Interviews - a case study

The interview I'm using as my case study is Dr.Phil interviewing Dina Lohan, the mother of troubled Hollywood actress Lindsay Lohan. I've taking the first 20 mins of this interview to analyze. Before the interview begins a VT is played of Dina where she summarizes her life with her kids and her husband, who apparently abused her, and claims to be 'just a normal mom that juggles everything'. She then says the purpose of the interview is to set the record straight because there are so many stories out there about her and her children and she wants people to hear her story and nobody else's. She says she wants to shed some light on herself and on Lindsay. It's very much pushed from the beginning that this is an exclusive interview and that this is something thats happening for the first time. I think all of this is used to draw the viewer in and let them know what to expect. But then the interview itself takes a completely different turn and becomes almost uncomfortable to watch. Dr Phil admits himself at the start that what he thought would be a normal in depth interview turned into something entirely different.

When the interview begins everything seems normal. Dr.Phil tells Dina that he wants to give her a chance to tell her story and set the record straight so people know who she is. Dina then seems to 'stall' by asking 'Are we to camera now, we're rolling?' She then goes into some detail about her past and turns to the camera and says 'Can we cut?' and she covers her face. She then asks again 'Is this rolling?' Dr.Phil tries to relax her by telling her to take a deep breath. I think she has gone into this interview with an agenda of making herself look like a victim. She talks about domestic abuse but because of how 'strange' her behaviour is, I feel that the audience won't connect with this or have sympathy for her. She comes across like she is drunk or on drugs during this interview.

At around the 7 min 30 sec mark Dr.Phil summarizes what Dina has said already about her relationship with her ex husband. I think he does this so the audience can get an understanding of what she has said. He is forced to operate under the constraints of her behaviour so he needs to summarize for the viewer.

At the 8.30 mark Dr.Phil asks her what was the lowest point. She then starts crying and covers her face and asks can they stop because she doesn't want to be on camera, but then she continues to answer the question making it look like attention seeking, playing the victim again (agenda).

The next question he asks her she tries to avoid by saying 'next question' but he just asks the same question again and she answers it. He doesn't let her get away with not answering the questions. He's firm with her but tries to make her feel comfortable. She then asks can she go home and he tells her she can do whatever she likes. You can see here that while he's not letting her get away with not answering questions he's also not willing to put up with this behaviour, as he reminds her that she was the one who wanted to do this interview to put everything behind her. He stays very relaxed and encourages her to keep going or she will regret it.

After this he then asks her what she wants to talk about, trying to make her feel in control, but she says you tell me you have the list. She then continues to talk about her ex husband saying he pays no child support and sees Lindsay as 'the goose that lay the golden egg' and that he never talks about his other children. Her agenda here is to make her husband look like the bad guy. We can then see how Dr.Phil is being neutral and wants to show the viewer both sides to this story by telling her that that's exactly what her ex husband, Michael Lohan, says about her, that her relationship with Lindsay is financial and she uses her.

At 11.50 Dr.Phil summarizes again what Dina came to talk about. She says she doesn't want to talk about something and he calls her out by calling back to her all the reasons why she wanted to do this interview. She tells him that she's being honest and he says 'no your not', he doesn't let her away with anything. From this point on he calls her out on everything she's doing. He tells her she's using words she doesn't know the meaning of. She calls him 'you people', and he responds by saying he's a highly trained professional, he's knows how to interview people and that he's not the media. He asks her again why is she here. He knows this interview means more to her than it does to him.

She tries to avoid questions again by commenting on his shoes so he calls her out again. He tells her that everything she is doing is a 'dodge' and she deflects everything. He summarizes how she keeps stalling asking about the cameras rolling and he calls her a 'phony' and a 'fraud'. At this point she sticks her finger up at the camera. This is around the 16 min mark. The interview continues where she keeps interrupting him and she keeps trying to put across her point or agenda that she just a normal person and she continues to play the victim by saying it's 'hard'. He describes her as 'flitting' around.

Throughout this interview we can see the interviewer using formulation because of the constraints they are under. You can also see how the interviewer is neutral. He tries to keep her calm and relaxed while also calling her out on what she's doing. I think by doing this he is getting the audience on his side. We can see erratic behaviour from the interviewee where she is avoiding questions by crying, playing the victim, changing the subject and stalling. She is also pushing her own agenda. But the interviewer doesn't let her get away with this. The interviewer in this case comes across as the better person.

