Experiencing Michael Jackson's death through the internet, specifically facebook as a social network site, has shaped my perspective of his life and death and contributed to my views of Michael both as a person and celebrity.
The day Michael Jackson died I was sitting at home looking through my facebook. I saw that several people had updated their status to things like "the king of pop is dead" and "r.i.p M.J." I clicked on a link to cnn.com; they had just updated the front page minutes prior with a breaking news story that Michael Jackson suffered from a heart attack and died.
Facebook provided a unique portal to the event as I was able to witness and participate in a collective reaction to his death and of his life. All at once I was flooded with information in various forms: music videos, old music clips, news reports in text, and opinions of my peers and people that would otherwise (if not for facebook) have been outside of my social and information circle. The internet also provided a real time delivery of the news that is not possible with other media forms such as newspaper or even television.
This influx of information also gave me a new view on Michael Jackson's life that I would not have formed had I seen the news through a different medium. I always had an impression of Michael Jackson as a weird plastic man who allegedly abused children. Growing up after Michael's prime, I had never seen him as a pop icon or experienced any of his musical talents. This rush of all of his contributions to pop music at my fingertips helped me appreciate him as an icon and see a more complete picture of his career. It opened a new view of the many good things that he and his music brought to people.
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This is a great example of collective intelligence, which we will study later in the course. Many people contributed small bits of information to print a larger picture of who this man was, beyond what mainstream media has focused on.
ReplyDeleteWhen Michael Jackson died, he became more than a celebrity - an icon. Just like the icons of saints in Eastern Orthodox Churches, nobody may dare speak ill of what Michael Jackson may have done during his life, as his image is now adorned by the purest of auras and nobody can resist his holiness now that he is dead.
ReplyDeleteAlthough we live in a much secular world today than ever before, our treatment of Michael Jackson after his death reflects how our society, through church, used to canonize people after their death and declare them saints. Furthermore, anyone who spoke ill of a saint in the early days was dealt with by the church as a heretic.
Today, Michael Jackson has become our current makeshift saint whose name nor image cannot be spoken ill of for the fear of reprisal from his mass cult following to whom he is indeed now a holy entity.
I find it fascinating more and more how many people are informed about the latest news through something like a facebook status update. It will be very interesting to see where this new medium of media is going to take us in the future.
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