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Media Theory — Dan Pesta

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Media Theory — Dan PestaWell-nighWork Menu Dan Pesta Media and ArtsWell-nighWork Some of the written work for my Master's in Media Psychology.====================================================================================================================================================="Narrative Transportation and Empathy"Dan PestaABSTRACT Narrative transportation may increase empathy for the purpose of social transpiration and awareness.  The socially conscious, first-person online game SPENT (www.playspent.org) is a powerful tool in not only creating sensation of those in need, suffering from poverty and homelessness, but moreover in eliciting an empathic response from its participants.  Interspersed with facts and figures regarding poverty and homelessness, SPENT transports players into a narrative where every visualization must be weighed thoughtfully and every dollar counts and is counted.  In effect, SPENT gives participants a first-person wits unfortunately shared by increasingly than 43 million Americans. Keywords: narrative, empathy, narrative transportation, narrative paradigm“Narrative Transportation and Empathy”Narratives and stories have been told for month in one way or another.  The ways in which narratives are delivered can vary, though their purpose is clear.  Narrative persuasion wishes to convey information in order for the recipient to understand, feel, learn, grow, empathize, and so on.  Researchers like Jerome Bruner (1991) believe narrative is the very way we construct the reality virtually us.  In short, narratives take on aspects of their surrounding culture and therefore inform the ways in which people organize wits and memory construction of reality (Bruner, 1991).  Crucial to the visa of ‘narrative persuasion’ is the word:  Verisimilitude.  Unlike empirical truths, which may be proved using logic and scientific discoveries, narrative persuasion relies on verisimilitude, the visitation of stuff true and real.  Of course, narrative persuasion may come to the same conclusions as logic or empirical study; however the persuasion speciality is not dependent upon truth.  Rather perceived and unliable truth based on several aspects Robert Yale (2015) expounds upon in his video lecture on ‘Narrative Persuasion’.  Yale (2015), remoter explaining the work of Walter Fisher the father of ‘Narrative Paradigm’, explains individuals rationalize the truth of a narrative based on two components:  Fidelity and Coherence (2015).  Fidelity, does the story finger true, and coherence, does the story fit together cohesively.  When both fidelity and coherence are high, Yale (2015) says a story will pass the narrative rationality test and therefore be increasingly likely to influence beliefs and deportment (2015). Important to the present essay is the notion of ‘Narrative Transportation’.  A crucial mechanism of narrative persuasion is narrative transportation.  Green and Carpenter (2011) explain transportation as a state of stuff which impacts cognitive, emotional and mental imagery engagement (p. 115).  Transportation into story or narrative allows for participants to enter flipside world, either real or imagined.  SPENT is a socially-conscious interactive game created for the Urban Ministries of Durham, in North Carolina.  The game itself was created to raise sensation for those living in and trying to survive poverty and homelessness.  The game SPENT transports participants into a world where plane the most seemingly mundane visualization can create a scenario where you lose your job or your apartment, simply considering you do not have the resources.  The first-person wits of ‘playing’ SPENT offers insight into the life millions of Americans live on a day to day basis.  The present essay will explore the game SPENT through the 10 features of narrative as put withal by Jerome Bruner (1991).SPENT starts you off with the exposition indicating you’ve lost your job, and house.  You have come to a point where your savings are gone and you are lanugo to your last $1000.  You moreover have a child to consider.  The telescopic of the game is one month.  Can you make the correct decisions and survive the month?  The days of the month are noted withal the right side of the screen.  As a participant of the game SPENT, your wits can last anywhere from 2 minutes to 10 minutes to either make it through the month or run out of money.  The events of SPENT happen both in real time and over a month long period in gameplay which is demonstrative of ‘narrative diachronicity’, events occurring over time. SPENT deals out many aspects of particularity, which add to the sense of dread facing millions of Americans on a daily basis.  Dramatic events such as how to handle a tooth yearn with minimum resources, a car accident, paying this snout vs that bill, going to work or going to see your child’s play, picking insurance or going without, where to live:  rent vs. travel costs, and other such particular events create persuasion toward sensation during the narrative.  The first-person speciality to SPENT informs the participant, they are the hero of the story.  As the person living in this low-income reality you get a sense every visualization you make impacts your and your child’s very well-being.  You must place your weightier intentions forward if you and your child are to survive the month. Intentional state entailment informs participants there are deportment which must uncurl with unrepealable intentions.  However, as Bruner (1991) points out intention in narrative “never fully determine the undertow of events” (p. 7).  