A few months back now I rented the DVD of Manufacturing Consent, the documentary based on the classic book by Noam Chomsky and Edward S. Herman.

The production is pretty rough, but the substance is incredibly relevant even today. What I found most interesting about the film was how much of the “future of media” that was presented is now coming to fruition through blogs and internet-based activism. Anyone that’s read Jay Rosen’s PressThink blog probably won’t find a whole lot of new stuff here, but it’s still very good.

Chomsky, as always, is full of factoids and amazing examples that demonstrate the issues he sees in the media. But one quote really stood out to me. Unfortunately I can’t find an exact reference - but paraphrased, it went something like: history likes heroes - in history social movements are often attributed to individuals, but it is the social movements that make the individuals historically significant.

In other words, heroes are often born out of mass social movements, the heroes don’t create them - but our history presents things the other way around. Maybe if I get the DVD out again I can find the exact quote - I don’t think I’m doing it justice here (and if anyone knows the quote I’m referring too, please leave a comment)…

It’s already been linked to death - yes I’m late to the party. But this really is a must read for anyone working in social/participant/citizen media. gapingvoid: random notes on blogging. My faves:

16. The day you can write as compellingly and consistently as say, Kathy Sierra, Jeff Jarvis, Guy Kawasaki or Michael Arrington, will be the day I start taking your complaints of low traffic seriously.

I know what he means about Kathy and Jeff - I’ve not read enough of Guy and Michael to know.

20. Blogging will never be a mainstream activity so long as being able to write [A] well, [B] often and [C] about stuff THAT PEOPLE ACTUALLY CARE ABOUT remain the main barriers to entry.

23. Another way to know you’ve arrived: When you realize that every business relationship you’ve established in the last twelve months was a direct result of blogging.

Related to that latter point - I’m simply amazed at how much communication between musicians in the Sydney music scene is done via Myspace. If you don’t have a Myspace profile and you want to play, you still can, but it’s a lot easier if you’re on Myspace…

39. If a blog doesn’t allow comments, then yes, it’s still a blog. People who say otherwise are just getting in touch with their ‘Inner Idealistic Wanker’.

I so want to use that line in real life: “Inner Idealistic Wanker”. Love it!

Scott Rosenberg: Lessons from MySpace: Success is a bug:

Here we have the state of Web development today: Your site’s massive success gets treated as a bug by your server; and the feature your users love best is something your programmers forgot to block.

One of my favourite magazines is Dumbo Feather, but unfortunately the website for the mag has been a little bit of a disappointment given how amazing the mag is.

Well, as of Saturday, the site has been updated to be a blog - which seems to me to be the perfect tool for the job. I’m subscribed already and looking forward to being inspired…

P.S. A subscription for Christmas would be awesome

I decided to move my del.icio.us bookmarks to a more “business like” username. I exported from del.icio.us, then imported into the new username, but it marks everything as “not shared”, and there’s no “share all” function.

I suspect this is an anti-spam measure, but it was a real pain. Anyways, a bit of digging and I found this blog entry that contains a script that allows you to, albeit slowly, automate much of the process. A tip though - don’t open multiple tabs and run this script as del.icio.us might lock you out…

The Devoted Few recently finished their latest video-clip for their single, Don’t Listen to Us (which, incidentally, you can download from their website).

The clip captures moments from their recent touring and recording activities, and looks pretty cool. The band currently doesn’t have a label deal, despite getting high-rotation airplay on Triple J, and therefore they don’t have the budget to produce a video clip. (I still don’t get this: band that consistently gets good airplay and has done some amazing live dates supporting top-line acts like Eskimo Joe hasn’t received any bites from a major label? But I digress…)

So they turned to iMovie. Barry collated a bunch of footage captured on his personal digital video camera and pulled it into iMovie, then cut it to the track. The bridge section needed a little “something else”, so a friend helped them by pulling it into Final Cut Pro to do the 16 panel sequence that fills that spot. That’s the only sequence that wasn’t done on a basic G4 iBook and the free software that comes with it.

And the result is quite compelling. Sure, it doesn’t have fancy special effects, but it does capture the tone of the band, and is compelling enough to hold its own. Compelling enough for multiple spins on Rage, and hopefully jTV - Triple J’s digital TV channel (which also appears occasionally on free-to-air ABC).

So - let’s recap. They couldn’t get a label deal so released the single on the net and got high-rotation Triple J airplay. They didn’t have funding for a video clip, so they did it themselves using a video camcorder, an iBook (recently replaced in the Apple hardware lineup by the more powerful MacBook), and a bit of creativity - posted it on YouTube, and also had it played on free-to-air television.

As I understand it they are currently working out how they might fund their next long-player themselves also. Sure, it’s a lot of hard work. Sure, it would be nice to have the funding to get other people to do the job - more time to spend on creating music. But whereas these used to be barriers that couldn’t be overcome unless you had truckloads of cash, nowadays bands can do stuff on a shoestring and pull it off.

Anyways, enough philosophising on the power of digital and social media Give them a hand and go check out the clip, download the single, request it on Triple J’s Super Request and jTV.

Mickey D’s spends a couple of hundred thousand dollars to promote a campaign telling us to Make up your own mind about whether their food is ok for you or not.

I was at a seminar just before my holidays (which explains the lack of updates around here of late) and the MD for Clear Blue Day was there sharing some really useful tidbits. When discussion turned to viral marketing, he mentioned that they wondered “is it ‘make up your own mind’ or ‘make up your mind’? hmmm… I wonder if they’ve registered ‘makeupyourmind.com.au‘”.

They hadn’t… The result is a quick redirect to Fast Food Nation. Nice jujitsu move that one…

I’d love for Clear Blue Day to go one step further though. Put up a form where you can sign up to tell McDonalds that you would like to make up your own mind - that you’d like a tour of the facilities depicted in the ad and to ask questions on the way.

I wonder how many expressions of interest they’d get? Perhaps the PR agency for Fast Food Nation here in Oz would be interested in putting something together?

Bonus link: Toby has posted a review of Fast Food Nation.

MTV: Israelis, Lebanese Blog To Each Other As War Rages [via Doc Searls]

Both sides of the political fence often claim that the mainstream media misses their side of the story. During conflict we often hear from the political leadership, be it those involved in the conflict or those outside of it. And conflicts are often presented in black-and-white/with-us-or-against-us arguments.

I think the article Doc points to shows how people, having found a voice through weblogs, can bypass the media to some degree and demonstrate that there is an alternative to war.

EchoDitto on the Pew Report on Bloggers.

The full report is on my reading list for when I travel to WA in a week’s time, but Terrence’s overview is very useful. I particularly like this pullquote:

But the numbers have to be combined with common sense. Blogging requires internet access (79% of bloggers surveyed have broadband), access to a PC, enough knowledge to use both, and enough leisure time to read and write blog posts; all of which usually requires a certain degree of education and economic privilege. Put all of that together and you get a clearer picture of who’s being “democratized” and whose voices are being empowered.

Indeed…

Scott Rosenberg posts a thoughtful response to Jay Rosen’sNewassignment.net.