Through the prism of Western Print media, Media gatekeepership the practice of controlling the nature and content of information passed from ‘sender to receiver’- is seen to be an ever present influence on the views and values of society. The Agenda Setting theory of Media Influence is an important explanation of such immense power. In this theory, an audience is understood as Active- readily engaging and seeking out information mediated by their own reception contexts. However, though gatekeepers cannot tell this audience what exactly to think, they do hold immense power to control what to think about and there are of course innumerable examples throughout history of such awareness birthing persuasion. Through the lens of Western Print Media, the process of gatekeepship runs smoothly through traditional media channels, however, with a proliferation of new informational platforms in a digitised age, the relationship between gatekeeper and audience has been significantly scrambled. Moreover, the identity of the ‘gatekeeper’ is in a state of change, as technologies of extension not only multiply, but become more accessible to the everyday audience member. Now, the modern ‘gatekeeper’, or more aptly ‘gatecrasher’ need only an internet connection in a cafe instead of a multi media conglomerate

This reinvigorated process of ‘gatecrasheship’ was exemplified in the Arab Spring of late 2010-early 2011, as the plight of Mohamed Bouazizi , a young street vendor who self-immolated outside the Tunisian Governor’s office in Sidi Boiuzid gained global attention. As state run media gatekeepers ignored the tragedy, discontent in Sidi Bouzid was instead captured in anonymously posted Youtube videos, foreign news coverage and shared jokes about their ageing dictator over text. Soon Al Jazeera was running the content recorded and written by citizen activists, which shocked the world. If this platform had not existed, the information communicated to an international audience would have been filtered and shaped by corrupt state-aligned gatekeepers. Additionally, it is a useful comparison to contrast this global audience, informed and aware of the atrocities, to previous ones in the midst of war. Where the latter has no physical point of access on the ground in Iraq, Afghanistan, Somalia etc.-reliant upon content filtered and shaped by media bias, their 2011 counterparts not only had a point of access, but a point of access in unprivileged possession of the technology of extension of the Everyman: the smartphone. The ‘gatecrasher’ now only needed a wifi connection to exert as much influence in setting the international public agenda as the conventional print media ‘gatekeeper’. In this case, the proliferation, increased accessibility of technologies of extension scrambled the relationship between the conventional gatekeeper and their audience.

However, the reliability of the information disseminated by the gatecrasher is somewhat contentious. This was bought to light recently as the self professed ‘front page of the internet’, Reddit, wrongly identified missing Brown University student Sunil Tripathi as one of the perpetrators of the Boston bombings, hours after FBI photographs of the Tsarnaevs were released. The claims made it all the way to the forefront of CNN and Fox News’ broadcast of the event, reaching a world wide audience of millions. Of course not every viewer accepted the claim, but many took to social media to debate about the post, expressing outrage when the brothers were eventually identified. The process of Agenda Setting was successfully enacted, but certainly to the detriment of fact as well as the Tripathi family.

Print journalism has undoubtably progressed since William Randolf Hearst’s artful furnishing of news events in 1892 (famously cabling his man in Cuba “You furnish the pictures, I’ll furnish the War”), though content is inherently filtered through the biases particular to a medium supposed as ‘dead’. Today, audiences consume such media with the assumption that journalists working under a rigorous code of ethics are reporting content with the closest proximity fact. No such checks and balances exist for 2013’s responsible administrator, the renegade gatecrasher. Thus, not only is the relationship between gatekeeper and audience scrambled, so to is the relationship between information and fact.

As I keenly await my friends finishing exams, and with precious little episodes of Orange is The New Black left I recently turned my attention to a Skins retrospective.

In my experience, actually finding myself inside a Skins story line a few times was not quite as cool as 15 year old me would have liked it to be. In this way, I feel like the show is an accurate depiction of some of the scenarios facing young people today and that itself justly warrants a parental freakout. But the purpose of this post lies in exploring how wrong it was to fetishise and idealise stuff that is the reason being a teenager can be so scary and confusing at times.

