Gaming analysis

Introduction: I was looking through the key hole of a vast virtual world thriving on the passion, time and sheer energy of a huge community of gamers — people mostly aged 5-35 — as I played Tap Tap Revenge in class the other day. It felt like I had gone back to my teen days (when my reflexes on the badminton court were so much quicker). I was required to tap on the shinning balls rolling down the grids before they hit the base line, and in a matter of moments, was focusing on them intently as I used to focus on the shuttlecock. Was it good for the soul? I don’t know, but I know it was a good exercise for my mental reflexes. It did nothing for my physical reflexes though and that, to my mind, is the negative aspect of all “couch” games.

Educational value/learning principles for the millennium: There is a section of parents from the older generation who think video games turn children into more of couch potatoes than the “idiot box” already did, without teaching them anything valuable. But then, everything is not idiotic about television, right? Similarly, there are video games that help young people pick up good “learning principles” (Gee’s words) relevant to the 21st century which are not available in conventional classrooms. To my mind, one of these “learning principles” is handling the challenge of learning by competing with oneself in a game, rather than with peers in a classroom which can sometimes turn nasty and vitiate the education environment. And the right games can actually contribute to a child’s education process by promoting cognitive growth.

Parental supervision: As with television, it is a matter of discernment and discretion on the part of parents when letting their children play video games. Yes, a certain soft drink ad on television did result in a teen (in India) trying to emulate the free fall from a highrise, but so far, we haven’t heard of video games causing such a tragedy. The National Institute on Media and the Family, a conservative media watchdog group, in this year’s report gave parents an ‘Incomplete’ for not paying enough attention to ratings and failing to use parental controls built into game consoles. Citing excessive bloodshed and brutality, the NIMF red-flagged 10 violent games (already rated M for Mature) which parents should keep away from under-17 children. These games include Blitz: The League II, Dead Space and Fallout 3. On the other hand, the NIMF recommended several Teen-rated alternatives such as Guitar Hero World Tour, Rock Band 2 and Rock Revolution.

Gender: Even my mom, a homemaker in India, appreciates the affordances of such “newfangled” things. That brings us to gender. Some games are supposed to be more popular with males than with females, but then, maybe it’s too early to draw a conclusion on gender-specific preferences, tendencies and capabilities. As ceilings built on gender bias come crashing down every day, and more and more doors are unlocked for women, only time can tell if they prefer one kind of games over another, given the freedom to choose and the opportunity to hone their natural/inborn skills.

Competitiveness: There are games — like Boom Blocks — that involve more than one person. As I played this game with two partners last week, the competitive aspect of the game just blew me away. I was barely into the second game and still learning the ropes when I found myself tilting the remote to view the blocks from various angles to determine the most effective spot to strike, as if I were a fighter jet pilot! Yes, I did blast the pile to clinch the third game early, but I’m glad it was only a virtual target and not some civilian’s home in West Bank or Baghdad or Kabul. That’s what’s good about gaming: it caters to the competitive spirit and helps let off steam without doing any real damage.

Psychological impact: There is talk of violence in the virtual world and its effect on young or impressionable minds. I would say, shooter games act more as means to help purge the soul of pent up feelings in a harmless way than catalyze real-life shooting sprees. A case in point would be my husband’s friend Sho, an avid hunter in his early thirties. Not only did he go elk shooting in Cloudcroft every year in the past decade, but also built a formidable collection of designer knives, swords, guns and other “weapons of destruction” that he says are an expression of his “hunter-warrior” soul. So we were surprised to hear he was at home this last hunting season, and decided to go find out if all was right. There he was in his cubby hole, yelling: “I killed the dork!” The virtual enemy in the video game had replaced the elk, and saved the life of a hapless animal.

