Preliminary Annotated Bibliography

References

Berg, P., & Jones, R. (2003). Feeding America: The Historic American Cookbook Project. Journal of Agricultural & Food Information, 5(4), 69-75.

• This article discusses the Historic American Cookbook Project, Michigan State University’s attempt to digitize cookbooks from the 18th, 19th and early 20th centuries; these efforts will make hundreds of public domain recipes searchable on the project’s website, as well as preserve the books for future generations of cooks.

Brown, L. K., & Mussell, K. (1984). Ethnic and regional foodways in the United States: The performance of group identity. Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press.

• The authors explore the role of ethnic and regional food in American cooking. They propose that cookbooks are a way to preserve cultural heritage, and for cooks to reconnect with their roots.

Brownlie, D., Hewer, P., & Horne, S. (2005). Culinary Tourism: An Exploratory Reading of Contemporary Representations of Cooking. Consumption, Markets & Culture, 8(1), 7-26. doi:10.1080/10253860500068937.

• This article claims that cookbooks are cultural artifacts rather than mere collections of recipes, and reflect the era in which they were published. While often overlooked by researchers, cookbooks actually contain a wealth of historic and social information.

Field, M. (2007). Making Food History. Gastronomica, 7 (1), 20-24. Retrieved from Academic Search Complete database.

• The article makes the interesting point that recipe writers use Google to search for obscure foods, a practice that competes with using the Oxford Companion to Food, itself only a recent contribution. While the book has been successful, the author argues that the only hope for future success of similar academic culinary tomes is if the author allows their personality to come out in their writing. This information will be helpful in the present and future portion of the paper, as it discusses using online technology as opposed to print.

Gabaccia, D. R. (1998). We are what we eat: Ethnic food and the making of Americans. Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press

• This book touches upon the differences between community cookbooks and commercial cookbooks among people of certain ethnic backgrounds living in the US. The author proposes that commercial cookbooks present ethnic cuisines through traditional, yet simplified, eyes, while community cookbooks represent a more authentic view of what people in ethnic communities actually eat.

Garland S. (2009). A cook book to be read. What about it?’: Alice Toklas, Gertrude Stein and the language of the kitchen. Comparative American Studies. 7 (1), 34-56.

• Through the interactions between Alice B. Toklas and Gerturde Stein, the article paints a portrait of cookbooks have evolved through American history. Legitimacy is a point echoed throughout the paper; 18th and 19th century recipes often had testimonials stating the quality of the recipe, while tone of writing conveyed some form of authority.

Levenstein, H. A. (1993). Paradox of plenty: A social history of eating in modern America. New York: Oxford University Press.

• The author discusses the social and culinary factors that have shaped Americans’ view of eating since 1930. He makes the point that while America has always had enough to eat, its culinary decisions have not always been rational or wise.

Keller-Cohen, D. (1994). The Web of Literacy: Speaking, Reading, and Writing in 17th- and 18th-Century America. Literacy: Interdisciplinary conversations. Written language series. Cresskill, N.J.: Hampton Press.

• The author (also the editor of this tome) states that many people in 17th and 18th century America were illiterate. This poses the hypothesis that colonial cooks did not use cookbooks because they could not read them.

(2009, January). The Virtual Roundtable: Food Blogging as Citizen Journalism. World Literature Today, pp. 42-46. Retrieved from Academic Search Complete database.

• The author discusses trends in food blogging. She makes the point that home cooks once clipped recipes from newspapers, yet today watch videos, and that online communities have taken the place of food critics. This information will be useful in second portion of the paper, as it discusses motivations for creating and reading food blogs.

Non-scholarly references

Wajda, S. (2008). Manly Meals and Mom’s Home Cooking: Cookbooks and Gender in Modern America. Winterthur Portfolio,42(1), 77-82. Retrieved from America: History & Life database.

• The author writes that cookbooks served as diaries or journals of women’s lives; they would include notes and clippings to take on an almost diary-like form. This parallels modern food blogging.

(2004, August 28). Julia Child. Economist, p. 78. Retrieved from Academic Search Complete database.