Skins was one of the first things Girlfriend Magazine ever recognised as a ‘cult show’, thus at 14 there was nothing I wanted more than for my parents to let me stay up late and watch SBS like a pervert or a foreign movie fiend. My friends with more small l liberal parents would eagerly trade the box sets and crave the day we too could stumble upon some E at an abandoned mansion party and dance attractively to strobe lights in a misunderstood way.

Everyone always used to talk about how they wished they were Effy or Cassie or Naomi, godesses of underage drinking and three episode long lesbian awakenings and my hate fire of my parent’s conservative ways burned stronger- I hadn’t even been allowed to watch the OC at 11 for godsake!

So for a few years I attempted to console myself through listening to the dreamy theme song on repeat on my sick rectangular shuffle.

Now I’m having one of those horrible moments where you look at your parents and say, ‘thankyou you were right, I’ll do the exact same thing for my daughter one day.’

At 20 I’m revisiting this show and being absolutely flabbergasted by the behaviour of those who might belong in the modern day screeching loudly on train carriages about 5 Seconds of/to? Summer or moping about on the flinders st steps.

16 year olds should not be out at rave parties swapping googs and having awkward sexual encounters! These kids need structure! Extra curricular activities! Better role models!

My god. I’m so aware too that I’m adopting the tone of a concerned member of the public making a complaint to the school principal about students behaviour at the local fish and chip shop, but having witnessed how much these characters were idolised and fetishised it’s incredibly scary that people ever wished their lives were like skins.

I don’t think the creators of the show set out to cause any kind of moral panic ala The Tenant of Wildfell Hall circa 1856 (woah what a reference). It’s entertaining aesthetically, with fabulous production values and fairly good actors save for the mind bogglingly beautiful actresses who don’t seem to do much save for looking elfin and exhaling ciggarette smoke enigmatically. There have also been some incredible guest stars, particularly British comedians before they hit the big time like Bill Bailey and THE NEXT DOCTOR or more importantly to a PR student MALCOLM TUCKER as someone’s dad.

But the fact was, this show was the absolute epitome of coolness and emulating the behaviour of its angst ridden subjects represented a real goal for a girl of 15. I would be horrified if my little sister was exposed to this kind of hysteria in only a couple of years. At least One Direction are poster boys of carefully managed khaki sex appeal, I will give them that. And at least when a couple of them are doing weed in the back of a cab it promotes an awkward conversation between parents and little girls.

But think about a group of fictional teens with thick accents as the 2007 version of One Direction (they have a lot in common anyway I guess) and think about all the salacious stuff they got up to!

I guess the show was good in that it probably introduced certain social issues and adult themes to an audience earlier than they might have discovered it in real life. Story lines around addiction, eating disorders and sexual assault may have helped to make an audience more aware of the world and offered solace in representation for those already living with such problems. But the many conversations we used to have about wanting to be ‘like Cassie’ are coming back to me and making me feel quite unsettled. Cassie was a character living with an eating disorder, but to 15 year old girls she was an it girl and her problems just made her all the more misunderstood and in need of Sid to romantically save her from her demons.

Again, it is perhaps a testament to my exit from my teenage years or the weird experience of finding myself inside a Skins storyline a few times and not quite enjoying it as much as 15 year old me would have liked me to, but lord jesus my parents were right!

I can only hope that my little sister receives her teenage awakening from something I prudishly approve of ;).

 

 

 

In a teensy tiny digression…

I feel my relationship with Hannah Horvath from Girls is super indicative of my transition to maturity and fabulosity, but not in a good ‘wow its great to see real bodies on tv’ way.

At first, as a wide eyed young dryad with a carefully tailored kind of quirkiness erring more on the side of Kinki Gerlinki than the Flinders St steps I looked at Hannah as a shiny beacon of realness. I aspired to be like her, a funny obscure writer living in nyc with a buzz killer bff and a string of american apparel playsuits. I would internally dance each time she said or did something totes relatable or told a guy like it was. I admired her taste in equally quirky attractive sociopaths who treated her badly but never enough to warrant any quaint decisive action.