Virtual identity: Gee’s comments on video game players taking on virtual identities really struck home. Games like Destroy All Humans, Medal of Honor and Fable (which have been around for quite a while), allow the players’ imagination to run riot as they portray fantastic roles such as that of an alien out to destroy humankind, or an American soldier storming foreign shores, or a character in a medieval adventure determined (by the player) on a scale of good to evil (with shades of grey thrown inbetween). Surprisingly, our friend Sho who sounds so jingoistic otherwise (and takes pride in his shooting and martial arts skills), says his conscience refuses to let him “degenerate” into 100 percent evil; such is his moral dilemma! So it seems that some video games can serve as mirrors of the soul and bring issues of the sub-conscience to the surface. That is, they help bring out the “real identity” or characteristics of a person through the filter of virtual choices.

Virtual high: Some of these games do not let you lose... they are only about winning! It could be the virtual high of victory for someone who has missed that experience in real life. Who knows, it could also be a potential therapy/cure for depression and tendency to diffidence, replacing prescription drugs!

Virtual power: This is an aspect of games involving simulated characters interacting in life-like backdrops. While some of us get creeped out when a simulated character dies or commits suicide because of a decision we made, others are delighted, perhaps due to a subconscious feeling of empowerment. For a taste of this phenomenon of virtual empowerment, I decided to play Indigo Prophesy. In this game, an apparently decent citizen (Lucas) commits a murder in a public restroom. Then he tries to escape and from this juncture onward, the player of the game is in charge of Lucas’ movements, determining his fate through her or his decisions, quick thinking or the lack of it, and dexterity with the hand-held device that is used to execute/coordinate the movements. The goal is to unravel a secret that is the key to a murder prophesy. To make an understatement, it is not easy to reach that final sequence. Before starting off with the game, I learned its ropes with the help of a fairly easy-to-follow tutorial. I was familiarized with all kinds of dangers that Lucas would face (thanks to my decisions) and was told that to play successfully, I needed a cool head supported by good reflexes. Equally important, that my actions would control the psychological state of Lucas, thus influencing his decisions.

My “movie” experience: The makers of Indigo Prophesy call it a “movie.” The visual and aural rhetoric of the video game, combined with a story or narrative that is partly scripted by the player (since her/his choices alter the course of Lucas’ journey), give it the characteristics of cinema. As with the setting of any Hollywood thriller, the carefully crafted background of the game comes complete with flakes of snow descending on the dark, eerie streets as the killer is on the run. There are cops waiting at every turn and I must successfully dodge them by making the right decisions or Lucas will be doomed. With every subsequent level, it becomes more and more difficult to save Lucas, and even before I know it, I am under the skin of the killer. I want to save him, or rather myself, as I have now become one with this computer-generated character, thinking and feeling on his behalf. I realize, it is this identification with the protagonist of the “movie” that makes a player breathe real-life attributes into a virtual character. Also, as the game progresses and the player gets drawn in further, the “compulsion” generated by the narrative to save Lucas helps sharpen mental and physical (limited to the fingers) reflexes. Bonus points are gained with successful completion of levels and a certain number of points allow the player to “unlock” the doors to advanced sequences. How far did I reach? Not far really. In the hour and a half that I spent with it (including tutorial time), I (now that I’m Lucas!) managed to give the slip to security at the venue of crime and dashed out the exit, but then kept wandering the streets too long and got nabbed by a policeman on patrol. So I didn’t really have the chance to experience things like “the consequences of my decisions” on Lucas’ psyche, or fully explore the world of dark forces where “anything can happen.”

The addiction factor: I have been sucked in. It is now a challenge to me. I want to go back to the game, do what I should have done but did not (that is, scanned the road better to find an escape route before the cop got me), and push my way toward the illusive secret. This is how video games get a player hooked, making the hours fly. I am told it takes at least 10 hours to reach the final turn of Indigo Prophesy. That makes it worth its price tag!