Preferred Meaning

I found an article in The Irish Sun from the 16th Feb that I think has a preferred meaning. The article header says 'Behind plus-size fashion weekend', with the headline reading 'Our catwalk has beautiful, curvy NORMAL girls'. The preferred meaning in this article would be to make people believe it's ok and normal to have a fuller figure. The intended audience would be fuller figured women to help them feel better about themselves. This plus-sized fashion weekend has happened at the same time as London fashion week where you see super skinny models walk the runway. While the aim of this is to make women feel beautiful no matter what their size, there is another reality to this that we're not seeing here.

Now while I believe that curvy figures are much nicer than super skinny and that curvy women should feel beautiful there is a line between what's healthy and what's unhealthy. The plus-sized model in the article says that she is a size 16 and eats healthy and goes to the gym, but the reality that's not being pushed here is that a size 16 figure could be very unhealthy. While it might be healthy for this model to be a size 16 depending on her height and her BMI, it doesn't give us this information in the article, so in turn every size 16 girl reading this may be led to believe that it's healthy when they could in reality have an unhealthy BMI. It is very unhealthy for people to have excess fat around their mid section, especially for women. According to the Drummond Clinic website:

"Carrying weight around the middle represents a serious health risk. It is now known that there are major health implications of storing fat in the middle of the body rather than anywhere else – studies have shown it increases the risk of heart disease, diabetes, stroke, cancer (especially breast cancer) and high blood pressure." 

http://www.drummondclinic.co.uk/articles/fat-around-the-middle/

In the article the model also says "Designers make clothes up to a size 16, so why don't they use real size 16 women, their customers, to show them off? Why would a designer create clothes in larger sizes if they don't want to see them worn?" The reality not being said here is that the designers are the ones picking the super skinny size zero models to show their clothes on the catwalk. At the end of the article there's a small piece by the fashion editor saying that "The Irish Sun has been campaigning against size zero models since 2007." While I am against size zero, I would be against unhealthy size 16 models also. I believe fashion shows should have size 10-12 models as this to me is what represents 'normal' and also healthy figures. I believe that women should be confident and feel good regardless of their shape but they also need to be healthy and this is the reality that is no being pushed by this article.

Here is a link to the article online:
http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/woman/article4797781.ece

Here is also a photo of the article that I saw in the newspaper:

The circuit of culture: The article is represented to us with a picture of the size 16 model posing seductively so that people will think she's beautiful and desirable. She is also the one being quoted in the article and as she is taking part in the plus-sized fashion week she is a reliable source for this kind of information. It's printed in a tabloid newspaper making the information easy to digest by the reader. They know that this sort of article will be acceptable by the reader and it is definitely aimed at female readers. It's also a short article with a big headline to catch the readers attention so they are likely to read it. The picture of the model may also catch the eye of some of the male consumers.


I think that the alternative reality is not being pushed here because people get so caught up in trying to get rid of size zero models that they forget about what's actually healthy and what's not healthy when it comes to plus sized models. Plus sized models want to make people think it's ok and normal to be that size so they don't tell them the risks that go along with it.

Pseudo Events

Pseudo events are events created by the media to generate news. The need for pseudo events comes from the general public. People expect papers to be full of news. If a reporter cannot find a story they are expected to make one. We demand more news than the world can give us resulting in fabricated stories. We keep these news reporters in business by demanding that they fill our consciousness. More and more of what we are seeing in the news are pseudo events, but this is because we expect them so therefore we are given them. These events become 'need to know' by the general public and therefore the lines between what people really need to know and what they can know become blurred. This news then becomes 'packaged' news. The news reporters select, invent and plan these events and news stories.

Pseudo events have 6 characteristics:
1. They are more dramatic and easy to get across and receive
2. Can be repeated/re-enforced
3. Cost money to create so they are advertised in advance
4. More sociable, easy to digest, convenient
5. Knowledge of the event becomes the test of being 'informed'
6. Pseudo events spawn other pseudo events that dominate our consciousness

A very recent example of what could be a pseudo event is from the Grammy Awards last night. Rihanna was seen at the awards ceremony wearing a ring on her engagement finger. She was sitting in the audience with Chris Brown, now four years after he assaulted her, wearing many rings on her fingers including her wedding finger, and she was clearly showing them off. When the singer then got on stage to perform she just had one simple silver band on her wedding finger. This lead to speculation on twitter about an engagement. This kind of of event being captured and reported on generates a lot of free publicity for Rihanna and Chris Brown. All she has to do is show up at an event with a ring on her finger and without even saying anything everyone on the internet is talking about it. This could have been totally planned by the singers PR team to get people talking and the ring could really mean absolutely nothing, knowing that the news reporters would need this as news. It could also be a plan to show the doubters and skeptics how happy and together the couple are on the 4 year anniversary of her beating from Chris Brown. Here is a link to the story that I found on the mail online website:

