a concept in this context, knitting and purling the craftivist movement to the expanding field of mobilities research and seeing what emerges.

Stay tuned for the more details on how the paper turns out!

MindMap_Craftivism

I love mind mapping. I find it liberates me from my inner critic who, while staring at the blank page, tells me that I have to craft the perfect opening sentence. By mind mapping, I can let go of that need to find the right words right away, and conceptualize the main themes and connecting sub-concepts. On a single piece of paper from my sketch pad, I place the main subject (or question or design challenge) that I want to explore in the center of the page and build out in a hub and spoke approach from there. I allow myself to be playful, use plenty of color, and let the process emerge organically.

There are plenty of books on mind mapping, software that digitizes the process, and it is an important part of the Design Thinking approach of creative process and problem-solving. Are there other mind-mappers out there? What’s your process?

Bon appétit!

I ♥ Ms. Pac Man

Last week I had the chance to spend the morning at Concordia’s Technoculture, Arts and Gaming (TAG) lab to hear a presentation from a prospective Research Chair candidate in Gaming Studies and Design.  It was an engaging talk that revealed how central video games have become in our contemporary global culture, and why we need to study the phenomena. Gaming is big business. It is also a site for important research into the leisure-filled activities of everyday life—from game play, online identity and avatars to ‘gaming capital’, expertise and reputation; from women and games to gender roles and technology; from cheating and game advantage to pop culture and cross-cultural exchange (Japan-America), and game research and methods. Not to mention game development, creativity and production culture among those who spend their days creating labyrinths, magical underworlds, shoot ‘em up wars, and virtual modes of entertainment and education. It’s still an emerging field, ever-changing and evolving, which reflects the changing space of academic work, media labs and proximity between commercial enterprises, cultural research and the creative industries.

Dr. Mia Consalvo opened her talk by describing the last few games she played: Lost Odyssey, Dragon Age, Ancient Quest of Sequoia, and Sally’s Spa. It’s telling that you can’t be a gaming scholar in theory, you must play to have any credibility. And, to have any real street cred, you need to be good—true participant-research!

Broadly speaking, her work spans new media, popular culture, digital games and the internet. She is the author of Cheating: Gaining Advantage in Video Games and a forthcoming Blackwell Handbook of Internet Studies. She described her affiliations with the Association of Internet Researchers, Women in Games International, and the Digital Games Research Association. She is currently working as part of the GAMBIT lab at MIT, a partnership with the government of Singapore created to explore new directions for the development of games as a medium. GAMBIT sets itself apart by emphasizing the creation of video game prototypes to demonstrate our research as a complement to traditional academic publishing. Yes, playing games is real work.

She pursued a couple of new directions of her research that I found particularly interesting: (1) ideas around cosmopolitanism, fandoms, and interaction by way of ‘Western otaku’: American video gamers who interact with Japanese players and culture and have a particular affinity towards Japanese pop culture (anime, manga); and (2) a desire to create more cohesive analytical approaches and tools around methods for gaming research: how does one study a game? As text? As cultural artifact? As socio-political practice? As creative endeavour? These are all important and timely questions that Gaming Studies is currently engaging. Plus, the talk validated my nostalgic love of Ms. Pac Man and current obsession with playing Brain Buddies.

Sometimes we make choices, and sometimes opportunities choose us. One of the course offerings in my PhD program this semester was a special topics course called “North and Nordicity: Theory in a Cold Climate”. At first, I wondered what relevance such a course would have for my interests, yet there was something about it that captured my curiosity. It would be taught by a writer and professor whose work I was drawn to and it would be a limited offering. I couldn’t shake it. Something was calling me. And then I read the opening statement of the first reading and I knew why. The author wrote:

“I write about the far north in the belief that we can best discover who we are by going to what we think of as the margins of our world. Faced with societies and lands that question our everyday assumptions and challenge our preconceptions, it is possible to discover both the importance of others and truths about ourselves”. -Hugh Brody, Living Arctic

It is this shared belief that exploring the unknown helps us to discover our own truth, our own place in the world and how we might challenge our beliefs and push our boundaries that I hold dearly. By exploring North as the home of the imaginary, fraught with extremes and a myriad of representations: the magical North, the dangerous North, the marginal North, the romantic North, the paternalistic North, the erotic North, the vast and unknown North, we uncover our own identities and, for me, this is what calls my name. Finding North is finding self, finding home.

