Does Media affect how we see the world?
A joint venture of Science & Cocktails and CPH:DOX presents a transdisciplinary evening of science with media/entertainment researcher Johanna Blakley, the screening of the documentary INFORMATION SKIES and the party concert of Trypical Cumbia. All this blended with cloud-like flavours of homemade cocktail recipes.
Programme for the evening:
18:30 Doors open for cocktails
19:10 INFORMATION SKIES
20:00 Media impact and its effect on viewers with Johanna Blakley
21:20 Trypical Cumbia
Entrance is free after 21:00.
How do media messages affect us? Can media storytelling – whether factual or fictional – affect how we see the world? Can stories change the way we lead their lives? What role does emotion play in this? And how do we measure that?
Media has long been used to spread messages to mass audiences, but, as marketers often say, “Half the money I spend on advertising is wasted; the trouble is I don't know which half.” Despite a plethora of digital data, measuring the effectiveness of media messages continues to be challenging.
The Norman Lear Center at the University of Southern California has generated media impact studies for 16 years, and, with the founding of its Media Impact Project five years ago, the Center expanded its focus from scripted TV to news, documentaries, narrative films, online video projects, and virtual reality.
Lear Center researcher Johanna Blakley will explain the “entertainment education” model that they used in their Hollywood, Health & Society program which bridges the gap between health experts and TV storytellers, as well as their work on the Media Impact Project, which develops and gathers best practices in media impact assessment.
Methods and findings from a range of media impact studies will be summarized, including results from studies on changes in awareness, knowledge, attitudes and behavior among viewers of scripted entertainment (soap operas, primetime dramas, feature films), as well as consumers of journalistic content on broadcast TV, film, online, and in virtual reality environments.
Combining multiple media genres (anime, sci-fi, fantasy role-playing games) and moving beyond the representation of linear time, Metahaven’s Information Skies offers a dreamlike speculation that questions the boundaries between sound and images, reality and fiction, factuality and technology, reflection and embodiment.
Afterwards, mediatic cocktail recipes while Trypical Cumbia takes the stage. Rebel Cumbia, Cumbia Andina, Cumbia Experimental, Cumbia Sabrosa, Mambo Chueco, Tinku de Combate… a typical tropical party trip! Trypical Cumbia is without a doubt the most popular live Latin band of the time in Scandinavia and delivers a dance show with a very high energy emission.
Photo: Part of Gretchen Bender's visual installation entitled "Total Reset", 1987
Johanna Blakley
Does Media affect how we see the world?
How do media messages affect us? Can media storytelling – whether factual or fictional – affect how we see the world? Can stories change the way we lead their lives? What role does emotion play in this? And how do we measure that?
Talk by
Johanna Blakley
Johanna Blakley is the Managing Director at the Norman Lear Center, where she performs research on global entertainment, cultural diplomacy, celebrity culture, fashion, digital media and intellectual property law. She received a Ph.D. in English from the University of California, Santa Barbara, where she taught courses on popular culture and twentieth-century literature. She has held a variety of positions within the high-tech industry, including Web producer, Web site reviewer, digital archivist and research librarian.
Documentary
Information Skies
Documentary by Metahaven commissioned by the 11th Gwangju Biennale (2016), alongside the mural featuring the inscription “Cosmic Disinformation”, against the backdrop of an anime-style portrait of a woman. Information Skies is not a dystopia but rather a poetically rendered document of the current evolutionary mutations that concern changes in communication tools and reality processing. Metahaven succeed at grasping the essence of these changes by virtue of their creative origins.
Music by
Trypical Cumbia
Trypical Cumbia has 7 band members from Colombia, Chile and Denmark and provides an unforgettable musical experience guaranteeing the true Latin party atmosphere. The group has become known for playing the very dance-friendly and popular music genre, cumbia, originating from the Caribbean of Colombia, but which has spread and evolved into one of the most popular musical styles in all of the Spanish-speaking countries of Latin America.