As one may find out when they play SPENT, your intention of making it through the month isn’t indicative of your reality of making it through the month.  On flipside note regarding intention, the makers of the game are thorough in their intention to show you firsthand what it’s like to make decisions of this nature.  So there are two sides of intentional state entailment happening here, one of the participant’s and one of the producers of the media. Hermeneutic composability, or a series of events which can be interpreted as a story, are evident in the continual happenings which must be dealt with in the game.  The subject matter of SPENT makes it difficult to not suspend disbelief, when the reality is the participant is sitting in front of a computer while perhaps someone just outside the window may be facing similar dilemmas.  The participant enters into an try-on with the media-maker in order to play and get a largest understanding of story.Canonicity and breach, in this instance are understood from the get-go.  Once a participant engages SPENT they are thwarted into a situation which might be considered a violate of the normal, but is a reality for so many.  You have lost your job, your house and are lanugo to your last $1000, what do you do?  The gamification of social scenarios such as poverty and homelessness are not completely lacking light-hearted decisions such as smoking or going out with friends.  However, the realistic effects of these decisions are felt and do not escape the perceived downward screw of gameplay. Anyone who’s had to make difficult choices such as those found in SPENT will immediately finger a sense of familiarity and referentiality. Planeif it doesn’t come lanugo to supplies or phone, rent or transportation for participants in the real world, SPENT does a fantastic job of relating difficult decisions to any participant’s life.  The narrative of SPENT feels real on a visceral level, there is an inescapable sadness twin the play of this game.  As a first-person experience, a participant need only click a few times into SPENT for the verisimilitude effect to take place and truly finger the narrative is real.  While the participant is surely playing a game, the fidelity of the situations and the coherence of the predetermined choices offered will requite any player a sense of reference to their own life.The genericness of the events in SPENT place this narrative squarely in the genres of drama, non-fiction, and realism.  Narratives are understood and well-set upon with regard to expectations of a given genre.  SPENT is realistic, dramatic, and representational of millions of Americans living at or unelevated the poverty level.  As such, a participant’s mindset may be informed by the notion of genre.  Picking between work and your child’s well-being isn’t comical, nor is losing your source of income and housing.  Again, stuff thwarted into these scenarios may have a visceral effect on participants, which on a subconscious level is once well-set upon by way of the genericness of the game.The narrative of SPENT supposes unrepealable societal norms, mainly if you work hard, you will live well.  This is a social norm which we are taught early in life.  The notion of nonflexible work stuff translated into living well is a social norm which simply isn’t the specimen for much of the United States population.  SPENT informs us as we play, there are no guarantees work will translate to positive outcomes.  Normativeness supposes a social norm which is foundational thrump-cap for the tenability of a given narrative.Context sensitivity and negotiability is closely related to transportation, wherein the participant of the game SPENT agrees to suspend their misdoubt and step into the shoes of low-income poverty stricken populations.  As SPENT is played, the reaction may be variegated for variegated people or variegated for the same person in variegated situations.  It is ultimately the understanding, history and culture we enter into the SPENT narrative which will ultimately inform how we interpret this narrative (Bruner, 1991).  This moreover may aid in the minutiae of empathy toward ‘those in need’ and could perhaps result in giving to the Urban Ministries of Durham, as there is a place to give, share, and spread the word. As with the rebuilding of temples on sacred ground, stories and narratives are built on the foundations of older stories.  The narrative accrual in SPENT is based on the continual story of resources, scarcity, and the have’s and have nots.  Within the narrative of SPENT are the cumulative effects of the very choices made throughout.  The outcome changes with each visualization made, as the next fork in the path is predicated on the visualization a user makes prior.  This powerfully builds the drama, conflict, and story within the game, remoter subtracting to the sense of realism.The gamification of social problems into a first-person wits builds not only an understanding of poverty and homelessness, but moreover a sense of empathy for those truly living the experience.  Regarding empathy, Green and Carpenter (2011) state, “narratives can help create empathy for marginalized individuals, or help encourage understanding between members of variegated social or ethnic groups” (p. 114).  In 2012, members of Congress were petitioned to take 10 minutes out of their day to play SPENT.  While poverty and homelessness will be with us for the foreseeable future, narratives such as SPENT indulge for a first-person understanding of the difficulties facing millions of Americans.  It is through this narrative the creators of SPENT hope to not only raise sensation of, and collect contributions to fight poverty and homelessness.  