I recognize much of Brown’s approach given it is very similar to the way we built Veer. I.e. hiring based on cultural fit, creative inclination (is the web programmer also a musician or car design afficianado?) and collaborative ability, however Brown does an excellent job at breaking it down into logical and actionable steps. He uses many tried and true examples of innovation (3M’s happenstance on the adhesive technology that came to be the ubiquitous Post-It), but also presents a much-needed view into using ‘design-thinking’ to tackle major health and social problems, including the design of clean water systems and implementation process for the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.

I particularly appreciated Brown’s emphasis on prototyping—a step many companies gloss over too easily. From ‘down and dirty’ methods of using foam core, markers and elastic bands to create the initial prototype of a new hotel’s reception foyer to prototyping entire organizations, he provides helpful examples and support for why prototyping can be a game-changer for any company. As a visual thinker, I also loved the mind map printed inside the front cover. It captures Brown’s conception of the ‘design-thinking’ method in one fell swoop and is an easy reference while reading the book.

Overall, I give the book a 3.5 out of 5.

Here are the Third-Wave Feminism and Case Study sections.

Third-Wave Feminism and Popular Culture

Third-wave feminism draws from the earlier social movements of the first and second wave, however is not defined as a structured movement itself. Although there is no universal agreement on its definition, it is most-often characterized as an ideology and as a generational marker of those that came after the second wave, particularly younger feminists that grew up under the popular writings of Naomi Wolf and Katie Roiphe in the 1990s. Astrid Henry (2004) argues that “third-wave feminism is more about textual and cultural production, local forms of activism, and a particular form of feminist consciousness than it is a large-scale social justice movement” (43). Further, third-wave feminism as ideology is more broadly defined and reflective of post-modernist constructions of identity and of the individual (Alfonso & Trigilio, 1997). In this vein, feminist theorists like Bell Hooks (2000) have noted third-wave feminism recognizes the pluralism of women’s identities, moving away from looking at women as one homogeneous group (which in earlier waves was typically white, educated, middle class and from the developed world) and acknowledging standpoints of class, race, gender, sexual orientation, ethnic heritage, etc.  Likewise, contemporary feminist scholars also recognizes the third-wave’s use of popular means to pursue its feminist agenda, including mass media, popular culture and, more recently, new media technologies, to move the discussion out of the academy and into the everyday, rejecting the formalism of academic feminism (Hooks, 2000). In all, its strategies reflect a more decentralized structure and fluid approach than generations past and that the younger feminists of the third-wave deploy their politics through disseminated, variable sites and methods (Alfonso & Trigilio, 1997), of which the internet and its media play an active part.

Bitch-ing and Blogging: A case study

BitchMedia defines its mission as: “to provide a feminist critique and analysis of pop culture, to encourage discussion about how the media influences us, and to promote the connection between cultural critique and social-justice activism” (Jacoby, posted Nov. 18, 2009). As one of the most prominent and trafficked expressedly-feminist sites on the web, the multimedia platform of BitchMedia (www.bitchmagazine.org) sits at the intersection of alternative media as activism and third-wave gender politics. Its genesis aligns with the ideological orientation and generational standpoint of third-wave feminism: “High-school pals and recent college graduates Lisa [Jervis] and Andi [Zeisler] were both pop culture obsessives with a particular jones for magazines—both were interns at the legendary Sassy magazine in the early 1990s—as well as feminists constantly on the lookout for sharp, fun, nonacademic analyses of the sexism rampant in movies, television, advertising, and more”(Bitch FAQ, accessed Nov 29, 2009). Likewise, Bitch’s multimedia web platform and current media practice embody this orientation.

Earlier I asked: what does the simplicity of the blog form enable toward potentially shifting established power relations? Power relations in this context refer to mainstream media discourse and systematic consolidation of media power as perpetuating patriarchy as dominant ideology. The mainstream media is a social institution fully invested in maintaining a social order (patriarchy) that favours its hegemonic position. By focusing on the blogs of Bitch, I will explore illustrative examples and analysis that demonstrate that through their modes of reporting, the content chosen for blog posts, reader comments, links to other sites and other conventions that this form acts as alternative media and source of counter-hegemonic discourse and politics.

