I submitted my thesis to the Department of Graduate Studies at Emerson College this afternoon. It’s entitled “Community Media in Transition: Public Access Television in the Age of YouTube.”

I appreciated the feedback I received from my committee during my defense. They recommended that I spend a bit more time on the paper before making it public. I agreed.

My plan now is to spend the next two months revising the paper. I hope to create a more clear and direct version of my thesis statement with the revision. My hope is that in doing so it will provide a much more detailed road map of policy recommendations that I’ve only begun to layout in the paper thus far. I also hope that a revised version will be more accessible to the general public.

While I’m eager to share the ideas presented in the paper, it’s more important to me that I spend the time making it all it can and should be. That’s the work ahead.

Posting has been light here over the past month as I’m working to finish up my thesis. I hope to have a final draft completed for my committee to review by early April. In the meantime, please visit the websites and blogs listed in my links section (right hand column) for updates from folks who have been great sources of inspiration for this project.

Last week, my thesis adviser recommended that I consider cultural studies as an analytic framework for helping me to articulate some of my thoughts on this project. More specifically, it was recommended that I refer back to Roland Barthes and his work in Mythologies. In re-reading “Myth Today,” Barthes begins by explaining that “since myth is a type of speech, everything can be a myth provided it is conveyed by a discourse” (109).

What I’ve learned so far in my research is that there is a huge disconnect between those who believe that public access television is like YouTube and those who believe the two are totally different. As I re-read Barthes, it becomes clear to me that at some point over the past 30 years a myth was created about public access television that still exists today.

With the growing popularity of YouTube this myth has resurfaced once again. What I hope to do with this project is explore the discourse surrounding the myth of public access television and how it has collided with the participatory web. As Barthes writes

We reach here the very principle of myth: it transforms history into nature . . . what causes mythical speech to be uttered is perfectly explicit, but it is immediately frozen into something natural; it is not read as a motive, but as a reason. (129)

Citation: Barthes, R. (1972). Mythologies. New York: Hill and Wang.

Jason Daniels of Medfield.tv generously contributed the header image above for this blog. My feelings about this WordPress theme have been lukewarm since I installed it. So, now I’m really inspired to find a new theme for this blog. Thanks, Jason!

“Saddles” photo by miladus

Sometimes all you need is a little inspiration (or push) to get you blogging again. Amy Gahran’s recent article, “Blogging Without the Time Sink” was just what I needed:

A blog post is not (or at least, it shouldn’t be) a writing assignment you must prep for and deliver as a finished package. Let go of the idea that you must have everything nailed down, organized, and edited before you publish. (A tough one for journalists, I know, but consider it a kind of experiment or Zen exercise.)

On that note, I’m back to it! I’ve been away for a bit this summer, getting married to my beautiful wife and honeymooning on the west coast. We had a lovely time and now we’re both back to work.

I’m revved up to officially start my grad thesis (this project) next week. It’s hard to believe that all of the planning and exploration over the past year on this topic is finally leading up to the beginning!

I’m looking forward to learning more, making a lot of mistakes, trying not to assume too much, and gearing up to be torn apart by a number of folks (particularly in the access community) who know way more than I do about the everyday ins & outs of grappling with new Internet technologies and learning what tools work best with their communities needs.

If this sounds like you, I’m still looking for your feedback and experience. Particularly to understand the contributions from the PEG TV community to the larger conversation about how a Community Media Center can best utilize the Internet - in concert with a cable channel(s) - to help amplify voices, connect and share with others, and empower local communities.

It would be nice to have a better looking header image for this blog. The image above is something I threw together over the weekend.

If anyone would like to contribute design ideas for this site, you can email them to colin (AT) cmediachange (DOT) net. The dimensions across the top are 780×150.