• The Economist discusses Julia Child’s contribution to modern home cooking in her obituary; the most telling point is that she herself was not a classic gourmet.

Question #2

In what ways do predictions for the future potentially shape it?

Discussion Group Analysis

“Social Interaction and Co-Viewing with Youtube: Blending Mass Communication Reception and Social Connection” by Paul Haridakis and Gary Hanson.

Article Summary:
The author examines what motives predict what people watch on YouTube, with the hypothesis that YouTube viewing includes a social element that television does not.

The Uses and Gratifications theory explains that people watch what they watch for a reason; they select viewing material to satisfy needs or desires as determined by their personality and psychological dispositions, and their use of media competes with interpersonal communication.

People traditionally watch TV for entertainment, information, arousal, habit, pass-time, escape, or relaxation. YouTube differs from the traditional TV format in that users can watch commercial media or consumer-created content. This article proposes an additional component for YouTube: the social, with the theory that antisocial people tend to gravitate towards YouTube.

Viewer’s pre-viewing and during-viewing activities have always been a subject of study, but YouTube brings another dimension: post viewing activity. What do people do after watching a YouTube video? People’s connection with what they watch generally makes them more likely to socialize about it post-viewing.

This study examined whether motives and individual differences (social activity, interpersonal interaction, locus of control, sensation-seeking, innovativeness and YouTube affinity) predicted viewing videos on YouTube and then sharing with others. The study examined users’:

• Social Activities and Interpersonal Interaction: relationship between online and offline behaviors
• locus of control: how much control users feel over their lives
• sensation seeking: do people watch things for excitement or to relax?
• Innovativeness: how do people adapt to new technologies?

The sample was comprised of college students from various majors enrolled in the same large communication course. Students who said that they used YouTube voluntarily completed self-administered questionnaires. Out of the 427 questionnaires administered,  41.5% were answered by men  and 58.3% by women, with the average age being 19.67. The researchers intended to gather information to answer following questions:

• RQ1: What communication motives predict viewing YouTube video content?
• RQ2: What communication motives predict sharing YouTube video content?
• RQ3: How do users’ background characteristics, motives, and affinity with YouTube predict the viewing and sharing of content?

The results were that male gender was a significant predictor of YouTube viewing. Sociable people,  thrill-seekers, experience-seekers and the easily bored gravitated to YouTube, while other motives for watching included convenience, co-viewing, and social interaction. While the typical user is a socially-active male who uses YouTube for entertainment, information seeking, social interaction, and to watch videos with others, the findings suggest that a variety of people use YouTube to connect with other people, making it a social rather than interpersonal medium.

Analysis:

The article was published in 2009, and my understanding that the study took place in 2007, as the author mentions that YouTube was less than two years old at that point. I can’t help but feel that the study is slightly biased due to its audience, as it examined early adopters among college students and not the average user. It seems like the study selected participants based on the researchers’ preconceived mental models of the typical YouTube user rather than coming to a scientific conclusion of what the average actually user might look like. In 2007, bored adolescent males may have been the primary users of YouTube, but I have trouble believing this is the case today.

My mother and father, both in their 60’s, often forward me YouTube videos that friends or colleagues share with them; if my parents, the people who used a rotary phone until 2000 and who still watch TV from a set with knobs, are using YouTube, then it certainly must be mainstream. To pass the time at a family reunion in September while waiting for others to arrive, my 70-year-old aunt suggested that we watch YouTube videos. This was not because she thought someone my age would enjoy it, but rather because watching YouTube is a pastime of her own, and she took great joy in sharing LED sheep. Her videos, like my parents’, are perhaps not ones I would gravitate toward, but show her genuine affinity for the site.

Anecdotal evidence aside,  Mashable reported in 2006 that the average age of YouTube users was 27, yet people in the 35-64 age range comprised over half of the viewers. Young, technologically-competent males may have been YouTube’s early adopters, but it’s appeal has grown. The initial skeptics have now adopted the site and are using it well. As Rogers says in Diffusion of Innovations, the Internet speeds up the time it takes to adopt an innovation; the encouraged sharing of YouTube videos makes this seem highly likely. Therefore, diffusion of YouTube potentially followed this path enough so that, in the time between collecting the data and the article being published, the demographic findings were already out of date.