Also, to remoter nurture a sense of empathy for those unprotected in the socioeconomic situations.  As one is transported into this world, it’s nonflexible not to be impacted by this powerful media, and want to make a difference in the lives of those living SPENT in real life.REFERENCESBruner, J. (1991). The narrative construction of reality. Critical Inquiry 18(1). Retrieved from:  http://moodle2.fielding.edu/mod/folder/view.php?id=71403Green MC, Carpenter JM (2011) Transporting into narrative worlds. Scientific Study of Literature 1(1): 113–122.Yale, R.N. (2015). Narrative persuasion [Video File]. Retrieved from:   http://www.robertyale.com/narrative-persuasion/=====================================================================================================================================================Living in Digital TechnologyDigital technology is here to stay, and with every new device and update it becomes increasingly inextricable to our everyday life.  As we increasingly depend on these devices, the use of digital technology is waffly us mentally and physically, therefore we must wilt conscious creators and consumers of digital technology in order to thrive in an oncoming digitized society.  According to the website, www.internetlivestats.com, the number of internet users has increased tenfold from 1999 to 2013.  The first billion users mark was reached in 2005, the second billion in 2010 and the third billion in 2014.  While the first Internet users were tethered to their home and work computers, a comScore U.S. Mobile App Report says wangle via mobile devices now worth for the majority of Internet access.  A 2015 Pew research project states 92% of American adults have a lamina phone, and 68% of these adults have a smartphone.  Smartphone usage has unceasingly risen since their introduction into the market and global smartphone sales surpassed the sales figures for regular lamina phones in early 2013 (Svensson).  In his 2014 presentation given to the American Library Association, John McCullough, OCLC Product Manager for Discovery Services states, “In January 2014 the time of mobile wangle to the internet exceeded desktop use in the USA” (McCullough, 2014).  Thus as mobile wangle to the Internet increases, the time spent on the Internet continues to grow at a faster rate.  While the Internet began as a communications platform and tool for government and military communications then later, to connect institutions of higher education, its popularity seemed to seek a higher purpose.  The Internet history website, www.livinginternet.com, states in 1995 it was handed over from government operations to several self-sustaining civil institutions.  Shortly after, the worthiness to communicate and requite feedback with other users was widow to the mix.  Social media created an entity which now increasingly than ever, resembles what Marshall McLuhan expressed as a an electronic nervous system.  This global village made up of humans interconnected by social media unliable for ‘horizontal’ dissemination of data, news, and information in real time.  Thus, we see a lessening of the ‘top down’ structure of information dissemination known for centuries.  Statista.com shows social media applications and sites have grown steadily to roughly 78% of all online users.  One of the first social media sites, Six Degrees, was created in 1997.  It enabled users to upload a profile and connect with other users. Two years later blogging sites became popular, creating a increasingly recognizable social media we have today.  Here, we uncork to see the combination of online persona, self-publication, always-on and wired-in mentality, and a networked virtual-reality.  Thus, the outstart of social media to our existing digital media has voiceless the lines between self, communication, and technology as an informational tool.  Somewhere between the task-oriented Internet and creating a digital-narrative of ourselves, we lost the worthiness to both turn off our media and put lanugo our tool.  Psychologist Kimberly Young (2011) believes over the last decade, the concept of tendency unromantic to Internet and gaming usage has grown in visa as a legitimate clinical disorder requiring treatment.  Media theorist Douglas Rushkoff, in his speech for PSFK, insightfully suggests, “We’ve ended up in a digital universe where we alimony devices strapped to ourselves, vibrating to us whenever someone tweets well-nigh us or Facebook updates… there’s an email or SMS”(2013).  Thus we’ve unliable our personal time and sustentation to be at the whim of unmanaged digital technology, unchangingly on, ubiquitous.  Unmanaged digital technology has therefore redefined what it ways to be present.  Mindfulness is crucial.  If we’ve once crossed the threshold of permitting ourselves to be fond to our digital technology, withal with stuff so hands swayed by its unmanaged interruptions into our lives, how will we pearly when the technology begins to seamlessly incorporate itself into our lives and bodies?  Extrapolating McLuhan’s idea of an electronic nervous system, information can be seen as flipside skin of our human existence.  Lee Rainie (2016) once suggests Cloud Computing is the joint fifth lobe of our brain.  The oncoming Internet of Things offers unconfined advances in human and technological integration, but where there are unconfined advances, there are unconfined perils.  Data-capture, sensors, real-time feedback, permissive monitoring, and smart-connected-networked ‘everythings’ will have the capabilities to yo-yo humans and how we interact with ourselves, others, and our environment.  The opportunity to thrive with digital technology is evident.  However, one variable to remains as elusive as the meaning of life itself, and this variable is our own human nature.  