Rhetorically: Blogs as rhetorical device

In brief, rhetoric refers to the practice of using language to persuade or influence others and necessitates that we concentrate on the devices and strategies used in texts themselves, including language use. Blogs, like other cultural productions including, for example, advertising, lobbyist literature, film or magazines, mobilize language toward persuasive ends. Emerging out of the personal journal or diary format, blogs, however, allow for a more personal, approachable and authentic style; one that has been called “activist or ‘native’ reporting” (Atton, 2002). Media scholars have argued that bloggers write from direct, personal experience where they can set their own tone, voice and language usage, creating a sense of transparency and trust that resonates with their readers.

Furthermore, third-wave feminism has also distanced itself from academic writing style and embraced an informal style of “sharp and sassy” commentary, more in line with both its generational standpoint and a style more consistent with the blog format of writing as personal diary that in comparison to formal, peer-reviewed academic journals and research publications, favours a more familiar, accessible style. Recent blog headlines at Bitch read: “ThatsNotCool.com is Pretty Dang Cool”(Johnson, posted Dec. 2, 2009), a post on ‘sexting’ and cell phone use linked to abusive behaviour and sexual assault, or the headline “Hey Big Gender: Why are women being charged more for stuff?”(Wallace, posted Dec. 2, 2009), which discusses the fact that products directed at women through packaging, description, or name might cost up to fifty percent more than similar products for men. Finally, a post that’s titled “Little Miss Oginy”(Tringali, posted Oct. 19, 2009), employs figurative language as rhetorical device as an entry point persuading readers to click through and read a critical article that discusses the TLC network’s “Tiaras & Toddlers” show, which documents the phenomenon of child beauty pageants. The blogger argues that the show not only questions the force-feeding of “gender ideals” that breed insecurity among the “pint-sized contestants”, but also its reinforces a broader commentary on society’s obsession with beauty. This style of reportage is rhetorically-driven and enabled by the blog format as providing journalism-style form and convention yet independent of mainstream media publishing systems and controls.

Technologically: Blogs as internet technologies and media platform

Geert Lovink defines blogs as part of “social software systems” (2008:xxiii). They are internet technologies built as web applications that support the authoring, editing, and publishing of blog posts and comments via a specialized content management systems. The nature of the technology itself has removed technical barriers and made blogs user-friendly, enabling access to anyone with an internet connection and basic web skills. This baseline capability has allowed feminists to take to the web and self-publish, creating a virtual printing press and alternative mediasphere outside of mainstream controls. This is the technical realization of Gans’ second tier. Bloggers make use of hyperlinked text as a standard mode of web writing, linking to illustrative examples, original sources, or compare and contrast methods that reveal alternate angles to stories that disrupt mainstream framing of news.

For example, a recent post on Bitch’s blog reads: “Swine & Dandy: What if we did as much to prevent rape as we do to prevent H1N1?”(Stone, posted Nov. 3, 2009). This post reframes mainstream news coverage of the H1N1 flu epidemic, criticizing broadcast news’ all-consuming coverage at the expense of other major news issues and the mobilization of public health resources and government policy toward an epidemic that is much less stigmatized and controversial than sexual assault. The blogger questions why such vast resources are deployed to a health crisis that affects significantly fewer numbers than the statistics of sexual assault and rape, but ultimately reasons that it would be nice if prevention programs, educational curriculum, and media attention were equally focused on other more marginalized areas of public health. She uses hypertext and linking to mainstream media coverage on CNN of the H1N1 epidemic and to statistical data on the Center for Disease Control and Prevention web site as technological devices to illustrate her argument with immediate sources.