However, I do agree that there is a highly social element to YouTube, if the user chooses to use it for that purpose. The opportunity to leave a comment, email to a friend, embed or share a link via email, Twitter or Facebook makes it certainly a social medium.

How to auto-tweet WordPress entries

My Account  –> My Blogs –> Under the ‘publicize’ column, select Twitter.

A new discovery for me. I’m very excited.

Book Review: We the Media

A New York Times reporter is a journalist, but so can be a high school student with a camera phone if he is at the right place at the right time. Such is the premise of newspaper columnist and blogger Dan Gillmor’s 2004 book We the Media.

I picked this selection for two reasons. As a non-journalist with a strong interest in writing and community engagement, citizen journalism (termed ‘grassroots journalism’ by Gillmor) has a particular draw for me. In addition to the DIY lure of the subject matter, the free PDF format also attracted me. This is not to say I’m too cheap to buy a book– I had already purchased The Victorian Internet– but I love being able to highlight and mark-up files in Adobe Acrobat. This was a crafty move on Gillmore’s end: it’s easy to cut and paste text, making sharing ideas (one of his primary arguments for new media) very easy.

Gillmor starts by challenging the perceptions that most people hold about traditional journalism. He notes that journalists have not always followed their current codes of ethics. Shoddy reporting was common in the 19th century as corrupt newspaper barons pushed their own agendas through their publications; journalism contributed little to society until muckrakers like Upton Sinclair and Ida Tarbell came on the scene. In our modern world, with disproportionate levels of violence on the evening news, bloggers’ genuine interest in the subjects the cover seem like a breath of fresh air; they are modern-day muckrakers.

Gillmor also dismisses the notion that the main principles of new media are new. He mentions that some of the most iconic footage of our time, like the Rodney King beatings or JFK’s assassination, were captured on film by amateurs. Between understanding the similarities between grassroots and traditional journalism, and the weak points of traditional journalism, the reader becomes less wary of new media communications tools– and perhaps less trusting of Big Media.

Despite the focus on journalism, the book is really a case for universal digital media literacy and net neutrality. Chapter 9 is devoted to the question of legitimacy: when it’s so easy to fake websites, blog posts, comments, and even photos and video, how do you know who to trust? Gillmor also makes a strong point against copyright laws, advocating that they restrict much of the internet’s iterative potential.

Gillmore deserves praise for putting many of his theories into action. He acknowledges the irony of a book about the web being written in the stagnant medium of print by referring readers to his website: ”The tools of tomorrow’s participatory journalism are evolving quickly—so quickly that by the time this book is in print, new ones will have arrived. This book’s accompanying web site (http://wethemedia.oreilly.com) will catalogue new tools as they become available.” (25) He practices transparency on page 79 by disclosing his exact relationship with a subject, noting that the two men share the same publisher. Finally, just having the book available as a free PDF so that anyone can access the information is a monumental show of faith in the system. These small details give his arguments weight.

However, I disagree with some of Gillmor’s proposed grassroots methods of gathering news. For one, Gillmor mentions several instances of bloggers asking for money to cover certain topics. If they don’t raise the money, they don’t get the story. This form of democratic journalism ensures that people hear only the stories they want to hear, with the drawback being that popular opinion dictates what is newsworthy.  The result is that lesser, though equally important, stories may not be told, which almost seems to be a form of bias. This notion of, in Gillmor’s words, “ability to get the news you want” (164), concerns me. There can be a great difference between want and need. The news you want may not be the news you need, and vice versa.

In addition, some of the information seems outdated: who wants to hear about failed democratic candidate Howard Dean’s use of the internet in Chapter 5 when they already know (or think they know) how current president Obama used it with overwhelming success? Some of the sites Gillmor mentions as resources are no longer around, or better versions have popped up in their place. Gillmor also makes the claim that “The Web can’t compete today—and may not compete in our lifetimes—with live television for big-event coverage,” (162) a statement that seems shaky in 2010.

