Age of Remix

What are your thoughts concerning mass media?

Do you value and appreciate the accessibility of information and the ease by which you can produce and share information?

Or, do you find yourself distracted by the media? Caught up in the “drama?” Are you comparing too much or have you lost trust in the reliability of the information shared therein?

Here’s some food for thought…

Has modern media given us the opportunity to transform ourselves, “into a speaker of that discourse who can intervene and contest its truth claims.” By way of ripping, editing, and rendering video, are we able to tell our story in a new light? (Kuhn, 2012).

What does Kuhn mean by “that discourse?”

“That discourse” refers to YOU. Your life. Your story and everything in between.

Think about Dennis Rodman’s, Michael Jordan’s or Lance Armstrong’s recent documentaries.

Each, an icon in their sport, had some issues from their past that were in need of re-appraisal and absolution; Jordan’s gambling, Rodman’s eccentric behavior, Armstrong’s doping.

From a theoretical angle, each documentary aimed to clear these men’s names and set the record straight, from their point of view.

What an act like this does, is to stamp out the previously popular narrative and replace it with a new one.

Does this re-authorship of history happen more than we think? Is that okay?

If audience truly determines meaning, perhaps we will never arrive to a popular consensus.

You tell me.

Thank you.