The time factor: A news report from Sweden, dated November 17, 2008, said a 15-year-old boy collapsed and went into convulsions the day before, after playing World of Warcraft for 20 hours straight. A new version of the game was released in Sweden the second week of November. This is what The Local reported (online):

…At around 2:00pm on Sunday, the boy had what appeared to be an epileptic seizure. “We were terrified and called rescue services,” said the father. At the hospital, doctors said the boy’s bodily systems had been thrown off by a combination of sleep deprivation, lack of food, and too long a stretch of concentrated game playing. While the boy is expected to make a full recovery, his father said he plans on limiting the amount of time his son is allowed to play computer games. He has taken it upon himself to warn parents of the other boys about the dangers of extended game playing…

Emilie Backlund, official with the Game Over treatment centre in Lincoping in central Sweden, told the Svenska Dagbladet (SvD) newspaper she has seen a steady rise in computer game addiction, with most cases stemming from those playing online fantasy games such as World of Warcraft and Counter Strike. “And it’s not only a problem for young people. Adults have also contacted us and it really doesn’t matter how old you are,” Backlund told SvD. This seems to be one of the new problems of the 21^st century that needs to be addressed, in developed as well as developing countries.

Closing comments: Like everything else in life, video games, too, are good for the mind and soul, if played in moderation. I intend to devote a reasonable part of my winter break to try and crack the secret of Indigo Prophesy and divide the rest of my time to “physical” sports and sleep. Thankfully, I learned the lesson second-hand from the example of a gaming-addict friend whose wife divorced him not too long ago.

Political rhetoric through multimedia

To be more specific, I will focus on the way multiple forms of the new media were used by the Dems and the Repubs during the 2008 election campaign. While Obama was considered more new media savvy and therefore, fit for a leadership role in the New Age, McCain's apparent handicap in this area raised questions about his eligibility. Obama used the Net as a campaign machine and not just an ATM. He unleashed a barrage of multimedia campaign material: a dedicated blog, an Ipod application, a web site, a Facebook profile, and several paid ads on television including the now famous multimillion-dollar, half-hour "infomercial" on three major television channels plus cable networks on October 29 at prime time. All this was in addition to traditional/old forms of campaigning. On the other hand, McCain set up a web site, and showed up on QVC with Ben Affleck, (said that was all he could afford) and Saturday Night Live. Obama showed up briefly on Saturday Night Live too, and Sarah Palin gave a short interview. Palin and Joe Biden also had their web sites. Clearly, McCain was depending more on old modes of rhetoric (town hall meetings, much in the Athenian way) to convey his ethos and appeal to the audience's pathos. Apart from this, both the presidential candidates used video biographies at their respective conventions and had large screens at the back of the stage with images which were meant to enhance the effect of their orations.

I will be talking about the visual, aural and written rhetoric conveyed by the candidates through multimedia and their effectiveness/success or otherwise in the light of ethos, pathos and logos.

Audio presentation ideas

1. After the recent gas price hike, the number of Las Cruceans who have taken to biking to work and other places have gone up considerably, says the manager of a city bike store. His account is interesting, and he's a good speaker too. It should be a cute piece with his quotes and ambient sounds from his store, plus bites from a few customers. Other sounds may be added.

2. We have a ceramic artist in town who learned her art from a reclusive pottery exponent in White Oaks. Their works are really beautiful and each piece is unique. Unfortunately, hand-crafted artwork is way too expensive for the ordinary buyer who has a cheap alternative in made-in-China, albeit run-of-the-mill, stuff. The city-based artist may be interviewed on her experience in ceramics and the reason why her exclusive art has not become a vocation. The downtown museum may be the apt interview venue. Other sounds may be added.

3. An avid Lakers fan, who's also a die-hard Obama supporter, watches the two together on his humongous television screen whenever they are on air at the same time. He simply cannot sacrifice one for the other. And he records them both for repeated viewing at a later time. When he talks about the two things close to his heart, he's hilariously serious. Of course he doesn't realize that. Sound clips from his recorded programs may be part of the background score. Other sounds may be added.

20 stories and more

What I like most about these narratives is, they are laced with the charm of fiction in their telling, even without being fictitious. The audio stories sound just as good as any short story would read, by performing basically the same functions such as etching characters (Penguin, Mary Poppins or Batman) and evoking scenes in the mind's eye. The background score, selected to match with the settings, moods and tones of the stories (comic or serious), sometimes doubles up as special effects (for instance, the sharp cling of the manual type writer in David Sedaris' narrative about a man talking on his cell phone while sitting on an airport toilet). In story number 17, narrator Richard Carey provides the special effects himself by vocalizing the sounds of a swamp: frogs, crickets et al.