And, well Marnie was an absolute bore. She was too pretty and perfect and cruel to her loving boyfriend and so smug about having a real job at that curator place.

How things have changed. Now I think it must be Lena’s intention with this, but in the past two seasons I have found Hannah scenes absolutely unwatchable. I carefully time the movement of my vlc track so as to not miss any major plot points but this is hard as she is THE MAIN CHARACTER OF THE SHOW. I find she personifies everything I hate about being a mildly 20 year old girl with baggage, she lets her mental illness be her kitschy defining feature, in a horrible act of fetishizing it to make it appear simultaneously whimsical and ‘oh I’m so deep no one will be able to ever understand me’. Mental illness is a topic which should be dealt with in mainstream media, but the way Horvath fetishises it to make it kitschy unsettles me so much and forces a lot of parrelels between people I know (perhaps this is Lena’s intention, good job gal if this is what you are going for).

In the first season I loved how she was all ‘I struggle to make ends meet as I’m a writer who can still afford a macbook air’. Her parents were totally lame and cruel for cutting her off, and Marnie was super high and mighty about finances. Jessa was so cool and worldly too and I loved her hair. Today, I would be ashamed if I was 25 and still coasting off my parents and had no source of income in the event of a departure from being a struggling artist. This is probably the most reflective thing of my maturing over the past years and trying to complete uni and delve into the world of internships whilst still having money that exists. Marnie is a completely sympathetic character, because she was ambitious and tried to have it all together early and wasn’t rewarded for it later on. Plus each time I think of things to wear to work I try and dress as her. Jessa is frustratingly selfish and self involved, again too kitschy for school and unaware how her carefully tailored care free nature impacts adversely on others.

I guess I’ve gotten to know a few Jessas and Hannahs over the years, or watched people I know become them. In fact in real life it wasnt cute and HBOish at all to be like these ‘Girls’ as self involvement and a tolerance for sociopathic boyfriends looks good on no one, no matter how artfully tousled their hair is.

I think now, surely now, Lena is trying to position Hannah as an unsympathetic character. With her being kicked out of a funeral for requesting a publishing contact from her ex publisher’s grieving wife, her instant ‘but how does this affect my ebook’ reaction on the news of said publishers death and the incredibly disturbing scene when she tells Adam Caroline’s fake story about the disabled cousin… I feel surely the tides are turning against an affection for everyone’s fave gal in a mind blowingly unflattering play suit!

I think it’s definitely an interesting exercise to analyse my tv role models from age to age and write agro critiques about them when my attempts to duplicate them cause me to fail at life in a non kitschy way!

What a week of hectic newness, I loved it all.

My colleagues treated me like an actual human person, which I didn’t quite know what to make of at first having been at times treated as a non living faux desk plant at previous internships. I wasn’t just a person young enough to only recently get their braces off/bunsen burner licence, I was an actual member of staff which was just bewildering!

To have responsibilities, to really feel like if you didn’t come to work today some one would notice and the task you are specifically being assigned to do would not get done is also a crazy concept. Interns are sometimes involved alot more in the menial implementation jobs than the important ones, but the stuff I’m doing is actually of value and my task alone to do. If I didn’t come in to work “girl with the mousey brown hair number 1″‘s absence would actually be noted here, being more necessary to the general mis en scene of the office than the fly on the wall this time!

All those desk plant experiences were life affirming in their own way, but I like the version of self actualisation wayyy better at this job.

I can tell this job will challenge me and force me to learn important things about life and my reaction to certain situations. For example, stuffing up. No one is there really to police you and hold you accountable for taking shortcuts, it’s just you doing a disservice to future you who will have to pick up the pieces YOURself.

