Monday, November 5, 2007

The readings were especially interesting to me after the group projects. One thing that did surface during the course of our brainstorming was the creation of an imagined community or network of media-humanitarians (college students) who, like keenan suggests, become moral spectators in a sense that they watch and feel bad about the human rights violations they see on TV but don't really do anything about it. This may be true in many, maybe most cases and it is urgent that we realize that "seeing isnt doing" I felt that the entire article was a little extreme in it's criticism of media as a powerful outlet for humanitarian activism. He starts his article calling the process "global telesurveillance" making it seem as if we are security guards scrutinizing poor people through cameras and ends suggesting that this imagined community threatens a "de-situation" leading to "the disappearance of the world itself in a 'tyranny of absolute speed.'"
The "CNN effect" makes us desensitized to the sad images on TV over time, robbing us of "humanity, the relation to the other." Is he suggesting, then, that we should get rid of the 'global telesurveillance' and remove cameras and the camera-culture from the scene altogether? what is the alternative in this postmodern world?

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