Discursively: Blogs as sites of resistance discourse

The reference book Key Concepts in Communication and Cultural Studies defines discourse as “the social process of making and reproducing sense” (1994: 93). Blogs as media texts allow for the articulation and circulation of different discourses and can make visible the struggle between discourses, including dynamics of dominant (patriarchy) versus oppressed or marginalized (feminism). Feminist blogs and the blogs at BitchMedia operates as sites of resistance discourse making plain the inequities of the patriarchal system and acting as a means to resist dominant ideologies and offer counter opinion. Bitch bloggers literally talk back through their analysis of mainstream news, government politics, and popular culture to refute the dominant order and challenge the images and texts that big media disseminate to maintain their hegemonic position. Moreover, the writers and readers at Bitch mobilize their third-wave feminist values and identities as activism through their writing and reader-responses.

A current political affair and active topic on the Bitch blogs was the “Open Thread: Healthcare Reform and the Stupak Amendment”(Johnson, posted Nov. 9, 2009), which covered issues related to reproductive rights, women’s health and abortion. These women’s issues were negatively affected by recent healthcare reform that prohibits federal funds for abortion services in the public option, which was passed in the US House of Representatives in November 2009 and included a specific amendment on the abortion issue made by Democrat, Bart Stupak. The blog post called the Stupak Amendment “a monumental step back from reproductive justice” (Johnson, 2009) and made a direct call for commentary from the feminist community, inciting comments like:

From Women & Politics (Nov. 9, 2009):

“The Stupak amendment passed 240-194. How many women voted for it? 19. (2 Dems, all Republicans). Allow me to do a little math: Out of 435 members, we currently have only 73 women in the House. We should have 217.5. (OK, round that up to 218 I suppose). So, that means we need 145 more women to make it equal.

What do you suppose would happen with the anti-choice, anti-woman Stupak amendment if we had gender equality in Congress for this vote? I dare to say that not only would it be defeated—it wouldn’t have even a whisper of a wish of passing. (That is, if it was even introduced at all).”

With reader-response comments and open forums, the blog form promotes dialogue and two-way communication or what Jenkins (2004) calls “participatory media culture”, where users both produce and consume media content, representing a cultural shift in creation, engagement and remixing of media content by audience-producers as actors. Additionally, Jenkins notes that this participative action assembles a collective intelligence that affects production, distribution and the power relationships of mainstream conglomerates versus individual and alternative media practices and serves to build community and collective consciousness.

This open call for comments at Bitch underscores the blog form as alternative media where “the coverage of nonmainstream themes and topics, and the open debate of issues that does not inherently privilege any one participant. Such journalism is focused on not on the mere provision of “facts” as determined by a small group of journalists and editors, but instead highlights the discursive, dialogic, and even deliberatory nature of public engagement with news” (Bruns, 2008: 256). These examples at Bitch also demonstrate blogs as facilitators of community by such open and informal venues and the specific use of comments as both technological feature and discursive practice. Feminist blogs give women agency and voice. They facilitate community, aid in the creation of feminist consciousness, archive and disseminate of feminist knowledge, and act as a repository for its discourse. As alternative media, feminist blogs offer an off-mainstream discursive platform to fill in the gaps left in dominant’s culture’s version of history, in popular culture, in mainstream news and in a wide variety of other spaces. Their collaborative logic and function as discursive platform enables a fully formed multiperspectival news media in Gans’ definition, incorporating participants as both producers and consumers, or Bruns’ (2006) hybrid ‘produser’, and presenting and representing as many perspectives as possible.

1. Change By Design by Tim Brown, CEO of IDEO

Design-thinking has been the approach to business I have always known and employed in my own work and as part of collaborative teams. This tome brings it to life with concepts and clarity as to the ‘what’ and ‘how’ of tackling multifaceted problems – business, cultural, and social. It’s the innovation model I believe is needed to truly make change in today’s world. This is my mission.

2. Communication As Culture by James Carey, communications scholar

A communication studies classic of essays on media and society that I have yet to read. An important work in cultural studies that lays its foundations and connects to today’s mediascape, issues and trends.

3. The Eye of the Spirit by Ken Wilber, philosopher and public intellectual

Wilber’s work has largely influenced my worldview and contributed greatly to my writing, analysis and method in both professional and academic work. This book applies Wilber’s “spectrum of consciousness” model to investigate what a truly integral culture might look like. The chapter’s on Integral Art and Literary Theory are particularly compelling.

