Sociology

As I reflect on how this documentary started and where it has ended up, I notice how much it has evolved. I have been writing up synopses and talking to a number of people about the project, and I realize that there is some confusion about the motivations and intentions of The Echo Chamber.

Is the film is going to criticize the politics of the selling the war to the American people and serve as a thinly-veiled attack on President Bush? Or is this a serious academic investigation of the downfalls of objective mainstream journalism?

ORIGINAL MOTIVATIONS

Addressing the market demand in the previous post, here is what I tentatively see as what The Echo Chamber can provide to the market:

* The Echo Chamber explores the sociology of the media and brings a deeper understanding to the media's role of creating meaning and shaping the cultural consciousness.
* Provides an opportunity to investigate the media bias culture wars in the context of the build-up to the war in Iraq.
* Can be used as an outreach tool for individuals to bridge the polarized culture gap -- Grievances with the mainstream media provides a common ground for conservatives and liberals to come together and have further political discussions that bring a deeper understanding to each other's perspectives.

indieWIRE's Eugene Hernandez subjectively lists the top 15 docs coming out of the International Documentary Filmfestival in Amsterdam.

Hernandez also excerpts Ally Derks, the IDFA festival director, pointing out how documentaries are picking up the slack of the failures of the mainstream media:

"It seems that the lack of adequate information in that land of infinite possibilities is taking its revenge. But filmmakers are no longer prepared to accept this." Continuing, she definitively, "The documentary is the supreme means of discussing, questioning and examining the world we live in."

I have been noticing that there are a number of articles questioning the relevance of network news since tonight is Tom Brokaw’s last broadcast as the NBC Nightly News anchor.

The Echo Chamber documentary focuses on the network news because of the influence that the media logic of the electronic medium of news has on the national political discourse...

Grievances with the mainstream media are often framed in terms of the supply rather than the demand. Most analyses focus either on the field of journalism, corporate ownership, commercialization or government regulation.

But what about our culture that demands to see mindless infotainment?

I would like The Echo Chamber documentary to provide a catalyst for the process of cultural evolution based upon the insights of the dynamic nature of our culture and various theories of human development.

The following sections explore the question of how ‘the public institution’ interacts with other institutional powers of influence...

I had a volunteer transcriber write in the following comment about my last e-mail message, "Kent, I hate to tell you, but if you are placing your confidence in facts clearly communicated in even the simplest terms, you are heading for a HUGE disappointment."

She’s right, and I’m hoping to make my film more than just a stream of facts. That doesn’t work. The presentation of the facts must be done in an emotionally satisfying way to be truly effective.

Barry Richard’s article is called "Emotional Deficit in Political Communication" and it gives insight as to how to the emotional nature of our popular culture has infiltrated our political discourse. (Political Communication, 21:339-352, 2004)

Here is a message I just sent out to my volunteers:

Greetings all,

I hope you're all taking some time to grieve this loss.

It has been such a heartbreaking week to see the exploitation of so-called moral values pardon an endless list of Bush's sins.

I thought I'd share some thoughts on the election, and try to frame current events in the context of what it means to be volunteering for this project.

I wish it didn't end up this way, but clearly The Echo Chamber is something that is needed now more than ever.

I hope that this project can be used a tool to help bring back rationality and critical thinking to this extremely irrational situation.