Sometimes, the ambient sound is made of natural or actual everyday noises of a milieu — lashing waves and screeching gulls at Nantucket or cadets in a barrack or machinery in a factory — and sometimes, it is the sound of silence that impels you to converge your attention to the spoken word. Sometimes again, music is used as an interlude (like the comic Shakespearean interlude) to fill deliberate gaps between the spoken lines, to provide relief as well as to give the listener the chance to absorb and assimilate what (s)he has just heard. Such rhetorical tactics may not always register in the conscious mind, but they do work on the subconscious, quietly translocating you to the realm of the story. The interactive conversations among the interviewers and their interviewees, with their lively back-and-forth movement, pitch the narratives at an easily accessible and relatable frequency.

What contributes largely to the enjoyment is the fact that the listener — to an extent guided by the interjected comments of Ira Glass — identifies with some of the thoughts, feelings and experiences of the protagonists of the real-life stories. When Glass breaks the flow of a narrative with his remark, it is not to show his authority/control over the proceedings but to make it lucid for the listener. With his quick, crisp style of delivery, he brings you to the point right away (given the time constraints of the air slot) while at the same time picking his words to render the narrative in a humane, "it-happens-to-the-best-of-us" light so that we may share a laugh without being judgemental.

In A Little Bit of Knowledge, electrician Bob Berenz's brush with Einstein and Newton is not just hilarious but also a study of the whys and hows of the human psyche. It is by adding this depth to his narrative that the narrator, a journalist, manages to sustain the listener's interest for 16 and a half minutes in a man who has been summarily dissed by a Los Alamos scientist.

Berenz is one of several people featured in this hour-long episode which, like classical Greek theatre, is divided into Prologue and Acts I through IV, with the last Act acting as the denouement as it were. Though the Acts here deal with independent stories, they all work towards the same theme, making it a unified whole with the establishment of the idea that a little knowledge can be an entertaining thing at best, and embarrassing at worst. Every narrator has her/his own style of delivery, which brings variety to the listening experience. Remarkable among them is Dan Savage, who relates his six-year-old son's take on having two dads, homosexuality and marriage. The pauses and emphases on significant/strategic words or phrases again, have a rhetorical purpose.

While introducing the concept underlying the imaginary magazine, Modern Jackass, Glass uses the metaphor of a little-knowing person using a tiny bit of pigment to colour an entire canvass. This aural input triggers the mind visually the same way a bunch of written words would have. A dash of cynicism, a dollop of humor, and discreet use of light-footed music comprising sounds from different part of the world make it a well-rounded presentation. In fact, the use of background music is comparable to the Greek chorus sometimes, offering the audience the cue to react and also subtly reassuring them about the timeliness/appropriateness of the reaction. This is in sharp contrast to the crude use of pre-recorded laughter in some comedy shows we often see on television.

Audio clips

I listened to three of them: Voices in the Sea, The Whalesong Project and Singing Lake. All three were amazing, with just one difference. While the first offered the audio along with a video clip as well, making it a well-rounded experience — as if taking me out to the ocean and giving me a real feel of life in the deep — the other two relied on just the audio clips accompanied by static pictures. No doubt the experience was different, but when you are forced to just listen, and not have your attention diverted to visuals, it turns out to be a different story altogether. Much of the picturization happens in the mind, fired by the natural, undoctored sounds, in these cases by a lakeside in France and in the Pacific, off the coast of Hawaii.
It was Lac de Pierre Percée on January 16, 2006. The aural experience begins with frost falling on the vegetation accompanied by birds in the distance. Brief percussive sounds tell you that ice has begun its work under the first sunrays. Then it starts to crackle and the sounds become intense. Finally, ice breaks everywhere, and the lake seems to be singing. The wonderful acoustic phenomenon was captured by Marc Namblard, sound artist and naturalist living in the northeast of France.
On the other hand, the whale vocalizations in Voices in the Sea come with spectograms and short interviews with scientists, making it an educative experience. The Whalewsong tells you that the US Navy has agreed to restict loud sonar to minimize trauma to the Humpback whale. While muti-modal presentations can capture life the way it is, using fewer modes has its beauty and advantages too. It helps converge your attention to a single or few areas, and guides you deeper into the experience while opening up new worlds within it.

