Communities through the lens: Grassroots video in Philadelphia as alternative communicative practice.

Format:

Book

Thesis/Dissertation

Author/Creator:

Wong, Cindy H., 1961-

Contributor:

Gross, Larry, advisor.

University of Pennsylvania.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Motion pictures--Research.

Motion pictures.

Mass media.

0708.

0900.

Penn dissertations--Communication.

Communication--Penn dissertations.

Local Subjects:

Penn dissertations--Communication.

Communication--Penn dissertations.

0708.

0900.

Physical Description:

312 pages

Contained In:

Dissertation Abstracts International 58-07A.

System Details:

Mode of access: World Wide Web.

text file

Summary:

New technologies of video production and dissemination have signalled to some possibilities for democratizing media and communications among peoples worldwide. Through the systematic ethnographic and textual analysis of the Community Visions Program of Philadelphia's Scribe Video Center, between 1990 and 1996, this dissertation provides a more complex vision of alternative media and their implications both for local communities and for our reading of contemporary mass media. It suggests that community and video are mutually influential, while the close relations of subject, producer, text and reader intrinsic to grassroots video recast relations of localism and globalism, the meanings of authenticity in form and content, and the construction of audience.

The introduction situates this work within communication, with a model drawing on cultural studies and anthropology. This chapter discusses the author's theoretical formation, participant observation and textual readings during fieldwork (1992 to 1996). The second chapter turns to Scribe itself, its history and goals and the selection process for Community Visions (CV) participants in order to provide an organizational and social context for the work within Philadelphia.

The third chapter follows community into production. General patterns of grassroots production are balanced by detailed studies of two projects: Asian Americans United and the Anna Crusis feminist choir. The chapter stresses how production underscores both organizational strengths and weaknesses, redefining community in action. The fourth chapter extends this analysis to CV texts in form and content. After a close reading of three grassroots texts, it focuses on the CV transformation of documentary strategies like the interview and narration.

Chapter V turns from text to audience. An overview of audience studies and how CV texts are interpreted and used is again complemented by two ethnographic case studies. These underscore how the video is embedded and reproduced within both a concrete community and one open to an imagined audience. The conclusions review the ways we understand relations of producer, text and audience in small-scale media and the implications of an holistic approach for questions of mass media.

Notes:

Thesis (Ph.D. in Communication) -- University of Pennsylvania, 1997.

Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 58-07, Section: A, page: 2433.

Supervisor: Larry Gross.

Local Notes:

School code: 0175.

ISBN:

9780591502015

Access Restriction:

Restricted for use by site license.