Post Prod Pokes

Certainly, as Keenan suggests, and JWK reiterates, the Jihadist movement's use of networked digital media technologies forces us to reflect critically on our advocation for the "Witness" -- side note: Peter Gabriel...? -- model of use for transnational cyberspace, and the fundamental implications of such a media zone. However, I was particularly interested in something Keenan brought up during the Q&A: his analogy of the videos to baseball cards, and the "fan culture" of trading media clips. Such commodification and circulation of these DIY, war videos, and the consequent questions of meaning, ownership and "work", might be investigated in reference to such techniques as the intercutting of text (in the Humvee segment, for example), and the overlay of logos. In terms of the latter visual trope, Keenan mentioned that a Sunni and Shiite group had alternately claimed the same footage, switching logos. What does that imply? Additionally, what do these post-production effects of text and logo have on the "decreasing time between event/reality and its recording and dissemination" (MKDUCH)? I am also curious how my questions of the function of text and logo relate back to EDONAHUGE's blog post about the loss of the "literary foundation" of news media. Post-production effects in the videos we watched also included some pretty snazzy replays -- the Humvee explosion was repeated multiple times. How does this affect the "being-there" and the Truth claim or value of the clip as trading card? Just some pokings from a production stand-point.