4. Here Comes Everybody by Clay Shirky, interactive communications professor

This one is en route to me, so it’s not quite on the shelf yet. It was recommended by a friend, colleague and mentor in business, academics and life. My view of technology has always been as cultural enabler, so this look into social media, interactivity and participative culture is sure to provide new insight in this realm.

5. The Aftermath of Feminism by Angela McRobbie, cultural studies scholar

The subhead for this book is “gender, culture, and social change” and McRobbie is well known for her feminist analysis into popular culture forms. Amidst all kinds of other social and political change that we’ve seen in the past decade, she reopens the debate on gender politics and so-called feminist ideology. As the jacket states: “With her own distinctive feminist analysis, McRobbie examines diverse socio-cultural phenomena embedded in contemporary women’s lives: from Bridget Jones, fashion photography and the television ‘make-over’ genre to eating disorders, body anxiety and ‘illegible rage’. The result is a scathing critique of ‘women’s empowerment’ and gender mainstreaming”.

6. Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov, author

I came across a gorgeously-bound, second-hand copy of Lolita many years ago. It is one of those books that you caress lovingly between your hands and open it for its musky, yet invigorating smell of the printed word. It has always been on my list as a piece of classic yet controversial literature, and this year I will read it cover to cover.

7. Turning Back the Clock: Hot wars and media populism by Umberto Eco, novelist, philosopher and scholar

I have a thing for Umberto Eco. I love his fiction and non-fiction alike. He’s a semiotician so his ability to vividly create and interpret signs and symbols is pure magic. This book targets the first half of the first decade of the new millennium with a look at topics ranging from Harry Potter, reality TV and cellphone manners to Bush, Blair and Berlusconi, neoconservatism and terrorism that was packaged and sold to the populous as progress. It will be interesting to look back with the advantage of hindsight now that we’re embarking on the second decade of this era.

8. To Have Or To Be? by Erich Fromm, author, sociologist and pschychoanalyst

Originally published in 1976, Fromm asks one of life’s most important and difficult questions, one that cleaves mankind and is indicative of our perilous existence on the planet. The commitment of learning to just ‘be’ is one that I have embarked on more and more seriously in recent times. Being present, being conscious and embracing this moment is something I hold very dear and have made central to my desire to live a fully inspired life. Maybe we should all read this one this year?

9. Theories of Communication by Armand Mattelart and Michèle Mattelart

This book was suggested reading on the syllabus for the joint PhD Integrative Seminar. I didn’t get a chance to read it during the semester but intend to make it a mainstay of my upcoming directed-study reading course.

10. Alice’s Adventures In Wonderland by Lewis Carroll, magician of literary nonsense

I’ve written before that I received a first edition of my perennial favorite for my last birthday, so I will again consume one of the most imaginative books ever written. It keeps my childlike curiosity and sense of adventure alive and well. And, it acts as a necessary and pleasure-filled counter-balance to my often-serious nature. Plus, I must re-read in time for the release of Tim Burton’s interpretation of my favorite tale.

So, with this list in hand I wish all a very happy New Year! What will you be reading?

I’ve also been asked about the papers I wrote, so over the next while I will post excerpts from a paper I wrote for my Alternative Media course. The paper is called: Interpreting Blogs as Alternative Media: Discursive, Technological and Rhetorical Conventions of Feminist Blogs as Sites of Resistance. It’s a 25-page paper, so I’ve tried to break it up into logical chunks and hopefully it interesting enough to persevere through each reading.

Here are the Introduction and Theory sections. Happy Reading.

Excerpt, Part I:

Introduction

Within scholarly and popular literature, Weblogs or ‘blogs’ have been heralded as having the potential to democratize the mediasphere, bringing into question relations of power among mainstream and alternative media and redefining roles and conventions of production and reception. Such hybrid forms, along with their siblings—photo and video blogs—may provide fertile ground for creation and dissemination of resistance discourse, the publishing of alternative viewpoints and critiques of mainstream media, and serve as tools and cultural interventions in pursuit of social and political change. In this vein, third-wave feminists have taken the to the web as a means of online activism, pursuing gender politics and critical feminist analysis of mainstream media discourse in an effort to expose distortions of power and reframe the media landscape. Blogs have surfaced as central media technologies and modes of alternative publishing in this effort to advance the feminist agenda against the dominant paradigm of patriarchy and its dissemination via big media. Therefore, as blogs continue to grow in number and impact, this research paper seeks to understand how blogs can be interpreted as alternative media and to probe the technical and discursive principals of this form to understand their impact. In particular, what does the simplicity of the blog form enable—formally, rhetorically, technologically and discursively—toward potentially shifting established power relations?