I found this this week as the institution I’m working at issued a press release about a smoke free policy they are launching on campus. What was a small tree falling in a forest with possibly little chance of people to hear it release, turned into a mass of media enquiries and opportunities. As a side note, how fabo that journalists are actually coming to us for stories, instead of spin doctors pestering journos on ‘how the feck did you get this’ numbers. Anyway, tasked with the role of monitoring the amount of media hits the story had received I’m sad to say I let a mid week stupor (bought on by waking up before sunrise and leaving calm, sterile office environment to tutor schreechy children) cloud my capacity to do the task well.

Oh well, I thought, I’m the intern and no one will notice. The fact was, this had a big flow on effect as those higher up in the institution requested figures of media exposure, on hearing that the comms work had done the trick. Having not compiled the hits well enough, my heart dropped as the comms director told me we couldn’t send the work that I’d done. But this was no all girls school attempt to haunt me forever and make me feel crappy on my third day, this was an impersonal mistake made in a professional setting which needed to be rectified to prevent a flow on crappy effect on others- a weird mix of sterile business things and consideration for other people.

So I sucked it up and fixed it without any excuses or lingering sense of ‘oh lord an ex journo from the London Mirror thinks I’m a twat’ because I think that’s what adults do!

But this account is feeling too smug and ‘I’m very blessed thank you Kabbalah God’ celeb tell all. I did some seriously lowly things which are more important to gush about in keeping with this blog.

I wore asics netburners with my work clothes on the train for fear of being late for work/suddenly having to compete in an 800m/steeple chase.

I became best friends with the receptionist over our mutual dislike of Schapelle Corby’s eye brows.

I wolfed down my hanaichi in my short lunch break, to the horror of fellow patrons in shock over the amount of fried chicken a girl in head to toe ASOS Daily Work Edit could ingest in 15 minutes.

And finally, most lowly…

I mistook a Media Academics name to be spelt Fred, when it was really Phred.

Stay tuned for more adventures from the flashy girl with the hanaichi stained pencil skirt.

 

After a saga Stephanie Meyer could not have even dreamt up, I have finally secured a fabulous internship at a place I love. My summer has been a smart casual hued haze of right brain/left brain qualifying questions, self conscious licking over my front teeth in the event of lipstick fails and careful analysis of the bridges of interviewer’s noses due to my total inability to maintain eye contact. However, through a fair bit of rejection and Thursday night bevs I am happy to have stuck it out and waited for the world to make sense in the form of a perfecto opportunity coming my way just when I thought I hadn’t even a hope of being any office’s lowly intern.

So, my lowly intern adventures will continue! My foray into an actual paying job will be documented here, hopefully with humour and vitality, a little bit of trepidation and a lot of plum lipstick. What i think is really key is appearing confident and assured, I am no longer a pimply 16 year old stamping envelopes at a publishing house after all. However menial/stressfully life affirming my work will be, every experience I have at this age is valuable ‘I told you so’ fodder for the fabulous Bobbi Fleckman incarnation of years to come.

Oh the things one must face in a field where sometimes real world experience is more valuable than contact hours.

Decked out in Jeffrey Campbells, a carefully sculpted donut bun and the constant sweaty palms of a life long over achiever, we media and comms interns have a lot more in common with the humble tradie than the heroines of our girlhood (for me, Bobbi Fleckman from Spinal Tap). Though King Gee might merely be a nickname for John Galliano to us, we put in more hard yakka in a real life environment than we probably ever thought we would after getting that idealised ATAR (note Jamie King wants to do my exact course).

If we are lucky, we are paid for our days work.

I don’t make an argument for hologram tote sporting asos nymphs suffering the slings and arrows of life financially more than people who really deserve our sympathy. I am merely saying that though we might be tasked with menial residual tasks appropriate for the lowliest and least qualified ‘practitioner’ of the office, sometimes we actually run media campaigns, get abused by a regional south australian radio personality, enjoy the cacophony of shrieks of a mainstream print journo pressed for time and perhaps soon a job….. we organise people, we ground creative people’s amazing ideas in reality and we act as intermediary punching bag between talent and media outlet.