Blogs and politics/civic discourse

When the September 11 attack was described as a "historical fraud" by a section of bloggers and netizens, it showed how a section of self-styled political and "investigative" bloggers were using the cyber space to spread their alternative or anti-establishment views. These bloggers say they "turned themselves into the 9/11 Truth Movement"; their views would most probably have been rejected by editors of print and TV media and never been spread around, if not for the mode of blogging.


The blogosphere is considered the only independent medium by people who believe that traditional journalists are "sold out" for corruption or state and military agencies. These people want to establish the concept of global free press. This concept, like any other, comes with both pros and cons. While on the one hand it gives people a glimpse into incidents that are overlooked by the mainstream media, like the protests at the recent Republican convention in St Paul and the arrrest of Amy Goodman, on the other, efforts like the "9/11 Truth Movement" may not be acceptable to many.

Thus, on the flip side, tons of rumors and blatant lies get circulated via blogs. Journalistic standards do not officially apply to those who call themselves independent cyber journalists and it is easy for them to push their agenda online. Therefore, while blogging offers the opportunity to hold a global conversation without impediments like censure or editing — and in that sense, it is a wonderful mode of civic discourse — those participating Weblogging should use their judgement when absorbing blog material. Statements floated through blogs need to be checked for factual accuracy and ideas that are potentially harmful/dangerous to society need to be discarded.

Blogging and the community

For starters, I'm thrilled to death that with this new mode of communication called blogging, I do not have to deal with lost letters, lost calls, or even lost e-mails. True, with "infinite" storage space offered by Yahoo, Gmail and Hotmail these days, messages seldom bounce back; but then, an over-active spam filter may still decide to screen out your laboriously typed mail. So far, none of my blog postings have been lost, and I also get the chance to correct typos which does not involve wasting paper or having to write the entire note again!

On a more serious note, I list below the major aspects/influences of blogging that I have noticed in our ways of communicating and creating/participating in the community.

1. Global connectedness: Blogs enable us to reach out to people we do not know, sometimes in places as alien as Timbuktu. Not only does this phenomenon help create an online community of people that may never have known about each other otherwise (and may never actually see each other ever), but it also opens our minds and hearts to opinions that are induced, shaped and coloured by exotic, unique and potentially educative cultures, civilizations or milieus. Some of us may have had reservations initially about communicating or exchanging ideas with strangers, but since we started attending this multi-media class, and after reading some of the listed blogs, even an introvert and private person like yours truly has gotten hooked to blogging!

2. Speed: It is a key factor in facilitating global conversation. What took months and years earlier, can be achieved in a matter of minutes or hours now through the Internet.

3. Uncensored discourse: Personal or independent Webcasting offers a great platform for global discourse on various issues. While a newspaper blog site may edit out your "politically incorrect" or otherwise disagreeable posting, a personal Weblog can reach out to everyone. It can serve as the voice of conscience, garnering support for, or opinion against, issues of local, national and international concern. The zillion web postings on global warming, Iraq and Tibet are cases in point.

4. Alternative journalism: As an extension of the above-mentioned idea, bloggers can practice alternative journalism by reporting raw feed on Weblog or expressing unedited and out-of-the-trench points of view with the help of live video and Web cam. When individuals become publishers in the free cyber world, they can write without the restrictions and constraints of institutionalized media or the establishment.

5. Serving the community: Weblogs are a great place for those looking at posting personal profiles for public viewing. Thus, it could become a dating service, as Paul Andrews points out, which may be considered yet another form of community service!

