NOTES: Origins and Context | See Also
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Origins of this content
This texteo mixes (or creates a montage with) two elements: the ideas and images of ethnographic filmmaker and theorist David MacDougall and text describing lessons I learned from LFYT 2007. In my blog post "On Slogans" I write: "I ask you to think of the following slogans—penned by committed artists from long-past revolutions, times, and places, and then followed by my own slogan responses—as a call to arms for how we might better muster today's technology to contribute to an ongoing project of improving the possibilities for presentation, interpretation, and abstract social evaluation, human interaction, perception, and epistemology, through media praxis."
Contextualization
"David MacDougall and his wife Judith MacDougall have been described as 'the most significant ethnographic filmmakers in the English-speaking world today.' They have collaborated on many prize-winning films, but have also gone their separate ways to produce distinguished films in their own right."[cit]

Visual anthropologist, Jay Ruby, writes about ethnographic films: "In order to discuss [these] films as ethnography we must assume that when a filmmaker says that his film is ethnographic he wishes to be taken seriously. The film is to be regarded as the product of an anthropological study, and its primary purpose is to further the scientific understanding of the cultures of humankind."[cit]

Professor Tom Breslin's Vocabulary for Media Ethics includes: conflicts, rules, relativism, egoism, altruism, ethics of care, and discrimination.[cit] In "Media Ethics Today," Brenna Coleman asks: "What exactly drives the powerful Western media—government mandates, social responsibility and the quest for truth, or is it the financial goals of large media corporations?"[cit]

It is important to distinguish what characteristics of media documentary will change the world's perception of social justice issues and which one's may fall short.--Chloe Kissane, LFYT 2015

One of my ten founding terms for this project is ethics: The lived power relations between humans that are mobilized by media production and reception are integral to its process and understanding.

And, one of my three founding calls for this project is supporting engaged citizens who participate in power sharing, or "creative democracy," radical pedagogy, ethical process, accountability, and social justice enacted through and about the media.
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More videos related to the content of this page
REPRESENTATION IS A CRIME

"The real crime of representation is representation itself."– David MacDougall [cit]

Video re-presentation on YouTube must be attentive to the ethics and power inherent in all acts of representation. Given the bounded terms of YouTube's corporate ownership and its highly structured platform, communal authoring is possible but rarely taken advantage of while communal consumption is almost absent by definition. Without community, users find little need or possibility for ethics, which are central for effective cross-cultural interaction and communication.