Honestly, as an intern more appropriate office wear isn’t something funky/cue-esque from your Mum’s wardrobe (preferably cowl necked or with a pussy bow), it should be workman’s boots and high vis gear and perhaps ear muffs for the journos.

It’s a little unsettling how well it has been instilled within us that we are lucky to have a job, any job, regardless of how well we are treated there, or compensated for time which could be spent earning money that exists and could help set us up once we leave uni and are flummoxed by life’s harsh possibilities.

We have very low expectations, and sometimes these represent a major killer of ambition. Would Roxy Jascenko have taken a job reorganising the office alcohol supply as a minor or stamping envelopes for 8 hours? I’m not quite sure, at least it’s so difficult to see someone like that ever being the lowly intern with a run in their stockings.

I guess we are told to believe that Roxy did have to do crappy things to get to where she is today, and to be so grateful for even being bestowed the honour of stamping those envelopes or being abused by Wally from the Wyngeree Community Broadcast service for stealing him away from his commitment to quality agricultural journalism.

Lately, I’ve been thinking about all this a lot and I’ve gotten cocky.

I put forth this argument to myself, “well I’ve done media relations on two campaigns so far, and have gained an unprecedentedly thick skinned approach to liasing with regional journalists, surely I deserve better in my final year”…. and I usually sign off with something like “dahhhling” and then “btw fetch me a Jarrah underling” and then “christ, this chunky conceptual jewellery really isn’t that practical, I can’t feel my neck”.

But then I have the furry rug made up of my late pet polar bear pulled from under my JCs as I stare down the humbling, yet terrifying barrel of interning for a few more years and not getting paid to do what I want to do with my life, and sometimes not even getting sought after positions involving things like pay or a well loved familiar environment.

I think interning is one of the most potent of all white girl problems but at that same time, these girls aren’t just bobble heads with an obsession for fro yo. They are hopefully the future’s answer to Bobbi Fleckman, with high IQs, excellent ATARS and a bit of charm. I just wish we were taught to respect ourselves and our potentials a little more, so we don’t end up metaphorically settling with that high school boyfriend who wore socks with sandals on your one year anniversary.

It’s so easy to visualise the scenario I put forth as, “you guyssss, make me feel special… I’m a gen y which means I can’t do anything without validation or praise….I need money for my dip dye retouching”

We shouldn’t expect to be running Artist Relations for Polymer Records overnight, but we deserve to at least expect to be treated well in the first experiences of what our career will look like.

My notes from the lecture didn’t make too much sense, I just had ‘BE KEVIN BACON’- not too trivial since the strains of ‘Footloose’ could wake me from a coma and his last name is my favourite food-but not super helpful either.

But then I tracked back to my thinking about how this statement related to my future goals in PR. As PR practitioners it is our duty to be like Kevin Bacon, to be hubs of information and communication liaising with a myriad of contacts, our links in the system. The stereotypical representation of PR people as social denizens who throw alot of parties isn’t actually that far off, as we are charged with the responsibility of central schmoozer/liaser within networked systems.

That’s right, it is my raison de’tre to be the modern day version of Spinal Tap’s Bobbi Fleckman- think Fran Drescher in an Easton Pearson Moo Moo, a chunky bangle and a passion to make sure everyone there has enough Champers. The nasal voiced mover and shaker whom everyone feels comfortable enough to circulate around professionally.

These are my professional goals, and I think it is my passion which makes them noble.

However, starting out in the PR game means that it will take me a long time to reach the dizzying heights of Bobbi in her leopard skin Loubitans as a centre or hub in the system. But in the lecture we were told that big hubs can deteriorate and be replaced by new hubs, ie. how different search engines have become more popular over the years. Could this in turn mean that I have some hope in reaching my hub like goals?

We were also told that it no longer takes a big leap to get to these big hubs with less intermediaries to go through on the ‘Long Tail’. The democratised nature of the decentralised distributed network means that new nodes like me playing intern office dress up may flourish!