6. Serving academic purposes: Our interactions with instructors and fellow students through blogspot.com postings prove that blogging can be a highly convenient, New Age teaching tool. It is an engaging way to teach a class while simultaneously demonstrating the use of a new mode of communication. This is where theory and practice converge.

PS to blogging rhetoric

Just wanted to add, if you violate the (unwritten) blogging traffic rules, you may end up being evicted from Blogosphere by the blog cops!

Blogging rhetoric

The very act of reaching out, or communicating with another individual, whether across the table in a room or across the globe through the Interact, involves a high degree of reponsibility. That is, we are responsible for the content, style and import and partly, for the possible interpretations, of the message/text which we send out. Since blogging these days has attained the level of a nanopublishing revolution, and the process of "filtering" enables you to offer access to potentially infinite sources of information or "knowledge", it is important not only to retain our credibility as blog writers, but also use the medium of language responsibly (I'm not sure if it's possible to blog in any language other than English as of this moment). That is where the issue of rhetoric in blogging comes in.
We post blogs for various purposes: share a personal experience, tell a story or float a political agenda. It could be for creative writing, technical writing, historical documentation, children's reading, or just to express a thought or reflect on something (a movie, a news event or a work of art). It could also be for the purpose of selling a consumer item, and that is where we step into the fast evolving domain of Weblog advertizing. Using photographs to illustrate/back up one's blog is part of rhetoric too.
Since, what's posted on the Weblog is open and accesible to millions around the world, including children sometimes, it is imperative to choose our words and visuals reponsibly. This involves blogging ethics. When posting an original work, a blogger is expected to choose her/his writing style to best suit the purpose, but in the event of drawing from other people's works, (s)he is expected to be honest and transparent about it. While pithy words, smart headlines, puns (as long as they don't have dirty connotations), contemporary jargon and tools of rhetoric such as metaphors, antithesis and other figures of speech are welcome, terms and phrases that may be offensive to groups or communities or unsuitable for children are not. That is, a blogger needs to maintain a modicum of decency. In our comments on other people's writing or on national and international issues, we are not expected to be nasty and when we use everyday parlance, we should know where to draw the line.
Weblogs are "link-driven" as opposed to the "ink-driven" pages of a conventional book but still, we have the software available to make words stand out by using the boldface or italicizing them. All this is just a matter of a mouse-click and contributes to visual rhetric.

For Jen (scary 2)

Jen,

I do absolutely feel the new media come with the "scary" aspect, along with some many other new things. But I suppose it's a good scare, since it forces people to think harder on their feet, or their finger tips, as the case may be, and prepares them better for extempore discourse. It helps whet the brain, I would say. Also, I believe it's a matter of "getting used to." We have been used to the laid back style of old media such as print. Even in a television interview, which is usually pre-recorded, we have the the time to ponder over our response after getting a hold of the questions beforehand. That's how most image-conscious celebrities work. But in today's "instantaneous" scenario, people are actually taking classes or grooming themselves to think fast, on the spot, like beauty pageant paticipants in that decisive final round. I think it's a very good thing, as it also helps bring out spontaneous, undoctored, and honest thoughts.

Moushumi

New media

Definition:

In a limited sense, "new media" means the information and communication technologies that emerged in the late 20th century — digital and computerized — that are capable of reaching out to all parts of the globe at once by setting up an instantneous audio-visual network. However, in a more comprehensive sense, "new media" today would utilize all available modes of communication, new as well old (print, radio and television), as required (depending on the subject matter), to achieve the best effect and maximum reach.

