Social Media: The Debate on Freedom and Responsibility

Defining social media Social media is a web-based platform where people share information, thoughts and activities. Social media has overtaken pornography as the number one activity on the web. According to Wikipedia, social media includes web-based and mobile technologies used to turn communication into interactive dialogue (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_media). The term Web 2.0 is associated with web applications that facilitate participatory information sharing, interoperability, user-centred design, and collaboration on the World Wide Web (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web_2.0). Examples of Web 2.0 include social networking sites, blogs, wikis, video sharing sites, hosted services and web applications. The news site, Indymedia was formed after the anti-WTO movement started in Seattle in 1999. Later the news site opened 120 branch sites from Boston to Bombay (Beckerman, 2003). The reporter-activists of Indymedia do not believe in objectivity. They believe that no journalism is without bias and the mainstream claims neutrality to mask these biases. If the Seattle incident gave birth to Indymedia, 9/11 popularised the blog. The Iraq War increased the number of bloggers. This proves that bloggers want to express their opinions of major global incidents, and in many cases they provide instant information regarding the incidents. Thus, they play the role of citizen journalists and respond on behalf of humanity and to the greater causes of majority people. According to the blog search engine Technorati, there were 133 million blogs from 2002 to 2008. Every hour, 0.9 million blogs are posted in cyberspace (www.technorati.com/blogging/state-of-blogosphere/). Though not all, but a significant number of blogs are run by strong activists. Several bloggers around the globe have been arrested for writing against repressive governments. And recently, social networking sites like Facebook, Twitter and YouTube have been added in the row. Though these sites were introduced to offer casual friendship, they were used as key components in the contemporary Arab Spring. The social networking site, Facebook was introduced in 2004. Just six years after its inception, the number of Facebook users crossed 500 million (now 800 million). It has become the third biggest 'country' in the world (Fletcher, 2010).

The Role of Media in Creating Consumer Culture in Bangladesh

The neo-liberal and free market economic system and deregulated media situation have ensured introduction of numerous commercial media outlets in Bangladesh. These entire media world are dedicated to create and to enhance consumer culture in the country. They are engaged in selling audience to the advertisers. This article will critically analyse how the media sell the audience to the advertisers. The theoretical aspect the political economy of communication would be instructive here in the critical engagement and case studies would be the method to investigate the role of media in creating consumer culture in Bangladesh. The areas of investigation in the article would be some cases selected from the newspapers, private television channels and FM commercial radios.

Media Sells Audience
In course of time, the idea of audience had shifted from mass to market. As the media have become bigger business, the term ‘market’ has gained in currency (McQuail, 2005). Media usually sells the market or this set of consumers to the advertisers. Denis McQuail defined audience as an ‘aggregate of actual or potential consumers of media services and products, with a known social-economic profile’ (McQuail, 2005: 399). In recent times audience is treated by media not as a group of public, rather a set of consumers.

Telecommunication sector under threat

The latest news in the telecom sector is "International Terrestrial Cable (ITC) license holders will be allowed/issued International Internet Gateway (IIG) license by default." The ITC license holders have already had meetings with the Ministry of Post and Telecommunication (MoPT) and Bangladesh Telecommunication and Regulatory Commission (BTRC) on the matter.

The reason they have shown in issuance of IIG license in their favour is that, as Bangladesh Telecommunication Company Limited (BTCL) and Mango Teleservices Limited (Mango) are holding both IIG and ITC licenses, if they are not given IIG license then they don't have any valid business case with ITC license only. One may be surprised to know that MoPT and BTRC may be considering such a request.

Issuance of the IIG license to ITC license holders would clearly cause procedural and legal difficulties for which the government/BTRC could come under questioning. If ITC license holders are of the opinion that BTCL and Mango are a threat to their business and they don't have any valid business case with ITC license only, then we may conclude that these five ITC license holders have submitted incorrect/wrong business documents/

feasibility reports without assessing their business risk factors; or they don't have any clear idea regarding ITC business; or BTRC/MoPT have failed to assess bidders properly and awarded these license wrongly. Before bidding, these ITC license holders knew that BTCL as an incumbent would be allowed one ITC license by MoPT/BTRC and Mango, as a prospective bidder for ITC license and as per the ILTDS Policy-2010, would also be awarded ITC license.

Cinema as the Work of Art in the Age of Digital Reproduction

Benjamin, Aura and Digital Reproduction
In his ground breaking article entitled 'The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction' Walter Benjamin (Benjamin, 1936) depicted how mechanical reproduction has changed the nature of production and consumption of art work. The most important thing is that the work of art has lost its aura. Aura is indicative of art's traditional association with primitive, feudal, or bourgeois structures of power. For the case of painting, there is always an original one, hanging in a museum or in the house of an elite person. One's claim of seeing Monalisa is not complete until he or she goes to the Louvre and sees the original work of art. But in the case of press, photography or film, one cannot differentiate between the copied one and the master. In the age of reproduction, the work of art loses the aura of originality. Benjamin (Benjamin, 1936) says the technique of reproduction detaches the reproduced object from the domain of tradition. By making many reproductions it substitutes a plurality of copies for a unique existence. Even the printed copy of Monalisa can be found in front of the Louvre which contributes, to some extent, to the loss of aura. According to Robert Kolker (Kolker, 1999), Benjamin, unlike most of his Frankfurt School associates, did not look at this loss of aura with alarm. Rather, he thought about the growth of popular culture as something to be understood not as an oppressive reality, but as a potentially liberating one. The mechanical reproduction system could democratis e art. One who has a still camera can be a creator of a work of art.