Still, Gillmor acknowledges how difficult it is to predict the future of digital media communication, so he doesn’t try; some of his comments are prefaced with “as of this writing” to cover any confusion that might occur in later readings. He does say “Only one thing is certain: we’ll all be astounded by what’s to come,” with Moore’s law and Metcalf’s law as proof of this.

Gillmor synthesizes the lofty ideas of thinkers like Benkler, Von Hippel, and Chris Anderson into a message that is practical and easy to understand.  He teaches with actual examples instead of weighty theories in honest, conversational prose and humor (such as his snip on page 176: “be careful of satire; some people are just too dense to get it”).

However, I’m already familiar with these authors. We the Media would hold much more value if I were reading it in my first quarter of the MCDM program, but as a student nearing the end of my studies (while working at a web-based start-up), I find many of its points redundant.  The Benkler, Zittrain, Lessig and Von Hippel mentions have overtones of our Social Production class, while US Digital Media Law covered just about everything in chapter 10. Gillmor doesn’t teach anything new or present material in a different light.

All in all though, Gillmor does an excellent job of explaining technological concepts in terms the average person can understand. If I were working at a journalistic publication and was looking to convince my old-guard boss to let me start a blog, I might give her this book to read.

Reading Reflection #2

Christiansen and Bower wrote the article “Disruptive Technologies: Catching the Wave” in 1995, but their advice seems even more relevant (and easy) today with the popularity of social media. In order to take advantage of disruptive technology opportunities, they argue that companies need to:

1. determine which technologies have legitimate disruptive potential
2. figure out why this is so
3. locate the best market to initially roll out the disruptive technology
4. hire an outside company to develop the disruptive technology
5. keep the outside company separate

Andrea Gets Coffee

Done as part of the Multimedia Storytelling Saturday editing workshop.

Question #1

Winston states at the end of chapter 18 of Media, Technology and Society,

“There is also little to support the idea that the net will become a crucial method for selling goods and services. Every system for avoiding shopping from the mail-order catalogue to the cable television shopping channel has never done more than provide, albeit profitably, niche services. One of the sillier facets of Information Revolution rhetoric is the belief that technology is urgently required to help people avoid going shopping or traveling on business. People like shopping and traveling.”(p 335)

The success of Amazon.com and other online retailers have proven this statement to be overwhelmingly false. Does his inability to predict the future make you think less of his previous analysis? Do you see any personal biases (pro-travel/anti-shopping) on Winston’s account in this statement? Was this really a trend that even an educated academic could not predict?

Final Project Proposal

Thesis

Up until not too long ago, recipes were passed along orally from generation to generation, if they existed at all; many meals were prepared by taste, sight, and smell alone. Then, somewhere along the way, someone had the idea to record, collect, standardize and publish these recipes in mass-produced cookbooks. Suddenly, home cooks began relying less on what their mothers did in the kitchen and more on what Betty Crocker told them to do.

Preliminary research based on the article “Pluck a Flamingo” from the December 20, 2008 edition of The Economist shows that cookbooks have been in existence for thousands of years, but only popularly used by home cooks for the past 150 or so. Before the industrial revolution, cookbooks were primarily used by professional chefs who could understand their sometimes cryptic notations; measurements did not appear until the 1850’s. Cookbook styles vary by country, and differ according to popular trends or necessities of their era; for instance, cookbooks published during World War II reflect shortages and rationing.

The scholarly article “Culinary Tourism: An Exploratory Reading of Contemporary Representations of Cooking” further explores this claim. It states that cookbooks are works of social history, with their content mirroring the views of certain segments of society to the point where they may even define a woman’s role in her society. The article also states how attitudes towards cooking has changed over the past century, from the drudgery of the 1950’s to the modern idea of cooking as therapy– in uncertain times, the kitchen is warm and comforting. If social choices mirror technology, how are digital versions of cookbooks and recipes extensions of these phenomena?

“I am” Slideshow

I made it in iMovie and am noticing that each of the images is really pixelated. Any pointers for improvement (aside from never, ever using iMovie again)?