To address these questions, this paper employs a case study of a specific subgenre of blogs, namely news blogs pursuing third-wave feminist politics. By examining feminist blogs as sites of resistance providing critical analysis and response to dominant ideologies propagated by mainstream media, I query their role as sites of off-mainstream journalism, contextualize the blog form by probing its strategies and conventions, and situate the study within theories of alternative media. I am guided by a series of related questions that frame the research relative to the case study, specifying the broad questions discussed above. In particular, how does the act of self-publishing and simplicity of the blog form enable feminist voices to offer counter-hegemonic representations and redistribute power relations in the media landscape? Who are feminist bloggers and why do they write? How do they establish a socio-technical infrastructure enabled by the internet to form community to engage and debate feminist ideals more widely?

The case study focuses on the blogs of BitchMedia (www.bitchmagazine.org/blogs), a not-for-profit feminist media organization that provides a ‘feminist response to pop culture’. The alternative media outlet publishes a quarterly print magazine and a multimedia web platform where its blogs can be found. Blog content concentrates on mainstream news and popular culture, written, analyzed and discussed through a feminist lens. These blogs will be studied and used illustratively toward fleshing out the characteristics and conventions of the blog form—rhetorically, technologically and discursively—in an effort to understanding its implications as alternative media. The case study is expressly constructed to serve an illustrative purpose and does not purport to function as complete and exhaustive methodology, but rather to pinpoint examples that demonstrate the strategies and modes of Bitch blogs as alternative media in practice.

Theoretically, I draw from Axel Bruns’ (2008) analysis of the future of tactical media, including theories of gatecrashing and gatewatching, and his reconfiguration of Herbert Gans’ (1980) theory of a two-tiered media system. Bruns’ revisioning of Gans’ theory nearly thirty years later is central to my analysis and argument that, given the explosion of new media and networked technologies enabled by the internet, blogs represent the shift from alternative media as tactic to alternative media as strategy in a post-Gansian mediasphere. I endeavour to use the case study to illustrate this position. Additionally, I integrate theories of citizens’ journalism and participatory media, and specific scholarly thinking on blogs as socio-technical phenomena and interpretations of them as social software (Lovink, 2008).

Blogs and Alternative Media Theory

Blogs, blogging and the interlinked web space known as the blogosphere are technologies, practices and communities that have secured a significant foothold in contemporary consciousness. In fact, Merriam-Webster named ‘blog’ as word of the year in 2004, signifying that it was the most searched term on the dictionary’s web site during that year (BBC News Online, Dec 1, 2004). Merriam-Webster subsequently included ‘blog’ as a listing in the 2005 printing of the dictionary. With millions of blogs on the internet, they have become a publishing phenomenon and occupy a good portion of today’s media diet, emerging in all imaginable categories: topical, news, political, personal, legal, media, religious, hobbyist, and more. We commonly recognize blogs as self-published online journals or web-based diaries, typically organized in reverse-chronological order where individuals or collectives of bloggers author entries on any variety of subject, include hyperlinks directing readers to other sites, and allow for reader-response comments. They are enabled by web-based software, templated formats and publishing tools that don’t require the user to having any specialized technical or coding skills. Emerging in the late 1990s, but gaining real traction in 2003/2004 as a result of the Iraq war and 2004 US election campaign, this form of communications technology is part of the explosion in new media fueled by the spread of the internet, digital technologies and broadband infrastructure over the last decade.

