In medias res: Semiology of Batman, economics of attention, hypodermic needles, magic bullets and more

So I've decided to headline these posts with interesting (to me) media-related content from around the web "In medias res". Not very original, I know, but "in the middle of things" seems appropriate.

• I came across the semiotics-centric site Semionaut via this post: "Semiotics and non-verbal communication". It looks to have a practitioner-oriented angle but they have some interesting analysis up.
• In other semiotics news check out this post on Arkham City art direction and semiotics from the site How Not to Suck at Game Design.

Following the semiotics goals I defined earlier, we will explore the complex network of sign language of AAA games, comic books, the Batman universe and related pop-culture, we will explore the narrative themes behind it all and we will examine how Rocksteady implemented said sign language using semiotic principles.

• I've come across what appears to be a blog for a graduate course in new media and an assignment centered on exploring new media via Marshall McLuhan.
• Some folks at the site Communication Steroids recently posted a podcast discussing the Attention Economy.
• Recently I've been delving into the literature on the political economy of communication, and that means I've been reading Dallas Smythe and Herbert Schiller. This blog post by Safiya Noble discusses the continued relevance of Herbert Schiller.

Schiller elaborates on the ways in which, "Corporate speech has become the dominant discourse...While the corporate voice booms across the land, individual expression, at best, trickles through tiny constricted public circuits. This has allowed the effective right to free speech to be transferred from individuals to billion dollar companies which, in effect, monopolize public communication (pg. 45)." Privatization, deregulation and the expansion of market relationships are cited by Schiller as the environment in which the national information infrastructure has been eroded (pg. 46).

• Tomi Ahonen, apparently the person who declared mobile technology the 7th mass medium (who knew?), has declared augmented reality the 8th mass media. The list of media, in order of appearance:

1st mass media PRINT - from 1400s (books, pamphlets, newspapers, magazines, billboards)

2nd mass media RECORDINGS - from 1890s (records, tapes, cartridges, videocassettes, CDs, DVDs)

3rd mass media CINEMA - from 1900s

4th mass media RADIO - from 1920s

5th mass media TELEVISION - from 1940s

6th mass media INTERNET - from 1992

7th mass media MOBILE - from 1998

8th mass media AUGMENTED REALITY - from 2010

• This New York Times article about the acquisition of Instagram by Facebook asks: With the advent  and adoption of smartphones, who needs the web?
• Henry Giroux wrote an op-ed for truthout about the war on youth wherein he borrows a phrase from Virilio: "the Suicidal State".
• The excellent media ecology blog Figure/Ground Communication has posted an interview with media ecologist (and coordinator of the upcoming MEA convention at Manhattan College) Thom Gencarelli. The interview follows Figure/Ground's recurring format of focusing on the interviewees academic background and thoughts on the tenure system.
• Blog Literary Theory and Anglo-American Culture has a post analyzing Chris Nolan's film The Prestige through a Baudrillardian lens.
• I came across this blog post of a video intercutting the poster's commentary with a video by Sut Jhally titled Deconstructing Dreamworlds (btw, Jhally and Mark Crispin Miller appear in Morgan Spurlock's newest documentary The Greatest Movie Ever Sold. It's worth a watch, and made me want to go to Sao Paulo).
• Sherry Turkle is quoted in this USA Today article that confirms: geek is officially chic. Which I guess means it is no longer cool.
• Finally, I noticed some mentions of old-school theories of media effects in a couple of recent articles. This piece at Arab Media & Society titled Technology Cannot a Revolution Make mentions the "magic bullet" theory in discussing how Western media researchers have analyzed the Arab Spring movements.

The return to the “magic bullet” theory has led many Arab and Western media scholars to focus on the study of the role of social media in developing popular movements. Little or no attention is paid to folk and traditional communication outlets such as Friday sermons, coffeehouse storytellers (“hakawati”), and mourning gatherings of women (“subhieh”). These face-to-face folk communication vehicles play an important role in developing the Arab public sphere as well as in introducing change.

And this piece about a new sex-advice show on MTV mentions the "hypodermic needle" theory:

When you talk about "young viewers" as helpless victims who are targeted by a message and instantly fall prey to it, you are positing a pre-World-War-II era mass communications theory known as the hypodermic model.

This model saw mass media as a giant hypodermic needle that "injected" messages into our brains. And no brains were more susceptible to the injections than those of children.