New book on Digital Cinema in Bangladesh

This book tried to investigate the potentials, trends and challenges of digital film in Bangladesh. The study has studied four digital films as cases to understand the digital film situation in Bangladesh. However, the theoretical notions by Walter Benjamin (1936) and Samira Makhmalbaf (2000) were instructive in guiding this study. According to their approach, new technological art medium always liberate and democratize art forms. Enthusiasts indicate that new filmmakers will embrace digital film as the preferred format and create a new cinema tradition in Bangladesh. Responding to that euphoria of technological liberty, this study has examined the potentials of digital cinema in Bangladesh, the trends of existing digital filmmaking practices and problems of digital cinema in Bangladesh. After in-depth analysis and discussion, this study suggests how to progress digital filmmaking practices in Bangladesh.

Lists of Content

Preface
1. Introduction
Film is Dead, Long Live Cinema
Analog versus Digital Technology
Defining Digital Cinema
Origin and Development of Digital Cinema
Digital Intermediate
Distribution and Exhibition
2. The Work of Art in the Age of
Digital Reproduction
Work of Art in the Digital Age

40 Years of Media Experiences in Bangladesh: A Critical Overview

As in other countries, journalism in Bangladesh, too, has experienced three phases. The first was initiated by the politicians, with the media being used as the voice of political parties or for serving political agendas though, for Bangladesh, it was serving the agendas of people also as the country was fighting for rights against West Pakistan central government in 1960s. With time, questions were raised against biased and political journalism and there was advocacy for objective and ethical journalism. Worldwide, behind the introduction of objective journalism, there was a contribution of journalism schools. Today is the age of corporate-owned journalism, a contemporary reality that is both global and local. There are differences in the objective and style of these three kinds of journalism.

Bangladesh as a nation turns 40 in 2011. In this article I will review the trends and developments of journalism in Bangladesh in the last four decades. I will also try to forecast here the trends of the news industry in the coming decade after which Bangladesh will be a 50-year-old nation.

Cinema(s) of Bengal(s)

Until 1956, Bengali cinema meant cinema made from Kolkata. It was a big industry within India since 1930s and Bengali Muslims from East Bengal were basically the consumers of the film. However, the international recognition of Satyajit Ray and artistic success of some other filmmakers like Ritwik Ghatak and Mrinal Sen from West Bengal, India had created a profound impact on the filmmakers of Bangladesh. The Dhaka-based first full length sound feature film Mukh O Mukhosh (The Face and the Mask) was made in 1956, just after the next year of the release of Pather Pachali by Satyajit Ray. The film industry of Bangladesh, Bangladesh Film Development Corporation (BFDC), was established in 1957. One of the earlier film Ashia (1960), produced from BFDC and directed by Fateh Lohani was highly influenced by Pather Pachali. After the independence, the first internationally recognized film from Bangladesh, Suryo Dighal Bari (The Ominous House, 1979) by Masihuddin Shaker and Sheikh Niamat Ali was also influenced by Satyajit Ray’s neo-realist filmmaking style. The first film Dhire Bahe Meghna (Quiet Flows the River Meghna, 1973) by Alamgir Kabir – one important auteur of post-independence Bangladesh – was a co-production with India. He had cast several actors from India in most of his films. The three great filmmakers of West Bengal – Ray, Ghatak and Sen – all of them either born in East Bengal and later migrated to India after the partition in 1947 or their ancestors were born in East Bengal.

So the plight of partition, or the reminiscence of their homeland were the subjects of some of films by Ray, Ghatak and Sen. Ritwik Ghatak is one of them who never accepted the artificially created partition of India as well as partition of Bengal and he had always talked about the cultural unison of two Bengals.

Seminar: Cinema of Bangladesh: Re-reading Popular Culture and Construction of Identity

The Event

Date: 18 August, 2009, Tuesday, 10:30 am

Vanue: Senate Building, Dhaka University

Organized by: Dept. of Mass Communication and Journalism, University of Dhaka and Bangladesh Film Archive

Papers
1. “6 Song, 10 Fights and 1 Affair: Re-reading Bangla Cinema”
Presenter: Lotte Hoek, Lecturer, University of Amsterdam
2. “Construction of Identity in the Independent Films of Bangladesh”
Presenter: Fahmidul Haq, Assistant Professor, Mass Communication and Journalism, Dhaka University

Discussants
1. Manosh Chowdhury, Faculty Member, Anthropology Department, Jahangirnagar University
2. Matin Rahman, Filmmaker
3. Zahidur Rahim Anjan, President, Bangladesh Short Film Forum
4. Salimullah Khan, Writer

Abstracts

Presentation 1: “Six Songs, Ten Fights, One Love: Re-reading Bangladeshi Cinema”
By Lotte Hoek

In this paper, I argue that an understanding of popular cinema cannot rely solely on a reading of a film text. Instead, such a text must be placed in its production context and its technological environment before it can function as an object for social scientific enquiry. Currently, the analysis of popular Bangladeshi cinema lacks any thorough engagement with its production context. In this paper, I will highlight one part of the FDC production environment. On the basis of this I will suggest a possible way of re-reading popular Bangladeshi cinema by investigating the diegetic results of the lack of use of wild tracks in the FDC.