For Jen

Jen,

I thought about the word "scary" that you used to describe how one might feel while shaping a discourse with other people. Obviously, this is an extempore activity during which one does not have total control over what is being delivered. It reminds me of the time when a McCain spokesman was asked by a CNN reporter if Sarah Palin had any overseas experience in diplomacy. The guy kept repeating that Obama did not have any, obviously avoiding a direct answer. The reporter kept repeating her question, and the spokesperson kept skirting the bush. Eventually, the exaspeated reporter said: "OK, I give it to you baby!" This was a classic "scary" situation for the spokesman which he would have given anything to avoid. He had simply not come to the interview prepared with an answer to this particular query! But, on the other side of the table, and the TV screen, the reporter and this viewer had a big laugh, at the cost of the unprepared spokesperson. I wonder if he still has his job! There is both the positive and the negative side to this situation, depending which side you are on. As a viewer of the live telecast, I thoroughly enjoyed watching the truth (about Palin) spill out through the spokesman's unpreparedness. Maybe that's the reason why Palin is not allowed to give any one-on-one or live interviews to the press (she may only deliver prepared speeches).

Moushumi

Modes and media

I would like to add to Gunter Kress' comment on fixed and variable entry points and reading paths in a book page and a web page or CD-ROM, that while in a book/novel, it is true that things don't make sense if you don't follow the prescribed/conventional left-to-right path, in a newspaper page or web site, you are free to determine the order of reading, or not reading for that matter.

As a journalist, what I have been practising for a decade and a half — even without studying the theory behind it — is the best possible use of modes of communication available to the print medium. My experience in writing news and feature reports, designing and laying out pages on Quark and using Adobe Photoshop to deal with photographs and graphics encompass the subject of multi-modal communication.

The other day, a classmate asked if Hillary Clinton's speech at the Democratic convention was just a speech or a production. The question reminded me of the many times I had to file a report or design a page to mount a "production" of a news event. It was the print version of the same effort by an audio-visual medium. If the news channel repeatedly focussed on Michelle Obama's expressions and reactions to achieve a certain purpose, then I had to incorporate pictures of certain people at a given event for a similar effect.

While the newscaster uses speech material and image material to shape news during a live telecast, a print reporter or editor picks and chooses the written word to convey the meaning (s)he intends (which may not always be the same as "uncolored" facts). The only difference is, a newspaper cannot not serve news piping hot, the moment it happens. Serving it the next morning takes away some of the heat of the moment. That's a limitation of the print medium.

Talking of limitations of modes of communication, the audio-visual medium, while serving news live, does not alway have control over the content. This could be both for good or bad, as it offers you the chance to see uncensored news. A print report, on the other hand, allows time for reflection on the delivery of news. Also, the audio-visual medium can engage the viewer on an interactive platform by taking calls or holding a dialogue on the web page. But a newspaper/magazine can only offer space for letters to the editor in subsequent editions.

Multiliteracies

My thoughts on the subject of multiliteracies after reading Cope, Kalantzis and the New London Group:

The story of the English language pertaining to the group of New Londoners sounded familiar to one who has witnessed the story of the English language in India. As a print journalist for 15 years now, with a Master's Degree in English, one has seen the changes that English has undergone in both the media and academic worlds in India.
After two hundred years of colonization, English was was, but obviously, the official language of a country that had scores of native languages and dialects. Even while the British were still ruling the Indian subcontinent, their language started evolving, incorporating native Indian words that made their way into the Oxford English Dictionary (for example 'bandobast', meaning preparation by the authorities before a political rally, or a public event). Thus, the English language (that is, Queen's English) evolved as it met the diverse regional cultures and languages of India.
The huge number of Indian words in the Oxford English Dictionary is a salute to the phenomenon of evolution of the language. Then came globalization, with the opening of the Indian economy to the world,, and the Indian version of British English came under the influence of American English. As the US started outsourcing labor to India, a new class of workers at multi-national companies were groomed in "American English", leading to a second phase of hybridity of the language. This second phase is ongoing.
In the given context, the concept of democratic pluralism is particularly relevant to India. And it is imperative to ensure that differences in culture, language and gender do not hinder the purpose of education itself. While there are concerns that the canon of great literature needs to be preserved, even in England, the English language is undergoing an evolution, thanks to global connectedness.

Reaching out

Hello Robin, Julie,

Here goes my blog ID: moushumibiswas@blogspot.com. Happy blogging this semester. Cheers!

Moushumi