BLOG POST 3 - Seif Amer

 In class we discussed the concept of media assemblages or media ecologies which are a collection of forms and practices that facilitate a specific media environment. A media ecology can be understood and analyzed by the use of three distinct articulations. 

The articulation of focus is #3, which focuses on how the medium is brought to life, and how it is spread through a culture, community or society to best deliver the message. This means taking advantage of spatio-temporal concepts of media distribution, creation and consumption. What this means is that by spreading the message in a creative manner using space-biased media in a time where there is no internet to facilitate virality, you maximize the potential for your message to reach as many people as possible. This is what Martin Luther did with his 95 Theses collection. A book that discussed Luther’s issues with the church selling indulgences to finance the building they were using, and as a result may be considered disingenuous. “Luther had unwittingly revealed the power of a decentralized, person to person media system whose participants took care of distribution, deciding collectively which messages to amplify through sharing, recommendation and copying (Standage, Pp. 53).” Martin Luther showed through creative distribution that physically spreading a media form is an effective mode of circulation. He distributed his theses by hanging them on doors, handing them off person to person, and travelling with hundreds of copies in carts in order to maximize how much he could distribute personally throughout his travels. His method of distribution succeeded in reaching many in the community and even distant parts of the region outside of his community.

Moving the focus over to the meme of the woman yelling at the cat, articulation 3 is also very present in the virality of this meme. First of all, the internet in general allows for the distribution of images in many different ways. They could be posted on social media, texted to an individual or group, placed in a video, used in a presentation etc. So there are many modes of distribution, but there are also endless interpretations to be formed from the meme, which is intentionally formatted to allow any context which fits the emotions being displayed in the image. This allows for endless levels of creativity which can allow the image to resonate with essentially anybody if the context relates to or concerns them.

                                                                           References

Standage, T. (2013). Writing on the wall: Social media -- the first 2,000 years.