The convergence of new media and technology has allowed anyone with internet access and basic word processing skills to self-publish. Blogs enable individuals to post comments on mainstream news, facilitate dialogue and discussion with visitors to their site and, most significantly, publish independent, original news content and opinion. Blogs have redefined journalism and empowered a digital citizens’ media—to extend Clamencia Rodriguez’s (2001) term—of activist reporting and media critique. Blogs report on news and engage discussion and debate outside, and perhaps even in competition with, established channels of mainstream media corporations and publishing houses. Alternative media scholar, Chris Atton (2007) describes blogs as affording individuals the opportunity to create their own news sites and engage in “radical journalism methods, encompassing first-person native reports; radical critiques of government policies and ‘radical mainstream’ sources; and the creation of spaces for discussion and debate” (77). He characterizes this type of alternative journalism as “heterogeneous, flexible, and responsive” and states: “above all, it offers a challenging critique to dominant news values and practices” (ibid). What distinguishes blogs from other forms of alternative media making as radical journalism, including the alternative press and print ‘zines, is that the digital medium of the internet usurps the mainstream media structures and journalists as gatekeepers, putting the publishing capability in the hands of the everyman or woman. Craig Saper (2004) also sees blogs as would-be outlets for political engagement and change, professing: “We live in a time of crisis and transition. Multiplying blogs might sit at the locus of political transformation…”.

Although Robert McChesney’s (2004) political economy of the media has been criticized for its totalizing grand narrative, it offers important insight into the global media superstructure and serves as a helpful lens through which the mainstream media paradigm can be defined and situated in modern society. In addition to developments in communications technology, McChesney points to the neoliberal politics of relaxing national regulatory policies regarding commercial exploitation of media and the consolidation and concentration of media into eight or nine global media empires that control large swaths of the broadcast, film and publishing industries. He argues that this conglomeration of power virtually eliminates democratic citizenship in the production, flow and access of media, breeding homogeneity of content and markedly diminishing the diversity of voices and modes of democratic participation. “The global media system is better understood as one that advances corporate and commercial interests and values and denigrates or ignores that which cannot be incorporated into its mission” (2004: 16), notes McChesney. He calls for media democracy in terms of policy-making and points to alternative media as a vital means combat the “deep and profound depoliticization”(2004: 17). Blogs may serve to answer the call for media democracy that McChesney heeds as they present a viable form of alternative media that allow individuals to talk-back to big media, engage in media activism and counter-hegemonic politics.

Axel Bruns pinpoints his analysis of the future of tactical media by looking at institutionalized journalism practice, mainstream media conventions, tactics and strategies by resurfacing Herbert Gans’ 1980 two-tiered model of news media. Bruns references Gans’ model where he calls for a second-tier media that would “devote themselves primarily to reanalyzing and reinterpreting news gathered by the central media—for their audience, adding their own commentary and backing these up with as much original reporting, particularly to support bottom-up, representative, and service news, as would be financially feasible” (Gans, 1980: 318). This call for a multiperspectival approach to news coverage was ahead of its time given the significant financial barriers and lack of viable media forms at the time that had sufficient audience reach to execute on such a proposition (Bruns, 2008:247). If we advance this notion however to the current media landscape, Gans’ visionary model of news media looks a lot like the existing mediasphere with the advent of blogs as new media form. Blog content and bloggers’ opinions are being incorporated into mainstream media news coverage as a means to gauge the pulse on news stories and, on the flip-side, bloggers are analyzing news stories independently, publishing alternative view points and commenting on existing coverage across the blogosphere. Bruns notes that “[B]loggers and other forms of participatory online journalism by citizens for citizens have gatecrashed the previously closed party of the mainstream news media; they have added a second tier of new media that comments on, critiques, and regularly corrects mainstream news, much as Gans proposed” (2008: 248). Further, he argues that blogs challenge the mainstream media conventions of formulaic journalism, ‘he said/she said’ reporting and offer a credible alternative toward a more discursive, deliberative approach, suggesting that “…the emergence of citizen journalism points to the potential reinvigoration of discussion, debate, and deliberation on political matters, beyond the polarized and polarizing coverage of mainstream media” (ibid).  As the case study will illustrate, bloggers also employ a ‘gatewatching’ strategy of content reappropriation of mainstream news coverage, which is then interrogated, reanalyzed and actively interpreted to point out flawed angles or potential bias. Additionally, reader-comments expressed on blogs often provide additional depth and critical commentary that dethrones mainstream positioning and extends gatewatching practice another register.