Carissa Corresponds · Thursday November 16, 2006
Carissa Wodehouse, freelance writer, email penpal, smart PDX person:
“So, let’s see, it’s the final words of the thesis that I think are a weakness because they are unclear, “to challenge the
hegemony of corporate media.” Realizing that you don’t want to get too specific and back yourself into a boring and obvious corner, still I think the word challenge could be refined.
“It may be too basic a question, and/or not appropriate to include in the thesis—I forget how to write the darn things—but my immediate unanswered question is why? Why challenge corporate media, why challenge hegemony, what is the outcome? To usurp, or just to supplement? I assume that to challenge means to dethrone mass media, and thus to create more outlets for information. But that’s because I’m a liberal little hipster kid in Portland who lives half my life online and trusts in website and blogs. I don’t know that everyone would understand hegemony of corporate media to be an inherently bad thing, or if they did I don’t know that they would deduce that blogs are relevant and reliable forms of communication. The thesis leaves me questioning first the extent to which you’re suggesting corporate media should be impacted by blogging, and then what the result will be (a vacuum? segregated micro media environments?), and how that will benefit or change the public access to information. “Challenge” doesn’t explain enough for me. Long, convoluted answer, Carissa.
“Also, I don’t immediately know what “the politics of blogging” refers to, and it doesn’t make me think of corporate media. I first thought of politics as bloggers vs. bloggers, or bloggers vs. readers.”
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