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/tvshowbiz/article-2276772/Grammys-2013-Rihanna-snuggles-Chris-Brown-flaunts-engagement-ring.html#axzz2KbB4OHzP

Media Discourse Analysis

I found the first class in this subject very interesting. It brought up topics that I would never have thought of or considered before. I never knew before that there are three ways in which information is given to us through the media and it's how the media manipulate and show it is how it's seen which is not always necessarily the truth. 

They are:

A genuine event

A media event 

A pseudo event

A genuine event is obviously something that has happened no matter what the media say about it and can't be influenced by the mass media. A pseudo event is something that is created for the purpose of getting media coverage which is something that I would have already known happened in terms of celebrities and what they do that is captured in magazines and news stories. These are not spontaneous, they are planned. But the one I never really had considered before is a media event, which is something that was going to happen anyway but it is received differently by the public because of the way the media decide to show it and manipulate it. A media event is held in response to an event or news story. But these events shouldn't be held to often as they need to be seen as a celebration or a spectacle of a specific event. 

It shows that we have to consider where our information is coming from and how we are receiving it. I am cynical enough already when it comes to things published in the media. As much as I love my celebrity gossip and would like to believe everything I read is true I know its not and even though I still read it I don't always believe whats being said. For example, a friend told me the other day about some music video footage that she heard was leaked before the release and straight away my response was, "That's definitely not true, it was planned, nothing is ever 'accidentally' leaked."

I think this module will make me look at stories more critically than I already do and probably make me analyse everything I see and read and be more cynical about what's reported in the news. I already blame the media for the recession among other things. 

My Creative Self

For my creative self project I wasn't quite sure what to do at the beginning but thought about the different things I'm good at and what I like to do. One of my favourite things to do is to take pictures, especially when I go traveling. I also like to make videos so thought about coming up with some way to combine the two. I wanted to make some sort of video collage of my photos. I looked up the internet for different tutorials on how to make creative photo collages. I spent a lot of time looking through different tutorials and picked my favorite ones. The general theme I decided to go with was the look of film from a camera and polaroids. The next task I had to do was to pick out the photos I wanted to use. I went through all my travel photos from America, Canada, Thailand and Europe and picked what I thought were the best ones that represented my travel experiences. I then put these altogether as collages in photoshop. After I had these finished I edited the video together in iMovie and put music to it. I also wanted to add something at the end that represented me, not necessarily me creatively but me as a person. So I decided to take three different photos of myself and edit them together. The first was of me sitting at my laptop as I'm always on the interent, the second was me drinking coffee as I drink coffee everyday and the last photo was of me on the phone and also holding my small tub of vaseline as my phone and vaseline are two things that are never out of my hands. Anyway, enough of me talking about the video, have a look below. 

The Creative Spark Project

The brief for our project was to create a creative media artefact which promotes the creative industries in Louth in general and the Dundalk IT and Creative Spark in particular. One of the sub themes of the brief was the Spark Plugs Social Club. Myself and my group had a look on the Creative Spark website to see what the social club was about. www.creativespark.ie  

After looking on the website we didn't find out much information about it apart from that if you rent an office in the Creative Spark building you get membership to the social club. So as a group we decided that we wanted to organize something around the social club. 

Our first idea was to set up an online forum for the social club so people would have somewhere they could talk to people outside of the meetings and then maybe the forum could be use to further discuss topics brought up at the meetings. So our group member Aoife created the online forum so we have it up and running for people to sign up to. 

We then decided that we wanted to hold the first meeting of the social club so the next step was to organize a meeting with the head of the Creative Spark Sarah Daly. Our group member Sarah emailed Sarah Daly and arranged a time we could meet with her. On the day we went down to the Creative Spark building and we told Sarah Daly our idea to hold the first social club meeting so she was very pleased with this idea. We wanted to get feed back from her of what she wanted from the social club. She wanted to get the tenants of the building involved and the Science Service Centre and then just general people working in the creative industries and students. She was interested in the idea of having a guest speaker on the night too so she was going to speak to the tenants to see if they were interested in speaking and we said that we would try and arrange a speaker too. She also agreed to give a brief introduction at the meeting about the Creative Spark. 