Presentation 2: “Construction of Identity in the Independent Films of Bangladesh”
By Fahmidul Haq

This paper tends to analyze how Bengali Muslim identity, the national identity of Bangladesh, is represented in selected independent films. The analysis finds independent cinema of Bangladesh as an influential cultural institution and as an ideal ‘system of representation’ it tries to ‘homogenize’ the nation through depicting Bengaliness, the ethno-linguistic identity approach, as the only identity approach of Bengali Muslims, and it suggests this preferred identity as progressive and modern and portrays Muslimness, the religious identity approach, as the ‘other’ identity which is or should be considered as non-progressive and primitive. As a part of homogenizing the ‘imagined community’, independent cinema widens the prevailing gap between the two conflicting identities – Bengaliness and Muslimness. The findings also suggest that to sustain the ethnic and cultural elements of Bengaliness on the screen, directors don’t hesitate to orientalize themselves to the global audience. The paper highlights and tries to establish popular religion, the syncretic identity approach within Bengali-Muslim identity, which is ignored in prevailing identity discourse in Bangladesh and it examines how this approach is dealt in the independent films.

BLACKOUT: A Vigourous-Bold-Experimental Story Without A Tale

A one-day-fine-arts-student and poet Tokon Thaakoor starts his journey in the premises of cinematography with Blackout. Not strictly a biography, though, it is a part of the same. He, here, himself apportioned into two, as does a bacterium; the two main protagonists Rafi and Madol are an artist and a poet respectively. In many way, they are identical with Thakoor- above thirty, unmarried, live on a garret (an attic), smitten with reverie-love-lust... all carnal desires. The way the poet (in the Blackout) is overwhelmed of his childhood, it seems, Thakoor is visualizing his autobiography. Though Blackout doesn’t show us the every details of an autobiography, it is certainly a documentation of a part of contemporary youth lifestyle and practice of dreamy obsession, the worse for intoxicating drug or liquor, unmet desire for sex. Specially, it is the documentation of artistry-love-lust of those fresh-blood youths, within a-some hundred yards between Dhaka Fine Arts Institute and Aziz Super Market, by whom the contemporary Dhaka-based art-culture-literature is being practiced and exercised. Rather the director didn’t follow the usual narrative of conventional documentary or feature-film; he went through the complex experimental course of metaphor-metaphysics in addition to animation. Probably, it is the Blackout presents before us with large-scale experimental relish ever in our country.

The prime criterion of this video fiction is its statelessness; self-perception dominates here as does in experimental short story. A used-to-viewer of simple narrative cinematography doesn’t feel ease here. This is rather an expression of feelings of this transition period youth- as a poetry, or as an artwork, partly revealed, the rest remains unrevealed. Blackout will definitely touch those young afflicted with creativity-love-lust-liquor-agony; also those non-young interested to realize the present-day youth. Others may refuse to accept Blackout, due partly to its unconventional complex type of presentation, and partly to its immoral (!) unaccustomed (!) commentary. Fortunately, it was not captured in celluloid; in that case, the scythe of the censor-board would be sharper. Here, in Blackout, an artist sketches a mature penis and calls it missile; masturbation contexts are there; character here is both homo- and hetero-sexual. Films released from FDC shows raw nudity, unreliably though; even then, those easily pass the censor-board. Nevertheless, undoubtedly, Blackout would be caught by the board.

Brick Lane: A Tale of Transformation of an Immigrant Woman

One can easily discover the thematic similarities between the film Brick Lane (2007) by British director Sarah Gavron and Paroma (1984) by the Indian director Aparna Sen. After serving her husband and caring for her children for several years, an ordinary housewife suddenly discovers that she has passed a large part of her life meaninglessly, not taking car of her own need. Of course, these feelings appear within herself after contact with a young man and she discovers how she has been deprived of the charms of life, how her mind and body have been dispossessed of heavenly happiness on Earth. Gradually, the late-thirties woman turns into a lover from a conventional housewife and feels like a young woman who has fallen in love for the first time. And most importantly, she becomes self-determined and self-asserting.

It is the first feature film by the documentary and short filmmaker Sarah Gavron. Though the title of the film is Brick Lane, adapted from the best selling novel of Monica Ali of the same title, you will not find the presence of Brick Lane or the Bangla Town, London much in the film. The storyline progresses as an indoor family drama.