While only time will tell for unrepealable the wordplay to many questions, increasingly research is needed.  Hence, in the meantime conscious consumption and megacosm of technology is imperative not only to understand the direction we’re heading as a people, but moreover to understand the ramifications of living within exponentially increasing developments in technology.REFERENCESSvensson, P. (2013, April 29. Smartphones now outsell ‘dumb’ phones. www.newshub.co.nz. Retrieved from: http://www.newshub.co.nz/technology/smartphones-now-outsell-dumb-phones-2013042912McCullough, J. WorldCat discovery services. Retrieved from: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MZk_Ufs2eOE Young, K. S.; Nabuco de Abreu, C., eds. (2011). Internet addiction, A handbook and guide to evaluation and treatment. Hoboken: John Wiley & Sons, Inc.Rushkoff, D. Present shock: when everything happens now. Retrieved from: https://vimeo.com/65904419Rainie, L. Operating in the age of unchangingly on media. Retrieved from: http://www.pewinternet.org/2016/10/13/operating-in-the-age-of-always-on-media/=====================================================================================================================================================Narrate or be Narrated!Recapturing Narrative Everything has a story and everyone’s got a story to tell.  From warmed-over tales of megacosm myths to the story of your favorite brand, each and every story has a linear and curated narrative which aids in the ‘selling’ of the story to believers.  These narratives can scale from the very story we sell of ourselves to ourselves, all the way to the story and popular narrative of a God or our universe.  At the personal level, the theory of narrative identity informs us we as individuals form an identity by integrating life experiences into an internalized, evolving story of the self, which provides us with a sense of unity and purpose in life.  On a larger scale, whichever narrative path we choose, we will often fill in the blanks or add our personal wits in order to finger a genuine connection to the narrative.  So long as our insertions maintain the continuity of the story, we have supported the narrative fractal.  Here’s where the story (or the narrative of narrative) gets fuzzy.  Truth is irrefutable, and while truth inevitably has a narrative, any given narrative does not always, inevitably tell the truth.  They are mutually sectional and most definitely subjective.  In terms of propaganda, a well-curated narrative sprinkled with the proper rhetoric can turn truth into lies and friends into foes.  With traditional power structures, information and liaison flowed downward in a linear fashion, a vertical dissemination.  Enter the digital age.  As the proliferation of variegated forms of liaison protract to rise (from person to person speech, smoke signals, and telegraph all the way through to pings, dings, SMS, and mass digital dissemination with the push of a button), our information can now be transmitted horizontally… replacing the archetype top-down, vertical dissemination.   Thus our liaison is pursuit suit, as all liaison is no increasingly than shit of information.  The path of liaison no longer has to follow a linear path; rather information and liaison now radiate from sources and are perpetuated by the supporters and believers of said information/communication/story/narrative.  In this day and age of always-ON media and digital social connectivity, the narrative (and not necessarily the truth) is often thoughtfully curated in support of the storytellers’ intent.  Just squint at us on a personal level, we’ve moved vastitude simply ‘keeping up appearances.’  We now curate our own story in the form of updates to text, pictures, locations, withal with likes and dislikes.  Regardless, with the recent emergence of horizontal dissemination of liaison and information withal with the limited topics of humans’ sustentation to requite in the spectrum, narratives now must compete for sustentation in an ever-shrinking spectrum of sustentation span.  This brings to mind the current social media problem with fake-news stories stuff as much a part of people’s information intake as a legitimate, truthful, well-done journalism piece.  Now add to the equation, our hyper-curated ‘Spheres of Influence’ on social media networks, it’s all too easy to perpetuate a narrative simply considering our friends, peers, or respected others believe it and pass it along.  Our story has wilt undivided in another.  When information and liaison followed a vertical path of dissemination, there may have been an editor, professor, doctor, librarian, or subject matter validity vicarial as a trusted gatekeeper between you and bad data, disinformation, or misinformation.  However, we have crossed a communications threshold where narrative is coming at us from every direction and competing ‘truths’ wrestle it out in the theater of the mind.  Truth is still not subjective, but it is rhadamanthine malleable based on where you source your information.  Now increasingly than ever, we must bring an era of mindfulness to the technologies we create and have wilt intertwined with.  We must not indulge narrative to wilt increasingly important than truth itself.  The first step in bringing well-nigh mindfulness is to wilt our own editors and fact-checkers.  We must move vastitude skimming and reactionary motivations to truly utilizing this unconfined technological information tool of ours, the Internet.  I fear if we don’t recapture our own narrative in the form of mindfulness and truth, we will fall for any others.’  In short, if we don’t narrate, we will be narrated. 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