Other things she wanted from the meeting was feedback on certain things. She wanted to know how much people would be willing to pay to join the club and also what people would like to see from the social club. So we decided that we would do a questionnaire that people would fill out after the meeting. 

Another group in the class were arranging an open night and exhibition in the Creative Spark so Sarah said she would like to hold the meeting on the same night so it could all tie in together. We then spoke to the other group about this and they agreed that it was a good idea. 

In the following week or two then we kept in touch with Sarah through email and kept her updated on how the planning for the meeting was going and she informed us that a lady called Tracey Dunne would speak at the meeting. She owns a company called Element Design and was the first tenant in the building. At the same time we were trying to arrange a speaker too. We had a man from Boylesports that agreed to speak but then he pulled out. We then arranged for a girl called Julie Reilly to speak. She is a past student of our course and currently working as an online editor in Boylesports so we asked her to talk about her experiences. We also spent time over the two weeks emailing some people to try and get the word out about the night. 

We also decided then what we were going to do as the media artefact. We wanted to create something positive for the Creative Spark and create something that they could use. So we came up with the idea of making a video that they could put on their website. We decided to take photos on the night of the meeting and the exhibition and then do a vox pop on the night of people talking about how they think the Creative Spark will benefit them and then we were going to put tis altogether in a video. 

We were all set then to go for the meeting so we just had to hope it went well on the night. The open night was on the 22nd Oct from 5-8 so we had our social club meeting from 6.15-7. There wasn't a big turn out on the night and we were worried about this but it ended up being a good thing for us. We held the meeting in a small room of a bout 15 people. The guest speakers were really interesting and informative about working in the industry and everyone really enjoyed the talks. The small number of people meant that everyone could get out any questions they had and it kinda turned into a bit of a group discussion then and more people felt comfortable talking. We left questionnaires on the chairs and collected these after the meeting so we could give the feedback to Sarah. After the meeting we also got people to sign up to the online forum and we went around and did the vox pop. 

I think that the first social club meeting was a great success and as a group we were very happy with how our project went. All that was left to do then was to put the video together and let Sarah know our findings from the meeting. 

Some photos from the night:

The room set up

Guest speaker: Tracey

Guest speaker: Julie

People there on the night

Culture and Society - Online civil disobedience and political activists

After researching Anonymous and Lulzsec it's clear to see a difference between the two. Lulzsec hack into different websites and systems just for the fun. They want to show people that they can do it and that their site's are not as secure as they would like to think they are. There is no meaning behind what they are doing just purely the fact that they can do it. They are responsible for high profile hackings such as Sony, Nintendo and the CIA website. They claim to have 7 members with one as the leader. They don't hack for profit but just for fun. They even opened a telephone request line so fan could request potential targets. 

Whereas with Anonymous they have political reasons for what they do. They are trying to protect users freedom online and free speech. Anonymous defended Wikileaks as a way of defending free speech but they also hacked into the accounts of Amazon, Paypal and Mastercard. To me, hacking into these accounts doesn't make sense in defending free speech so I think that in a way they also do it because they can but they want to be seen as doing good. I think that they do have good intentions and when they hack into these accounts they don't release any of the information but a lot of the time they aren't doing good for the general public. They contradict themselves by shutting down websites in the name of free speech.  They protest against things that they are passionate about and obtain private information of people who may not be passionate about the same cause as them. Although the other side of this is that by hacking into these large corporations they are showing a flaw in their security and therefore people loose trust in these companies resulting in them losing money and some control. Anonymous is not a specific group of people it is a mass of people all existing separately or some together. 

I understand the fun aspect of it coming from Lulzsec. If they can do it why not point out the flaws in national security systems. In the long run they are probably helping these systems iron out the bugs in their security. I don't agree with taking personal information of account holders though. With Anonymous they seem to have a good cause that I also agree with which is freedom online and I think that they are good at creating awareness. I also like the whole mystery aspect as who these people are. I think they both have good intentions but don't always end up doing good. You're never going to get everyone to believe in your cause anyway. 

I don't think that I could be convinced to become politically active through targeted social media. For me it's not about the means in which you are targeted but it's if you are targeted for something that you are actually interested in or passionate about. I have no interest what so ever in the politics of this country. I choose to ignore it and not watch the news and live in my on little bubble because it's just depressing otherwise. So if there was a social media political campaign I would swiftly ignore it and move on to doing something even more useless with my time. My own little world is a happier place this way.

Information

http://www.cjr.org/the_news_frontier/are_online_attacks_civil_disob.php

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-13787229