Science

I did what many graphic designers have probably done at one point or another: search the Internet for images and recontextualize them into something completely different.

I wanted to a nature picture that demonstrated characteristics of Fibonacci Sequences and the Golden Mean, and I found this amazing page by Dr Ron Knott with lots of great pictures and information.

I took his picture of Romanesque, and remixed it into my banner above. I'm going to contact him and see if it is okay to use it on my site.

I gained a lot of insight about the problems with American journalism from a lot of different expert perspectives throughout the production of The Echo Chamber documentary.

The media's objectivity standards limit the framing of issues to a very narrow spectrum of perspectives.

One way to overcome this limitation is for journalists to use much more sophisticated analytical techniques that have been developed by the Central Intelligence Agency. These techniques take a more scientific approach for weighing the available evidence against as set of possible explanations for the behavior and motivations of political leaders. These techniques provide very effective techniques for detecting political deception, and would be very beneficial investigative and analytical tool for journalism.

By combing this type of standardized analytical framework with the Internet, then it will be easier to harness the collective wisdom of a decentralized force of volunteer citizen journalists. By collaborating with these civically-engaged citizens, then the press should be able to challenge deceptive partisan framing and defy traditional media logic by investigating complex issues.

I have been struggling with how to incorporate the methodological flaws of the Media Research Center into my documentary film. For the first time, I have organized my thoughts as clearly and succinctly as I can in this blog post.

But the medium of web writing and the medium of film are completely different, and it will be very difficult to make the same caliber of an argument within The Echo Chamber documentary.

A writer has more freedom to use complex words and phrases that carry very specific meanings, and adding a hypertext link allows the reader to learn more about the difference between an inductive and hypothetico-deductive method of scientific inquiry.

The Media Research Center is the conservative watchdog group that is the most influential intellectual authority behind the claims that the media "slant reports in favor of the liberal position on issues."

While there may in fact be instances where the media’s coverage is tainted by a political bias, the standard of scientifically validating this causal path goes beyond simply collecting "a mountain of evidence."

The MRC claims to have proven the existence of liberal media bias through "sound scientific research," but yet their scientific methodology relies solely upon inductive method of investigation while never using a more comprehensive Hypothetico-Deductive Method of scientific inquiry.

I intend for my project to be soundly grounded in theory from the disciplines of sociology, psychology and mass communications.

The underlying theory that I am trying to apply is that fixed attitudes and beliefs can limit one’s perception of reality. Our attitudes and beliefs are influenced by our value system and sense of morality. Our value systems serve as the primary filter to how we see the world and what we perceive to be the "truth" as we understand it.

The project will be covering issues that are very emotionally charged, and it will inevitably stimulate emotional states of high passion and low logic. But at the same time it is difficult to make a credible argument to an opposing viewpoint by going outside the bounds of accepted academic discourse. The more that the film’s content is grounded in academic theory, then more persuasive and acceptable it will become.

Names are important because they carry meaning.

I named my production company "MetaThought Productions" after a textbook called "Tools of Critical Thinking: Metathoughts for Psychology" by Pepperdine University Professor David A. Levy.

My mission statement explains further:

Our mission at MetaThought Productions is to expand consciousness by exploring the limitations of our attitudes and beliefs. By "thinking about how we think," then we can gain the perspective to be able to break out of our dominant paradigms. We accomplish this by producing multimedia outreach tools for liberals and progressives that stimulate dialogue with conservatives. The Echo Chamber documentary intends to build understanding between the polarized ends of the political spectrum by providing an emotionally engaging catalyst for discussing grievances with the mainstream television news media.