Annotated Bibliography Assessment

Rocamora, A. (2012). Hypertextuality and Remediation in the Fashion Media. Journalism Practice, 6(1), 92-106. doi: 10.1080/17512786.2011.622914

The author of this article, Agnes Rocamora, is a Senior Lecturer in Cultural and Historical Studies and a Senior Research Fellow at the London College of Fashion, University of the Arts. She has written many other journal articles and was a contributor to two fashion books. This academic and practical experience, along with the extensive use of sources throughout the article demonstrate that she is in a position to comment and pass judgement on issues that come under her expertise and that she has found many examples to corroborate her view. The article itself discusses the fashion blogosphere and its impacts on old media, whilst also investigating how traditional media is affecting this new form of fashion journalism. Two particular aspects are examined, hypertextualisation and remediation. She discovered that the rise of blogs has caused fashion magazines (traditional media) to include pieces of journalism that seem highly blog-influenced and, that blogs themselves have risen in popularity due to the idea of the ‘semantic’ web, with users having a great degree of control when searching through posts. The only point lacking in this article is that ‘traditional fashion media’ are discussed only as fashion magazines and as text; no strong mention of photography/illustration can be found. Overall, the discoveries discussed in this article (hypertextualisation and remediation) can be seen, to a certain extent, in the following three news media pieces.

Weiss, P. (2012). Vogue Bans Underage Models, Calls for Healthy Fashion Reform. At Last. Retrieved from http://shine.yahoo.com/fashion/vogue-bans-underage-models-calls-healthy-fashion-reform-235800554.html

This online article discusses Vogue’s decision to stop using models under the age of 16 and those who appear to have an eating disorder. The beginning of this piece seems extremely biased towards Vogue, focussing strongly on quotes from Vogue magazine themself. Towards the end of the article however, there are some questions raised as to whether Vogue will actually commit to their stated goals, and there is a small amount of criticism of the magazine. These negative comments seem weak compared to the heavy praise contained at the start of the piece. There is reference to the fact that Anna Wintour’s biggest competitor is now a blogger by the name of Tavi. This is strongly in line with Agnes Rocamora’s piece on the fashion blogosphere. Weiss hints that the statement about models by Vogue is a strategy to gain more readers and perhaps gain an advantage over bloggers. The author is an editor of Yahoo! Shine, and is heavily involved in fashion writing and photography which would lend her to be quite informed on fashion issues. Yahoo, however, is a commercial form of media and scattered throughout the page and in the story itself are links to other stories that are only loosely related to the main point. This may frustrate readers and it seems like a deliberate attempt to make readers more exposed to advertisements. This causes a lack of credibility to the site.

Landers, K. & Voloder, D. (Presenters), & Clements, K. (Interviewee). (2012, May 4). Vogue decides to ban underage and skinny models [Audio Podcast]. Retrieved from http://www.abc.net.au/worldtoday/content/2012/s3495563.htm

This source is in the simple form of a radio interview (archived as a podcast) and in contrast to the Yahoo! Shine piece, there is heavy questioning on Vogue from the beginning. Similar points are discussed in this piece, such as the timing of the decision and the questioning of how it will be policed, but the ABC version seems to address them in much more substance. The ABC is generally held in high rapport with the public and they are trusted to deliver news that is factual and truthful, which they seem to have done by going direct to an Australian source on the issue. Although they questioned Clements quite thoroughly, there can be no guarantees to the truth of her statements and it would be a stronger piece overall if the presenter did more research on the topic or interviewed an opposing source in addition to the Australian Vogue editor. This would have given a wider view on the topic. It was aired on the ABC radio show The World Today which prides itself on analysing, interpreting and encouraging debate on events and issues that are important to Australians. This is a respected news program and Australians would, due to historical reputation, place more faith in this source than in Yahoo! Shine.

Next Media Animation. (2012, May 7). Vogue: Underweight Models Need Not Apply [Video]. Retrieved from http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4KM_BuuGSnE

This video provides an extremely crude angle to the story and it should not be considered a credible news piece. To begin with, they provide only one source to back up their story, which was the press release itself. There is nothing to back up other claims stated throughout the video, unlike the two previous reports on the topic. They do question Vogue’s ability to police the topic and comment on the history of the industry but the hosts, who go by the names of Jen-Jen and Vanessa, have no credentials and their only aims for news-reporting are that it is ‘sexy, eye-popping and fun’. This would leave the viewer to be extremely critical of whatever they hear from this source. In contrast to the previous two sources, visuals are included in this medium. However, this only detracts even more credibility from the news piece; it is animated and grossly exaggerated in order to shock the audience. The author’s heavy bias is displayed in the visual content. An example of this is: when underweight models are not being used, the only alternative appears to be plus size models that are deemed by the authors to be ‘wide-loads’. Hopefully traditional fashion media will not follow Rocamora’s prediction of remediation with Next Media Animation in mind.