Guy Brandon on Social Media

The latest Cambridge Paper from the Jubilee Centre is available online, this one by Guy Brandon:

Guy Brandon, ‘The Medium is the Message: the Spiritual Impacts of Social Media’, Cambridge Papers 25, 3 (September 2016).

Here is the summary:

‘The internet, smartphones, social media, instant messaging and other related technologies have had a dramatic impact on the way we communicate over the last 20 years, and therefore fundamentally how we relate to one another. Since we are relational beings, made in the image of a relational God, these far-reaching changes have innate spiritual significance. The pervasive nature of communications technologies means it is often hard to gauge their true effects on us, but exploring and understanding the implications for our lives and relationships is vital if their use is to be meaningfully aligned with our faith.’

Second Nature

Second Nature – ‘an online journal for critical thinking about technology and new media in light of the Christian tradition’ – is still fairly new, but looks interesting and helpful.

Lausanne Movement on Media and the Gospel

The current topic focus from the Lausanne Movement on the issues raised in The Cape Town Commitment is media.

There is a summarising piece by Naomi Frizzell – ‘Media and the Gospel: A Call to the Global Lausanne Community’, urging us to take seriously:

• Media awareness – ‘The need for greater understanding of how media messages shape individuals, families and societies; and the need to develop skills of critical evaluation and response.’

• Media presence – ‘The need for a new emphasis on working in the mainstream news and creative media, from a Christian perspective, with professionalism, creativity, integrity, and courage.’

• Media ministries – ‘The need for courage, creativity, innovation, and integrity in using every medium to its full potential to communicate the gospel and biblical truth.’

Several short essays and responses exploring the topic further are available from this page.

Collin Hansen on the Challenge of Christian Journalism

Having posted a piece last week on journalism, I thought I’d link to this short piece by Collin Hansen on ‘The Challenge of Christian Journalism’.

Here’s how he concludes:

‘Journalists that would serve the church will fulfill a catechetical calling. We are teachers who help other Christians understand a world created by God but corrupted by sin. Our investigative work reflects the biblical reality that we live in the “not yet” of the coming kingdom, a time when our “adversary the devil prowls around like a roaring lion, seeking someone to devour” (1 Peter 5:8). We expose the sin that imperils believers so that they might be prepared to defend themselves in the power of the Holy Spirit.

‘Yet, we also live in the “already” time, when the Father is working in glorious ways to spread the saving knowledge of His Son, Jesus Christ. This is good news, and journalists have been called to tell it. With a little help from preachers, we just might be able to encourage the church with a new, more edifying approach to media.’

Don’t Stop the Press

[I contributed this week’s ‘Connecting with Culture’ from the London Institute for Contemporary Christianity. There were a number of possible topics to write about this week, including the London mayoral and local elections, and the first anniversary of the killing of Osama bin Laden, but I opted to reflect on World Press Freedom Day.]

World Press Freedom Day, observed annually on 3 May, was established by the General Assembly of the United Nations in 1993. It provides an opportunity to celebrate the principle of press freedom, draw attention to those areas of the world where such freedom continues to be repressed, and pay tribute to journalists who have faced harassment, imprisonment, or even death to bring news to the global public.

Proceedings surrounding this year’s World Press Freedom Day are considering the power of media freedom to ‘transform societies’. That might sound somewhat grandiose were it not for recent events in North Africa and the Middle East. News of the self-immolation of Mohammed Bouazizi, a vegetable peddler in Tunisia – following the confiscation of his cart by the authorities – went viral through a convergence of mobile technology, social media and satellite TV, lighting the touch paper of unrest, arguably giving birth to what became known as the Arab Spring.

Back in the UK, somewhat ironically, the Leveson Inquiry into ‘the culture, practice and ethics of the press’ rumbles on. The full report is still to come, but the process has already reminded us that freedom can be abused, that there is a line between careful investigative journalism and callous invasion of privacy. Perhaps we have also seen something of our own complicity in sustaining a culture which expects access to news of the scandals and tragedies of others.

At the same time, it would be unhelpful if the Leveson Inquiry demonised journalists and discredited their profession. Those whose understanding of the world is nurtured by Scripture know that journalism (like sex, money and politics) is not inherently evil in itself, but can directed in beneficial ways and misdirected in harmful ways. And those whose lives are shaped by the good news of God’s work of restoration begun in Christ can be confident that in this arena (as with sex, money and politics), redemption is possible.

Indeed, signs of God’s grace can be seen in every instance of truth-telling, of professional integrity, of communicative skill, of honest reporting which treats people with dignity and serves the welfare of others. And we can pray for and support those who work hard to do this, often in difficult circumstances, confident that in God’s grand design ‘there is nothing hidden that will not be disclosed, and nothing concealed that will not be known or brought out into the open’ (Luke 8:17).

