1 - Title Page:

How Media Texts Become “Touchstones”

2 - Thesis Page:

First off, this presentation—and entire conference—relies on a metaphorical comparison of

biological systems of a pandemic with systems of media and cultural distribution.

And this is a comparison that is well established in the field:

“Cultural transmission is analogous to genetic transmission,” Dawkins argues (1976, 189)

The Selfish Gene

Douglas Rushkoff ’s 1994

Media Virus

“media events are not like viruses. They are viruses,”

Based on this metaphorical comparison…

I look at how media texts…..spread…..through cultural networks AND mutate into….cultural

touchstones that are then reused and further spread throughout communities.

3- Terms from other articles:

Social media “spread” (a term I borrow from Jenkins, Ford, and Green), that speaks to the
transmission of media from person to person

-- not viral b/c viral has to do with self-replication and also has a negative connotation.

Networks – Sterne / Transmission

network—a whole set of relations, practices, people, and technologies (which Jenkins takes a step further to be a
“networked Culture” )
Mutate – Burgess uses this term to speak to the change that a video/media text may undergo
as it is spread/shared

Viral Videos – Burgess - mediating mechanisms via which cultural practices are originated,
adopted and (sometimes) retained within social networks
**here we will mostly refer to these at Media Texts/Visuals to take into account Jenkin’s rebuke
of “viral”

4 – Touchstone Term

The new term I will use today is “Touchstone”

When media “mutates” via “spread” it can become a “touchstone” that we as a global society
understand/agree as a specific cultural symbol.

[NOW START BULLET POINTS]

So it is:

- A cultural symbol
- Often the context of the original media text drops away as it mutates into a touchstone
- It is re-purposed to quickly convey an idea or moment that is symbolic

5 – Trump/Clinton Debate Part 1

To demonstrate this touchstone mutation idea I am going to look at the October 2016
Trump/Clinton Debate

How many people can picture in their mind Trump stalking Clinton?

But….How many people actually remember the content of what was debated?

[start bullet points here]

That is because this visual is a touchstone. Through almost immediate spread through
networked cultures…this visual mutated into a new media text.

Here are a few tweets….each that has thousands of likes.

As Burgess speaks about in her essay, there is no way to quantify spread on networked cultures
like social media, but we can confidently say that this “touchstone” spread far and wide.
The media text mutated into a touchstone symbolizing Trump’s intimidation that emphasized
his problematic male dominance over Clinton…during a highly gendered political election.

6 – Trump/Clinton Debate Part 2

We are familiar with the famous visual, but the debate itself is of course much longer and
shows many other things happening.

[start bullet points here]

When a media text becomes a touchstone, the context of the original drops away, as is the case
here:

The debate was 90 minutes…but the touchstone is a frame grab…not even a full second

We forget the format and the moderators….it was moderated by Anderson Cooper and Martha
Radditz and was a

We forget that it was a town hall style which allowed for questions from the audience.

We forget that this was the debate where Trump had a press conference with former Bill
Clinton sexual assault accusers. And that these women are in the audience

And we also forget the issues discussed during the debate itself:
- Trump’s Access Hollywood Tape
- Clinton’s Email Server
- Trump and Clinton on Syria
- Immigration

These are all contextual observations that a viewer cannot make from the touchstone visual of
Trump standing over Clinton.

The spread of this visual meant that it mutated into a touchstone that has cultural significance
about the imposed dominance of men over women in politics…and in society.

7 – Trump/Clinton Debate Part 3

When a media text becomes a touchstone, it is then used and appears in various other forms to
evoke a cultural moment or an idea:
CULTURAL TV:

SNL:

We have to understand the touchstone to be in on the joke, and to understand the use of the
Jaws music here that emphasizes Trumps threating actions

Doc Films examples where this is used as a Touchstone:

Hillary:

**uses visuals of Trump standing over Clinton that visually resonate and take us back to the
moment…and the gendered options that Clinton had at the moment.

Because of the touchstone nature of the visual…it resonates for us.

7 – This idea isn’t something that appeared with the internet,

• The internet increased the reach and speed of SPREAD and the size of the NETWORKED
CULTURE, but this TOUCHSTONE MUTATION of media text is not a new creation.

As both Burgess and Jenkins, Ford, and Green note

Hillary Clinton in the pink dress at World Women’s Conference in 1995 – “human rights are
women’s rights and women’s rights are human rights”

Kent State Shooting in 1970 – student protests against US military actions across the globe

Jesus on the Cross on Clothing and Jewelry -

These are all touchstones---a media texts that “spread” through “networked cultures” and
“mutated” into “touchstones” that serves as symbols that then can be repurposed in a way that
may be different from the original text. That we collectively understand to mean something.

8 - Works Cited Page

Burgess, Jean. “’All Your Chocolate Rain Are Belong to Us’?: Viral Video, YouTube and the
Dynamics of Participatory Culture, ed. Geert Lovink, et. al., Amsterdam: Institute of Network
Cultures, 2008, 101-109.

Jenkins, Henry et. al. “Intro: Why Media Spread.” Spreadable Media, NYU Press, 2013, 1-46.
Sterne, Jonathan. “The Social Genesis of Sound Fidelity.” The Audible Past, Duke University
Press, 2003, 215 – 286.

Sterne, Jonathan. “Conclusion: Audible Futures.” The Audible Past, Duke University Press, 2003,
335 – 351.

https://www.bustle.com/articles/188675-memes-about-donald-trump-standing-so-close-to-
hillary-clinton-are-more-creepy-than-funny

https://www.nbcnews.com/storyline/2016-presidential-debates/top-six-moments-second-
presidential-debate-n663371

From Spandita Behera to Everyone: (10:53 AM)

SNL: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qVMW_1aZXRk