Links

UNESCO, World Press Freedom Day 2012.

The Leveson Inquiry.

Christians in Journalism.

The Church and Media Network.

David Aikman, ‘Three Callings of a Christian in Journalism’ (2002).

Arne H. Fjeldstad, ‘Challenges and Opportunities for Christians in Journalism’.

Never Knowingly Over-commercialised?

[I contributed this week’s ‘Connecting with Culture’ from the London Institute for Contemporary Christianity. I’m not entirely happy with the final product; it was difficult to limit myself to the 400 word count and say all I really wanted to say. Ah well... I’m also grateful for the help of my colleague, Neil Hudson, who suggested a few lines.]

Even if you’ve not yet seen the John Lewis Christmas TV advert, the chances are you’ve heard about it – through colleagues at work, Facebook friends, or just about any national newspaper. Within a few hours of being broadcast, it was trending on Twitter and has already had over 1,800,000 hits on YouTube – three times more in a week than its counterpart last Christmas managed in a year.

High production values, careful editing, and a few nods to classic movies combine to tell the story of a young boy counting down the days to Christmas only to ignore his own presents on Christmas morning for the joy of giving his parents their gift. Ending with the tagline ‘For gifts you can’t wait to give’, it has apparently reduced grown men and women to tears.

Others, however, have balked at the £6million price tag for the campaign, or condemned it as a clichéd, overly sentimental example of commercial manipulation, yet another victory for consumerism, and a cynical way of making money – only slightly offset by the policy of John Lewis to reward its workers with a share in the profits. Fans of Morrissey are divided on whether he has done the unthinkable in allowing the 1984 Smiths song, ‘Please, Please, Please, Let Me Get What I Want’ to be borrowed, covered in this case by Slow Moving Millie, using a hymn about unrequited love to sell goods to the middle-classes.

Even so, although the scenes contain John Lewis products, they are not centre-stage. In fact, the emphasis is not on the value of presents so much as the warmth of relationship. As such, the advert gestures towards what we hope to be true. We want generous-hearted children who know that ‘it is more blessed to give than to receive’ (Acts 20:35). Maybe the child embodies qualities we’d like for ourselves.

The joy of giving rather than receiving is somewhat hackneyed, but no less true for that, not least for those who are themselves part of the story in which God loves, Jesus serves, and the Spirit ministers – in self-giving tenderness towards us.

Here, perhaps, is a way of truly ‘connecting with culture’. But it’s also the challenge presented in culture to us. Mawkishness and sentiment aside, how might we demonstrate over the festive season and beyond a generosity of heart and home?

Links

View the John Lewis Christmas 2011 Advert on YouTube.

Read the press release from John Lewis on the Christmas 2011 TV advert.

Take a look at Stuart Jeffries, ‘What John Lewis and other stores’ TV ads tell us about Christmas 2011’, The Guardian (15 November, 2011).

On Marshall McLuhan

Yesterday – 21 July 2011 – was the centenary of the birth of Marshall McLuhan.

I’ve stumbled across two pieces on him so far: this short one in The Guardian by Douglas Coupland, and a much longer one in The New Atlantis by Alan Jacobs (also available as a pdf).

Coupland includes this prescient-sounding quote from McLuhan in 1962:

‘The next medium, whatever it is – it may be the extension of consciousness – will include television as its content, not as its environment. A computer as a research and communication instrument could enhance retrieval, obsolesce mass library organisation, retrieve the individual’s encyclopedic function and flip it into a private line to speedily tailored data of a saleable kind.’

Jacobs notes that there are several ways to read McLuhan badly, and that he is ‘tempted to suggest that McLuhan now be ignored – to argue that his greatest long-term value has been his ability to provoke people who are, if not simply smarter than he was, then more patient, methodical, and scholarly’ (referring to Neil Postman, Hugh Kenner, and Walter Ong). Even so, according to Jacobs, in spite of his overblown international celebrity status, ‘it is not likely that Postman, Kenner, Ong, and many others would have achieved anything like what they did had it not been for the example and the provocation of McLuhan’.

Britain in 2011

Britain in 2011, published by the Economic & Social Research Council, 122pp., £5.50.

This magazine published by the Economic & Social Research Council (which bills itself as ‘the UK's leading agency for research funding and training in economic and social sciences’) looks at eight significant areas of life in the UK today:

• Environment

• Public Services

• Money and Business

• Politics

• Recession and Recovery

• Science and Innovation

• Society

• Media and Entertainment

They also publish Society Now three times a year which is freely downloadable from their website.